From the Fire V (9 page)

The fueling continued.  She thought about scraping the filth off
of the headlights, then thought about static electricity. 
No.
  Instead,
she tightened the roof bungee cords.  She looked in and fretted over Silas
while she worked, and listened to the wind.  She could hear the clang and
clatter of solid garbage hitting the bay walls, the aluminum doors and
rebounding off.

Silas no longer watched her.  He too was listening, scanning,
staring out the wide opening then up at the fuel bay’s ceiling.

He’s looking for a convex mirror,
she realized. 
Something to look out and around the corner. 
There
was none. 
We’re blind in here …

There was some monstrous, unspoken terror-thought behind his
encrusted eyes, and Sophie knew they should not have stopped at Pearson’s
Corner.  Not for fuel, not for anything. 
We had no choice.
  She stared
at him, whiling the fuel to pump faster.

The gears of his mind were whirring, his face was trembling as he
fought with pain and suppressed the urge to say whatever he was thinking.

He knows there’s survivors out there.  He’s waiting.

Still, she was certain anyone still alive in Pearson’s Corner
could not be in much better health than Silas himself was.  There was only a
fortified truck stop, a partial ruin. 
There is no true shelter here.
 
And how many weeks had passed since the War of Hours, the fiery destruction of
the world?  But the spiral maze of the trucks and welded metal had been huge,
deliberate.  If there were AWOL military, or survivalists, they probably had
access to more than one generator.  How else could the fuel pump be running? 
If they had fuel, the trucks and some few still operational, maybe they even still
had lights, electricity inside.

What was possible?  What if, Fate forbid, the pumping of fuel had
caused
another backup generator to come to life in the other building?

Oh, no.

When she next looked down into Silas’ widening eyes, she could see
that he had just realized precisely the same thing.

He mouthed to her, holding himself to silence: 
Get out of
here.  Now.

She nodded.  The gas they had stolen would have to be enough.  The
fuel was still running, they needed much more considering the leak and the
drive to Kersey, the route bypassing Fort Morgan, but there was no time for
that.  She clicked the fuel feed off, pulled the hose, hung it back.  The
clack
as it settled back in its rack socket seemed ominously loud against the wind.

She took only a second to think about screw the connected gas cap
back on, and was just deciding what to do about closing Silas’ door when the
alarm klaxon went off.

V-6

THE VOICE
OF THE SERPENT

“Shit!”  Sophie pulled out her gun, fumbling it with gloved and
shaking hands.

Somewhere out there, a door slammed open.  Someone not very far
away kicked a shorn piece of lead pipe or something similar across the concrete,
and it gave an eerie skirling
clang-ang-ang
, an under-beat as the klaxon
droned ever on.  Heard clearly then, the voices of men were in the air, vying,
conflicting.

“You trip that?”

“No!”

“Where’s Zeke?  He fueling?”

“Hell no, he’s on lights.”

“Perimeter?”

“Neg.”

“They’re in the fuel bays!”

Oh, fuck fuck fuck.

“Get in!  Pull out, Soph,” cried Silas, positioning his pistol and
scrunching his bandaged body further in onto the back seat.  “Go!  Now, now,
nownownow!”

But the men’s intruding voices were not just behind the fuel bay. 
They were all around.

The alarm klaxon warbled itself into a gout of static clicks, then
echoing silence.  Scudding boot-steps came closer, gravel crunched.  Someone
very near was
whistling,
of all things. 
Like a prison guard,
Sophie
thought,
some guard ambling toward Solitary to give his favorite hated
prisoner a beating.  That animal, trapped in its little cage?  Nowhere to run. 
What’s the rush?

The whistling edged nearer, the enforced casual melody of a
killer, stalking in slowly toward trapped prey, ready to linger over a slow and
luscious kill.  It was the iciest, most disturbing human sound that Sophie had
ever heard.

The whistling stopped, but there was a huge man’s shadow now. 
Fluorescent lights of some kind had snapped on out there and the beams were
casting the greasy air into streamers of white and gray.  And there were more
boot-steps coming up behind the lurking man, a lot more.

Sophie was ready to slam Silas’ door when she heard the casual,
almost ruminating drawl of a deep-yet-muffled Louisiana voice from just behind
her.

“Well now, darling. 
Hey la bas
.  Not quite expected, is
what
you
are.  What do we have here?”

Her knees pressed in together, suit surface to surface.  She felt her
bowels begin to loosen.

She turned slowly.  The man walking in to stand in the fuel bay’s maw
did not possess a face.

His mouth was covered over by something hand-made, something that
looked like a surgeon’s mask, but it was fashioned from black leather stitched up
and through with fishing line.  Two crumpled bolts of yellowed tissue paper
were stuck up his scabby nostrils.  He was wearing ski goggles, a bloodied rag
wrapped around his head, a poorly-buckled Kevlar vest and a singed and flapping
hoodie draped over it all.    Below the waist, he wore faded jeans caked high with
filth and oil, and what looked like a reflective barbecue apron.  He held the
butt of a splintered Rockies baseball bat, tapping, tapping, its length idly
resting upon one shoulder.  His other hand balanced a sawed-off shotgun.  He
pointed both barrels over at Sophie’s chest with an air of relaxed ease.

Sophie backed slowly closer to the H4, into the open passenger’s
side, where Silas was gripping at the back of her armored suit.  He was trying
to push her away, to get a clear shot. 
No. Silas, you can’t see this. 
She
concealed him as best she could.
 You’d never be fast enough to save me.

As she opened her mouth, desperately trying to think of what she
could say,
Anything, anything
to defuse this rising catastrophe, she had
time for one clear, lucid thought.  It was a glimmer only, but something her
beloved Tom would have been very proud of:  She knew the man looming before her
was supremely overconfident.  He was holding two weapons, neither easy to wield
one-handed.  And his goggled eyes had parsed over her lowered submachine gun,
and dismissed it.

He thinks I don’t have a hope in Hell.

“I don’t want any trouble,” said Sophie.

“Oh,
Tifi
, sad to say you’ve earned it,” said the man.  His
voice was baritone behind the mask, almost jarringly agreeable.  Yet the nasal
tincture, his parched and plugged-up rumbling, these betrayed the deadly truth
beneath the pleasantries.

He gestured at her face with the shotgun barrels, while nodding
his head toward the pumping hoses.  “For here you are, stealing from my boys
and me, you see.”

He somehow slotted away his baseball bat, like a boy’s wooden
sword tucked back to a makeshift scabbard.  He was still holding the shotgun in
only a single hand. 
He couldn’t fire it safely if he tried.
  The
recoil, Sophie guessed, would probably break his jaw or worse. 
But at this
range, the scattershot …

Sophie let go of her corded gun, let it slip down into the utility
pocket across her chest.  The man huffed in disdain.

“Fancy shooter there, miss.  Dare say now, you even think you know
how to handle it, right by an open fuel tank?  Very sweet.”  His voice was
droning, disarming even, but his free arm was dead straight down his side, the
fist a trembling, angry slab of meat and bone.  His head was lowered, his
goggle-tinted eyes gazing up at her, yellow slivers.  Sophie tried to remember
when she had ever seen that stance, some movie poster. 
The Joker.
  Every
line of his silhouette spoke sugared hatred, rage at bay.  A wolf waiting to
pounce.

He’s not toying with me.  He’s waiting.

Seven more rag-men — oil drifters, derelicts — strolled in behind
the man.  One was swinging a police nightstick, another had a grimy crowbar
which had been sharpened into a stake of steel, something you might stab a
vampire with.  All were armed, some smiling.  Leering, even.

They’re not just going to kill me,
Sophie thought.

Panic began to surge in over everything.

She swallowed.  She managed, “I’m sorry.  I’ll trade you very well
for this, and go.  I’ll never tell anyone where you are.  I just want to
leave.”

“Will you, now?”  The man was chortling, only the shotgun he held
was perfectly still.  “Oh, my aching eyes.  You see what she say?”  He pulled
down his leather jaw-mask without hands, by rubbing his chin against his
shoulder.  His lips were covered in black scabs.  “All this lovely cargo,
here-ah, and a running engine too, all this
materiel
just for lady-you? 
You caravan?  You all alone,
Tifi
?”

Sophie disregarded this deathly play.  She answered the unspoken
instead, the questioning need she could see glinting deep in the eyes of the
other men.  “I mean it.  I can trade well for the fuel.  I’m a doctor,” she
lied.  “I have medicine.”

The triggerman actually looked back over his shoulder, a full second
in which he could not see Sophie’s gun or her face.  “Oh, she can trade so
well
now, services, can she?”  He looked to her again, a terrible smirk at his
unshaven jaw.  “You’re in a position of great power,
Tifi
, in your very
own kingdom of the mind there, aren’t you now?  Isn’t that just sugar.”

One of the muscled men behind the triggerman chuckled drily. 
Emboldened, the man with the crowbar-stake tapped his booted foot against the
H4’s back left tire.

“Riding low,” said this other, “and leaking, too.  Fuel line. 
Hell of a lot of supplies back up in here.”

“Hell of a lot and heaven as well,” the triggerman agreed, “and damsel
in nice
vêtements
, too, to top her off.  Very fine,” he said to Sophie. 
“That I grant you.  A good man could go for
vêtements
like that, miss-doctor-you. 
Something very cozy to get into.  But oh, not sure am I, you’re in any position
to trade now, love.  That I fear.  No.  You’ll be sharing, see?  You’ll be
sharing everything, miss-doctor-you, and then some.”

“I’m far from defenseless,” said Sophie.  “Open fuel tank or no, I’m
certain you don’t want —”

“Lady, you’re outnumbered.  Do the math quickly, mind.  Let’s have
a look in here-ah, with you all quiet and nay touching that mighty pretty
shooter anymore, unless I tell you to set it aside. 
Bon?  Bon.
  Now. 
What’s up to the windows behind these drapings, you plumped to the roof with
water bottles?  What all’s behind the driver’s seat?  What else you got in the
back there-ah, ‘sides medicinals?”

She didn’t know how to answer.

Instead, in the moment of indecision, the triggerman demanded,
“Never you mind all that.  I’m thinking out loud, is all.  Those medicinals,
miss-doctor-you.  You show us now.”

“There’s really no need to —”

“You show us now.”

“Not just yet,” said Sophie.

The man raised his head, a coarse and grizzled skull staring her
straight in the face.  “What did you say?”

Silas, still unseen, was reaching up for her shoulder and it took
all of her self-discipline not to give him away by looking down.  She blinked. 
“Not with so many weapons out,” she said.  “Not just the fuel tank.  The
morphine.  The vials are very fragile.  Let’s —”

“Oh, fuck all this, Zeke,” said one of the younger men, a lanky
and limping upstart swathed in brown rags with a leathery scarf-thing tied
around his face.  “Get her inside and let’s strip this thing.”

“Now, now, my hasty boy.  I,” said the triggerman, a gentle threat
spoken back over his shoulder to the other, “prefer to be known as Zachary.”

The other men shifted, huddled in an uneasy line just inside the
fuel bay, under the door and out of the wild wind.  The upstart strode in, right
up past Zachary, smacking a claw hammer into his bandaged palm.  Zachary’s line
of sight to Sophie was blocked again for all of two seconds.

As the young one strode nearer in toward the H4’s door, Sophie
calmly took up the submachine gun in both hands and leveled its mouth,
centering on the dead point between the oncoming upstart’s eyes.

The youth swallowed, open mouthed.  His eyelids fluttered wide. 
He dropped the claw hammer with a clang on the concrete, and held his bloodied
palms out in a shaky miming of submission.  He backed away past Zachary,
somehow quickly and very slowly all at once.

“See what hasty bring you, now?  Half rations tonight for you,
young master Rollins,” said Zachary, never taking his eyes off Sophie’s
weapon.  “Back to square one.  Let’s start afresh, ma’am.  I’m sorry for all
that.  Morty scared you, I understand.  But you don’t want to do that, love.” 
Zachary carefully lifted out his splintered baseball bat, and handed it back
behind him.  “See?  All gentleman-like.”  A lean black man with splinted
fingers leaned in and took the bat from him gingerly.

“There we are.  Fewer weapons.”  He grinned at Sophie without
fear.  “That’s as far as we go.  You can-no get us all, you know.”

“I can get you,” Sophie replied.  “Perhaps even the young master
Rollins.”

Zachary considered this.  Then, of all things, he shrugged.  He
even took one step closer in toward Sophie.

“Life.  Not exactly precious, darling,” Zachary was saying.  He
covered the mouth of the gas tank with his side.  “Not any longer.  And I want
to get you inside with me.  You appreciate?  Get to know you.  First is
procurement, you understand.  Now lower your buzz-saw, kindly step away from
your grand, mishandled
routier
here-ah, or misery, I’ll blow the
ever-loving shit straight out the back of you.”

She had no choice.  She lowered the gun once more and stepped to
the right, away from the open passenger’s side, and Silas’ shivering fingers —
the hand without the pistol — trailed and reached up after her.

There was a gasp from eight voices.  Silas had been seen.

“Zeke!”  One of the younger derelicts called in warning.  “Get
back!”

But Zachary only stood — his head tilted in that somehow lupine,
predaceous way — and whistled through his teeth.

“Holding out on us, darling?”  Zachary
tsk
ed at Sophie.  “I
know that stink, you know. 
Eau d’Vieux Carré
.”  His face soured, his
lips twisted over his teeth.  “Barely can move now, can he?  What kind of pet
you hold dying back in there-ah, no kennel or none?  Let’s put it out of its
misery,
ai
.  Woman, is that a
nègre
?”

Sophie refused to answer.  She had lowered her gun a little, but
only to avoid getting herself shot. 
And what are they planning for you? 
What if that would be better, after all?

But in that face, she saw the first arising evening star, the
twinkle of fear in Zachary’s
wulfen
eyes. 
What is he going to do now?
she wondered. 
He’s as afraid as I am, but he can’t back down in front of
him men.  He doesn’t dare.  Alpha
wulfen,
first bite of everything.
 
The triggerman was difficult to read behind the goggles, the dirt, the shotgun
itself.  Any mistaken calculation would probably get Sophie killed.

“Silent on the
nègre
, eh?”  Zachary, aiming, steadied his
shotgun in both hands.  “Let’s see just what pet-filth you’re riding around with,
how about we?”  He backed one step away.  “Jakey, Rob,” he said over his
shoulder, “be ready to disarm.  Jakey front.  Now lower your gun all
careful-like and step back slowly, darling.  Rob, you cover her while I take a
look-see.”