Siren Song Page 26

  Chapter Thirty-One

  The journey back to Heaven Falls took longer than J.B. had hoped. Krysty had little energy left after drawing on the Gaia power, and she kept needing to stop to rest. Eventually, Krysty urged the others to go on without her.

  “I’ll catch up,” she said. “Better that Ryan has some backup than none.”

  J.B. couldn’t argue with that reasoning, nor could the others.

  After making sure Krysty was comfortable sitting on a mossy log in a thicket, the Armorer, Mildred and Ricky continued over the high mountain path, picking their way across the sharp rocks as they hurried back to Heaven Falls.

  Once they were in sight of the gates, J.B. pointed out the beehives that ran in twin lines along the exterior wall.

  “I’m going to ask you to duck out of the main event,” he told Ricky. “I need a man to set fire to the hives. Think you can do that?”

  Ricky looked uncertain. “You sure you won’t need me in there?”

  “Mildred can cover my ass,” J.B. assured him.

  “Not for the first time,” Mildred teased.

  Ricky handed Mildred the extra plas ex he’d been hauling, then scrambled down the steep outcropping, taking care not to be seen.

  * * *

  WITHIN THE VILLE, Doc was following a similar task to Ricky’s. He had lit one of the smoking cloths that were used by the beekeepers to dull the bees’ senses while they gathered the honey, and now made his way around the ville counterclockwise, setting fire to the hives. Jak was performing the same task following a clockwise direction.

  The fires were slow burning, and it wasn’t until Doc was almost a third of the way around that someone noticed that the hives weren’t just smoldering—as if they were being smoked by a harvesting crew—but were actually on fire. Before long, the alarm went up, but Doc’s actions were overlooked. He was known as a beekeeper and no one thought to question why he would be carrying the same smoking cloth that he and his colleagues regularly employed in their workaday business.

  Working from northwest to southeast, Doc had reached the east wall hives when someone finally came to question him. That someone was Jon, his beekeeping supervisor, who happened to be working at a nearby hive in the otherwise empty field. He clearly didn’t register what Doc was up to, and was simply surprised to see Doc at work.

  “I heard you were sick,” Jon said. “That nice medicine lady—Molly, is it?”

  “Mildred,” Doc said.

  “Yeah, she came and told me early this morning,” Jon explained. Already a respected healer in the ville, Mildred had been sent to spread a little disinformation before the companions had split off to enact their plan.

  Doc took a deep breath. “As you can see, I am feeling far more sprightly now,” Doc explained, “so I hurried to catch up with the day’s tasks.”

  Jon eyed Doc skeptically. “Where are your gloves?” he asked. “And what have you been collecting the honey in?”

  As he spoke, his eyes flicked over Doc’s shoulder to a beehive that stood just a little distant, and he saw the dark smoke pouring from it. “Hey, is that hive burning?”

  “Where?” Doc said, turning to see where Jon pointed. As he did so, he flipped his swordstick up and around, rapping it with force into Jon’s groin.

  The beekeeper let out a gurgle and sank to the ground. Standing over him, Doc swung the swordstick again, smashing it hard on the side of the man’s skull. Jon said something unintelligible and sagged in the grass, unconscious.

  “Sorry, my friend,” Doc lamented, “you were a rather good boss and deserved better than that. But time is not my ally today.”

  “Hey!” The cry came from across the field. Doc looked up and saw Jon’s curly-haired partner, Thomas, running toward him. “Hey, what the heck did you just do?”

  Doc twisted the silver lion’s-head handle of his swordstick and readied to draw the blade that was hidden within. Thomas stopped a few feet away, staring in shock at Jon’s body where it lay in the grass, swelling already evident at the side of the man’s face.

  “You hit him, Doc,” Thomas stated. “I saw you do—”

  In a swift movement, Doc drew the blade and slashed it across Thomas’s chest, tearing shirt and skin.

  “Get back,” Doc warned.

  Thomas stood there incredulous, looking at the line of blood that had appeared across his chest. “Why did you...?” he muttered. And then he swayed in place and sank to his knees, his hand clasping the wound on his chest. It was a common enough reaction, one that Doc had seen many times before—a person didn’t know how to react when his or her blood was suddenly spilled.

  Taking advantage of Thomas’s momentary shock, Doc stepped closer and unholstered the LeMat, using the grip like a club against the back of the beekeeper’s skull. Thomas collapsed to the grass, unconscious.

  There was no time to lose. Doc had to keep moving, setting light to the hives while his allies continued with their own parts of the plan.

  * * *

  LIKE DOC, JAK worked around the ville as fast as he could, setting fire to the beehives. He moved swiftly, using a flint and tinderbox to light a fire before sprinting to the next hive.

  Jak had set light to twelve hives before someone noticed what he was doing and gave chase.

  “Hey, what do you think you’re doing?” a woman asked. Jak didn’t know her name, but he had seen her around. A supervisor in the construction projects, she was tall with long limbs and blond hair so pale it was almost white.

  Jak didn’t even stop. He merely glanced back at the woman before working the flint and tinder over a rag to light the next hive. Behind him, smoke was beginning to churn in the air above Heaven Falls from the burning hives.

  “I asked you a question, man,” the woman demanded, now standing over Jak. When he ignored her, she reached down for the crook of his elbow as if to pull away a small child.

  Jak turned then, thrusting the burning rag at her face. The woman shrieked and backed off, the burning rag setting her hair on fire.

  “Keep away,” Jak warned her as she slapped at her burning hair.

  Three minutes and four hives later, Jak became aware that people were approaching, a whole group of them, walking determinedly in step. He looked up from his work at the next hive and saw Charm leading four other women across the flowers toward him. She was dressed in her Melissa robes, but the other women looked like farmers or construction types.

  “Jak, my love, what do you think you’re doing?” Charm demanded. “Put that down.”

  Jak closed his eyes, allowing her silky voice to wash over him, dropping the flint and tinder as he felt the urge to trust her. He wanted to trust her, believe her, obey her. He wanted all of that, in some deeply buried part of his mind. But he had to ignore it; she was as much a victim as he was.

  “Jak?”

  “Honey poisoned,” Jak said, keeping his eyes closed. “I save you. Save all.”

  “Jak, you’re sounding like a madman.” Charm practically cooed the words, and Jak felt her shadow cross over his face as she reached for him.

  Jak lashed out, not looking but sensing where his lover was. Charm gasped with surprise as Jak’s swipe struck her under the chin.

  “Jak, please...” she began.

  The albino opened his eyes then, two bloodred orbs reflecting the flaming rag in his hand. “Charm don’t see,” he said. “None see.”

  “I was going to be your queen,” Charm rasped.

  “Not queen,” Jak told her. “Queen bee.”

  And then Jak drove the clenched fist of his left hand into the side of Charm’s head with sudden force. Charm saw it coming at the very last instant and she tried to avoid the blow, but there was nowhere for her to go. Jak’s fist hit her with a blunt thud, striking her temple where it was most
sensitive. He watched as Charm keeled over and sprawled on the ground, her white robes fluttering around her in the wind. She was semiconscious, her eyes flickering, only the whites showing.

  “Check her,” Jak told the other women.

  One of the women stepped forward, a fierce expression on her face. “You lunatic!” she bellowed. “You’re defiling the Regina’s love!”

  Jak thrust the burning rag at the woman, forcing her to step back. As she did so, he reached across his body with his empty left hand and pulled his Colt Python from its hiding place at his right hip. The woman’s eyes were still on the flaming rag as the blaster appeared in Jak’s hand, and he waved it in a controlled arc at the group.

  “Keep away,” Jak told them. The alternative was obvious enough.

  * * *

  RYAN WAITED FIFTY yards from the honey store, leaning back in the shade of an adjacent tower, watching the twin guards who stood within the shade of the door. He could smell the smoke now as it wafted over the mountain ville, and the sounds of shocked discovery were echoing from the distance where the Trai people were beginning to realize what was happening. The two white-robed women in the storehouse doorway were aware that something was going on, too. Ryan saw them peer excitedly from the door, discussing what they could see.

  “Come on,” Ryan urged quietly. “Step outside and take a look.”

  The two women, one blonde, one redhead, talked and pointed, spotting several sources for the plumes of smoke that were tangling together in the skies above Heaven Falls. The redhead stepped into the courtyard and paced a little way out to get a better look.

  Unseen in the shadows, Ryan lifted his longblaster to his shoulder, shucking the blanket that had disguised it. He followed the redhead through the crosshairs, waiting until she was in line with the blonde at the door. When she was, he stroked the trigger on the weapon and a 7.62 mm bullet drilled from the barrel and hurtled through the air, piercing the redhead’s throat without pause.

  The blonde looked up at the noise, turning as she saw her colleague drop to the ground.

  Still hidden in the shadows, Ryan shifted his aim slightly, centered the blonde in the crosshairs and fired. He watched emotionlessly as she dropped to the ground in the doorway. Ryan lowered the Steyr and sprinted the fifty yards of open courtyard to the store-tower doorway. He could hear shouting coming from all around—people discovering the burning hives, maybe questioning the sound of his blaster shots that had echoed like cracks of thunder across the ville. He kept moving, hurrying through the open door, into the darkened, warren-like interior.

  A woman was standing at the far end of the corridor. Ryan pulled his SIG Sauer P-226 handblaster from its holster and snapped off a shot, one-handed. The woman sank to the floor, her death barely seen in the unlit corridor.

  Open doors ran along both sides of the corridor, Ryan realized. At the sound of his blasterfire, a head bobbed out from one of the doorways. Ryan raised his SIG Sauer, but the figure ducked back inside the storeroom.

  “Get out,” Ryan shouted as he scrambled past the open doorway where he had seen the face appear. It was a woman, he saw now, dressed in a shift covered by a pale apron, its color difficult to discern in the poorly lit room. Behind her, lining every wall, Ryan saw the great clay containers of honey. “If you want to live, get out.”

  The woman looked at Ryan, then at the SIG Sauer in his right hand, the scoped longblaster in his left. “Y-you can’t have blasters here,” she stammered, shocked.

  “Out!” Ryan shouted at her, gesturing with the handblaster.

  The woman stood defiant for a moment, so Ryan fired a shot over her head. The report was loud in the enclosed space, and the bullet penetrated a clay cylindrical vessel shelved at shoulder height. Ryan watched as honey began to drool from the holed vessel, while the apron-wearing woman finally took her cue to leave, sobbing as she tottered past him on suddenly unsteady legs.

  “Right,” Ryan growled as he looked around the towering storeroom at all the clay cylinders of honey. “Time to shut down this sweet op.”

  * * *

  J.B. AND MILDRED approached the ville from the east, scrambling down the almost vertical rock face where the mountains met the fields. As they descended, they could see the plumes of smoke clouding the air, billowing in tufts from the burning hives.

  “Looks like Doc’s been busy,” Mildred said.

  J.B. looked around, searching for any sign of the old man. A scarecrow-thin figure was hurrying across an adjacent field, the tails of his coat flapping in the breeze. “There he is,” the Armorer said, pointing. “Go get him and meet me at the towers. Ryan should be there, and we have some last bits of business to conclude.”

  Mildred agreed, and she sprinted across the field with the ZKR 551 target pistol in her hand. The time for stealth had passed—now there were only life-and-death decisions to be made.

  * * *

  SURROUNDED BY ALL that honey, Ryan was starting to feel giddy. The stuff was irradiated, produced from pollen that had been doused in the fallout of the nukecaust. It had spoken to him when he had believed the Regina and the society that she had created. But now— Now it made him feel light-headed and nauseous simply being this close to it.

  Ryan looked around the storeroom, calculating how many rooms like this that the tower had to hold. Doc had said that there were probably six levels in all, and that three of them were almost full. There was enough honey here to feed a settlement the size of Heaven Falls for years—perhaps even a decade, if it didn’t spoil. They were stockpiling it—that was obvious. Perhaps they planned to take some with them when the Regina’s chosen ones left the hive to swarm. Perhaps they planned to dose up the entire Deathlands, make everyone see things from the point of view of the hive mind. Ryan and his companions had been in Heaven Falls two weeks, and in that time they had become subsumed by the strange culture that the Trai had created. It didn’t take much; a little longer and they never would have left, not even after J.B. had come to tell them what was happening. They would have just chilled him.

  “Two weeks to lose your humanity,” Ryan muttered, shaking his head.

  Holstering his handblaster and slinging the Steyr, Ryan paced over to one of the shelves and ran his hand along it. It was made of wood, and so was the wall behind, which meant once he got a blaze started, the whole place would go up in flames.

  Ryan moved swiftly, checking the other rooms of the storage unit, searching for anyone else who might get accidentally caught up in the inferno he planned. He hadn’t come here to chill people. Whatever was going on in these folks’ heads, it wasn’t really them—he could vouch for that by his own experience, the way he had become docile and had very nearly turned on his oldest friend. He would chill if he had to, but he would not be a party to genocide.

  Ryan reached the wall ladder and moved up into the second story of the storage tower.

  * * *

  MILDRED HAD BEEN joined by Doc, and they took a different route into the ville center. Around them, hives were burning, sputtering smoke into the air. Bees were exiting their hives in great clouds, their angry buzzing sounding like some colossal power saw cutting through the air.

  Doc pulled his coat up over his head, moving in a crouch. “We have riled our insect friends,” he said, shouting to be heard over the buzzing.

  “Just keep moving, Doc,” Mildred urged. “J.B. found enough explosives for all of us.”

  As they hurried up the dirt trail toward the central towers, Jak appeared from a line of trees, having cut across the ville. “What happen?” he asked.

  “The whole place is coming down,” Mildred told him, handing Jak detonators and several blocks of plas ex.

  “What target?” Jak asked her as the three companions jogged up the dirt incline and reached the seven towers.

  “Here and here,” Mildred said, poin
ting. “Doc, you take the one at the back. J.B.’s handling the central tower.”

  “What about you?” Doc asked.

  “Medical faculty,” Mildred told him. “Good luck.”

  With that, the three allies split up, running toward their chosen targets. Mildred could not help but feel a pang of regret at having to destroy the medical tower. The Trai had developed such knowledge and insight. They had created a society of superbeings with the ability to heal quicker than a normal person thanks to their steady diet of honey, and had employed royal jelly to create the superfast Melissas. There was so much that Mildred could take from here, so much she still had to learn. She should save the Home....

  No, she thought as she reached the medical building. That’s the honey talking, twisting my thoughts. It’s evil, pure evil. Insect reasoning trying to override my rationality.

  She strode into the medical tower and saw Petra crossing the lobby.

  “Mildred,” Petra gasped, “what’s going on out there? I heard screaming.”

  Mildred raised her ZKR. “You’ll be hearing a lot more unless you get everyone out of here right now.”

  Petra’s eyes boggled at the sight of the blaster. “You can’t—”

  Mildred pulled the trigger, sending a single bullet into the floor between the woman’s feet. “Only the first one’s a warning shot,” she said. “If I shoot again, no amount of medicine will fix what will be left of you. Got it? Now clear the faculty. You have two minutes.”

  Petra ran, rushing to get everyone out of the medical tower.

  * * *

  J.B. APPROACHED THE central tower where the Regina made her home. Three Melissas stood guard there, including raven-haired Nancy. J.B. stomped toward them, shotgun in hand.

  “Get out of here if you want to live,” J.B. snarled.

  “Violator!” Nancy shrieked. “How dare you set foot in Heaven Falls after what you did to my sister-in-arms.”

  J.B. wasn’t going to argue. He simply pulled the trigger, sending a wad of buckshot at the white-robed woman as she stepped from the doorway.