Eden’s Twilight (24 page)

“This seems to be working,” Mildred announced, her face pressed against a window. “But how do we get Jak back on board?”

Even as she asked the question, a side door of War Wag One cycled down and the filthy teen threw himself onto the angled stairs. Then Quinn appeared and bodily hauled the albino teen inside, the door closing right behind them.

“Jak's safe!” Mildred exhaled in relief.

“Glad to hear it! Now somebody turn on the bastard radar!” Ryan ordered, both hands tight on the trembling wheel. “We need to reach the shore triple fast!”

The engine temperature was creeping upward, and the man tried the old trick of turning on the defroster to try to draw some heat off the engines. It worked, but then the windows fogged solid, making it impossible to see. Suddenly, Krysty appeared by his side and cleaned the inside of the Lexan plastic with a handkerchief. Ryan grunted in thanks and concentrated on his driving, keeping away from the small islands or any calm surface that could mark the presence of a sinkhole or deep water.

“Okay, there's something large just ahead of us,” J.B. announced, bent over the glowing screen. “It's either dry land or a mucking huge island.”

“Either one would do,” Ryan snarled, the tendons distended in his arms, both hands clenched white on the vibrating steering wheel.

“I just hope that we are not under observation,” Doc mused out loud, looking over the Stygian landscape. “This very moment would be the perfect opportunity to attack us again.”

“Not gonna happen,” J.B. said without looking up from the radar. “We're in a fragging swamp, so there's nothing for a sniper to hide behind, and by now Pete knows that we can shoot down his damn missiles. I don't know what he's packing, but there's no fragging way he could possibly have more missiles than we do live brass.”

“Damn well hope so,” Mildred growled, checking the load in her Czech ZKR target revolver.

Just then, the radar began to tone steadily.

“What is it, another missile?” Ryan demanded, hunched over the wheel. He could see the distant shore through the foggy windshield. They couldn't be more than a thousand yards away, maybe ten or fifteen minutes.

“No, this is something in the lake,” J.B. said in growing disbelief. “It's big, and coming fast.”

“It's probably just War Wag Two,” Doc said hopefully, squinting into the distance. There was an island in the lake that he did not recall being there only a few moments earlier.

Since Ryan and Krysty were busy, Mildred reached into the man's jacket and extracted his navy telescope. Extending the device to its full length, she swept the flat landscape and soon found the new island. Oddly, it seemed to be coming their way. The physician had no idea what it could be. The thing was much too large to be a swampie or an alligator, and the water was way too shallow for a submarine or sailing ship. Maybe a rowboat or a canoe, but those were much too small to be mistaken for an island. What the frag was it, a beached whale? That was about the right size.

Suddenly the radio speaker in the ceiling crackled briefly into life, the garbled transmission lost in the background static. Then it crackled again, this time a single word coming through loud and clear:
kraken.

“Fireblast!” Ryan snarled, stomping on the gas pedal and throwing the wag into high gear. The tandem diesels revved in power and the dashboard flashed with meters flickering into the red zone. But the chained wags moved slightly faster across the oozing morass of watery mud.

Flipping switches, J.B. armed the five remaining missiles while the rest of the companions shoved the barrels of their weapons out the blasterports, and waited with pounding hearts for the gigantic mutie to get within range.

“Anybody know where to shoot the thing?” Mildred demanded, icy calm flooding her body and mind as if about to go into surgery. “Where's the heart, or brain?”

“Don't know that a kraken has either of those!” Krysty answered, wiping the windshield clean of condensation. Her crimson hair flexed wildly, then coiled tightly to stay out of her eyes.

“Indeed? Has the abomination never been dispatched before?” Doc asked, his sight riveted on the approaching creature. It was like watching a train coming out of the night, growing larger and more menacing with every passing second.

“There's always a first time!” Ryan shot back, trying to urge the struggling wag on to greater speed. Everything but the transmission was at the red line, bordering on failure. The combination of the mud and dragging the munitions wag behind them was almost more than the vehicle could handle.
At any moment the wag was going to stall, leaving them helpless before the onrushing colossus.

Without releasing the wheel, Ryan bumped Krysty with an elbow. She nudged him back with a hip, the silent communication between the two lovers saying more than a thousand hurried words.

Coming straight across a small island, the kraken was engulfed in a brief flurry of explosions from buried land mines. The detonations hardly slowed the beast, and it loudly roared like the fevered delusions of a madman come to horrid life.

With a rush of white smoke, a missile launched from the aft MRL pod of War Wag One. The sleek warbird streaked across the watery swamp and slammed into the kraken, the blast blowing away the moss and sticky mud to reveal a leathery form advancing on a writhing nest of jointed tentacles. The bulbous head possessed multiple eyes, like some kind of an insect, while the mouth was a yawning pit full of the needle-sharp teeth of a carnivore. Everybody else in the Deathlands might call the thing a mutie, but the companions felt sure that when a kraken bled, if it could bleed, that the fluid would be the telltale yellow of another triple-damned biowep. The giant seemed designed just for chilling, which meant that it probably had been built in some predark lab for just such a purpose. Nature designed animals to live and breed; only humanity built creatures for the sole purpose of sowing death.

Another missile launched from the chained war wag, and J.B. added one of their own. The missiles hit the kraken dead-on, but did scant damage, the wounds closing almost as fast as they were formed.

At that chilling sight, every machine gun chattered into life, and rapidfires yammered into operation from every blasterport. Streams of lead hammered the onrushing kraken, but the bullets merely sank into the mottled flesh and disappeared.

Seeing how far away the shore was, Ryan decided to take
a gamble, and lifted the fork from the mud. With that removed, their speed increased exponentially, and the kraken dropped behind slightly. As if infuriated by the escape, the huge creature redoubled its efforts and rapidly closed the gap, the lashing tentacles reaching out to slap the armored hull of War Wag One with ringing force. A blaster was snatched out of a blasterport, fingers caught in the trigger guard coming along. The vented barrel of the Fifty was bent, the chattering machine gun instantly backfiring; a piercing shriek of pain came from the armored blister, then red blood flowed freely from the air vents.

Positioned directly in front of War Wag One, it was difficult for the companions to aim at the kraken, so they switched from full-auto to single shots, and went for the eyes. One of the orbs burst, then another, but then the kraken raised a tentacle in front of its face in a protective gesture.

“Sweet Jesus, how smart is this thing?” Mildred demanded, dropping a spent clip and slamming in a reload.

As the question did not seem to need an answer, none of the companions responded. They simply kept shooting.

Unexpectedly, a roof hatch crashed open on the aft wag, and Jessica scrambled into view holding a Molotov cocktail, the rag around the neck of the bottle already burning. She threw it at the kraken, but the container merely bounced off the leather hide and fell into the lake to disappear into the mud.

Stretching out a tentacle, the kraken tried for the woman, but Jessica dived back into the hatch…only to reappear a split second later holding a machete and a gren.

Grabbing a gren, Doc stepped away from the blasterport, then bitterly cursed at the sight of their roof hatch welded tightly into place. Rushing to the aft doors, he threw the bolt and kicked one open, weaving back and forth, trying to get a clear view of the kraken. Then the scholar coldly smiled at the explosion from just behind War Wag One, and a severed tentacle went flying off, gushing yellow blood.

Moving away from War Wag One, the kraken started toward the UCV, and the companions stopped firing, urging the creature to come closer. It was almost upon them when there came a sharp whine from the laser on top of the war wag, and a scintillating beam of coherent light stabbed outward to slice across the kraken, opening the body wide, intestines slithering into the mud, along with a great rush of golden blood.

Screaming louder than a thousand steam calliopes, the creature spun and the laser fired again, piercing the kraken completely through. It sagged, then rallied and threw itself on the front of the transport, the tentacles slithering along the sides, seeking any purchase or entry. Weapons were hastily withdrawn and the blasterports slammed shut as the kraken began to tighten every tentacle, inhuman muscles bunching as the creature began to squeeze the armored vehicle, the metal audibly creaking from the incredible pressure.

No longer in danger of shooting a friend, the companions gathered at the rear doors and cut loose with a barrage of blasterfire at the biowep, the big Fifty on the roof chattering nonstop.

With the added weight of the kraken, the UCV slowed again, but Ryan could now see the edge of the lake. Dry land was only fifty feet away. Once there, they could drop the chain and simply outpace the thing, leaving it easily behind. To stay alive, they had to reach the shore, but to reach the shore, they had to stay alive. Unbidden, the recipe for rabbit stew came to mind. Step one: catch a rabbit.

“Use the Molotovs!” Ryan bellowed over the sounds of battle.

Pausing in her furious wiping, Krysty gave the man a puzzled look, but the others understood. Lighting a rag fuse, Doc gently lofted a firebomb bottle at the creature. As the bottle landed, Mildred triggered the rapidfire, shattering the glass. Flames spread across the kraken, and it howled even
louder than before, then again as J.B. aimed the Fifty at the flames, trying to pound the blaze inside the accursed thing.

“Whatever you did, do it again!” Roberto yelled over the radio, the signal coming through much clearer than before as they approached the edge of the lake. “Keep this thing busy for a couple of minutes, then get ready to release the chain!”

“Never! We will not abandon you!” Mildred snarled over the chattering rapidfire. The spent brass arched from the ejector port and bounced musically off the armored doors to splash into the black muck.

“Just tell us when!” Krysty shouted, reaching out a hand to grab the release lever for the winch.

As Doc tossed another Molotov, Mildred was caught off guard by the unexpected remark and almost missed the bottle. But as the firebomb exploded across the kraken, she suddenly understood and grinned fiendishly. That just might work!

With a lurch, the UCV surged ahead, and the prow began to rise from the lake. “We're at the shore!” Ryan shouted.

“Not yet!” Roberto answered. “Not yet!” There was a terrible grinding noise and numerous voices were cursing or shouting orders. Oddly, no blasters were firing.

As the front tires of the UCV dug into the firm soil, the tandem engines loudly revved and Ryan was forced to hit the brakes in order to not snap the tow chain. It was made of thick steel, but nothing had ever been designed to handle the double load of wag and biowep.

“Now!” Roberto shouted over a crackle of static. “Cut us loose!”

Instantly, Krysty yanked the release lever and the chain went free, snaking away into the air. Freed of the awful drag, the UCV raced forward, and Ryan let the wag get a few yards away from the lake, then turned the wheel and braked hard, turning the UCV to directly face the machine and monster. Flipping a switch, Krysty lowered the fork to what she hoped was a killing height. J.B. swung around the rocket pod, while
Doc and Mildred leaped out of the wag with firebombs in their hands.

But before anybody could act, the kraken screamed insanely as a wild corona of blue sparks crawled over the creature. With a few of its tentacles still in the lake, the kraken became a conduit for the massive electrical discharge coursing through the armored hull of War Wag One. Literally galvanized motionless, the kraken could only shudder as wisps of steam began to rise from every pore and orifice. The cooking eyes turned solid white, piss-yellow blood started pouring from the convulsing mouth, then flames erupted from the bubbling skin. The dirty water around the war wag began to churn as pieces of the animal blackened and fell off to reveal the ropy muscles, various internal organs, a strange flexible skeleton and finally a large pulsating brain, obscenely dripping golden fluids.

At the sight, the companions banged away with everything they had, riddling the throbbing mass until the lead began to ricochet off the windshield of the vehicle. Standing in the control room, Roberto yanked a switch set into the wall, and the lethal surge of power was terminated, the electrical discharge fading away in cycling stages. Fried alive, the last remaining pieces of the kraken limply slid off the grille and prow of the armored machine to splash impotently into the filthy lake.

With every tire still spinning madly, War Wag One slowly moved toward the shore, then lurched ahead as the wheels finally touched solid ground. Erupting from the mud lake, the transport braked to a rocking halt only a few yards away from the UCV.

“Behold!” Doc exclaimed joyfully, brandishing his rapidfire. “Odysseus escapes from the island of Calypso!”

And for once, Mildred could only look questioningly at the old man as she honestly had no idea what in the world he was talking about.

Whooping and cheering, crewmen poured from the wag, led by a muddy Jak, wearing a pair of pants several times too large. The companions joined them on the shore.

“What fight!” the albino teen declared proudly. “Didn't think anything could ace kraken but nuke!”

“Neither did I,” Ryan admitted. “What happened to your laser? I would have thought you'd use that as often as possible before doing something as risky as electrifying the hull.”

“We had no choice in the matter,” Roberto growled, limping closer. “All of our diamonds are gone.”

“Thought you folks had gotten a whole bag full from the last supply cache,” J.B. said curiously, tilting back his fedora.

“We did!” Jessica answered with a snarl. “They're gone, all of them!”

It took a moment for Ryan to realize what was not being said. “You had a mole,” he said simply.

“Yates!” Roberto barked, expelling the name as if it was made of human waste. “When Eric went to load the reaction chamber, the diamonds were gone. Every damn one of them! Then he found Tex missing.”

“When Shelly went to check on Yates, she found Tex lying in his bunk with his throat slit,” Jessica finished. “Don't take a whitecoat to figure out he stole the diamonds and did Tex.” She looked across the fetid expanse of the mud lake with open revulsion. “It must have been before we started across the lake.”

“Obviously, Yates was secretly working for Broke-Neck Pete,” Doc espoused thoughtfully. “A dastardly Quisling, a wolf in sheep's clothing set to make sure we never reached Cascade alive!”

“Never did trust a healthy doomie,” a crewman snarled hatefully, balling a fist. “If I ever find the mutie-loving freak, it'll take him a week to die! Two weeks. Tex was a bud!”

“More importantly, he was crew,” Roberto stated. “Which means that Yates belongs to me!” Then the trader smiled
without any trace of humor whatsoever. “However, there will be plenty of him left over for everybody else to have a…taste.”

The furious crew growled their approval of the idea, several of them pulling out knives to test the edges for sharpness.

“Is everybody else all right?” Mildred asked, looking over the assemblage of angry men and women for any wounds. “I saw somebody lose fingers when their blaster was yanked away.”

“That was Chuck. Shelly already has him in sick bay,” Roberto said, dismissing the matter. “Ryan, how's your wag? Is it fit to roll?”

“Just have to let the engines cool down some,” Ryan said warily. “Why, did you take damage?”

“Plenty.” Roberto sighed, his exhaustion showing for just a moment, then he stood tall once more. “We have structural damage, a cracked blister, jammed doors, radar aced, busted fuel lines and a cracked housing on the transmission. It was sheer luck that we made it out of the lake!”