Endworld 29 - The Lords of Kismet, page 1
Copyright © 2015 David Robbins
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Published by Mad Hornet Pub.
Printed in the United States of America
ISBN: 978-0-9977390-1-5
Dedicated to Judy, Joshua and Shane
PART ONE
INTO THE
RABBIT HOLE
CHAPTER 1
It was known as the Valley of Shadow. Noxious clouds hung as thick as thunderheads, roiling like a dark sea in a tempest. Streaks of light flared and crackled, as if the clouds were electrically charged. Thunder rumbled but no rain fell.
Desolation stretched in endless panorama; blistered ruins, stark columns of charred stone and brick, collapsed buildings, all that remained of towns and villages. Here and there skeletal farmhouses and barns and crumpled silos bore testimony to the fact that once the poisoned earth had been rich in nutrients for the plants that no longer grew.
Figures shambled, dim shapes in the perpetual murk that shrouded the ravaged landscape.
An eerie silence prevailed, broken now and then by hideous shrieks and ghastly groans. Once, something gibbered and tittered.
Then a new sound broke the quiet, the revving of an engine. Bright headlights and spotlights pierced the gloom like the blazing eyes of some nocturnal beast. Into the Valley of the Shadow came a vehicle particularly suited to navigate the nightmare terrain.
The SEAL, it was called, an acronym for Solar Energized Amphibious or Land vehicle. Dark green, it rode on giant tires and was fitted with solar panels on top.
The man at the wheel barely fit in the high-backed seat. Over seven feet tall, his broad frame rippled with muscle. A shock of reddish-brown hair hung low over piercing gray eyes. Strapped around his waist were a matched pair of Bowies. Which was fitting, given that the name he’d chosen on his sixteenth birthday at his Naming ceremony was Blade.
In the front passenger seat sat a blond man in buckskins with the eyes the color of a mountain lake—back in the days before the world went to hell. Pearl-handled Colt Pythons were in holsters on either hip. Leaning forward, he peered into the gloom. “This place raises my hackles, pard.”
“Yours and mine both, Hickok,” Blade said.
“Remember Thanatos and all he put us through?”
“I’m not likely to forget that madman as long as I live,” Blade replied.
“It’s why we’re here, after all.”
Hickok grunted. “I just hope this harebrained notion works.”
One of the three men in the wide middle seat chuckled. He had black hair and brown eyes and a Native American cast to his features. Fatigues clothed his stocky form, and a tomahawk was wedged under his belt. “When it comes to harebrains, no one would know better than you.”
“Thanks heaps, Geronimo,” Hickok said, grinning as he did.
Blade was thinking about Thanatos, the demented genius who once claimed the Valley of Shadow as his personal domain. Known as the Dark Lord, Thanatos had been as vicious as he was brilliant, as diabolical as he was powerful. His ambition had been to rule what was left of North America a century after Armageddon, and thanks to his arcane science, he’d almost succeeded.
But now Thanatos was dead, his legacy this blighted landscape. As well as the hideous monsters he’d spawned in his vats and test tubes and let loose on the already devastated world for no other reason than to savor the new chaos they caused.
Blade flicked a toggle. The spotlights fastened to the frame above the windshield swiveled in the direction he desired, revealing their destination. “It’s still there,” he said, as much out of awe as anything.
“Did you reckon it wouldn’t be?” Hickok said.
Ahead reared a spire that rose to the roiling clouds, a great Tower the like of which had not been seen since the days of Babylon. From it bowels radiated an eerie green glow that permeated its very walls. Once, the Tower served as fortress and laboratory for the madman. Now it stood abandoned yet was no less imposing.
The men on either side of Geronimo leaned forward for a better view. On his right was a middle-aged broomstick with a wild tangle of shoulder-length brown hair that he never combed or brushed. His face was bony and angular, his eyes sparkling points of intense scrutiny. “I can’t believe our luck.” His clothes were rumpled and patched in several places. He, too, had a belt around his thin waist, only his was a wide yellow utility belt fitted with custom pouches and pockets.
“Is it that or something more, Tesla?” the last man in the vehicle said. Older by decades than any of them, he idly swiped at his grey bangs and added in his usual quiet way, “John Milton once wrote that luck is the residue of design.”
“Who?” Hickok said.
“Didn’t you pay attention in class during your schooling years?” the older man asked. “I’m sure your teacher would have covered Milton. He was one of the greats of literature.”
“Oh,” Hickok said. “That Milton.”
Geronimo laughed. “Don’t let him fool you, Socrates. He has no clue who Milton was.”
Blade was about to suggest they settle down and focus on the matter at hand when the ground in front of the SEAL erupted in a tremendous geyser of dirt and rocks and something enormous heaved up out of the earth with its maw agape.
CHAPTER 2
A Crawler. One of the boundless genetic mutations spawned by the genetic-altering stew of radiation with biological and chemical weapons unleashed on the environment during the global conflagration that left humanity, and the planet, tottering on the brink of extinction.
Crawlers came in all sizes. When born they were no bigger than an earthworm but quickly grew to become as huge as a diesel truck with a trailer attached. This one was somewhere in the middle, essentially a long, thick body with a mouth attached. And what a mouth. Ringed by thick tendrils that writhed and coiled like so many snakes, its maw constantly opened and closed, as if the creature were biting and swallowing the air itself.
Blade slammed on the SEAL’s brake, narrowly avoiding a collision. For a few moments he was face-to-mouth with the horror. Then the Crawler heaved up out of the hole it had created and whipped its enormous body around.
“It’s coming at us from the side!” Tesla shouted.
Blade was already reacting. He tromped on the pedal and the SEAL lurched forward, spewing dust from under all four tires. The Crawler hurtled past the SEAL’s rear and immediately looped in a half-circle to come at them again.
“Let me out,” Hickok said, his hands on his Pythons. “I’ll try to slow the critter.”
“Be serious,” Blade said. His friend’s prized revolvers would have no more effect than slingshots. Their only hope lay in the SEAL’s armaments. He gained speed, hoping to put distance between them and the monstrosity.
The Crawler gave chase, whipping over the ground much as a snake would, its maw opening, closing, opening, closing.
Blade grimly kept the pedal to the floor. The Crawler was large enough and heavy enough that if it rammed them, it might flip the SEAL over. While nearly impregnable to small-arms fire, the vehicle’s structural integrity wouldn’t survive the impact of the five-ton behemoth. It would crack like an egg, and they were the yolks the Crawler would greedily devour.
The Tower loomed larger ahead. Blade saw that he might be able to use the edifice to his advantage, and made straight for it at over seventy miles an hour. Incredibly, the Crawler was gaining. At the last instant he spun the steering wheel, sending the SEAL into a slide and missing the Tower by a whisker. Hugging the structure, he pushed the SEAL to its limit.
“Go! Go! Go!” Geronimo hollered.
Socrates hadn’t said a word. The Family’s new Leader was staring out the back, as unflappably calm as ever.
Blade didn’t know how the man did it. Elder or not, there was something uncanny about Socrates’s sense of self-possession. He put it from his mind and concentrated on finding just the right spot, a clear space empty of boulders and other obstructions. It came on them in a flash and he frantically worked the steering wheel while trying to drive the brake pedal through the floor.
The SEAL spun completely around, and stopped. The front end was pointed at the oncoming Crawler.
The monster didn’t slacken its speed one iota.
Blade flipped another toggle.
“What are you waitin’ for?” Hickok said.
“Christmas,” Blade said, and cut loose with the .50-caliber machine guns mounted behind the SEAL’s grill. The vehicle shook to the recoil of the twin devastators as a hailstorm of heavy slugs struck the creature head-on, and slowed it.
Blade doubted even the machine guns could kill it, as immense as the thing was. But they had another weapon in their arsenal that might, and when the Crawler arced its huge body and spread its maw wider than ever, he opened up with the flame-thrower.
A funnel of fire engulfed the Crawler. Blade swore he heard a scream but that was impossible. Crawlers, like the worms they were mutated from, never made a sound.
Defying belief, the Crawler advanced into the flames, its maw shut tight, its entire bulk shuddering.
Just when Blade thought the flame-thrower wouldn’t be enough and the abomination would reach them, it whipped away from the SEAL and the liquid fire and off across the plain. It didn’t go far. Partially aflame, it vaulted its front half high into the air and slammed head-down into the earth. In seconds it was gone, the hole it had made letting out tendrils of smoke in its wake.
“My word!” Tesla exclaimed. “Did you see that thing?”
“What thing?” Hickok said.
Geronimo snorted.
“What if it comes up below us?” Socrates asked, no worry in his tone at all at the prospect.
Blade was worried it just might if it wanted to feast on them bad enough. But the seconds turned into a minute and the minute into two and nothing happened.
Hickok laughed. “I reckon we kicked its wormy butt, pard.”
“Don’t crow yet,” Blade cautioned. He tilted his head to stare at the top of the Tower, so high it seemed to scrape the bottom of the clouds. “The worst might be yet to come.”
CHAPTER 3
One of the great wrought metal doors that served as the Tower’s only entrance hung aslant by its top hinge, the other lay on the cracked marble slab that supported them, all three covered with the accumulated dust of years.
Blade took the lead, his Commando Arms Carbine pressed to his shoulder. “Be ready for anything.”
Behind him, Socrates and Tesla stood with their heads craned back, studying the edifice.
“Magnificent,” Tesla said in admiration. “Truly magnificent. The architecture is extraordinary.”
“This spires befits a being with its maker’s ego,” Socrates remarked. “Thanatos saw himself as supreme ruler over all.”
“He may have had his personality quirks….,” Tesla began.
“Quirks?” Geronimo cut in. “Thanatos was insane.”
“There’s a fine line between madness and genius,” Tesla said. “And you have to admit his accomplishments in the field of genetics, to say nothing of his ability to manipulate the chronol continuum, were light years ahead of anything that anyone else has ever done. He deserves our highest respect.”
“My pard is right,” Hickok said. “All we’ll admit is that Thanatos was loco. And the only thing he deserved was to be put down.”
“Enough,” Blade commanded. He was listening for sounds from inside, and thought he had heard faint scrapes and whispers. “Geronimo, bring up the rear. Hickok, stay close to our Leader and Tesla and don’t let them come to harm no matter what.”
Hickok patted the Henry rifle he had brought. “Anything so much as growls at them, it eats lead.”
“How far to the chamber I must examine?” Tesla asked.
“It’s at the very top,” Blade informed him.
“Figures,” Hickok said. “Nothin’ is ever easy with us.”
Girding himself, Blade switched on the beam to the flashlight strapped to his head and stalked into the Tower. The Family had acquired a dozen, along with the batteries to energize them, back when the Home conducted regular trade sessions with other factions of the Freedom Federation.
The light played over the dimly glowing green walls, over furniture scattered in disarray, over dust motes that hung suspended like so many insects. A musty scent was mixed with other, less pleasant, odors.
The walls appeared to be seamless but Blade knew better. He remembered every detail of his last visit to the madman’s lair, remembered that by pressing a recessed stud on the back wall, he could activate the elevator. Striding over, he stabbed his finger out.
“Do you think it will still work after all this time?” Geronimo wondered. He had planted himself facing the entrance, the hammer on his Marlin cocked.
As if in answer, a low hum rose from behind the wall and a distant clanking sound.
“What power source did Thanatos use?” Tesla asked. “It can’t be solar. The sun never penetrates those clouds.”
“How would we know?” Hickok said. “All we cared about was killin’ him.”
The hum grew louder.
“It must be nuclear,” Tesla said. “Perhaps one of the fusion generators manufactured before the Big Blast. Or perhaps he built his own.” He stepped past Blade and put his hand to the wall. “Feel that? The thrum? Perhaps I’m mistaken. Perhaps it’s not a generator but a reactor.” Chuckling, he said, “I feel like a child about to be given his first taste of candy.”
“You’re weird,” Hickok said.
“As if you’re a paragon of normal,” Geronimo quipped.
Socrates clasped his hands in front of him and a rare smile tweaked his thin lips. “I’ll remind you gentlemen that Tesla has the highest intelligence quotient of anyone in the Family. He’s our only true Scientist, and we are fortunate to have him.”
“I never said we weren’t, Leader,” Hickok said peevishly.
“Please, it’s Socrates. I’ve told you Warriors that time and again.”
“Sure,” Hickok said. “But if you can call us by our title, we can call you by yours. Tesla, here, we’ll just call Doofus.”
“Behave,” Blade said.
“Don’t I always?” Hickok replied.
Tesla, to his credit, took their banter in stride. “That’s all right. I find your antics to be quite cute.”
“Cute?” Geronimo said.
“Enough talk,” Blade said. He turned back to the wall just as the elevator arrived and the hidden door slid open. He went to take a step and drew up short, his skin prickling as fetid breath fanned him.
The elevator was occupied.
By a creature born of science gone amok.
CHAPTER 4
The thing was ovoid in shape. Bristly quills, much like those of a porcupine only with a metallic sheen, covered every inch of what might be called its torso. Where a neck should be was a thick leathery stump that supported a head unlike any ever conceived. Impossibly, its features were a mix of species. It had the eyes of a crocodilian and the hooked beak of a raptor. Below the beak, defying all biological reason, was a wide mouth rimmed with shark’s teeth. It possessed tentacles for arms, with crab claws where hands would be. Its legs were goat-like, even to the extent of having hooves.
“My word!” Tesla exclaimed. “How fascinating.”
Blade was in no position to appreciate the wonder of the thing. Barely did he set eyes on it than a horrid screech tore from either its beak or its mouth—he wasn’t sure which—and the thing raised its claws and came at him in a rush.
“Lookout!” Hickok bawled.
Blade backpedaled but only managed couple of steps when he collided with Socrates. Their new Leader stumbled and nearly fell, and Blade, in reflex, grabbed him to keep him from falling.
A claw clamped onto the Commando’s barrel and the creature literally tore the weapons from Blade’s grasp. Instantly, Blade grabbed for a Bowie but the thing was on him before he could unlimber the big knife. A tentacle wrapped around his arm, holding it in a vise of steep, even as the other claw, spreading wide, sought his throat.
Geronimo’s Marlin boomed, the 45-70 slug striking the quilled body—and glancing off.
Those quills, Blade realized, must in fact be metal, although how Thanatos had achieved the feat was beyond him. He swooped his left hand for his other Bowie, only to have the creature’s other claw close on his wrist. The pain was excruciating. He was pulled, violently, and was suddenly nose to beak with the living horror.
The thing’s shark’s teeth spread to engulf his face.
Out of the corner of his eye, Blade glimpsed Hickok. The gunfighter shoved his Henry at a startled Tesla and drew his Colt Pythons in a blur of motion. He fired each from the hip, the two shots sounding as one.
