Deathlands - Amazon Gate Part 10

The warrior queen holstered her blaster and unsheathed her panga in one smooth motion, left hand replacing the blaster while the right pulled the blade from her thigh. Stepping away from the albino, she raised her head high and let out a series of piercing whistles that formed a signal, before screaming loudly, tossing her fiery mane back in the heat and wind of battle.

For a moment, it was almost as if that scream had created an oasis of silence and calm around it. To Jak, holstering the Python and palming a knife for each hand, it seemed for just a fraction of a second that the whole world had been stopped by that scream. There was a frozen moment that heralded a turning point, and the next stage of the battle.

And then it pa.s.sed. The silence-if it had ever been there-was broken by the yells and screams of the Amazons as they all followed their queen, holstering their blasters and drawing their blades.

"Dark night, this is going to be b.l.o.o.d.y," J.B. murmured to himself, safely storing his blasters before unsheathing his Tekna knife. The Armorer ran a practiced eye over the encroaching horde of stickies as the words escaped his lips. If their numbers were consistent on all sides, then there were three or four of them for each member of the tribe and the companions.

Well, they'd had worse odds before now, although perhaps not with an enemy that refused so stubbornly to lie down and die.

The hand-to-hand battle began in earnest as the first wave of muties reached the advancing Amazons, who moved forward to meet their foe, gaining momentum in their movement for the first strike.

First blood went to Tammy. A stickie that had somehow made it through the onslaught without even picking up a clotting scratch was upon her, waving a sharpened tree limb that formed a pointed stake in one fist, the suckered fingers of its free hand reaching for her throat. She could feel its hot, fetid breath as it came within arm's length of her.

The young warrior gave the boiling fear in the pit of her stomach no thought, but merely sidestepped the charge and brought her blade across the stomach of the mutie as it lay open to attack. She knew from observation that a mere wound would be little use, so she drove the blade as deep as it would go and sliced across, splitting the stickie's abdomen in twain and spilling its intestines onto the plain. They hit the gra.s.s in a steaming, twirling ma.s.s. Tammy pulled her hand, hot and red with the stickie's viscera, from out of its stomach and followed her initial thrust with a slash across the throat The blood slick blade sliced through the soft, soapy flesh, splintering the soft bone, mashing the bone, flesh and tendon into a pulp that caught on the razor honed blade, tangling as it reached the spinal column.

The young warrior knew the only safe way to insure the chill was to sever the head or sever an internal organ. With a rebel yell that rang through the air, she exerted all the power of her young muscles, the tendons standing out on her knife arm as she held the stickie back by the shoulder with her free hand.

The mutie's spinal column was made of bone as pliable and soft as the rest of its neck and throat, and with one mighty heave the knife scored through it, severing the nervous system and taking its head off- if not cleanly, at least completely.

With a whoop, Tammy flashed the blade toward the next attacker, stickie blood showering off the end, while the corpse of her first chill slid harmlessly to the ground.

All around, there were similar scenes. Doc hacked and slashed with the swordstick, eschewing its usual function as a rapier-like blade in order to inflict the maximum damage. Unlike the pangas and machetes used by those around him, Doc's blade was of the finest tempered Toledo steel, and hadn't been manufactured to hack and slash. Rather, it was a weapon of accuracy.

But not here. A simple wound that would disable or cause enough blood loss to kill a normal human being or stickie wouldn't be effective on these genetically altered muties. So Doc had to forego his instincts and use the blade in a bludgeoning manner quite unlike that for which it had been designed.

And he was doing pretty well. His eyes glazed over as the blood of his enemies splashed on him, his white hair flying in the momentum of his movement, the tails of his frock coat whirling behind him. In reality he was in the Deathlands, with altered muties falling before him. But in the mind ravaged by time trawling and torture, unbalanced by the unimaginable experience of having existed across a period of three centuries, Doc was fighting battles that would take place after he should have died, and yet had taken place years before he was alive. The stickies in front of his eyes became Native Americans falling before the U.S. cavalry, became British soldiers falling beneath the pioneers, became the Vietcong falling beneath the Green Berets, became the j.a.panese falling beneath the U.S. Marine in the second of the three world wars, became Saxons falling before Vikings in the faraway lands that had birthed his ancestors, became the first Bronze and Iron Age tribes falling beneath each other's blows in the quest for better land, in the quest for survival.

In the ravages of his mind, Doc became all men, in all history, fighting for survival. There was no here and now anymore, only the instant where one man faced another knowing that it was kill or be killed.

Elsewhere, the battle raged on in a present that all involved knew could end for them at any second with just one wrong move.

Both Krysty and Mildred weren't renowned for their skills with knives, and both women were finding the going tough. They had blades with them, handed out earlier in the trip by Margia, but they weren't the experts that the Gate warriors had trained to be. Somehow, by some instinct the stickies could sniff this out, almost as if they could smell the apprehension coming off the women.

The larger proportion of stickies they attracted left some of the Gate warriors free to chill their attackers quickly and with a ruthless efficiency. Pangas and machetes hacked at heads after first disabling the attackers by severing their suckered hands with one swift blow of the highly honed blades. The Gate women were thus able to dispose of the stickies almost on a production line of chilling, and it wasn't long before some of those closest to Krysty and Mildred were able to a.s.sist them in disposing of the vast numbers they had cl.u.s.tered around them.

Dean and Ryan were fighting back to back, the older Cawdor slashing at his enemies with his panga, cleaving skulls and arms with ease. At his back, his son fought with an equal savagery, only his age and relative lack of experience showing in his lower chill rate. He held a machete that he wielded with an economy of effort that showed he had studied the methods of Jak Lauren when he had watched the albino practice. Behind his father, Dean could almost have been a shadow, with the same sculpted musculature and broad shouldered build, smaller only because he hadn't yet reached maturity, the curly hair glistening and dripping with the sweat of exertion. The only thing to separate the two was the livid and puckered scar down one side on Ryan's face, disappearing into the empty and patch covered socket, while Dean still had both eyes.

J.B. was fighting alone, his Tekna knife wielded with a scientific accuracy that marked him as a mechanically minded man. The savagery of his strokes was controlled, directed at the most vulnerable points on his attackers so as to disable and kill with the minimum of effort. His wiry frame crackled with an electricity that made his usual mild-mannered appearance disappear, and he seemed almost to grow in stature as he fought. The Armorer knew the strong points of his weapon as an attack blade, knew the best way to angle each stroke so as to inflict the maximum amount of damage, and cut through his a.s.sailants as though they weren't there.

The Gate were faring well against the army of stickies. So far, there had been no fatalities, as the stickies had been unprepared for the way in which the tribe had stood its ground, and for the manner in which the women had fought. The muties might have outnumbered the Amazons, but they didn't have blades or blasters, and although they surrounded the Gate on all sides, they couldn't easily break through their strong defensive formation. There was a number of minor injuries among the Amazons, but nothing that had disabled any of the warriors enough to bring them down and make them vulnerable to chilling.

Out in front, Gloria and Jak were setting the best possible example. The soulmate warriors who had forged a strong bond over the course of the trip were fighting superbly together. Each knowing that the other was there to cover their back meant that they could take chances that would otherwise have been too risky.

Jak's hands were a blur of movement, the lethal leaf-bladed knives slicing through the soft flesh of the stickies with little or no resistance, cutting through to vital organs and severing them so that no amount of rapidly clotting blood could prevent death, penetrating eyes and soft flesh to cut into the even softer tissue of the brain. Those stickies who managed to dodge the flashing blades were met with kicks from his heavy combat boots that snapped necks and limbs, disabling them long enough to fall prey to Gloria's panga.

The Gate queen herself was dispatching more than her fair share of stickies. Knowing that Jak was at her back gave her the confidence to take the offensive against the horde of muties, rather than lie back in defense and wait for them to come to her. Launching herself forward in a series of flying kicks, she snapped necks and knocked the muties to the ground, following this with a series of slashing moves from her panga that severed heads with ferocity. Her eyes blazed like the sunlit sky, and her mouth was opened in a roar of fury that echoed her movements.

It was a hard battle, but by degrees the horde of muties grew less and less, the Amazons moving outward to gain ground, treading on the corpses of their chilled foes and driving the remaining stickies back and back.

Eventually even the enhanced brains of those remaining stickies got the point, and they retreated back across the plain, fleeing into the woodland.

Surveying the carnage, Ryan gave a sigh of relief and exhaustion.

"Fireblast, I thought they'd never stop coming. For a moment, I thought there were more and more coming out of the trees."

"Mebbe there were," J.B. pointed out. "We need to be more than triple red now. We're tired and strung out, and they may have f.u.c.k knows how many in there." He indicated the area of woodland circling the plain with a sweeping gesture.

"We beat them once, we can do it again," Gloria said, adding, "But only if we rest up now. Make camp and set up a guard. They'll need to regroup, too, if they're going to attack. So we should have some time."

With which she directed her people to make camp, clear the chilled and tend to the few minor wounds they had received.

While this transpired, Ryan gathered together his people. Speaking softly, he said, "It's not the stickies I'm worried about."

Doc noticed the puzzled look that Jak gave the one-eyed warrior, and said, "If I'm not mistaken, my dear Ryan, you allude to the fact that our little mutie friends were genetically altered?"

Ryan nodded. "And if we're approaching the place you've heard of, then-"

"Then the danger may not be from stickies," Mildred finished.

They were prophetic words.

Chapter Eleven.

Night fell on the carnage surrounding the Gate encampment. The chilled corpses of the stickies had been gathered and piled together along with kindling to start two large blazes that would cremate the remains of the muties and also act as warning beacons for any who might still be lurking in the woodland. Gloria was aware that the flaring fires would alert anyone watching as to their position and camp, but as she told Ryan, "If the stupidworks don't know where we are by now, they're no danger anyway!"

And so the camp was set for the night. The canvas and plastic sheets that acted to keep in the heat and reflect light were set up around the small city of tents and wags. Forming as they did a barrier of darkness against the moonlight that reflected across the plain, they were useless as camouflage, but then, that wasn't their intent. They enclosed the camp and allowed the sentries to keep guard at all points while the rest of the tribe and the companions rested within. The guards themselves were exposed to the elements and to any threat of attack, as there was nowhere to hide or cover on the flat plain, but there was nowhere for any approaching enemy to cover and make a sneak attack.

It seemed that the Gate warriors were a.s.sured of a quiet night's rest after battle, before continuing their journey back into the woodland and toward the seemingly deserted settlement.

But it wasn't to be. In fact, it was on the third watch, deep into the night, when the attack came. The best time for any night maneuver, as the opposition were almost certainly a.s.sured to be in a state of unpreparedness. Even more so as the crematory fires that had lit up the dusk had now died down to little more than embers deep within the piles of ash and fat that comprised the remains of the mutie hordes.

The third watch saw Margia, J.B., Dean and Tammy covering the four points. The Gate queen had been unwilling to let her sister stand watch with the Armorer, considering that her now forgotten infatuation with him had been the original source of the feud between the blonde and Jak. J.B., however, had been unconcerned by this, reasoning that as long as he and the blonde took diametrically opposed areas to cover, then there would be no chance of friction.

In this he was correct, yet even the laconic Armorer, with his sense of the bizarre that all too rarely broke the surface, couldn't have foreseen the irony that was about to occur-for it was both he and Margia who simultaneously raised the alarm.

For J.B., it happened when he was squatting about twenty yards from the plastic and canvas wall joint of the camp. He was looking out in a southwesterly direction, back across the path they had traversed along the plain. The night had been cold and quiet since he had been roused from sleep to take his turn at the watch, and the boredom was lulling him toward sleep.

He wore only a shirt and camou pants, unwilling to wrap up too warmly against the night cold lest he should succ.u.mb to the desire to nap in the boredom. The chill edge kept him awake and alert.

Nonetheless, as he squatted with one hand resting on the cold earth, the short gra.s.s bristly beneath the pads of his fingers, the fingers of his other hand rubbing at eyes raw from sleep and the dryness of the air, he became aware of a vibration that ran up through his fingers and along his arm. Perhaps, in the business of day, he wouldn't have noticed something this slight. But in the absolute still of the night, it took just that to make him aware.

J.B. rested his other hand on the ground, palm down. The vibration was faint, but growing harder with every second. Straining his ears, J.B. could hear a faint rumble that he was able to identify immediately: the tone and pitch of a diesel engine powering a wag that had tracks on the back, possibly an old military sec wag, or at least one that had b.a.s.t.a.r.dized pieces of such equipment.

Rising smoothly to his feet, the Armorer could no longer feel the vibration-not through the soles of his boots. The faint rumble was still there, but not growing appreciably louder.

Turning, he ran back toward the encampment, not wanting to raise the alarm by

shouting, in case there were scouts ahead of the wag who were on the fringes of the woodland who would hear him. As he reached the hooded entrance to the plastic and canvas wall, he almost ran into Margia. The woman was grim faced, her white teeth and blond hair shining in the reflective light of the moon against the dark of her tanned flesh, barely covered even in the cold night.

"Something's up, honey," she said to the Armorer. "Some way off, but-"

"A wag? Mebbe old predark sec?"

She nodded briefly. "How d'you know, sweets? Same your end?"

"Yeah, so it's at least a two-p.r.o.nged attack."

Margia looked around. Dean and Tammy hadn't yet joined them, and so were

presumably at their posts. "The young ones aren't here, so unless they're not as aware-"

"Unlikely," J.B. cut in.

"Precisely. I guess they're just going to try to pull us in opposite directions. One from where they come from, and one from where we came from."

"That's a.s.suming that they come from the settlement," J.B. pointed out.

Margia shrugged. "Good a.s.sumption as any. Anyway, stop arguing and let's get everyone up."

Inside the camp, all was still and quiet, the fire that warmed the camp now dying, the lamps now stilled apart from the muted lights that prevented the camp being in total darkness. Both armorers moved toward the queen's tent, joined on the way by Tammy and Dean.

"Guess you know what we're here for," the young Cawdor said wryly to J.B.

"Anyway, we could see you and Margia move past us, so we knew before it became obvious," Tammy added with a toss of her auburn curls, catching the dim light and making her eyes sparkle with the light of oncoming battle.

The Armorer a.s.sented. "Need to get everyone together as soon as possible."

Margia arrived at the tent first, where Petor rose from out of the shadows. As always, he was guarding his queen and mentor.

"Trouble?" he asked, already wide awake and alert.

"Wags approaching on the southwest and northeast," Margia said briskly. "Not much time, boy, so tell Glo I said we need to move-"

"n.o.body tells Petor what to do, even me," Gloria snapped as she emerged from her tent, interrupting her sister's officious flow. Despite only being awakened by the discussion outside the tent a few moments before, the warrior queen had already brought herself around to full consciousness, and was pulling on her clothes as she emerged. She smiled at Dean as she caught his expression on seeing her firm b.r.e.a.s.t.s before they were covered. "When you're older, son," she said to him before returning her full attention to J.B. and Margia. "How big are the wags?"

"Hard to tell for sure," J.B. mused. "I'd guess they were at least six-tonners because of the tracks. The rumble was low enough to suggest they were really digging into the ground. Could mean a lot of men-or a lot of firepower."

"How come they're getting through that jungle?"

The Armorer shrugged. "Could be old rail cattle grids to move the foliage. It wouldn't be that dense under that much weight. I've seen it done before. But that will make them harder to attack, give them some serious armor."

"Blind-side gren attack," Margia said dismissively.

"If you get the blind side," J.B. murmured.

But the blonde didn't hear him. Her attention was taken by the sight of Jak Lauren coming out of Gloria's tent, not fully clothed and checking his Colt Python.

"Still playing, then, Glo?" she mused.

The woman shot her sister a warning look, her blue eyes icy and piercing, even in the dim light of the camp.

"Leave it, Marg," she husked in a low voice that carried all the more menace and authority for being quiet. "We'll sort this between ourselves...later. Now we've got more important things to see to."

"They always are," Margia said dismissively, turning on her heel. "I'll get the armory opened up- that's if you can spare at least one of your little proteges..."

Petor colored at this parting shot and looked at his queen.

"Ignore the b.i.t.c.h. You and Jon know what to do," Gloria said, inclining her head to indicate that he should follow the blonde.

As Petor left, Ryan and Krysty approached. They were closely followed by Doc and Mildred. The companions' tent was near enough to Gloria's in the new camp for them to be awakened by the exchanges, and they were already partly aware of what was happening. J.B. filled them in on the rest while Gloria dispatched Tammy to wake the other warriors and prepare them for battle.

By now the air outside the encampment was carrying the sounds of the wags as they approached. Sentries posted by Tammy called back in relay that the wags were approaching at speed now they were on the plain.

"Plan?" the one-eyed warrior asked the Gate queen. He was prepared to follow her lead until such time as they were out on the battlefield and initiative became imperative.

"Rock and a hard place," she replied. "If we stay in here, we're sitting targets, and if we move outside, then we're in plain sight to be picked off. At least outside we can scatter and distract."

"Mebbe a pincer movement with the fastest outriders to act as fire drawers," Ryan mused.

"It'd be a suicide mission," Gloria replied.

Ryan shrugged. "Mebbe, but not necessarily. If each group then splits and maintains a zigzagging pattern, they can draw fire into empty s.p.a.ces. After all, chances are that whoever this is hasn't had a real combat situation, unless you count coming up against their own experiments in the woods."

Gloria considered this for a moment, then nodded decisively. "Eh-la, eh-la," she called, once again adopting a different tone and intonation for the syllables that acted as a call to her warriors.

The roused and alert women drew close to their leader, and Gloria outlined the situation in a few words. There was no shortage of volunteers for the outriders, and the fastest were soon dispatched, while Margia, Jon and Petor pa.s.sed among the warriors, handing out extra blades, blasters and ammo to those who requested them.

Ryan gathered his people around and spoke while they all checked their personal weapons and took grens pa.s.sed out by J.B.

"You know the plan. It's the only one that's possible for any of us right now, but I don't think any of us like it. So stay frosty, and look for ways into the wag." He fixed his good eye on Jak. "You've got the best throwing aim of any of us. If you can get a gren in any gaps they may leave..."

"No need to say," the albino muttered. "One hole, many dead..."

Ryan nodded. "Okay, let's do it."