Dallas Run

Chapter Seven

“I feel like a blamed sittin’ duck.”

“You’re walking.”

“Okay. I feel like a walkin’ duck.”

Geronimo snorted. “If you ask me, I think you’ve quacked,” he said, and shook with repressed laughter.

“Pitiful. Just pitiful,” Hickok muttered. “It’s sad to see a body moseying around without a mind to direct it.”

“So that’s your problem,” Geronimo said.

In front of them, Blade suddenly halted and glanced back. “I don’t want to hear another peep out of you.”

“What’s the big deal?” Hickok countered. “They know we’re comin’ anyway.”

“Most likely. But we don’t need to compound the problem by advertising our presence,” Blade said.

They were advancing southward on Highway 289, and they had reached a point about 200 yards from the sentry point. Blade came first in line, then Hickok and Geronimo, followed by Lieutenant Garber, and Humes, McGonical, Liter, and Griffonetti. The soldiers held their M-16’s at the ready. Liter bore the radio on his back.

Blade scrutinized the field on the left, then studied the row of neglected, worn-down structures on the right. There was no sign of movement in the shadows. A hot breeze from the southwest caressed his cheeks. His instincts warned him that they were being watched, and he fingered the M60 trigger nervously. In a way, he hoped they would be attacked right then and there. Their mission was to capture an infected individual, and the sooner they accomplished their task, the sooner they could return to Sentry Post 17.

They passed the structures without incident.

Frowning, Blade scanned the terrain ahead, mentally marking the positions of the densest vegetation. Three hundred yards distant on the left, affording ample hiding places for unseen watchers, abandoned frame homes in various stages of disrepair were arranged in a tidy line stretching for as far as the eye could see. A former residential neighborhood, Blade deduced.

“Pssst! Can I peep?” Hickok whispered.

“What is it?” Blade said softly over his right shoulder.

“What were General Blood-and-Guts and you yakkin’ about when we were gettin’ set to leave? I heard him mention that private, Nelson.”

“General Reese received a message from President Toland,” Blade disclosed. “Private Nelson hasn’t displayed any strange symptoms yet. No fever, no green splotches. He appears to be in excellent health.”

“So maybe the green splotches aren’t contagious,” Hickok stated hopefully.

“It’s too soon to tell.”

“Boy, are you a bundle of sunshine.”

They proceeded warily, drawing ever nearer to the frame houses. The undergrowth was deathly still; not so much as a bug buzzed.

“I’ve got a bad feeling about this,” Hickok commented.

Blade heard a twig snap to his right and pivoted, leveling the M60, and glimpsed a hunched-over figure scurrying through the brush. The figure promptly dropped from sight. Blade raised his left hand and pumped his arm twice, and instantly Hickok and Geronimo flanked him.

“I saw it,” Geronimo said.

“So did I, pard,” Hickok stated.

They waited for a full minute but nothing happened.

“What’s going on?” Lieutenant Garber inquired, joining them and peering at the undergrowth in confusion. “Why have you stopped?”

“Were you daydreamin’?” Hickok rejoined.

“We’re being shadowed,” Blade revealed.

“What? Where?” Lieutenant Garber asked, gazing all around.

“Don’t pee your pants, junior,” Hickok said. “They’re not aimin’ to attack us yet.”

“How do you know?” Garber questioned skeptically.

“If they intended to kill us keep us from entering their territory, they would have charged us already,” Blade speculated. “They might want us alive. If so, they’ll wait to jump us until we’re out of hearing range of Sentry Post 17.”

“If you’re certain they plan to attack us, why don’t we go back and try again after dark?” Lieutenant Garber proposed.

“It wouldn’t make any difference,” Blade said. “If they’re watching the sentry post around the clock, they’d see us enter at night.” He paused. “No, we go in now. At least we have the daylight in our favor. They can’t come at us without being spotted.”

“We hope,” Hickok said.

Blade straightened and waved his left arm forward. “Stay frosty,” he advised, and led the way.

“In this heat?” Hickok complained. “You must be kiddin’.”

“There would be a lot less hot air if you’d keep your trap shut for five minutes,” Geronimo joked.

“At least I don’t fart folks to death,” Hickok retorted.

“And I do?”

“Who ate that moldy can of baked beans we found that time?” Hickok stated. “Who went around fartin’ up a storm for a week? Who wilted plants at ten feet? Who got jumped by a female skunk that mistook him for a male polecat?”

“Rikki-Tikki-Tavi?”

“Try again, rocks-for-brains.”

“What can I say? That took place twelve years ago. And I wasn’t jumped by a female skunk,” Geronimo said.

“You mean that smell was your natural odor?” Hickok asked, and smirked in triumph.

“Children, please,” Blade said sternly.

They fell silent.

An hour went by and on they trekked through the residential suburb of the city. The buildings had all sustained weather-related damage during the 106 years since the nuclear Armageddon. Roofs were blistered and broken and partly caved in in many cases. The exterior walls were cracked and crumbling. Hardly a window was intact.

“Do you reckon the people who lived here skedaddled when the war broke out?” Hickok asked.

“Most of them, anyway,” Blade answered. “We know the U.S.

government evacuated hundreds of thousands, maybe more, into the Rocky Mountain region and the Midwest at the onset of hostilities.”

“I wonder why the lousy Commies didn’t hit Dallas with a nuclear bomb or missile?”

“Who knows? Their systems weren’t very accurate. Maybe they tried and missed. Maybe there were other targets they wanted to take out first.

General Reese told me that Dallas was rated as a tertiary target,” Blade said.

“Terry who?”

“Dallas wasn’t considered crucial by the Soviets.”

“If I was from Dallas, I’d be plumb insulted,” Hickok commented.

“So would the—” Geronimo froze in midstride. He tilted his head.

“What is it?” Hickok asked.

Blade halted and surveyed their surroundings. Decayed, disintegrating homes were on both sides of the highway. Forty feet in front of them on the left, rearing six stories into the humid air, rose a squat black structure. Large, faded words were visible near the top, with several letters missing. Blade read the letters.

“I heard a sound,” Geronimo announced.

“What kind of sound?” Blade inquired. He’d learned to rely upon the exceptional senses Geronimo possessed. Undoubtedly because of his Blackfoot inheritance, Geronimo enjoyed outstanding eyesight and hearing.

“A hissing, like something expelling a breath,” Geronimo stated.

“Are you sure you weren’t fartin’ again?” Hickok asked.

Blade advanced cautiously, his eyes scrutinizing the nearby homes and settling on the black monolith. The building had been constructed of an opaque, glasslike substance. All of the upper four floors were intact, but there were gaping holes in the two lower stories, gloomy, ragged cavities averaging five feet in diameter. What could have made those holes? he wondered. Looters? Scavengers? An explosion of some kind?

A faint scraping noise came from the monolith.

Blade swung the M60 to cover the monolith. He detected a flicker of movement in a cavity on the southwest corner, a brief streak of a thin, reddish whip.

What in the world?

He tread lightly, striving to peer into the murky recesses of the artificial caves. Were the attackers lurking within, girding for a charge? He came abreast of the monolith, his body tensed for action, ready for anything.

Or so he thought.

A huge reptilian head suddenly poked from a cavity on the ground floor, its red tongue darting in and out of its wicked-looking maw. The skin was a rusty brown with distinct, rough scales. Its dark, unfathomable eyes were enclosed in rings of bright red. The beast stood at least five feet high at the shoulders.

“Dear Lord!” Lieutenant Garber exclaimed.

More reptilian creatures appeared, glaring balefully at the humans, their demeanor unmistakably menacing.

“Why do I feel like a slab of venison?” Hickok quipped.

Blade continued walking slowly, hoping they could pass the monolith without incident.

“I didn’t know there were alligators in Texas,” Hickok said.

“Those aren’t alligators, you dummy. They’re mutations. Spiny lizards, I believe,” Geronimo stated.

“No foolin’, professor?”

Nine lizards were now staring at the Warriors and soldiers.

“Do you suppose they eat things like insects and snakes?” Hickok asked of no one in particular.

“We should be so lucky,” Geronimo responded.

One of the larger lizards abruptly sprang from its hole, darting at its intended prey with astounding speed, legs flying, mouth wide open. As if on cue, all the rest of the mutations burst from their dens, swooping toward the highway en masse.

“Here they come!” Lieutenant Garber belabored the obvious.

The first lizard made a beeline at Hickok.

“Eat this, sucker!” the gunman declared, the Henry already to his right shoulder. The rifle boomed.

The shot caught the reptile in the mouth, the slug boring through its head and tearing out the top of its cranium. It stumbled and sprawled onto its bluish-tinged belly, thrashing uncontrollably.

Geronimo cut loose with the Browning, and the chatter of M-16’s created a metallic din as the Civilized Zone troopers opened up.

Move! Blade’s mind shrieked, and he did, taking several strides to the east, wanting the angle to be just right so he wouldn’t accidentally hit any of his friends and allies. The short span of grass between the monolith and the curb was a mass of hurtling mutations. He squeezed the trigger, gripping the M60 firmly with both hands, his legs braced.

A hail of rounds slammed into the closest lizard, bowling the beast over, miniature geysers spraying from its perforated body.

Blade elevated the barrel, going for the next two creatures, seeing his slugs rip into their heads and necks, the thundering and bucking.

Hickok and Geronimo were pouring lead into another of the genetic deviates.

The remaining four lizards surged toward the soldiers. Despite the deadly rain from the M-16’s, they barely checked their rush. A bulky mutant reached Humes and struck, clamping its jaws on the trooper’s midriff and lifting him from the ground. Humes screamed as the lizard shook him savagely. He dropped his M-16 and flailed ineffectually at the lizard’s head.

Private McGonical emptied his magazine into a charging monstrosity, and the creature fell dead almost at his feet.

Backpedaling frantically, Private Liter fired at an onrushing lizard. His rounds punched into its head, staggering the thing for an instant, and then the mutation lunged, its jaws smacking shut on Liter’s head. Liter screeched and attempted to ram the M-16 into the lizard’s throat, but the creature whipped its head from side to side, swinging Liter as if he was a mere stick. On the sixth swing there came a loud snap, then a squishy, ripping noise, and Liter’s headless body flopped to the roadway, blood gushing from the severed neck. The lizard swallowed, gulped, and blinked.

Lieutenant Garber and Private McGonical fired into the creature holding Humes, and the beast promptly dropped on the spot.

The last two mutations were both after Griffonetti, who had whirled and raced behind a tree on the opposite side of the highway. Keeping the trunk between himself and the lizards, he had managed to evade their snapping jaws while firing repeatedly into their heads. But now his M-16 went empty at the moment the creatures came at him from different directions.

Griffonetti, his fingers fumbling as he tried to insert a fresh magazine, panic-stricken at the sight of the two lizards coming at him, thought he was doomed. Out of the corner of his right eye he saw someone racing toward him, and then Blade materialized with the M60 pouring forth death and destruction. The first lizard went down, convulsing, and the second twisted as a dozen rounds penetrated its left side. It scrambled at the Warrior, only to have its head be stitched from crown to mouth.

Gurgling obscenely, the beast fell.

The sudden silence seemed eerie.

Blade scanned the dead and dying lizards, insuring none of them were capable of inflicting any harm. He spotted Liter’s corpse and walked over, scowling in disgust. The body lay on its back, blood still pumping from the neck. Blade knelt and rolled the corpse over, then opened the backpack containing their radio, expecting to find the worst. He did.

Loose wires protruded from the cracked casing.

“Private Humes is dead,” Lieutenant Garber declared, walking over, his face ashen.

“Two men dead and we’re not even to the downtown section yet!” Blade snapped.

“Do you think there are more of those things around?” Lieutenant Garber asked, glancing at the monolith.

“There might be,” Blade said. “See if you can make this radio work.” He rose and joined Hickok and Geronimo, who were standing near the curb and eyeing the black building.

“We saw something move in there, pard,” the gunfighter said.

“We should keep moving,” Geronimo suggested.

“I know,” Blade said.

“Everybody and their grandmother will know we’re in Dallas now,” Hickok said.

“I know,” Blade responded again, his tone bitter.

“What’s eatin’ you?” Hickok inquired.

“As usual, everything is going wrong from the start,” Blade replied.

“Murphy’s Law,” Geronimo said.

Blade frowned. “Just once I’d like a mission to go exactly as planned.”

“Remember what the Elders say,” Geronimo observed. “Hardship breeds character.”

“Then we should have more character than we’ll know what to do with by the time this run is over,” Blade said.

Hickok and Geronimo looked at one another.

“I want both of you to play it safe,” Blade directed. “Especially you, Hickok. You have a knack for getting into trouble.”

“Who, me?” the gunman responded.

“I’m serious,” Blade said. “I don’t want to lose another man. Not Garber or his men, and certainly not either of you.”

“The same goes for you,” Geronimo stated.

“We’ll cover your back all the way,” Hickok offered.

Lieutenant Garber, Private McGonical, and Private Griffonetti approached.

“The radio is shot,” the officer said.

“Figures,” Blade muttered.

“We’ll be ready to leave after we bury Humes and Liter,” Lieutenant Garber said.

“Forget it.”

“Sir?”

“We can’t afford to waste time burying our dead,” Blade stated. “We keep going. I’m sorry.”

Garber, Griffonetti, and McGonical looked at one another.

“Begging your pardon, sir, but we don’t think it’s right to go off and leave their bodies to be consumed by the wild animals and the mutations,” Lieutenant Garber commented.

Blade sighed. “I repeat. We can’t take the time to bury Humes and Liter. Grab their weapons, spare ammo, and their personal effects and let’s go.”

“But—” Lieutenant Garber started to protest.

“Didn’t General Reese tell you to follow my orders explicitly?” Blade asked sharply, cutting him off.

“Yes, sir,” Garber dutifully replied.

“Then you’ll do as I say or I’ll report you when we get back,” Blade promised. “Collect the M-16’s, the pistols, and their personal effects now!”

Reluctantly, their expressions downcast, the three soldiers went to comply.

“Garber doesn’t have a thing to worry about,” Hickok remarked.

“How do you figure?” Blade asked.

“You threatened to put him on report when we get back,” the gunfighter noted.

“So?”

“So it’s more like if we get back.”