James Axler - Deathlands 27 - Ground Zero Read online

  He felt the familiar swelling in his groin, lying still, trying to decide whether it meant lust, or the simple pressure of needing to take a leak.

  A leak, he decided.

  There was a great temptation to try to ignore it and stay warm and comfortable. But Ryan knew that he would be simply postponing the inevitable.

  The wind brought another flurry of rain, tiptoeing across the roof, gurgling in the leaf-blocked gutters. The sound of running water was enough to decide Ryan that he needed to move. Biting his lip, he eased his way out of the makeshift bed, pulled on his pants, then the steel-tipped combat boots, hurriedly lacing them. The shirt was next, tangling itself awkwardly around his wrists, then the panga in its sheath.

  He considered the SIG-Sauer and rejected it.

  "Only going on the porch for a piss," he whispered to himself, picking his way carefully cross the creaking boards.

  He had barely set foot on the landing before Jak was sitting up, his hair a blaze of brilliant white in the gloom, holding his heavy blaster.

  "Should've slept downstairs, Ryan," he said quietly. "Whole world needs leak."

  "Hear anything outside?" Ryan asked, as he stepped past the skinny figure of the teenager.

  "The night. The sky. The trees. Dogs, far off. Thought heard shot, hour ago. Got up, checked around."

  "And?"

  "Nothing."

  "Right. Be back in a couple of minutes."

  Jak lay down again, closing his eyes, while Ryan left him and walked slowly down the stairs.

  ONCE OUT THE BACK DOOR the one-eyed man blinked in the unexpectedly cold air, breathing in deeply, savoring the freshness. The fetid smell of brackish water that had been so strong once they left the hidden redoubt had gone, for the time being, washed away by the rain-bearing northeaster.

  But he could still taste the last lingering tendrils of smoke from their fire.

  Before unbuttoning, Ryan stepped cautiously onto the long porch, past the rusting skeleton of an ancient swing-seat, avoiding a jagged hole among the rotting timbers.

  He could feel a faint prickling at his nape, which was often a warning from his highly developed combat sense of impending danger. Not always, but often enough for Ryan to take the sensation very seriously indeed.

  His hand went for the SIG-Sauer, and he realized instantly that it lay alongside the sleeping Krysty. But there was still the eighteen inches of honed steel in its sheath. He drew it in a silken whisper of sound, looking out into the dense undergrowth of the garden, wondering if there was some hunting animal out there.

  The air felt heavy, and he caught the intrusive smell of ozone, a sure pointer toward a severe chem storm hanging in the air close by.

  Before he could move, there was a dazzling flash of lightning, blinding him, with a deafening roar of thunder riding right on top of it.

  "Fireblast!" His ears felt numb, and he blinked furiously, seeing brilliant red spots on the inside of his eye, trying to see across the porch.

  Ryan heard the voice before he could see anything of the speaker, a soft, gentle voice, sibilant, hissing at him from the darkness.

  "Extremely sorry to perturb you, but I regret I must kill you. Please take your opportunity to try to defend yourself from my attack."

  Chapter Eight

  Ryan's brain was racing.

  Who was the stranger who announced his deadly intentions in such a calm, almost courteously gentle manner?

  Where was he?

  What kind of blaster was he carrying?

  Ryan furiously rubbed at his eye, trying to recover some elements of sight, head to one side, attempting to fix the location of his would-be assassin.

  It crossed his mind to yell out to Jak and the others for help, but that might be just the trigger the killer needed to immediately execute him while Ryan stood there on the porch, almost as helpless as a day-old kitten.

  There was something about the voice that nagged at Ryan's mind. It had a quite strong accent, though the way of speaking was accurate and educated. It was almost as if the man out there had learned English from a book as a second language.

  "Time is of essence. I am extremely sorry, but if you will not defend yourself, I must take appropriate action and terminate your unworthy existence."

  It was the letters l and r that gave the man some difficulty.

  "Extremely" almost, but not quite, came out sounding like "extlemery."

  "I can't fucking well see you," Ryan said angrily. "Lightning blinded me."

  "Ah, so sorry to hear such unfortunate news. I did not know that. But." There was a long sigh. "I fear I must carry on with expediting your passing, though it will bring me little honor. And you none at all."

  Another lightning bolt hissed through the damp air, and an instantaneous rumble of thunder, that seemed to make the marrow of the bones vibrate, so close to the derelict house that the epicenter of the storm had to be within a quarter mile of where Ryan was standing.

  With his eye shut, Ryan had been saved from being blinded all over again. But he had seen the vivid light through his closed lid. Now he cautiously opened his eye again, finding the shreds of high cloud away near the horizon were allowing some watery moonlight to illuminate the garden-and the man who was standing there, less than fifty feet away from Ryan, under the dark leaves of a dripping rhododendron bush.

  He was below average height, barely five feet three inches tall, slenderly built. His face was sallow and his eyes almond-shaped. His mouth was partly open in a friendly smile.

  He was wearing a long skirt, richly embroidered, that brushed the grass. Above it was an ornamented breastplate of steel, chased with silver dragons and flowers. He wore a magnificent helmet, that looked like bronze, and had two crescent moons on top, like twin horns.

  The stranger was holding a long-bladed sword in both hands. Ryan noticed that the hilt was long and narrow, unlike any other sword he'd ever seen.

  The combat stance was also unusual, slightly crouched, one small foot advanced in front of the other, the sword pointing back behind him.

  There was something about the appearance of the Oriental-looking man that rang a tiny, distant bell for Ryan, a picture that J.B. had once shown him of Chinese warriors from medieval times-or, was it Japanese?-a still picture from some vid that the Armorer said was very famous.

  But it slipped away from Ryan, driven by the urgency of his own position.

  "You are now able to be seeing better, perhaps?" The question was solicitous, as though it were a good friend's inquiry about his health.

  "A little."

  "Good." The man sounded delighted. "We begin."

  "Can I ask you a question?" Seeing the way the man was dressed, with the trailing skirt, it suddenly occurred to Ryan that this might be one of the pair that they'd tracked within the gateway. He also remembered that there had been rumors, increasing for some time, of a mysterious group of Oriental bandits, raiding here, there and everywhere, all across Deathlands.

  "No. No point and no time for such closeness."

  He shuffled toward Ryan, a halting step at a time, breath hissing between his teeth. As far as the faltering moonlight showed, the man wasn't wearing a blaster. Ryan yearned for the SIG-Sauer, knowing that he could easily have laid the Japanese on his back, staring open-eyed up into the drizzle.

  For a moment he wondered if this was one of the strangers from the redoubt. If so, then where was his companion? Ryan felt a prickling between the shoulder blades, and he risked a glance behind him.

  The house stood there, ghostly with its peeling paint and empty windows.

  There was another rumble of thunder, a little farther away. Ryan knew that Jak would have awakened at a whispered footfall anywhere in the building, but would sleep happily through the worst chem storm.

  "If I may offer a humble suggestion? It is wise not to turn away from me."

  "Stab me in the back, would you?"

  The man actually took a staggering step backward, eyes widening. "Is
that the way barbarians think and act? We have been told to beware of such crudity of thought but." He gathered himself. "No, we shall fight face-to-face."

  "Your long sword against my little cleaver?"

  Ryan was buying himself some time, watching the Oriental like a hawk, studying him, concentrating his attention on the way he held the sword. It seemed to Ryan that the only possible path of the attack would involve an overarm cutting blow, aimed at his own head and neck.

  The problem would be how to get in his own blows, against someone shrouded in armor, virtually from top to toe.

  "You do not have a sword?"

  Ryan shook his head. "In the house. Shall I just go in and get it?" he asked, intending to shoot the man with the Steyr, from an upper window.

  "Trickster! I think not. Come, we have squandered enough precious time in idle talk."

  The fight lasted only a few seconds.

  Ryan had guessed right.

  The helmeted figure attacked with a strange, fluid, sliding movement, the sword coming over in a hissing arc of death, ready to cut Ryan open from throat to belt buckle.

  But Ryan wasn't there anymore.

  He had feinted left, then ducked right, using the back of the panga's blade to fend off the sword, sparks flying at the clash of steel.

  Missing his blow sent the Oriental staggering off-balance, his small booted feet slithering in the muddy grass.

  It opened up the right side of his body to Ryan's wicked reverse cut with the panga, aiming below the skirted armor, the edge hacking into the man's knee. It cut through the ligaments, slicing the cartilage apart, splintering the delicate bones of the joint.

  The swordsman yelped and fell away, tumbling so quickly that Ryan almost had the hilt of the panga, blood-slick, jerked from his fingers.

  It was a keystone of combat lore that a first successful shot or blow was useless unless you immediately followed it up and seized the advantage.

  Ryan swung straight around again, aiming for the neck, but the fringe of steel links that dangled from the helmet deflected the blow, though there was enough power behind it to send the Oriental rolling on his back, dropping the long, slightly curved sword, grabbing at his ruined knee with both bands.

  Ryan was amazed that his opponent wasn't screaming helplessly in terrible pain. Injuries to any of the major joints of the body-knee, elbow, shoulder-were among the most excruciating of any sort of wound, as Ryan himself knew from bitter personal experience.

  But the Oriental mouth was tight-set under the painted visor, a trickle of blood running down his chin.

  Ryan stooped and cut at the leather strap that held the helmet in place, slicing it in two, opening a long, shallow gash in the side of the throat. He knocked the heavy helmet away with his hand, revealing long black hair, tied back with a red-and-white scarf.

  The narrow eyes looked up at him, showing virtually no emotion, though the man had to have known that he was staring up at his own death. He hissed something in a foreign language that Ryan didn't recognize.

  For a moment Ryan hesitated, intensely curious about the alien-looking outlander, wondering where he could have come from, how he had managed to operate the gateway. If he was, indeed, one of the pair that they'd tracked both inside and outside the redoubt, which raised the question once again of where the second stranger was hiding.

  Trader used to say that if you come to talk, then talk. But if you come to chill, then get on with the chilling.

  He still hesitated, the panga hefted ready for the final crushing blow.

  "To spare me would be to bring me only the deepest dishonor," the Oriental whispered, struggling to sit up.

  One hand had moved from the damaged knee, crabbing toward the short dagger that was sheathed at the silken belt, a knife that had pretty braids of electric silk knotted in tassels at the ivory hilt. The sight of the bright-colored material nagged at a small memory at the back of Ryan's memory, but he couldn't quite remember what it was.

  There was no point in waiting for the fingers to reach the knife.

  The panga bit into the exposed neck with a wet thud, like a butcher's blade striking the flanks of a carcass. Blood gushed from the severed artery below the right ear, fountaining into the wet grass, black in the moonlight.

  The man fell flat on his back. His legs kicked for a few moments, both hands opening and closing in twitching convulsions as the neuron lines went down.

  Ryan bent and wiped the smeared blade on the man's baggy pants, straightening. He looked around the shadowed garden, feeling the rain becoming more heavy on his face.

  There was no sign of any other living creature in the neighborhood.

  He walked quietly back into the house.

  The creaking of the hinges of the door had awakened Jak, who'd sat up, blaster in hand, as Ryan slowly climbed the stairs toward him.

  "Trouble?" he asked.

  "How did you know, Jak?"

  "Smell on you. Hear fast heart."

  "Yeah. Found one of those men in dresses we trailed in the redoubt."

  "One?" The teenager was up on his feet, peering down into the moonlit vault of the hall below.

  "Only one. Oriental with a sword. Kind of odd." He changed his mind. "Hold that. He was triple odd."

  "Dead?"

  "Dead."

  EVERYONE WAS ROUSED.

  J.B. suggested a recce to try to find the mysterious second man.

  "Bushes and trees trickier than fleas on a dog," Ryan said. "Steady rain. Chem storm in the area. Light varies between poor and nonexistent."

  "He didn't have a blaster?"

  "No. Beautiful sword, and all this armor. Never seen anything like it in my life. Not here in Deathlands."

  Doc cleared his throat. "From your detailed description, my dear fellow, I am forced to only one possible conclusion as to the nature of our visitors."

  "Samurai," Mildred stated.

  "I was about to say that," the old man said crossly. "The samurai. A class of professional warriors who flourished in old Japan for several hundred years. But they had died out, effectively, about fifteen or twenty years before my birth."

  "You mean they gave up when they knew you were on your way, Doc?" Mildred teased.

  "No. Not so. It was when Commodore Matthew Perry arrived with his so-called black ships in the territorial waters of Japan in, I think, about '53. He brought all the benefits of Western civilization that killed off these fighting men of honor. But it puzzles me to think what such a man could be doing here in Deathlands."

  "And he spoke good English, lover?" Krysty asked. "Couldn't be some kind of time traveler? Operation Chronos from the farthest East?"

  Ryan shook his head. "Don't know. How come they're using the gateways? And folks have been talking about gangs of them appearing, like wolf's-head bandits."

  "Be interested to see him and all his weapons at first light." J.B. looked around. "Best keep a good watch for the rest of the night."

  "Yeah." Ryan quickly allocated parts of the house around the group. One of them down in the hall, just to watch the front and back doors, another guard roaming around the silent first floor and a third sentry to cover the top floor and attics of the rambling old house.

  HE WAS ASLEEP when Dean came in to wake him with the news that the first opalescent light of dawn was lighting up the Washington suburb.

  "Nobody around?"

  "No. But."

  "What?"

  "No body."

  Ryan sat up, glowering at his son. "You got something to tell me, then get on with it. We're not playing some stupe kid's game, Dean."

  "Sorry, Dad. But there isn't any body out there in the garden."

  Ryan still wasn't completely awake from the excitement of the previous night. "Nobody?" He sighed and felt a pulse of anger throbbing at his temple.

  Dean bit his lip. "Not anybody, Dad. Not any body."

  "The corpse is gone."

  "Right."

  "Animals? Heard a pack of hunting dogs w
hen I got up. Some way off."

  "No sign of any blood or anything. Me and Jak went to take a look a couple minutes ago."

  "Footmarks?"

  Dean sniffed, looking down at the dew that coated his boots. "Jak says it was the other little man. Deep marks where he must've picked up the body of his friend and carried him off into the undergrowth. Couldn't follow him."