Carry the Flame (36 page)

The least of my worries?
“You mean the ground shaking? Will that blow them up when I'm there?” She'd wanted to ask him about that.

“The ground was
shaking
?” The way he asked scared her.

“Yes!”

William collapsed from his crouch, shoulders drooping as he sat on the dirt. “How bad was it shaking? Did it make the ground look blurry?”

“I don't think so.”

“Okay, here's what we've got to do. The first mine, the AT, won't go off from that kind of vibration, but the smaller ones will.” He glanced at the mines disguised as toys. “But we need to get at least one of the bears in there to get the big one to blow up.”

“You said we needed four of the teddy bears.”

”Not anymore. It's too dangerous. If you can get one of them in there when the dragon's not walking around, that'll be great, Cassie. And then you've got to get back here as fast as you can because if that dragon comes back with you in there, you're going to die. Did you see a place to put the AT?”

She told him about the ledge. He shook his head.

“No good. You've got to get the big one into the wall so the mine sends all its power upward.” He handed her a metal knife. “Use that to dig out a place for the AT. You can dig right into the wall. The small one can go on that ledge. You hearing everything I'm saying?”

“Yes.” She slid the knife into her rope belt.

“How's your path? Is it clear?”

“Uh-uh. I had to climb over some big stuff where the wall got crashed in.”

“There's no way around it?”

“No.”

“Are you sure? Because you can't fall with these things, Cassie.”

“I'm pretty sure I know where to put my hands and feet.”

“You're only going to have one hand, at best. You'll still have the lantern.”

“I know that.”

He picked up the AT. “Remember, it's heavier than it looks.”

He'd made her hold it back in a storage area so she could “get a feel for it.” But now it was activated because pulling the pin took William's strength. He slowly turned the mine on its side and threaded it through the bars, careful not to jolt it, even though he'd said it needed a big thump to go off.

Like dropping it.

J
essie watched slaves lower a dented aluminum ladder into the pit. The bludgeoned Russians crawled toward it, while their four comrades scurried down the rickety, paint-spattered rungs. She wondered if the Komodos smelled blood, or otherwise sensed it. Chunga seemed to confirm this when he crashed against the gate; to keep him hungry for Fight Night, the creature had been fed only freshly butchered arms from the human larder. The four Russians scurried back up the ladder, leaving their injured friends rigid with fear. When the barrier held and Chunga settled, three of the rescuers resumed their efforts. The fourth kept his eye on the pen.

Moments later a scuffle broke out above the other side of the pit. Jessie saw Ananda struggling to shake off two guards dragging her toward the Mayor.

”Don't hurt her!” Jessie screamed. Her tormentor grabbed her hair and snapped her head back, silencing her.

“Little one,” the Mayor said, smiling at Ananda, “stop your foolishness.”

Two more men held Bliss, who offered no resistance.

Jessie, still in the tormentor's painful grip, worried more about Bliss than her younger daughter. Despite the tyrant's attention to Ananda, the girl's youth and sex would protect her—in the short run—from the most dire reprisals. But her sister, always so fierce, appeared deeply shaken and strangely passive.

“Where is my crane team?” the Mayor demanded. Four slaves hurried toward him. “Bring it out and strap them down.” He nodded at the girls.

What?
Jessie watched slaves wheel out a huge, ungainly looking wooden contraption. A cable ran from a hand-cranked spool up along an arm that extended about six feet. The line ended in a rusty, foot-long hook that swayed menacingly until a short, skinny, one-eyed man grabbed it. The hook looked like it might have been salvaged from a slaughterhouse. If so, she thought it hadn't traveled far, regardless of the distance.

The slaves rolled the crane to the edge of the pit. One of them, sporting a full-size tattoo of a rib cage on his back with
X-ray
inked below it, hurried up to Ananda and Bliss with a harness made of burnished leather straps. One gave off a suspicious glint that Jessie hoped was nothing more than an odd reflection of torchlight.

For the first time since she and Burned Fingers arrived, the Mayor turned to her. “Your girls will earn their keep tonight. And you are a lucky woman to see such a sight. Not all mothers are so fortunate as you.”

Ananda screamed.

J
ester snorted at the sight of the last guy to leave the trailer. Ponytail all the way down to his bony ass. And of course,
he
had a gun. Everybody in the whole fucking world had a gun 'cept him. But he finally caught a big break when a woman's delicate hand reached out and closed the door after Ponytail galloped off. One glance and Jester knew it wasn't a guy. How sweet was that? Leaving a damn female to guard the fort, or whatever it was?
Sweeeeet.

Two hours had passed since then. Not another scum coming or going, or even in sight. Johnny got his gun and went a-marching, near as Jester could tell. He would have bet hollow points to hardtack on that one. From what he'd seen of their weapons and numbers, they'd be no match for the City of Shade. And they didn't even know about the Russians and marauders.

Just like that female had no idea who was gonna be a-knock-knock-knocking on her door. Jester was already climbing down the stack on the row three side so she couldn't happen out and see him. He was feeling much stronger than yesterday when he'd climbed up. Tongue only half as thick as boot leather now, and he had himself a belly full of biscuits. All ready to do battle. He just felt sorry to have wasted all his fine reviving on a woman. But the place held secrets, and he aimed to find out what they were.

Hey, iddy biddy. I'm a-comin' just for you.

He hustled around the crashed cars and looked across the thirty-foot-wide strip of sand separating him from the row with the trailer. Then he scooted over to the wide metal door, wondering what she'd try to do first. That was the great thing about having fun with a female—there were all kinds of ways of doing it. He wasted no time:
Knock-knock-knock.
Pause.
Knock-knock.

The handle shifted, creaking when it turned.

Open sesame.

Her fingers reached around the edge, and he grabbed her hand fast as a snakebite. Soon as he tried to pull her out, something banged the inside of the door, inches from his head. Sounded like a gun. But he had his knife ready, and that was a smart move because when he twisted her wrist and cut her deep, she shrieked and fired.

Idiot.
What did she think she was aiming at? She hadn't seen more than his hand, and it was on hers. She'd panicked. That's what she'd done. He sniffed that out. Just as quick, he seized the arm with the gun and bent it away from him like it was nothing more than a flap of sun-rotted tire.

But he had to move 'cause someone with big ears might be around, so he kicked her belly, left her breathless, then forced the bitch onto her back and pressed his body into hers. Nice and comfy. He gave a good listen for snoops, keeping her gun hand flat on the ground and pointed away from him. Not a sound, 'cept for her trying to breathe.

The door was open enough to throw some light. Turned out there wasn't much to see in that old trailer. A few rusty jacks holding up the roof and all the cars on top.

He'd been hoping for a whole goddamn arsenal, but at least he was going to get a gun. An old derringer, he saw now, an iddy biddy gun for hunting down an iddy biddy girl. Had the one barrel atop the other, which was kind of how he was with her, and how he might have stayed for the hot stirrings in his pants—if the lay of the land had been different. She was a looker. No denying that. Short dark hair that smelled
good.
But it was her skin that made him want to take a bite. She had the whitest damn skin ever. Like it had never seen the sun. White as sand. No kidding.
How'd she do that?

No time for asking. He pressed his knife into her neck. Blood seeped along the blade, changing the color of things fast. “I'm going to cut your head off, you don't let go of that gun.”

No way in hell that pistol was getting away from him. Not like the one some dying scum had buried in the sand just to make him look bad with the Mayor, no thanks to that freak, Soul Hunter. Nope, she was going to the grave knowing she'd fucked up bad in the end, 'cause he couldn't wait to get that gun and tell her that he'd be sure to use it on her kith and kin. Might only have the one load left, but that bullet was his grubstake. It would make his every threat real. When he got the drop on another gunman—and no yard scum could match up to him; look at her, living, make that
dying,
proof—he'd start building his own arsenal.

He slid his hand up to the derringer. Her fingers tensed, but he'd already figured her to put up a fight.
Good luck with that shit.
But the gun went off. For a full second he stared at the little pistol, a sneeze of gun smoke hanging in the air, dumbfounded by what she'd done. She'd emptied the derringer. Taken away
his
only shot. Done it knowing she would die.

Greedy goddamn bitch.
What was
she
going to do with it? She was finished. But
he
could have used it.

Jester shook with rage. He pinned her arms with his knees and raised his knife, watched her face flatten with fear. At another time, with another woman, he would have had the patience to make the most of the murder. But not with her. Not now.

The first stab killed her, but he couldn't stop there, not after what she'd done to the King of the World.

“You . . . fucked . . . me . . . over!” With every word, he hammered the blade home, until there wasn't a speck of white skin on her face.

Or his.

A
nanda couldn't stop screaming, and Bliss wheezed a nonstop stream of profanities. The harness had barbed wire embedded in the leather strap cinched around their thighs. The tiny spikes drew blood as soon as the slave Ananda thought of as “X-ray” tightened the buckles on their legs. Now he bound them back-to-back.

Jessie, shaking off the tormentor's grip on her head, yelled, “Stop it!” from across the pit.

Her outcry shocked Ananda into trying to control herself; their chained-up mom might get hurt trying to help them, and there was nothing she could do to stop whatever madness the Mayor had in mind. Ananda managed to reduce her screams to gasping whimpers.

The short skinny slave slipped the large iron hook through a metal O-ring attached to three straps. A more muscular member of the crane team cranked on the spool, reeling in the cable, which lifted the ring and straps above the girls' heads.

In spite of his weak appearance, the skinny slave pushed the sisters over the edge with ease. The operator let the cable unwind for several feet, before arresting their flight with a brutal jerk that drove the weight of their bodies forward. Each barb harrowed a full inch of their flesh. Ananda and Bliss both shrieked.

The crane's long wooden arm moaned. Ananda hoped it would snap. Her legs felt incinerated, and she was sure a fall to the sand would be less painful than the razor-sharp barbs.

But the crane's moaning belied no greater weakness in the wood, and they spun about ten feet above the sand until the O-ring straps twisted so tight they released in the opposite direction. Men toasted them with mugs and metal drinking containers.

A marauder yelled, “I'll bet on
them
.”

But when guards shoved Leisha and Kaisha toward the pit, attention quickly switched to the conjoined twins and a second crane. X-ray strapped the girls down only feet from the stands. The men pressed close, screaming “Freak show, freak show” so loudly they drowned out the twins' screams when the barbed wire tore into their burns. But Ananda heard Leisha and Kaisha's escalating agony when the skinny slave pushed them over the edge—and the cable snapped tight. Her own pain had subsided slightly, another red tide drawn back from the shore.

A tall slave moved the crane's arm that held Ananda and Bliss, sending them swinging in wider and wider arcs, like a wrecking ball before mobs, marauders, and soldiers saw to the leveling of cities and towns.

Across the expanse, Leisha and Kaisha swung back and forth just as fast, whirling wildly. With both sets of sisters in full motion, the Mayor ordered them raised. His command left them swaying a couple of feet above the top of the pit. Ananda spotted blood drizzled on the sand.

“We will now have our first real contest of the night,” the Mayor announced. “Two slaves will race to open Chunga and Tonga's pens. The loser will pay with his life and limbs. Place your bets.”

Linden, bald head gleaming in the torchlight, stood at a broad table where men dumped their loot, arguing loudly about the value of guns, bullets, a rocket launcher, weapons of all types. They also shouted out the weights of gold nuggets and debated the relative worth of fuel, engine parts, tires, and luxuries like sunglasses, watches, boots, a neck brace, prostheses for arms and legs.

When the betting settled down, the Mayor motioned to guards stationed over the dragons' gates. Each group lowered a slave, roped around the waist, until the one-eyed men hung directly in front of the barriers, legs dangling like bait inches above the ground.

“When I say, ‘Open them,' we will see which slave gets to live, and which one goes to the larder. Keep the girls
moving.
”