Moonfeast (22 page)

Past the barracks was an elaborately carved wooden door, with the word “Captain” correctly spelled. Checking the latch, Ryan was surprised to find it unlocked. Moving to the side, he fired the SIG-Sauer and blew the latch apart. As the door swung open, there came a deafening roar as a sawed-off scattergun fired. The blast of lead pellets hammered into the opposite wall
and ricocheted off the iron to painfully pepper the two men from behind.

“Prick!” Jak snarled, touching his throat, his finger coming away streaked with blood.

“Don’t go in!” Ryan ordered, looking over the sumptuous furniture, colorful tapestries and well-stocked liquor cabinet. The bedchamber resembled something from a gaudy house, not a fighting ship, and the one-eyed man was suddenly convinced that the entire room was a trap for invaders.

Hauling out his own sawed-off, Ryan put a pair of 12-gauge cartridges into the place, and sure enough a dozen assorted traps sprang into operation, blades slashing out, another hidden blaster firing in return, and a section of the ceiling slamming down to reveal it was a foot-thick of solid steel. The impact made the entire passageway shake.

“Shit, not trust Carlton if he tell water wet,” Jak stated. He hawked to spit, then swallowed instead, not sure of even that minor an affront would set off another trap. Possibly an explosion powerful enough to breach the iron walls.

The passageway ended at a set of double doors, each marked with a carved wooden plaque, one displaying a vagina and the other a puckered asshole. Ryan and Jak almost smiled at that. Obviously these were here for any newbies unable to read. But anybody smarter than a mutie could figure out what these signs meant.

Going to the Out door, Ryan wiggled in the panga and pried it aside. The room beyond was full of machinery, diesel engines, pumps, generators, fuel tanks and a scrawny sailor standing in a pool of darkness, holding
an ax. Startled by the unexpected infusion of light, she almost dropped the deadly weapon, then snarled and swung the blade.

Quickly stepping back, Ryan shoved the exit door for ward and the blade slammed deep into the wood. Hauling the door open, he yanked the ax handle out of the grip of the sailor and she retreated into the shadows, muttering and cursing.

Kicking open the entrance, Jak started to shoot into the gloom, but then paused. A single ricochet in here could blow the whole damn barge out of the water, with them inside.

Unexpectedly the sailor lurched into view, swinging a wrench like a club. Jak hesitated shooting her for a split second and she knocked away the Colt Python, the blaster hitting the deck and sliding underneath a loudly thumping bilge pump.

“Come here, mutie-boy,” she snarled, swinging the wrench with expert ease. “I’m going do you proper!”

Yanking open the exit, Ryan extended the sawed-off, but withheld firing for the same reason the teenager had. However, the sailor flinched at the sight of the blaster, and Jak used the distraction to bury a pair of knives into her throat.

Drowning in her own blood, the sailor staggered, man aging to yank out one of the blades. Now the blood spurted away in high arches even faster than before. Sagging to the deck, she clumsily threw the knife back. Expecting that, Jak sidestepped the crude attack and recovered the Colt to put a round into her temple. The sailor jerked at the arrival of the .357 Magnum round, then never moved again.

While Jak dragged the corpse out of the way, Ryan hurried straight to diesel engines. They seemed in perfect working condition, everything clean and polished to a dull sheen. The deck was corkboard in some areas, obviously protection from slipping on grease spills. Buckets of sand hung near every fuel pump, and several pegboards were situated around the room, each tool hanging neatly inside a painted silhouette.

Rapping a knuckle against the fuel tanks, Jak was pleasantly surprised to find them nearly full. There was enough juice here for the companions to ride the barge all the way to the Alaskan redoubt, if they cared to.

Going to a set of predark controls, Ryan saw the old labels had been replaced with simple wood carvings to explain the function of each switch. Mentally thanking Carlton, the man turned on one of the diesel engines, then activated an electric winch and started hauling up the anchor.

As the wet chains started rattling through a hole in the metal ceiling, Ryan turned on the other two diesels, while Jak opened the fuel valves all the way.

“All right, let’s go topside,” Ryan commanded, striding for the exit. “I’ll take the wheel, and you get one of those bastard Fifties working!”

The albino teen nodded. The easy part of jacking the ship was over. Now things were going to get bloody.

“Sir! Captain!” a sailor cried, safely hidden on the lee side of the burning
Moon Runner
.

Crouching behind a concrete pylon, Carlton turned to stare in annoyance at the man. “What is it?” he replied gruffly, fumbling to reload his blaster. So far, everything had gone according to plan. That bastard Jones and his witch had taken refuge in the tunnel and had barricaded themselves inside behind a wall of the dead. It was a triple-clever tactic that was going to backfire on them if they escaped. Win or lose, Jones and his witch got chilled this day. It was all arranged. “Sir, the
Tiger
has broken free of her anchor!” the sailor yelled, pointing with a tattoo-covered arm.

“Impossible!” Carlton bellowed, spinning. But it was true, the barge was rapidly heading up the coastline. Then the captain noticed the churning wake behind the vessel and realized that all three of the diesel engines had to be running at full power.

“You feeb! It hasn’t broken free,” First Officer Godderstein roared. “Our nuking ship is being jacked!”

“But we left twenty crew on board,” a boson snarled, angrily standing to try to see through the haze. The instant he broke cover, a blaster sounded from inside the tunnel and the boson staggered, his shoulder gushing blood. Dropping his blaster on the dock, the sailor
foolishly tried to reclaim the weapon. An arrow lanced from the tunnel to slam into his ear. Flipping sideways, the boson splashed into the lagoon, a billowing stain rapidly spreading around the sinking body.

“You three, behind the hut!” Captain Carlton snapped, looking at the men directly. “Take a couple of those bikes and race to the west. Try to reach the water fall and sneak back on board the
Tiger!
”

“You two, Smith and Mackewitz,” Godderstein add ed, sliding a fresh clip into his rapidfire and working the arming bolt. “Head east, in case they try for Sealton ville!”

“Handel, take a canoe and head back to port,” Carlton added. “Break out the rockets and bring back the whole damn fleet!”

“What, all fifteen, Skipper?” the man asked, lowering a massive crossbow.

“Every fragging thing we’ve got that floats!” Godderstein roared, standing and firing his M-16 rapidfire in a long burst. The rounds hit something inside the dark tunnel with meaty smacks, but there weren’t any answering cries of pain.

Holstering their blasters, the sailors grimly nodded, then took off at a run. Immediately a flurry of arrows streaked from the mouth of the tunnel, chilling one of the men. The others got out of range and separated to their assigned tasks.

Not willing to depend entirely upon his crew, as loyal as the members were, the captain closed his eyes and reached out with his mind to sweep the vicinity for any remaining animals that might help in the pitched battle. Almost everything in the area was either useless, like
the hutch of coneys in a stand of trees over the hill, or already chilled. But then the captain sensed something else, infinitely larger and more dangerous, and he slowly smiled in grim satisfaction. Oh yes, those would do just fine.

S
TILL RAGING
, the fight at the lagoon was starting to slow a little, mostly because everybody was beginning to run low on ammunition. Knives and arrows were replacing lead, and each side was looting the dead for any spare rounds. Smack in the middle of everything, the
Moon Runner
was gradually sinking into the lagoon, a fire still raging inside the engine room, the dark smoke covering the dockyard like a ghostly pall.

With the help of the big rapidfires on the
Tiger Shark,
Captain Carlton and his sailors had used their canoes to gain control of the dockyard and hut. Cut off from their bikes, the baron, his wife and their sec men had fallen back into the tunnel, only to discover it was blocked solid just fifty yards inside the cliff. Effectively trapped, Jones had his people build a protective wall across the mouth of the tunnel from their own dead, which Lady Veronica had the sec men reinforce with a mound of rocks and dirt scooped up by hand from the floor or scraped off the walls. The first corpse used had been that of the newly promoted sec chief Zane Southerland.

The chattering sounds of fighting never ceased outside the tunnel as the frantic sec men used their bare hands to dig into the rocky earth of the collapsed ceiling. They had dug a crawl space into the loose material, using boards taken from the roof of the tunnel to support
the cramped opening. It only went in a few yards, but was getting deeper with every passing minute.

Staying bent low, wounded sec men hauled the material away in slings made from their shirts to pack it behind the wall of corpses. Incredibly, the crude barrier was holding, and the incoming lead from the sailors only made the bodies jerk about in a horrid mockery of life.

“How’s the brass holding out?” the baron asked, pulling the last spare rounds out of the loops of his gunbelt to thumb into the empty clip of the Ruger. There was a single gren on his belt, but that was the key to their escape. Hopefully.

“Don’t ask, my love,” Lady Veronica replied, releasing an arrow from the stolen crossbow. The MP-5 rapidfire still hung at her side, the last full clip reserved for the next rush of the sailors. The last time Carlton had ordered them to use a desk from the hut as protective cover. But the 9 mm Parabellum rounds from the MP-5 had easily cut through the flimsy pressboard, and the lady ruthlessly sent five more sailors into the arms of Davey.

Just then, a boomerang spun out of the smoke and streaked into the tunnel. It missed the baron by the thickness of a prayer and slammed into one of the wooden beams supporting the roof. Grabbing the weapon with both hands, a corporal jerked it loose and raced to the wall to fling it back outside. It spun away and clattered noisily against the tilted hull of the
Moon Runner
.

Instantly a flurry of arrows sailed forth, one of them catching the corporal in the armpit. Dumbfounded, the sec man stared at the ghastly wound, knowing in cold
certainty that the location made a tourniquet impossible. As the warm red blood flowed down the side of his chest, the corporal passed his gunbelt and blaster to a new recruit, and walked over to sit with his back to the wall.

“Four rounds,” he whispered hoarsely. “Make them count, brother.”

Crisply, the new corporal saluted in reply and buckled on the gunbelt to check the load in the revolver.

With no way to help the dying man, the baron lit a cig and passed it over. The pale corporal eagerly accepted the special gift and gratefully took a long drag, letting the sweet tobacco smoke fill his lungs, then he exhaled slowly and stopped moving.

“Save the arrow, then put him on the wall,” Jones commanded, his face a mask of control.

“Yes, Baron,” the corporal replied, and the grisly task was accomplished without further conversation.

Accepting the arrow, Lady Veronica loaded it into her crossbow and reached out with her mind to find the original owner. There was a faint tug from the direction of the fuel pumps, and she instantly fired. With a strangled cry, a sailor stumbled into view, the arrow buried deep in his left eye. Blindly, the man staggered around, going straight off the dock and into the lagoon. He hit with a splash, and the blaster in his hand sank out of sight.

“Thirty more like that, and we win,” Jones muttered, scanning the smoky exterior with his blaster at the ready.

“Doing my best,” Lady Veronica replied, notching
another arrow into the crossbow. “How is the digging going?”

“There’s no way of telling,” the baron said, then jumped back with a curse as several snakes wiggled around the wall of corpses and into the tunnel. Shitfire, that mutie Carlton had summoned an entire nest of cottonmouths! Their poison was ten times more deadly than the venom of a jumper.

Retreating quickly, the sec men kicked dirt at the snakes, trying to herd them together. Firing an arrow at a cottonmouth, and missing, a sec woman swung down her crossbow and caught the snake on the rise, crushing the head flat. As it dropped lifeless to the ground, the other snakes converged on the sec woman, hissing and trying to bite her legs.

Letting loose an arrow, Lady Veronica got one snake through the middle. Pinned in place, it could only lash around madly, hissing louder than ever and snapping at anything nearby. A sec man cursed as the fangs scored a deep scratch across his arm. Quickly, he backed farther away, pulling out a knife and a butane lighter.

Uncoiling his bullwhip, the baron lashed the knotted length of leather forward and cut off the head. As the other two turned on him, he did the same. He coiled the bullwhip and returned it to his gunbelt. “Here, use this to save the poison,” the baron directed, tossing over a paperback book. “Then smear it on the arrowheads.” The sec men rushed to obey.

Huddled against the rocky wall, the bitten sec man played the flame of the lighter along the edge of his knife. When the metal started to change color, he
slashed the wound and started sucking hard, turning his head to spit out the poison.

When the spit ceased to have a greenish tinge, the sec man weakly stood. “I think that did it, Baron,” he grinned, just as another boomerang spun into the tunnel. Everybody ducked except him and the man’s brains splashed onto the rocky wall.

“Son of a mutie slut!” Lady Veronica snarled, swinging up the MP-5, but then slowly lowered it against her will. The whole point of Carlton sending in snakes was probably to make them use up the last of the brass.

As if in response to her thoughts, the sailors opened fire with a fusillade of blasters, the hot rounds smacking into the barrier of corpses with meaty whacks and ricocheting off the rocky walls of the tunnel.

Suddenly a sec man charged out of the gloom from deeper inside the tunnel.

“We’re through!” he whispered, a smile splitting the layers of grime covering his face. One hand was wrapped in bloody strips of cloth, but the man radiated a sense of victory.

“About damn time,” the baron grunted, slapping the man on the back. “Good work! Send through some scouts, then the wounded. We’ll take the six.”

“But Baron!” the sec man objected.

“Obey your baron, arnsman,” Lady Veronica commanded, using the ancient title of a loyal guard.

Stiffening at the honor, the sec man raised both hands in silent agreement and started arranging the exodus.

“You next, my love,” Jones said, pulling a half stick of TNT from his left boot. He had been saving it in case
the sailors mobbed the tunnel. The blast would chill them all, granting him revenge and saving his beloved wife from a gang rape that would never end.

Lady Veronica started to object, then saw the raw determination in his face and relented. Kissing him briefly on the sweaty cheek, she crawled into the hole and out of sight.

Waiting a few seconds, Baron Jones lit the fuse with a butane lighter, stabbed it into the soft dirt alongside the hole, then dived in and started scrambling for distance.

A few seconds later the half stick detonated, the confined explosion blowing out the corpses like a shotgun blast and shattering the support columns. With a stentorian groan, the roof collapsed and the walls folded to completely fill the underground tunnel, clouds of dust and dirt billowing out to mix with the woodsmoke from the burning
Moon Runner
until the roiling atmosphere of the lagoon turned as black as midnight for several minutes.

When the sea breezes finally cleared away the smoke and dust, the tunnel in the cliff was gone, as if it had never existed.