Remember Tomorrow (29 page)

When they hit the wag park where the war party was massing, ready to depart, the scale of the action hit them. The park that had been used as a trap a few hours before had been cleared, the convoy led by Malloy now relocated to the park on the far side of the blacktop. The blood and debris had been haphazardly swept aside, the vehicles used as cover moved out and replaced by a series of armored wags painted a uniform dull brown color to blend with the land when in transit.

There were eight wags, each capable of taking up to ten men. If half the sec force for the ville was being used, as Esquivel had estimated, they were short of transport for twenty men, as around a hundred soldiers had been equipped.

“They’re either gonna leave some of us behind or it’s gonna be a tight squeeze in there,” he murmured. “And I’ll tell you guys. I don’t reckon that’ll be good for the fighting forces, to arrive cramped up and stiff, unable to move.”

J.B. shrugged. “Mebbe some’ll think of it, or else we’ll have to suggest it.”

“You think Hammick’s gonna listen to you?” Esquivel asked.

“Es, from what I saw, I’d be surprised if Hammick’s in charge anymore,” J.B. countered.

Olly looked from one to the other. “Then who the hell is gonna lead the charge?”

Neither man answered. It wasn’t an unreasonable question, but one that posed more questions than there were answers.

As the three fighters entered the wag park, all was still in the prebattle confusion that arose from men trying to find their positions with no guide. Esquivel stopped several of his compatriots and asked what was happening, but was met each time with a shrug of confusion and the repeated answer that his guess was as good as anyone’s.

The three men stood in the center of the park, waiting for something to happen. It looked as though the war party wouldn’t even get out of the park, let alone reach Nagasaki. J.B. looked up at the sky. The ambient light from the ville made it hard to tell, but the sky seemed to be lightening in that manner of predawn. The rogue wag had been gone for some time and had a good start on them. Although this didn’t matter to Xander and his sec force, it did to J.B. He knew that every minute wasted put his friends at greater risk.

“Fuck this, we’ve got to make something happen,” he said to Olly and Esquivel, before gesturing to the young man. “Let’s go,” he beckoned. Together, they mounted onto the roof of one of the war wags. Following an indication, Olly fired a single shot from the Weatherby into the air. The report of the rifle cut through the milling confusion of the sec force around, drawing their attention to the two men standing on the wag.

“There anyone in charge here?” J.B. asked. When he was met with a general murmur of dissent and ignorance, he held up his hands to quell the crowd. “Then there needs to be. Me and Olly will do it if you’ll have us. Esquivel will work with us. We need to get some strategy together for the attack.”

“What about Hammick?—he’s boss,” came a shout from the crowd.

“Yeah, what about him?” Olly retorted. “He’s not here, is he? And we need to move.”

He trailed off as he saw Xander enter the compound on his own. The baron cut through the crowd and mounted the wag until he stood next to them.

“Hammick has been relieved of his post,” he announced. “There’ll be a new sec chief appointed when you return triumphant from this mission. In the meantime, I’m going to brief you. And then you will be led by these two, as they so rightly suggested,” he added with a sweep of his arm to indicate Olly and J.B.

A ripple of surprise swept through the sec force, but the baron quelled it with a cry. “Listen to me—Hammick was responsible for the fuckup earlier. No way he’s chilling more of my people—you—with his stupe ideas. Instead, I want you to travel to that pesthole ville and use the wags to encircle it, moving in at a synchronized time. You hit at the same time, circling them to stop them running and blast the fuck out of them. Wag drivers, here now.”

The baron jumped down from the wag, joined by Olly and J.B., with Esquivel sidling up to them. As the wag drivers gathered around, Xander gave them their intended positions and the attack time, making them synchronize their wrist chrons. The order of attack for the individual sec teams in each wag was detailed, with the drivers holding responsibility for passing orders to their crews.

At J.B. and Olly’s prompting, he then stood down twenty of the fighters assembled to avoid wag overcrowding. As the baron allotted wag teams, J.B. could see that he knew more about his sec force than the Armorer had thought. The baron knew each man’s strengths and selected his wag teams accordingly.

Within half an hour, as the sun was creeping up over the horizon, they were ready to depart. With a last word of farewell for his men, Xander left them to file into the wags, with J.B., Olly and Esquivel in the lead wag.

The convoy fired up and filed out of the wag park, turning onto the blacktop and heading for the sec post that had been shattered by the departing rogue wag. A work party had already started reconstructing the emplacements and the barrier. Although J.B. wouldn’t recognize them, two of the workers were the men who had discovered him only a few days before: Sim and Hafler. They stopped to watch the convoy roll across the blacktop and toward the horizon before going back to their work.

As the wag train reached the point where they turned off the blacktop and headed into the wasteland in search of the ville, the sun threw its first rays of morning across the land.

The nights had been pivotal points in the last week of his life. Now J.B. felt he would face his fate—and that of his companions both new and old—in the glare of daylight.

There was nothing that the companions could do except wait for Buckley’s next move, wait for a chance to escape, wait for their end. A quick recce of the barn had revealed nothing in the way of a possible escape. The tallow lamps, sputtering as they were dismounted and moved by Ryan and Jak, cast a dim light that reflected nothing but a mounting sense of despair.

Before, Ryan had only seen the dimly illuminated central area of the barn. That had been bad enough, showing little but filth, rotting meat and the results of Nagasaki torture methods. That much Doc and Krysty had also discovered. They had only been in the barn a short while before the others were cast in with them and had not yet had the chance to explore its farthest reaches.

It was a slim hope knowing of the mantraps that had been set in the dry moat surrounding the building, but if it were possible to find a weakness in the structure of the barn, some way in which they could effect an escape, they could at least cause some confusion amongst the ranks of Buckley’s people. Anything would be a plus, anything that gave them an edge, especially as they were now stripped of their weapons.

Taking the tallow lamps from their brackets on the stanchions that held up the barn roof, Ryan and Jak ventured into the darkness. Beyond the area in the center, the stench of decay and death got worse, causing both men to breathe shallowly, swallowing down the urge to vomit as they balanced taking in breath with keeping out the smell. The flickering lights illuminated a scene of barely describable horror. The floors were stained with years of blood and gore, bones sticking up from the muddy mixture in the recesses where the slightly sloping floor had gathered years of waste in a miniature cesspool. Some of the bones were just that, whereas others were still recognizable as once belonging to human beings, scraps of rag or mummified flesh clinging to the calcified remains.

There was evidence of some of the tortures that the captives in the barn had been subjected to over the years: hooks and nails covered with rusty dried blood; wicked-looking blades that were imbedded in the wood of the barn, carrying scraps of material and what could have been dried flesh; pits of ash and tar that were the remains of some kind of fire, along with long irons that were charred and covered in a crust of some sort at one end.

The residents of Nagasaki took their pleasures seriously.

But along with all this and the ever-present smell of decay, old blood, feces and fear that permeated the barn, there was the security. This was a place of no escape. The walls, inside as well as out, were reinforced and there was only the one method of entry and exit.

The edges of the barn were so dark and full of stench that the air seemed almost fresh by comparison when Jak and Ryan returned to the central area and reported their findings to the three who had remained there.

“Of course,” Doc ruminated when he had heard all that had to be said, “if there is only the one method of entry, then it should in theory be as easy for us to keep them out as it is for them to keep us in.”

“What good is that?” Jak asked. “No food, no water. Why want stay?”

Doc shrugged. “Survival instinct, perhaps. A little longer before we are chilled, a little longer to savor the sweetness of life.”

“Not so sweet in here, you old fool,” Mildred muttered darkly. “You mean a little longer to contemplate our fate.”

Doc nodded. “Perhaps…but a little more time bought means a little longer for something to happen.”

“Like what?” Mildred countered.

Doc shrugged. “It strikes me that human nature does not, in essence, change, no matter what happens to it over the years. You dared to impinge on the universe of the baron of—where was it again? Ah, yes, Duma. Well, to return to my point, if you impose on him, would he not wish to impose on you in return?”

“You really think he’ll bother to raid this pesthole?” Ryan queried. “Why wouldn’t he have done it before?”

“Because he had no need. These people are inbred cretins, incapable of causing his ville any serious damage. But with us, they have struck at his heart. And it strikes me that any baron would not like that in the slightest. So what would he do? Why, he would mount an attack of his own, to eradicate the menace.”

Krysty shook her head. “Sit it out here in the hope that your speculation comes true? We can’t afford to do that. It’d be a slow chilling and I’d rather go quickly.”

“Not much of a choice, is it?” Mildred sighed. “We hang on and hope for a miracle, keeping them out but ourselves prisoner, or…or what? How can we put up any kind of a fight without weapons? They outnumber us so heavily that we need something to even that up.”

“Yeah, and we got it,” Ryan affirmed. “We’re smarter than them. We must be able to think of something.”

Even as he spoke, Ryan’s mind was racing. He looked around the barn, thinking of all the things he and Jak had seen in there and what they could use. As he caught Jak’s eye, he could see that the albino hunter had also been pondering this. A rare grin flashed across Jak’s bone-white, scarred visage.

“Yeah, mebbe could do it,” he said.

It didn’t matter that they had no idea whether or not there really was an attack coming. That was nothing more than an excuse. The only thing that really mattered was that they could now fight back. If they were going to buy the farm, there was no way they would go quietly into that dark night.

D
AYLIGHT HAD SPREAD
across the land by the time that the lead wag in the Duma war party drew to a halt. The other wags pulled up behind and the drivers dismounted, meeting in the middle of the small circle formed by the stationary vehicles. J.B., Olly and Esquivel joined them.

“Why have we stopped?” Olly asked as the three men approached.

The driver of the lead wag scratched his armpit and then used the same index finger to point off to the northeast.

“Shit hole they call home is about half hour’s drive away, just out of sight. It’s recessed into a small valley. We won’t see it until we’re on it, but their sec can see us coming from a few miles away. So we all figured this is where we’d stop and get our tactics right.”

J.B. agreed, trusting the men that Xander had taken into his confidence when relaying tactics. “You been told which wags take which position or you got to sort that now?”

The lead driver shrugged, this time scratching his ass. “Xander gave us the tactics and told us who went where, but I figure we’re the men on the ground and as long as we keep to the battle plan and know what we’re doing, a little adjusting ain’t a bad thing.”

“So how well any of you guys know this place?” Esquivel asked. “You been around these parts before?”

“Tell you the truth, Es, we all keep well clear of the sick fucks and weirdos who live down there. There have been some scouting parties, see what the fuck they’re up to, but really…” He shrugged.

“What about basic layout, distances, any weak spots or strong points?” J.B. pressed.

One of the other drivers spoke. He was lean and rangy and his tanned arms were cut with white scar tissue. He looked and sounded like a long-serving sec man and J.B. immediately trusted his words. Anyone still fighting with that number of scars had courage and willpower…and a fierce determination to stay alive.

“Seen that place fairly close the once. Valley forms a circle about two miles around. Most of the buildings are clustered in the center, but they got one big ’un that’s set apart. Mebbe the armory, mebbe where their baron lives. Looks more like a jail, though, with a trench all the way around. That could be a fucker to crack. Otherwise, they ain’t got much guard ’cause they ain’t got much to guard, if you see what I mean. Figure that we need to get some real heavy blasters around the back for that barn. Not many shacks behind it, but that could be the fucker,” he reiterated. “Only the one road in—more like a dirt track. No sec posts. But no track around the back or sides. Rough terrain but no hidden posts.”

“That we know about,” J.B. emphasized. “Okay, listen up. I know I ain’t got any authority as you got your orders from Xander direct, but I do want to say one thing. I know how to blast the fuck out of things like that barn, so I want to take that back end of the ville. Me and Olly will ride the wag that does that. Any problems?”

The drivers looked at one another, concurring. The lead wag driver spoke for them. “That’s fine by us. We’ll move out from here into a pinwheel that circles the shit hole. Attack starts when our chrons make twelve-fifteen. That give everyone enough time to get into position?” It was a question that he directed at the others. They nodded. “Okay, let’s do it,” he said.

As the drivers turned toward their wags, J.B. halted them. “Wait—one more thing. You know we’re supposed to haul out the people that I travel with. The one-eyed man, the red-haired woman, the black woman, the old guy and the albino.” He stated this slowly, wanting to impress the descriptions on them.

The lean, rangy driver looked at him askance. “Look, man, that might be what you want, but it ain’t our problem. Xander didn’t say shit about that. He just wants the whole shit heap wiped off the face of the desert. If you want to save them, you’re gonna have to get to them before the rest of us, ’cause we won’t have the time to stop and ask questions.”

With that, the drivers returned to their wags, leaving J.B., Olly and Esquivel standing alone in the center of the circle.

“The coldheart bastard makes noises about wanting to save Ryan and all the stories he’s heard, then he doesn’t tell these fuckers,” J.B. gritted. “What kind of a lying, two-faced fuck is he?”

“The kind who’s kept a tight rein on Duma for a long time, dude,” Esquivel said softly. “I told you there was something corrupt about the ville, didn’t I? Never trust that bastard. The only thing we can do is make sure that we get to your people before any of the others here.”

“You make it sound so easy,” J.B. said with a hollow laugh.

“Mebbe it will be,” Olly countered. “Think about it—they’re all gonna have their hands full with the inbreeds. They’re not actually looking for your friends. But we will be.”

“Yeah, mebbe you’re right,” J.B. agreed. “Best thing we can do is get the attack going and blast our way through the back of the ville, see what we can find.”

“Dude, that ain’t gonna be a problem.” Esquivel smiled at his friends. “C’mon, let’s go.”

I
T TOOK THE COMPANIONS
some time to gather together items that they could use to defend themselves and secure the barn as a fortress. They were hampered by the fact that too much activity in the vicinity of the tallow lamps caused them to flicker dangerously close to extinction. Taking them to the rear and farthest sides of the barn, using them to illuminate the darkest corners, meant that any work had to be done slowly and carefully, close to the lamps but without knocking the flame so that it went out.

Even though the barn was cold, the temperature kept low by the thickness of the reinforced walls, they sweated as they tried to work loose the old blades that were stuck into the wooden stanchions and wallboards. They were deeply embedded, but Ryan and Mildred, who had set to this task, found that once they had managed to pry one loose, they could use the point to gouge the wood around the next, in order to hasten its exit.

While they did that, Doc and Krysty rummaged among the detritus on the floor of the barn, searching for any old bowls or receptacles they could use to gather the tar and ashes that were gathered in circles around the floor. Using the flame from the tallow lamps on a small sample of the material as they scraped it into the bowls, they could see that it was highly inflammable, burning and hissing brightly with a blue-tinged flame, sending up a cloud of noxious smoke. They extinguished it quickly, in case it start to smoke the barn out and defeat its own purpose.

Jak spent his time moving around the barn in the darkness. He was less reliant than the others on the light of the tallow lamps, as his albino eyes adjusted far better to the shadows. He moved swiftly and with a great sense of purpose. In essence, his task was simple: where Mildred and Ryan were taking time to remove blades from the walls, Jak was picking at the many nails that extruded from the wood. He gathered a selection of them that he carried into the center of the barn. He then took the branding irons that they had found and used the nails to scratch the dried crust of blood, soot and melted flesh from the ends of the irons. The nails were bent and rusty, but the ends were still sharp; with diligence and patience he worked at both the nails and the branding irons, using each to hone the point of the other until they had a degree of sharpness to them. They couldn’t replace the knives taken from him before they had been imprisoned, but they would suffice as a deadly enough weapon if used at close range.

They worked as fast as they could under the circumstances. They didn’t know how long they had. Would there be an attack from the sec force of Duma? If so, when would it be? And if not, how long before the Nagasaki people, led by an enraged Buckley, came to bring them to trial and take their revenge?

Finally, they were ready. The bowls were placed on the floor on either side of the door, with fuses made from lengths of hemp rope found around the floors and tied to stanchions. Each companion had a blade or a sharpened branding iron, with clusters of nails hidden about their person.

Now all that remained was to wait.

Half an hour passed before they heard the wooden slatted bridge being hefted into place across the moat and the bar removed from the outer side of the doors.