Strontium Swamp Page 23

  “Thank you, Diamond,” he said mildly. “I appear to have made a terrible mess. Get it cleaned up, will you? But first, I think we have something to attend to.”

  Chapter Thirteen

  “Dark night! Sounds like there’s already a full-scale firefight going on,” J.B. breathed as they sunk farther into the cover of the ruined buildings on the edge of West Lowellton.

  “If there is, then who the hell are they fighting?” Mildred questioned. “I don’t know about you, but I counted them all out.”

  “Only one way we’re going to find out,” Ryan said decisively. “We’ve got to follow the sound of the firefight.”

  “Follow the drum,” Doc mused. “How appropriate for the way we live.”

  “Think I see what you mean, Doc, but now really isn’t the time for any philosophy,” Krysty told him.

  At an indication from Ryan, they moved out of cover and began to progress stealthily along the roads that crisscrossed the old suburb, cutting across ruined buildings to keep cover and save time as they sought the source of the blasterfire.

  They hadn’t let up their pace since leaving the swamp settlement that morning. Keeping close on the obvious trail left by the guerrilla army, they had soon worked out that speed and not stealth was Jak’s aim. He had taken a direct route and hadn’t rested along the way. Their own momentum had carried them toward the old ville of Lafayette, and in the same way the companions had marched without respite to keep within distance of the main army. It was imperative that they try to catch them before they entered the walled ville. After that, who could tell what would happen.

  They had still been in the swamp when an ominous rumble in the distance had warned them that the sec patrol wags were emerging in their nightly convoy. They had taken shelter in the undergrowth and watched as the wags rolled past, silently waiting for the moment when they would dismount and begin their nightly circuits of the swamp.

  After the last of the wags had rolled past, they had waited still, the notion that there may be some stragglers among the vehicles a possibility, albeit an unlikely one. After a nerve-stretching interval, Ryan had signaled that they should proceed. They had made their way through to the edge of the bayou and across into the remains of the old suburb with no problems, and had paused only when they heard the sounds of a distant firefight.

  “Which way?” Ryan asked J.B. as they moved once more.

  The Armorer indicated to the north west, across a row of half-demolished apartments and past the remains of the old hotel they had searched during their first visit to the suburb, some years before.

  “I’d say it’s coming from over there, which makes it certain that it must be Jak’s people.”

  “Why certain?” Mildred asked.

  “Because it’s on the way to the walled part of Lafayette and is probably the route they would take,” Krysty said. “Am I right?”

  J.B. agreed. “That’s the way I figure it.”

  “Then perhaps we should make some speed and attempt to assist our friend and his little band of angels in their struggle,” Doc said, directing this to Ryan.

  The one-eyed warrior grinned. “I was just about to say that, Doc. Keep in cover. They might not think to ask who we are before firing on us if we sneak up on them too quickly,” he added.

  Using the cover of the buildings, they headed toward the source of the noise. It had also occurred to them that there had to be another party in the firefight, and if the sec convoy had already left the old ville, then it meant that there was at least one sec party roaming free within the ruins. If there was more than that one party, then they had no wish to confront them.

  The trouble was, they knew that Jak’s plan would be to hit fast and with stealth. That surprise element was almost certain to be removed now that this firefight had broken out. So he’d probably need all the tactical and combat experience he could get beside him. They had to balance keeping out of sight of any patrols with getting to Jak before he reached the walled ville.

  As suddenly as the firefight had begun, silence fell over the ruined suburb. Not even an echo of a blaster shot hung in the air.

  “Shit, why has it gone quiet?” Ryan asked.

  “Mebbe they’ve overcome the sec patrol. They probably had the numbers,” J.B. mused.

  “The problem is, we need them firing to pinpoint where they are. How the hell are we going to find them now?”

  “We know where they’re headed,” Krysty said. “If we head off that way, then we should be able to head them off before they reach that sewer outlet you mentioned.”

  “Yeah, that should—What’s that?” he asked suddenly, his tone changing as he caught the faintest of sounds carried on the air.

  “Take cover—it’s at eight o’clock,” J.B. snapped, his ears attuning to the sound quicker than anyone else.

  They were close enough to the opening of an apartment building to use the lobby as shelter. A few wrecked couches and a torn and stained carpet were all that remained of its previous existence, the elevator doors showing a permanent out-of-order sign.

  The sound resolved itself into footsteps—running—and a heavy, panicked breathing. As they watched, LaRue ran past them.

  Doc stepped forward to leave the shelter of the lobby and hail the man. Ryan held out a restraining hand.

  “My dear boy—” Doc began, bewildered.

  Ryan shook his head. “Why’s he running? Who’s chasing him?”

  A look of understanding spread across Doc’s features and he drew back into the shadows of the lobby.

  Yet there was no other sound than that of the bald swamp rebel as he ran, his footsteps and labored breathing getting farther away with each second. There were no other footsteps, no sounds of a wag in pursuit.

  “I don’t get it,” Krysty said. “If there’s no one chasing him, then why is he running like that?”

  “Yeah, and is he running to find the others, or away from where they were?” Mildred asked with a raised eyebrow. “Either way, it can’t be good to have him running around loose.”

  Ryan agreed. “Let’s get after him, and try to find out what the hell is going on.”

  Keeping close to the walls of the ruined buildings, with an escape route to cover only a few steps away at any given moment, they slipped out of the ruined lobby and chased after LaRue. He had turned left at the corner, and J.B. hoped that the left turn didn’t lead to a junction with five separate roads leading off. He wanted to keep the swamp dweller in sight and not have to split their own force to find him. That could be self-defeating. It kept nagging at him: what had made LaRue run? Some problem within the rebel army, some kind of infighting breaking out? Or were there extra sec patrols because of Dr. Jean’s intention to strike out for the rebel ville?

  Either way, it could cause an immense problem for them now they were here and looking for Jak. Furthermore, if there were extra sec patrols and LaRue was to run into one of them on his own, there was no way he could neutralize them all—and so the rebel presence would be widely known. He would never have said it out loud, but he knew that the others thought it, too.

  The road that turned left was straight for about four hundred yards: yet there was no sign of LaRue along its length.

  “Where the fuck has he gone?” Ryan whispered, bewildered.

  Krysty silenced him with a gesture. “Listen…” she whispered.

  It was there, faint, but still audible—La Rue’s footsteps echoing through the mouth of a ruined building about a hundred yards ahead and to their right. He was breaking through the rubble wherever possible, as though he had a definite goal.

  Maybe he did—they’d have to catch him to find out.

  The companions set off after the fleeing man, trying to keep to speed with him. It was difficult, as the building he had chosen was littered with treacherous debris that moved underfoot, threatening to twist and disable feet and ankles with one wrong step. Some of the upper floors had also caved in, leaving great hills of rubble that ext
ended up through a hole in the ceiling. They had to move around it, and work out where LaRue had run to. The enclosed space acted like an echo chamber, making his footsteps more audible, but also bouncing echoes of the walls, making direction hard to determine.

  It was only when he became briefly visible exiting the ruins that they were able to determine his direction. Setting off in his wake, they came to the rear of the building as LaRue was breaking for the far corner of the street, heading toward the walled ville.

  That they didn’t follow was determined by the sound they heard in the distance. Lingering in the well of the ruined building, Ryan stayed the others with an arm.

  “Listen—” he whispered.

  “Sounds like a wag, and coming fast,” J.B. added.

  It was: a sec wag responding to the radio call of the malfunctioning wag that the rebels had attacked. As the companions watched, they could see LaRue run blindly toward it, some two hundred yards from them. He cut across the corner of the road and ran directly in front of the wag.

  “What in the name of the Three Kennedys is he doing?” Doc breathed. “The fool, he is bound to be caught.”

  “If he isn’t chilled first,” Mildred said. She could see that he was about to be hit by the wag, and figured that a direct impact might just buy the farm for him.

  She was wrong. At the last minute, the man’s instincts—blunted for so many minutes by his fear—took over, and he noticed the wag racing toward him. He tried to pull back, stumbled and fell backward. The wing of the sec wag clipped him, and he hit the ruptured tarmac and broken concrete with a sickening thug. The sec crew were out of the wag in an instant, surrounding him.

  “We can take them,” Mildred said calmly. “There’s only four of them, and we’ve got surprise—”

  “No, it’s too late for that,” Ryan said. “Why are there only four of them? Where are the others? Besides, by the time we reach them they could already have raised a warning.”

  “But we can’t let them take him,” Mildred said.

  “We’ll have to. Mebbe they’ll torture him for information, but I figure he’ll hold long enough. We’ve got to think of the bigger picture.”

  “Which is, exactly?” Mildred said angrily.

  “Which is that we let Jak and his army know that Dr. Jean now knows about them. And then we help him get another plan,” J.B. said calmly. “We go after LaRue, then mebbe we lose more lives in the long run,” he added.

  Mildred glared at him, then at Ryan. She looked to Krysty and Doc for support, but she already knew they would back Ryan. In truth, she knew that he was right. But the thought of losing one man was as painful to her as losing many. Sometimes there were no easy choices.

  THE VID SCREENS on the street corners stopped pumping out their bland eulogies to the glories of Dr. Jean, and what sounded like Klaxon erupted. The noise cut through the hubbub of the neon-lit city and caused the people on the streets to look up, penetrating even their jolt-induced stupor. In every building that was inhabited during the hours of darkness—the factories in which the workers toiled on the weapons and old tech that Dr. Jean was seeking to develop, the brothels that serviced the workforce, the bars that fed them liquor laced with powerful narcotics, the trading posts that sold clothing, blasters and food—there were vid screens that were permanently broadcasting, as on the streets. These, too, saw the people react to the sudden alarm. Work ceased, transactions were stopped halfway through, drinks were put down, couples stopped screwing in midhump. All responded to the frequency of the alarm as it cut through to some part of their brain unclouded by the drugs or hypnosis, and tuned to respond to the signal.

  The face of the baron appeared on the screen.

  “In two nights’ time I planned to mount a raid on the last remaining scum that stood between ourselves and the complete domination of the bayou. A small, insignificant number of people, they had nonetheless succeeded in hiding themselves away like canker that festers in a sore. In much the same way, they had made themselves an irritant on the skin of our glorious regime. So, much as you would lance a boil, squeeze the pus from a spot, or clean out the festering pus in a wound, I had decided to rid us of this irritation. Having located the sickness, it was time to burn it out.

  “But, with an audacity that I find breathtaking and, at the same time, incredibly stupe, they have decided to attack our ville this very night. They have a childishly and cretinously simple plan, which involves using the sewers to gain access under the walls. An appropriate manner in which to enter when you consider the shit that these people are. Why, you may wonder, do I not just send a force into the area beyond the walls and wipe them from the face of the earth?”

  Dr. Jean paused and smiled. To anyone under his spell, it would have seemed the mark of a benevolent leader. For anyone else, there was a cold malice in the smile that would have chilled the blood. He continued.

  “Because, my people, I feel that it would be a good way for you to show your love and loyalty by dealing with this yourselves. I shall tell you where they will enter our ville, and I want you to mobilize so that you have your own quarters defended in case of attack. Look on it as an exercise in how well you can work together. Strength through unity, my friends. That is the key. That is our strength.

  “Defend your own quarters and be ready. Those of you who live on Fifth and Vine will be aware now that in the backyard of dormitory seven there is a cover over the sewer. It is in this yard that the intruders shall emerge. I will be sending you a detail of sec to assist you in the eradication of the rebel army. I want most of them chilled straight away. Do not waste time on them. But there are those who I wish to be made an example of, and offered as a sacrifice to the gods who guide us.

  “We must work together on this. I have faith in my people, for they are as one. That is all.”

  The screens went blank for a second before the regular broadcasts returned. But the atmosphere in the ville had changed. It was now more highly charged than it had been a few minutes before, with an edge of anticipation for the fight ahead.

  DR. JEAN LAUGHED as he sat back in his chair. It was an old leather-covered swivel chair set behind what had once been the newsdesk of the local Lafayette cable news channel. The equipment within had somehow survived the nukecaust relatively unscathed, and had been ignored by looters as it held no interest for them. But it had held an immense interest for Dr. Jean when he had first established his ville. He had enough knowledge of old tech, and access to equipment in enclaves he had discovered during his time in the wilderness, hiding from those who sought revenge against anyone associated with the old Baron Tourment, to know that he could get this old tech studio working again, and use the cable lines to set up vid screens in every building and on every street corner. There would no escape, no solitude safe from the word of Dr. Jean.

  And it was at times like this that he felt the most proud of his achievements. That had been Tourment’s trouble, and something from which Jean had learned—keeping a population in its place by terror was a useful means of control, but it was a sure way of building a long-term resentment as well as using a vast amount of sec resources. He had no plans for making such a mistake. He used propaganda, used the old tech to feed them a constant diet that told them how lucky they were to live in Lafayette, how they could only prosper with such a leader at the helm. How much he did for them, and, indeed, in many ways he could be said to have furnished them with a relatively comfortable life within the walls of his Lafayette.

  But at a cost. There was always a cost.

  Time for action. Dr. Jean hauled himself out of the chair, ignoring the lackeys who operated his equipment, and beckoned to the sec man who had been with him when he chilled LaRue. The scarred man approached him cautiously. He was Dr. Jean’s sec chief, and had worked closely with him since he had established the walled ville within the old Lafayette; and yet, he still knew next to nothing about the baron and his plans. And, if truth be told, he was scared to find out; scared of the power an
d hate that this giant held within his frame.

  “Sir,” he said as he approached, trying to keep the tremor from out of his voice.

  “Walk with me, Diamond, I have something to tell you,” Dr. Jean said mildly. He was always at his most dangerous when his tone was that mild, and as the stocky sec chief fell in beside the baron he felt the apprehension grow within his breast.

  The two men set out for the baron’s chambers, which were two blocks from the old studio. As they walked through the streets, those they passed fell to their knees and sang praises for the ebony giant, who barely acknowledged their presence. Some came up to him, seemingly just for the privilege of touching his cloak. He pushed them away and they fell to the ground, writhing in an ecstasy that would, in predark days, have been called evangelical. Even to be manhandled by the baron was a joy: he had touched them. That was enough.

  It always sent a ripple of fear through Diamond, the sec chief, to see this happen. Everyone was armed, and the baron took no precautions. Before he could have had a chance to draw his own blaster, the baron could have been chilled from anywhere, by anyone. Yet the people were totally in thrall to him. He could do anything. Probably would. That was what seemed so scary.

  Dr. Jean didn’t speak to Diamond for the whole of the two blocks. They covered the distance in a short time. Despite his limp, the baron moved swiftly, with long strides that had a rolling, irregular rhythm to them. Perhaps he was just concentrating on this, or perhaps he had something to impart that he wanted no one else to hear.

  Diamond was soon to find out. They ascended the stairs in the block where the baron had his throne room, past the sec guards on each level, and past the torture room—the body of LaRue had been removed—and three women with buckets and brushes were scrubbing the blood from the floor and walls, chanting along to the messages and imprecations that came out of the vid screen as they worked.

  In fact, Dr. Jean didn’t speak until they were in the throne room, alone. He slumped into the large wooden chair he used as a throne and rested his forehead in one vast palm.