Hellbenders Read online

  “You know where we’re headed?” Dean asked.

  Lonnie nodded curtly. “Know this place all too well. And I know a way in.”

  Charity was built around the remains of an old New Mexico town, the name of which had long since been forgotten. But it had been a one-horse town, and possibly a one-wag town, in the days when such things counted. Not being big, it had been isolated and off the beaten track for any enemy attacks during the nukecaust. As such, it had only been the nuclear winter that swept the Deathlands that had damaged the old buildings, and this was in places minimal, as the town had been built to withstand the harsh heat and desert winds, with low adobe buildings, and very little over two stories. When the ancestors of the current baron and the interbred families that made up the ville’s elite had first come to the old town, they had taken over the most repairable and least damaged buildings, which were those that were residential, and thus smaller than the more damaged shops and small businesses that were either directly on the main street, or clustered on the edge.

  These larger and more damaged places had been taken over and used by the trickle of outsiders who had come to the ville over the preceding years: to such an extent, in fact, that smaller buildings made of waste rubble and corrugated iron had been built into shacks that ran off the main drag and into the areas around the old business area.

  As well as housing the overspill of newer residents to Charity, these places also played host to a different kind of business. Before skydark, the main drag of the town had been home to the grocery store, the tourist-trap gift shops, the clothes and furniture stores of a normal ville. Now, the trading for food and clothing was carried on in other quarters, and there were no tourists, only outsiders. The business that was carried on in these areas was the sale of jolt and derivative chemicals and hallucinogenic plant extracts—this was, after all, New Mexico, where such plants grew in abundance and were stronger than ever after rad mutation. There were also saloons where you could drink cheap liquor until you dropped, and gaudys where you could sate your carnal needs if you had the ability after spending so long in the saloon.

  There was no law anymore, so these businesses couldn’t be outside any law. These were violent times, so the idea of a no-go area for Charity residents was ridiculous—on the contrary, they loved the main drag and the old business district. But there was a distinct purpose to making the main drag and the business district the areas where there were bars and gaudys and drug dens. By containing all these activities strictly to within these areas, Baron Al Jourgensen and the barons who had preceded him had been able to control the amount of jack that flowed in and out of Charity with a firmer hand than in many villes. People knew where to buy, and where to sell, and even at seven in the morning, it was always party time down on the drag, and party time in Baron Al’s private vault.

  But all the jack in the world wouldn’t buy seed crops, wouldn’t buy food, if there was none to be had—hence the deal with Summerfield and the sale of the ville’s women and hence the trade caravan that the Hellbenders were out to raid.

  Gaining access to the ville had been absurdly easy. It was isolated and off the main roads and trails that ran through these parts. Only those who truly wished to visit the ville, either for trade or for pleasure, would come this way. So the sec guards who patrolled the perimeter were inclined to be slack at times, especially as the land was flat for miles around, and any wags would be easy to see from a distance.

  Not so a party of seven who traveled light and had selected a sheltering place to hide out. Once they had packed their tents away and eaten from some of the self-heats they had carried as supplies, they assembled around Lonnie, who told them that from his knowledge of the sec routine, there would be a gap in less than an hour where they could just walk in.

  It seemed a long time to wait as the sun began to blaze hot. The sec guards patroled the ville perimeter on old motorcycles, fuel being one of the few things Baron Al had a supply of, and one of the things that he had tried to use for trade.

  “There they go,” Lonnie whispered triumphantly as two sec guards on old choppers, with belts of ammo across their chests and old Thompson blasters resting in the crook of their arms, crossed virtually right in front of the spot where the recce party was concealed. The two guards stopped to talk briefly, the hum of their conversation buried beneath the guttural growl of their bikes. Then they throttled the choppers and moved off in opposite directions.

  “And that’s it?” Dean asked incredulously as the noise of the bikes receded into the distance.

  “Yep, that’s it,” Lonnie confirmed. “See, most people only come to this ville to trade with Baron Al or to visit the drag. And they’re pretty few and far between.”

  “But isn’t Al worried about you or Correll or anyone?”

  Lonnie gave a twisted grin. “He thinks we all bought the farm when we left. In his world, no one survives without Baron Al…which is kinda useful for us, when you think about it. C’mon, let’s go.”

  He came out from cover and led them across the few hundred yards of desert soil that ended abruptly with the beginning of the ville, in the shape of a few old adobe buildings that were quiet.

  “Residential. No one’s up yet,” he commented as they walked past and begin to hit the old tarmac and pavement of the preDark town.

  This area of Charity was all quiet, and as they walked along the paved sidewalk, Dean wondered if they would be noticeable as being the only people out on the streets at this hour.

  “’S’okay,” commented Lonnie, “we’ll head for the drag. That’s never quiet.”

  It took them only a few minutes’ walk to negotiate the back streets of the ville and reach the town center, Lonnie knowing exactly where he was headed. Dean realized that they knew nothing of Lonnie’s personal history, and he wondered what the man’s grudge was against Baron Al. Whatever it was, now that they were here he seemed as fired up against the ville as Correll had been when they first encountered him a few days earlier.

  “C’mon, let’s blend in,” Lonnie suggested, steering them toward a saloon.

  “What about sec wags for convoy?” Jak questioned.

  Lonnie shrugged. “I know where they’ll be, all right, but we need to leave that till later in the day, when there’s some action on them. The yard’ll be empty by now. We’ve got till nightfall—yeah, if we get separated, we rendezvous where we camped last night, okay? Now,” he added with a malevolent glee as he pushed open the doors of the saloon, “it’s time to shake some action.”

  As soon as the doors were opened, the noise increased to a deafening volume. A long, makeshift bar constructed from old shop counters and covered with chicken wire was being propped up by a number of men and women with prominently displayed blasters. They were all downing home-brewed spirit at a rapid rate, and the smell of the grain used for the brew permeated the room with a decaying stink. The boom box behind the bar, guarded by the bartender, a fat man with a graying beard as long as his belly was large, was playing an old song with soaring guitars that seemed to be about a man leaving home, feeling he wouldn’t be remembered, but that he would rather be a free bird than tied down. A sign proclaimed that each drinker was limited, due to shortage of brew and shortage of grain to make it, to three drinks only. A quick head count of those sunk into corners, either unconscious or near to it, suggested that the brew was strong enough that very few drinkers would not reach their limit.

  Lonnie strode across to the bar, and the fat man looked at him with a curious stare, as though he half recognized him.

  “What can I do for you?” he asked, a note of suspicion creeping into his voice.

  “Drinks for all of us, Jem,” Lonnie replied with a grin.

  The bartender’s eyes narrowed at the use of his name. There was also something about the voice that reminded him…

  “Say, I’ll give you the drinks if you’ve got the jack,” he said slowly, “but mebbe I shouldn’t. There’s something a mite too familiar abou
t you, boy. Something that rings a danger bell in my head.”

  “My friend, the only thing that rings bells in your head is that brain rot you’ve been serving for too long. Always said that you shouldn’t drink your own brew.”

  The bartender said nothing for a moment, then a slow smile spread across his face. “Wouldn’t have recognized you, Lon. Never did see you without a beard or all that hair. But voices don’t change, do they?”

  “They don’t,” Lonnie agreed. He put some jack on the bar. “Now, how about you do the business and give us what I’m paying for?”

  “Sure,” the bartender replied, taking the jack with one hand while he laid out a row of glasses with the other. Raising a bottle filled with the murky spirit, he poured along the row of glasses with practiced ease, slopping very little between glasses. “What brings you back here? You know that Baron Al would be pleased to see you back.”

  “Yeah, and he’d be pleased to know how little of your profit actually goes into his coffers, and about the way you let the gaudy sluts use the bar without giving him his share of the jack,” Lonnie added, indicating a corner of the room with his head.

  Both Dean and Danny, curious, followed his movement and saw a woman in one corner, taking two customers at once. Her head was buried in the lap of a semiconscious man who seemed not to know what was taking place, while her short dress was hiked up above her waist and another man moved rhythmically behind her, his movements pushing her head into the other’s lap farther and farther.

  “See, Baron Al likes to keep his businesses under strict control down here, so he can get his share of the jack. Jem here isn’t supposed to run gaudys, and she sure as shit won’t be giving the jack she fleeced from those dudes to Baron Al, will she?”

  “I don’t take jack from her,” Jem said.

  “No, but you take favors,” Lonnie pointed out. “In Al’s book, that’s more jack she don’t declare.”

  “I knew I’d rue the day you came back—if you ever did,” Jem muttered, passing the glasses to the recce party. “So what do you want from me?”

  “Not much,” Lonnie said, sipping the strong spirit from the glass and wincing at the sour taste. “But enough. Do the sec still drink here in force?”

  “’Course they do,” Jem replied. “Why d’you think I can still have gaudy sluts on the house and get away with it?”

  Lonnie nodded. “Figured as much. So what do you hear when they get to the third glass?”

  “About what?”

  “About the big convoy and the trade-off with Summerfield.”

  “What d’you want to know for?”

  Without warning, Lonnie reached across and grabbed the fat man by his beard, pulling him over the counter.

  “Because, fucker, I do. Ask me no questions and I won’t slit your porky little throat.”

  The rest of the recce party was astounded by this sudden turn of events. They had all, in their own ways, assumed that Lonnie would want them to blend in with the other ville inhabitants until such time as they had gleaned the necessary information and got the hell out. They had assumed that to enter the bar was part of that process. It would seem that Lonnie had a personal score that he wanted to settle while he was back in Charity, an assumption that was confirmed by his next few words.

  “I should’ve chilled you when I had the chance before, Jem,” Lonnie growled. “Mebbe I’ll finish the job this time.”

  Jak noted that, despite the fact that brawls were commonplace in bars and people usually didn’t interfere in case they got themselves chilled, the atmosphere had changed in the bar through the course of Lonnie’s discussion with Jem. Their exchanges could barely be heard by the rest of the recce party, let alone by anyone else in the bar, over the noise of the boom box. However, it was startlingly obvious to even the most intoxicated and junked-out inhabitant of the bar that there was something going on here that was beyond the normal bar brawl.

  An undertone of clicks sounded around the bar as blasters were drawn and safety catches clicked off. Jak nudged Dean.

  “Be ready—get out quick,” he whispered.

  “What about the others?” Dean replied.

  “We have got a rendezvous,” stated Doc, who had been listening, “and we know a time. I suspect we may very well have to leave the rest to chance.”

  Meanwhile, Mik and Tilly were trying to stop Lonnie from going any further.

  “C’mon, man,” Mik whispered hoarsely, pulling at the recce leader’s arm, “leave this. We can’t risk a firefight before we’ve even started, can we?”

  “You don’t know what this fucker did,” Lonnie replied without taking his eyes off Jem.

  “You’re right, I don’t,” Mik said softly. “And guess what? I don’t fucking care. I just want us to get this mission accomplished and get back to Papa Joe, okay?”

  “Uh, I think it may be too late,” Tilly murmured as one of the drinkers, holding a remade snub-nosed .38, wandered closer to them.

  “There a problem here, Jem?” he asked in a lazy drawl.

  “Could say that,” the fat barman replied in a voice choked by Lonnie’s grip.

  The disheveled drunk held the Smith & Wesson up to Lonnie’s head. Considering how drunk he was, and the fact that he looked to be a physical wreck, his arm was highly muscled under the strip lighting of the bar, and his hand was rock steady.

  “Let him go,” he said slowly and gently.

  “Make me, shithead,” Lonnie replied, the veins bulging at his temples.

  Danny leaned over to Dean, keeping an eye on the rest of the bar. Even the gaudy slut had stopped, and was looking up from her position, the semiconscious man’s limp member in her hand while the customer behind her had withdrawn and was doing up his pants and trying to fumble his blaster from its holster.

  “It’s gonna go up,” Danny said, “and I think we should get the fuck out before we all get chilled.”

  “What about Lonnie?” Dean replied.

  “Leave him,” Jak interjected. “All have job, right?”

  Tilly, turning, nodded. “Scatter, and try to assemble later,” she agreed.

  Jak nodded. “Take Doc with me.”

  “Obliged,” Doc said, his LeMat firmly grasped in his fist.

  “You come with me,” Danny said to Dean. “While they check the convoy, I think there’s something else you should see.”

  Dean was about to ask what that might be, but was forestalled by what happened at the bar.

  Mik had a Walther PPK handblaster in his fist, and it was pointed at the head of the disheveled drunk who still had his Smith & Wesson at Lonnie’s head.

  “You chill him, and you’re on the last train west, too, fucker,” Mik said steadily.

  “New Mexican standoff, eh?” the drunk said. Then, louder, “What y’all say to that?”

  The words had barely escaped his mouth before the first blaster went off. The gaudy slut had a small derringer of her own, which she kept tucked into her dress between her breasts. The recce party wouldn’t know this, but the disheveled drunk was one of her best customers, and she wasn’t about to lose that source of income. Fortunately, she was a lousy shot, and the small-caliber slugs took out the strip lighting above the bar.

  It was the signal for chaos to descend.

  Blasters were raised and shots fired off with absolutely no sense of direction. In the heat and dark of the bar, there were shouts and screams of pain from those of the customers who were hit by stray or badly aimed slugs. The only ones not to fire were the members of the recce party. Jak and Doc had already hit the floor and were threading their way toward the exit as the firefight began. Behind them, Dean and Danny had also hit the ground, but as the young Cawdor made to follow Jak and Doc, Danny grabbed him by the arm.

  “This way,” he whispered with urgency. “We’ll take the back way.”

  Dean turned and followed Danny, figuring that they could catch up with Jak and Doc back at the rendezvous. As for Mik, Tilly and Lonnie—anything co
uld be happening to them, for all that he could see or hear in the dark, dense atmosphere of the bar, which now stank of cordite, blood and fear.

  In fact, the disheveled drunk who had been aiming his blaster at Lonnie’s head had been distracted by the slut’s loose shooting to such an extent that he had turned his head away for a fraction of a second, his arm slackening just enough to alert Mik to an opening. The rat-faced recce man had raised the blaster he had aimed at the drunk’s head and brought it down again butt-first, the force of his wrist and fist driving the heavy stock into the drunk’s skull, parting his greasy hair with a force that cleaved an open wound in the flesh and left him with blood coursing down his forehead. The drunk crumpled under the blow and fell away. At the same moment, Lonnie slammed Jem’s head onto the bar with a force that drove it down through the chicken wire and the glass; the bartender’s face suddenly opened up into a thousand tiny and painful wounds by the wire and the shards of glass that were driven into his eyes, blinding him with blood and pain.

  Mik turned and loosed Lonnie’s grip, while Tilly grabbed the recce leader by his other arm and yelled, “Let’s get the fuck out of here!”

  Pulling him away, assisted by Mik, Tilly directed him toward the exit that Doc and Jak had used.

  “Let’s move it, and keep him down!” she yelled at Mik, who nodded rather than waste breath.

  Which just left Danny leading Dean through the confused and drunken crowd toward the rear exit from the bar.

  They reached the door leading out to a back alleyway that was littered with garbage, and housed a few rats that scuttled for cover as they emerged into the daylight. Out front, where the other members of the recce party had been making their escape, a crowd of curious drinkers, sec men reluctant to walk into a firefight before it had run its course and those who just wanted to join a fight, had gathered. Danny and Dean, however, had a clear getaway.

  They were out into the alleyway, and both young men scrambled to their feet, slowing as they gained a few yards from the bar’s back door.