Borderlands: The Fallen (13 page)

Zac sat up, gasping for air, clutching at the wound on his right shoulder. It wasn’t deep, but blood seeped between his fingers.

“Well one of the bastuds got past me but I got the second one, boy!” Berl cackled. “Now if you just had your shotgun ready!”

“I told you I haven’t
got
a shotgun—”

“Should never have come to this planet without a good shotgun, young fella!” Berl chambered another round.

Three rakks were flying overhead, their blue almost the same as the sky, sweeping tightly back and forth like kites in a crosswind. Then two of them dived directly at them …

The shotgun thundered again and one of the rakks burst apart, raining reeking blood and animal parts on the two men—the other, injured by the pellet spread, flapped away, followed by the other surviving rakk.

“Ha! I discouraged ’em! They’re gone for now!” Berl crowed.

He lowered the shotgun and twitched his shoulders. “Ouch. Arthritis acting up. Harder to shoot upwards nowadays. Slower too. Was a time I’d have gotten all of the bastuds.”

“You got any of that Dr. Zed medicine I heard about?” Zac asked, kicking rakk guts off his foot.

“I might have a shot or two. But you’ll owe me for it. Hard to come by out here! I don’t see that Claptrap very often.”

They returned to the camp—they’d gone to the hilltop to see if bandits were moving in on them and spotted only rakks. To get to the camp, Zac had to follow the old man down a winding path between boulders, then right past Bizzy. Yellow eyes glowing, the creature seemed to watch him suspiciously as he walked by. It was only a meter away, sitting on a fat rock like a daddy longlegs on a toadstool, stiltlike legs half-folded to either side of the boulder, turning its whole body to watch Zac as he passed. Any moment it might decide to spit corrosive venom at him—and his face would burn away, like what happened to that bandit, screaming and dying …

Why the hell had he ever come here?

He had to make a move, soon, at least try to get back to the Study Station, find out what became of his family. But the lure of that crashed alien ship was still strong.
Sometimes he thought he could
feel
that treasure out there, in the wastelands, throbbing; hear it calling to him …

Zac shook his head, and entered the camp, sat on an old crate as Berl administered the med syringe. The infusion began its work immediately—he felt strengthened, restored. His injuries closed up, the bleeding stopped. Wondrous stuff: nano-nodes that rebuilt the cells from within.

“Like I say, you owe me for that, boy.”

“Sure, Berl. How about we go to a settlement, so I can get some money wired down to pay you with?”

“Hm?” Berl’s face creased in a scowl. “Settlement—
me
? I don’t go there less’n I have to. I meet the Claptrap, I give him the goods, he gives me what I need.
It
, I should say, speaking of a robot. I guess he ain’t no he.”

“Well, uh—you could
direct
me there.”

“I could. But you’d never make it. Hell I’d-a been dead a long time ago if not for Bizzy …”

Berl squinted over at the Drifter and unconsciously touched the collar-like necklace. Looking at the necklace up close, Zac realized that the scaly, iridescent segments strung together on the copper had been wired there by Berl. Those pearly scales, each one only half the size of the palm of his hand, were the extraterrestrial artifacts. Berl had put them together for some reason and it seemed to give him a psychic contact with Bizzy.

“What you looking at, young feller?” Berl demanded, glaring.

Zac decided it would just make the old guy more paranoid if he wasn’t straight with him. “Just—that necklace, Berl. Seems like there’s some connection between you and Bizzy through that thing.”

“What about it?”

“Look, I came out here looking for that crashed ship. Seems likely you know where it is, Berl. Now, why can’t we partner up for real? You want to stay out here, hell, then stay here—I can act as your agent for the find. We can split it. I don’t even need a big share. I’ll sign a contract, whatever you want.”

The old man was fairly trembling with suppressed rage.

Zac cleared his throat and went nervously on. “Berl, come on, man, take it easy—I am not trying to take anything that’s yours. I am grateful that you saved my life. Wasn’t for you, why—”

“Wasn’t for me, some cannibal bandit’d be crapping you out in his turds right about now, mister!” Berl snarled.

Zac winced. “Well I wouldn’t’ve put it that way but yeah. I’m grateful. I’m not out to rip you off. But just imagine—if you want to stay out here, why not do it right? If you were rich, you could send for a construction bot, dig a hole in this hill, make yourself a real bunker—a whole fortress out here, if you wanted to! You could set up robot sentries. You could defend yourself from anything—a rich man could … Berl?”

Berl had the shotgun pointed at Zac’s middle.

Zac licked his lips, suddenly very dry.
“Berl?”

“Boy,” Berl said, his voice almost inaudibly low, “I’m thinking the best way I can defend myself … is to cut you in half right here and now. ’Cause otherwise you’re gonna bring hellfire down on me from up there …” He glanced at the sky, then looked quickly back at Zac. “Outworlders flat cannot be trusted! And I was a fool to trust you at all.”

“Can I … have a drink of water instead? I’m really parched, Berl.”

Berl glowered at him—then pointed with the shotgun
muzzle at a canteen lying on the ground nearby. “Go on and get you a drink. While I think on if I should kill you.”

Heart thudding, Zac got up, picked up the canteen by its strap, desperate to stall, thinking to swing it around, maybe hit the old man in the head with it before he could fire that gun—Berl had said he was slowing down some.

But then a shadow fell over him. He looked up to see two yellow eyes glowing down. Bizzy the Drifter was towering over him, on its pole legs, quivering, opening its maw. Seeming ready to spit burning spume down at him …

Checkmate. Zac had a choice of sizzling to death or being shot. He preferred being shot. He drank deep from the canteen, put it aside, turned to Berl—and was struck hard in the forehead by the butt of Berl’s shotgun.

He fell, spinning into a sucking pit, wondering if he’d ever wake up again. If he’d ever see his wife or son, if he’d ever find his way out of …

Darkness.

Sunset blazed in Marla’s eyes. Her wrists were pinioned behind her back, and they ached as she was marched along the wooden false beach to the group of slavers standing by a battered flat-bottomed motorboat. Slavers—waiting to purchase her.

Dimmle was behind her, Grunj stalked along to her left. Another sea thug she couldn’t see was off on the right, a step or two back. She hadn’t seen Vance today, though he’d seemed ready to help her escape. She’d thought he’d gone for her scheme. But all he’d gone for was her body. Then he’d locked her up, made himself scarce. Now Vance was
nowhere to be seen, and Dimmle had shown up, taken him to Grunj—who’d received her while standing over the smashed corpse of a midget, grinning. “Your time has come, missy ho,” he’d said.

And here she was.

So she was to be sold to slavers. What would happen to her then? A series of degradations—living death?

There was nothing reassuring about the slavers. They were hairy, sunburnt men in layered clothing and hip boots, bits and pieces of armor, holsters and scabbards, a rifle in each pair of hands. Their leader, standing with his hands on his hips, was almost a giant, a one-eyed man with a dent in his forehead and patches of hair on his scarred scalp. It appeared he’d been shot in the forehead, and the skin had grown over the hole—and somehow he’d survived. The side of his face missing the eye was half crumpled in. The other side had once been handsome, she supposed. He wore a sleeveless jerkin; his arms were twined with strings of tattooed sayings, something like Dimmle’s.
Take em make em have em use em sell em take em make em use em sell em kill em …

It seemed Dimmle knew him, hence the tattoo connection. “Mash!” Dimmle called. “Good to see ya!”

Mash’s voice was like a bone slowly breaking. It came grating out the intact side of his mouth. “Good? Not good. You shouldn’a come here to work for this son of a bitch. I don’t like it when my men leave without asking me.”

“I paid you for the privilege, Mash,” Dimmle said.

“Hmph, after the fact!”

“Never mind all that,” Grunj rumbled. “We making a deal for the missy ho or not?”

Mash grunted, looking Marla over. “So this is the woman, yeah? Not bad! Possibilities. Not terribly young but … we can make a profit on her. I got some special customers on the Trash Coast pay good for that.”

She listened in stunned astonishment as they negotiated her price. Apparently Mash was buying her “wholesale.” She looked around, wondering where she could run to. Nowhere—you can’t outrun a bullet. There was the boat—a flat-bottomed electric boat Grunj used to ferry people to his “island.” One of Grunj’s men waited at the tiller of the idling boat, a heavily armored man with a full-face breathing mask. Why did they wear the breathing masks? The air seemed fine. Were they hideous under there?

The negotiation was over after two minutes and a handshake. Mash gave Grunj a bag of money, and after he counted it, he gave Marla a shove toward the boat. “Go on, my man’ll take you and them to the Coast. Do what they tell you or it’ll go hard.”

Dazed, she let herself be herded into the boat. She sat near the big man at the tiller. Mash got in, just in front of her, then his men piled in. The boat was laden to the brim, sat low in the water as the man at the tiller put the engine in reverse and they backed away from the false beach of Grunj’s Island. They left Grunj, Dimmle, and their men behind. Still no sign of Vance …

The feeling of hopelessness that had been creeping up on Marla seemed to lunge for her throat. She felt crushed by the jaws of despair. She’d never see Cal again, never see Zac, she’d die in some bloody bed, probably …

The boat was turning around, heading away from the
artificial island toward a headland. The setting sun was off to her right. The darkening, craggy outline of the Trash Coast, a quarter kilometer away, was waiting for her …

“Who you figure to sell the bitch to?” one of the men asked.

Mash scratched at his ruined forehead. “Maybe that bastard Greeb. He might pay double for her—he uses ’em up quick and this one looks strong. Like she might last a year or two …”

“If he don’t take a fancy to kill her quick.”

“Marla,” the man at the tiller whispered. “Soon as you hear the explosions, lie down as flat in the boat as you can.”

“What?” Then she recognized the voice of the man in the mask. Vance.

They were only about a hundred meters out from Grunj’s Island when two things happened—Vance cut the engines, and the explosions. Five fiery blasts went off from one end of the island to the other within seconds. Each one threw chunks of phony island in the air, pieces of shack and metal slats and spikes of wood and metal crates and bodies, some bodies in pieces and some living and screaming and some already dead—burning bodies, burning chunks of wood, lifted on pillars of fire. The multiple roar of the explosions made the men in the boat turn and gawk. The flames lit up the evening sky. Then the shock wave hit them and the boat jolted, lifted on a wave and almost overturned.

“Motherbuggerin’ son of a
whore
!” exclaimed Mash, as he clutched at the sides of the rollicking boat.

Pieces of the island were raining down in the water; its sections, held together by chain and rope, separated and
sloshed in the sea, some of them overturning. Men shouted and their shouts were lost in gurgles. The water around the shattered remains of Grunj’s Island seethed and churned and steamed, as pieces of the island vanished …

Then silence settled over the sea—except for the sound of the men in the boat, swearing and muttering.

Only then did Marla remember to flatten herself in the boat. She lay down, curled up in the small space between the men—and the shooting began immediately. Before the staring men turned around Vance shot them. His rifle fired electrical charges that took out their personal shields, along with the rounds that cut them down. The bullets jerked the slavers around in the boat. A few rounds were fired in return, to no effect.

There were three splashes as dead and wounded men fell overboard—and again the boat almost overturned. Mash snarled and stepped over Marla, tried to grapple with Vance—she reached up and tugged hard on the man’s knee so he tilted off balance and pitched overboard.

“Ha!” Vance said. “Good work, Marla!” He pulled off his mask and grinned at her.

The engine started again, and the boat continued toward the Trash Coast. Marla sat up and looked around. Only two men remained in the boat. Both clearly dead—both missing their heads. She turned away, stomach flip-flopping.

Someone thrashed in the sea to aft. It was Mash, still alive, face bloody, trying to swim after them.

“Stop that boat and fight me, you scummy coward!” Mash howled.

“Here, shoot the bastard,” Vance said, handing her a pistol.

She numbly took the gun—she knew how to use one, she’d been a security guard for two years, right out of school—and she aimed it at Mash’s face. She could see his face only dimly, tinged by sunset and blood, four meters back. A wave lifted him up, seemed to roll him closer to the retreating boat.

It was the ideal moment to shoot him …

She had never killed anyone before. The man was a beast; he had talked of selling her to someone who
uses ’em up quick
. But she had to close her eyes before she could pull the trigger.

The gun banged and jumped in her hand, twice. She opened her eyes and looked. She didn’t see him anymore …

“You get him?” Vance asked.

“I … I think so.”

Vance sighed. “Hell. Wish I could be sure. Tried to time it so Grunj would get blown up, too. I need ’em both dead. Grunj woulda figured out I took most of his cash when I left. Lotta money. I got it in this pack I’m sittin’ on here. And Mash’d never get over my killing his men—taking his prize. Need both of them dead.”