Last Stand of the DNA Cowboys (12 page)

'Some people like this shit.'

Billy shook his head as though still amazed at the things people could like. 'I'm with you, Minstrel Boy. The sooner we get to a nice big city, the better I'll like it.'

'You were run out of Litz, weren't you?'

'If you remember, we were all run out of Litz.'

'There are plenty of other cities.'

Renatta was hanging out of the side port, squinting ahead into the slipstream. 'There's something up there.'

'What is it?'

'I can't quite see. It looks like a mast or some kind of antenna . . . oh, God! I don't believe this.'

Now everyone could see it. The Minstrel Boy slowed the Saab to a stop. It was a body hanging from a tall pole, a man who had been creatively mutilated.

'This is not a good start.'

'He doesn't look like a native.'

What garments remained on the hanged man were more appropriate to a neoprimitive warrior than to the kind of mind-roasted sun worshiper the Minstrel Boy had expected to find in Santa Freska. His hair was plastered up into a coxcomb of high spikes, and he wore ceramic chest and shoulder guards; the tattered black loincloth was stiff with dried blood, as was the streaming horsehair sporran that hung between his legs.

'You telling me that this is what they do to strangers?'

The Minstrel Boy engaged the drive again and started forward down the road. Billy immediately protested.

'What the hell do you think you're doing?'

'Heading in to see what's going on here.'

'Do we want to know what's going on here? The stiff on the gibbet clearly wasn't intended to encourage tourists, so why don't we take them at their word? Why don't we just turn around and go back the way we came?'

'Because I think this is Santa Freska Town coming up now.'

The Saab was cresting a low hill. In front of them, a circle of palms and a tangle of smaller vegetation was a flourish of cool green against the drab desert.

'It looks like someone trashed the place.'

Black smoke poured from a blue dome in among the trees. Flames flickered from a gaping hole in the side. One end of a low flat-roofed structure had fallen into rubble. A burning ground car lay on its roof beside the road. As they got closer, it was possible to see the bodies on the ground in the shade of the palms and the black, flapping shapes that moved in among them. The Minstrel Boy once again halted the Saab before actually entering the town. Reave effortlessly assumed command.

'Okay, let's have the covers down and the gun ports manned. We're going to go in, but we're going to do it slow and careful.'

Billy did not look too happy about the idea, but he kept quiet. Reave turned his attention to Renatta, who was tentatively grasping the handgrips of the particle thrower.

'Do you know how to fire that thing?'

She nodded. 'It looks pretty straightforward.'

He leaned in and fine-tuned the sight fix. 'That'll be better.' He glanced up at the Minstrel Boy. 'Okay, let's move but take it real easy.'

Before whatever violence had taken place, the oasis must have been an idyllic spot. It was only when the Saab was in among the trees that its occupants realized just how big they were and how, in fact, there was a whole small town down in the cool shade. The tank came around the burning dome and turned into what was the equivalent of a main street. On one side there was the water of the oasis itself. Flamingos and other wading birds stood unconcernedly in the shallows while human bodies still floated in the water. All around there were the scars of gunfire and explosions. Two buildings were demolished completely, and an imposing wooden building with a sign proclaiming itself "El Cantina" had taken a bad beating. There were more wrecked vehicles and yet more bodies.

If anything, the flapping black things were more of a shock than the bodies. The Minstrel Boy had assumed that they were regular buzzards. They were not. Much larger than buzzards, they were some unholy, and probably wholly fabricated, hybrid of the vulture and the leather-winged pterodactyl. They tore, ripped, and haggled over the flesh of the dead. On the ground they moved like vultures; they had the same hooked beak but were completely without feathers, and their wings were thick membranes like the creaking shrouds of huge carrion bats. The Minstrel Boy could not believe that anyone could deliberately create anything so disgusting.

There were also humans, stooped figures in dark dirty rags, moving among the carnage stripping the corpses. The raiding party that must have swept through had its own hyena camp followers. When they saw the tank, they cut and ran, scrambling aboard the most verminous tent rail the Minstrel Boy had ever seen, a smoke-belching flatbed with a crude frame superstructure covered in rotting canvas and tattered hides. It took off, hightailing it down the road away from the oasis even while the last of the scavengers were still struggling to swing themselves aboard. Renatta fired a shot after them but misjudged the range.

'Always compensate for a target that's moving away from you,' Reave told her.

'I'll learn.'

He beamed encouragingly. 'Sure you will.'

Billy was thoughtful. His normality seemed to be holding. 'If things like that have started following these raiders, the situation must have deteriorated since Reave was running with Baptiste.'

'Sure as hell weren't creeps like that following our trail. Baptiste would have wasted them.'

The Minstrel Boy halted the Saab in front of El Cantina. 'Do you ever get the feeling that we're traveling through the end of civilization?'

Reave and the Minstrel Boy looked around as Billy let out an unexpected laugh.

'If anyone deserved a role in that, it's got to be us.' Billy even seemed to be recovering his personality.

They waited a full five minutes without seeing any sign of life except what they had started to call the vulture bats.

'Looks as though the town's dead. Maybe we should get out
and have a walk around, see what we can see,' Reave suggested.

Nobody seemed to want to be the first to move. Finally Reave took a pistol from the rack beside his gun position. 'I suppose you all want me to take the point?'

'We thought you'd never ask.'

He checked the charge on his first pistol and slid it into his belt, then picked up the second one. 'Okay, so pop the side hatch.'

The Minstrel Boy raised the gull-wing door on the left side of the tank, the side that was facing the oasis. It was unlikely that an attack would come from the water, and there was always the chance that a straggler or a survivor, still with a weapon, might be lurking inside one of the buildings. Reave would have the battlewagon between him and that possibility.

The Minstrel Boy glanced at Billy. 'You have a weapon?'

'Only a sleeve needler.'

Billy had always had a taste for small, easily concealed weapons. They might be handy in a bar or boudoir, but as street sweepers they were pretty well useless. The Minstrel Boy looked to Renatta. 'How about you?'

She shook her head. 'I don't have a weapon at all.'

The Saab's previous owner had left a rack of small arms: a selection of handguns and three heavyweight von Essen shattertubes, the kind that fired blasts of hardened ice. The Minstrel Boy passed one over to Billy and took one himself. He grinned at Renatta.

'Why don't you move up into the top turret and cover us until we know that everything's okay.'

She nodded. She did not seem to have any desire to venture outside. 'Okay.'

Billy and the Minstrel Boy dropped through the hatch. As they stood beside Reave, Billy jerked a thumb back at the tank, indicating Renatta. 'If anything goes down, she's just as likely to blow us away by mistake.'

Reave glanced back through the hatch. 'Lighten up. She's okay.'

The Minstrel Boy eyed Reave silently. He was being uncharacteristically pleasant to Renatta. Reave did not notice the look and gestured with one of his pistols.

'Shall we get on with this?'

They cautiously emerged from the cover of the Saab. They spread out and started slowly to cross the street toward El Cantina. The vulture bats hissed and barked at them and rattled their wings, but nothing else stirred.

'We ought to wipe out those things before we leave here,' Reave said.

They took a couple more paces, and then Billy froze. 'Something moving inside the cantina!'

They stood their ground, weapons at the ready. The door of the cantina creaked. A figure tottered out onto the covered walk.

It was a man, covered in blood and with an ugly blast wound in his chest. It was amazing that he was able to stand at all. He clutched a long-barreled pistol in his right hand and was desperately trying to raise it with the last of his strength.

'You . . . scum . . . bastards.'

Billy looked urgently at Reave. 'Shall I finish him?'

'Hold your fire.'

As Reave spoke, the man's legs gave way and he collapsed to the boards of the walk. The three of them ran to where he was lying. As they gathered around him, his lips began to move. It was clearly agony for him to talk.

'What . . . did we . . . ever do . . . to you?'

Reave knelt beside him. 'We're not with them. We're just travelers. What happened here?'

The nerves on the left-hand side of the man's face spasmed uncontrollably.

'I . . . my partner . . . inside . . .'

Billy stiffened and raised his gun. He peered into the dark interior of the cantina. 'You think it's a trap?'

'I doubt it.'

'This one's dead.'

Billy edged up to the doorway. The Minstrel Boy automatically backed him up. The old habits were coming back.

Billy whispered instructions. 'You go left.'

'Whatever you say.'

'So let's get to it.'

Billy hit the door. The Minstrel Boy was right behind him. They peeled off in opposite directions, flattening themselves against the wall.

'God, it stinks in here.'

The cantina was filled with the stench of violent death. There were bodies everywhere. From what was left of them, it looked as though the local bandidos had made their stand there. Many were not just the victims of a firefight — they had been tortured and mutilated. The raiders seemed to have staged a vicious grand finale. Billy and the Minstrel Boy stiffened as someone groaned. It was hard to see after the brightness outside.

'Over there, by the bar.'

The man seemed to be actually hanging on the bar, head sagging, knees bent, and arms outstretched. 'Help . . . me.'

They moved toward him. Broken glass crunched under their boots. It was only when they came close that they saw the black iron spikes driven through his forearms and into the dark polished wood of the bar top. He had literally been nailed to the bar.

'Water . . .'

Billy ducked behind the bar and found an unbroken bottle of mineral water. He handed it to the Minstrel Boy, who was kneeling beside the crucified bandido. The Minstrel Boy held the bottle to the bandido's lips. 'Here, drink this.'

The bandido swallowed with difficulty. He had trouble keeping his head up. 'Thanks.'

Sunlight shafted into the cantina as Reave came through the door. 'All secure in here?'

'There's this one guy left alive.'

'God, this is a mess.'

The Minstrel Boy gave the bandido a second drink. 'Who did this?' he asked.

The bandido eased the weight oo his arms. 'You . . . kill me, huh? I . . . can't stand any more of this.'

'Just tell us who did this.'

'He . . . called himself Ravaj Taraquin . . . Taraquin's Irregulars. There were some . . . thirty guns . . . plus a . . . tribe of neoprimitives . . . maybe fifty or sixty more . . . We didn't have a chance.'

'That's more men than Baptiste had,' Reave commented.

The bandido jerked his head. 'Baptiste . . .'

'What about him?'

'They . . . were meeting him. Taraquin's Irregulars were . . . going to link up with Baptiste's army and storm Idleberg.'

Idleberg was a town of modest size.

'This is getting serious,' the Minstrel Boy said.

There was a rustling behind them — a vulture bat had waddled through the door Reave had left open. In pure reaction, Reave shot it dead. Within seconds more of the creatures were jostling through the door, drawn by the fresh kill. Reave cursed and rushed at them, lashing out with his boots. When he had finally driven them all out, he tossed the one he had shot after them. 'I'm going to kill every one of those goddamn things. I swear.'

The bandido let out a groan. 'He had them made.'

'Who did?'

'Taraquin . . . He created those vulture things . . . he had a template. He made them . . . to leave behind . . . like a calling card.'

'This Taraquin's a psychotic.'

'Kill . . . me. The pain . . .'

The Minstrel Boy stood up. 'Can't something be done for him?'