Ghost Book Two: The Death Machines

– Chapter Four –

There was no time to worry about where Athalia had gone. I mean, I worried anyway. I worried plenty, but those bullets were zipping in like a sideways hailstorm, so I worried while running. Hell Razor, Thrasher, and I darted forward from boulder to broken wall to flagpole while Ace, Angie, and Vargas kept the Guardians occupied with return fire.

Finally we were flat against the Citadel’s outer wall under the shadow of their battlements.

“Okay, Thrasher,” said Hell Razor. “On yer way.”

Thrasher grunted and sidled sideways along the wall toward the main gate. It was so dark he disappeared into the night after five steps, but after a minute the quick flick of a lighter told us he was in position.

Hell Razor flicked his in response, then opened his pack and pulled out two flares. “Okay, Casper. Get ready.”

I put my assault rifle to my shoulder and aimed straight up. Hell Razor stepped out from the wall, cracked the first flare and pitched it high. It hissed as it climbed, then blazed as it arced over the battlements and landed on the top of the wall. Shots cracked from Angie and Vargas as the light exposed the Guardians there, and there were screams and confused shouts above us.

Hell Razor chuckled and threw the second flare further down the wall. There were more shots and screams and a body toppled over the battlements. Then, the thing I was waiting for. One of the Guardians stuck his head out to see who’d thrown the flare. I fired and he ducked back, screaming and grabbing at his face.

The second guy was smarter. All I saw was his arm as he whipped the flare back down at us. The other one sailed out into the middle of the field and bounced near Angie, Ace and Vargas, turning their position into a pool of red light and black shadows. Now we were the ones being lit up, and the crack of gunfire echoed all along the walls.

I picked up the flare again and was making to throw it back when a little black ball dropped down toward us.

“Grenade!” shouted Hell Razor, and we sprinted for the nearest cover, a rusted gun turret that didn’t look like it had worked in a hundred years. It was tall, but not much bigger around than a garbage can, and Hell Razor and I hugged behind it like lovers as the grenade exploded and shrapnel smacked into the turret, whistling past us on both sides. Gunfire followed it, and they were really zeroing in. It was like we were in broad daylight.

Hell Razor shoved me. “Idiot! Throw that fucking thing!”

I looked down. I was still holding the flare! “Shit!”

I whipped it up toward the wall. A Guardian reached up to catch it, but a LAW rocket screamed in from Ace’s position and he and the battlement around him disappeared in a ball of fire that rocked us back on our heels.

As the explosion dissipated, we saw burning figures stumbling down the wall away from it.

“But wait,” shouted Hell Razor. “There’s more!”

He pulled a grenade from his pack and arced it after them. It was a picture–perfect throw. Landed right on the wall. More shouts and screams, then a thud that I felt in my chest, and grit and blood rained down on us.

The light from the flare died. It was dark again.

“Time to change positions,” said Hell Razor. “Come on.”

We ran back to the wall, but closer to the gate, waiting for another fool to poke his head over for a look. Instead, we heard a frantic argument.

“Brother None, take your squad out there and get them!”

“No way. Throw another grenade!”

“Okay. Look out and tell me where I should throw it.”

“And get my head blown off like Brother Findley? No thanks.”

“Then get out there!”

“But—”

“I’m beginning to question your dedication to the cause, brother.”

“Tsk. Fine.”

Hell Razor flicked his lighter. There was an answering flick from Thrasher. We were ready. Hell Razor was more than ready. His chuckle as we shouldered our guns and drew our knives was the scariest thing I’d heard all night, even scarier than bullets whispering in my ears.

“Now for the good part,” he said, and started forward in a low trot.

I followed, feeling a bit queasy. I might have been a suicidal lunatic who walked into danger without giving it a second thought, but having a complete disregard for one’s personal safety isn’t quite the same thing as getting all hot and bothered because you were going to get to stick your knife into somebody. That was just plain disturbing.

A small door set in the big gate opened and a handful of nervous Guardians with flashlights on the ends of their rifles stumbled out and turned in our direction, just like Thrasher and Hell Razor had hoped they would. Then they started shooting, just like I’d hoped they wouldn’t.

Hell Razor and I hit the dirt, and most of the shots whistled over our heads, but not all of them. A punch like a sledgehammer hit caught me on the shoulder and I spun as I dropped and landed on my ear. My whole left arm felt numb, and I clutched at it, terrified it would be a bleeding wreck, but other than the impact, there was no damage. The pseudo–chitin armor didn’t even have a mark on it.

On the other hand, I was bareheaded, and there were more bullets slapping the ground all around me. Except, all of a sudden there weren’t. Instead there were screams and thuds and the crunch of bones coming from the Guardian squad. Hell Razor and I looked up. Thrasher was standing in the middle of them, his rebar billy–club a whirlwind of iron that blurred around him, spilling blood and cracking skulls.

Hell Razor and I surged up and charged in, punching and stabbing, but there wasn’t much left to do. Most of the Guardians were already on the ground.

“The door!” Vargas’s voice roared from the field. “Get the fucking door!”

We looked around. The little door in the gate was swinging closed. Thrasher threw his billy–club and it jammed it open at the last second. Through the gap I saw a hand grab the iron bar and try to pull it out, but I ran forward and kicked the planks and the person who the hand belonged to sprawled back as the door flew open. It was an older woman. She shrieked at me.

“Heathen savages! You will get no further! The future is on our side! It will bury you!”

I knew that voice. She was the one who’d been lecturing us from the walls. I swung my AR off my shoulder and shot her between the eyes. “The future buries everyone.”

We stormed in through the little door, firing in all directions to cover our entry. There wasn’t any need. Except for the few bodies that had fallen from the walls, the place was deserted, and the Citadel’s giant bronze doors were rumbling closed as the last of the defenders ran inside.

“Crap,” said Hell Razor.

“Hope you saved a few rockets,” I said.

Hell Razor spat. “Gonna take more than rockets to get through those big bastards, but I might have a little something.”

He stepped back out the door and waved the all clear to Angie, Ace, and Vargas.

I kicked the big doors with the toe of my boot as we all stood looking up at them. Each one was wider than the tightest spot in the canyon — and just about as tall — and they were covered with line after line of engraved sayings. I took a closer look. It seemed to me like the words must have been carved after the apocalypse, because the edges were undulled by time and weather, and also because the lines were actually kind of crooked and the letters kinda wonky. Also the sayings — “Strong enough for a Man, but I like it too!” and “Extra value is what you get when you buy Coronet!” and “You’ve come a long way, baby!” Were they some kind of secret code? Did the doors open if we said the right counter phrase? I remembered a phrase I’d seen in the back of an ancient magazine once and gave it a try.

“You too can have a body like mine!”

Nope. Nothing. I shrugged and turned to the others.

“Who built these doors? No way it was these crazy pack–rats.”

Angie shook her head. “Nah, they’re original to the facility.”

“Really? With the weird sayings? Doesn’t seem like government issue to me.”

“That the Guardians did,” said Vargas. “You remember ol’ Flintlock?”

The name rang a bell, but I couldn’t place it. “Remind me.”

“He’s our historian back at the Ranger Center library. You weren’t much for book learnin’ even back when you was you, so it ain’t any wonder you don’t remember him. Probably never set foot in the place. Anyhow, Flintlock says that when the Guardians discovered this place they found these doors blown out of their tracks and lying on the ground, and the whole front of the place caved in. Couldn’ta been a nuke that done it. No residual radiation, but it was something big, that’s for sure.”

Angie snorted. “Flintlock thinks it was a giant lizard.”

“Flintlock thinks a lot of things,” said Vargas. “Anyway, first thing the Guardians did when they got here was set the door back on their tracks and rebuild the wall.” He pointed to the panels. “Second thing was they started carvin’ those crazy slogans into the doors. Religious texts, Flintlock calls ‘em.”

“And you might think carvin’ into ‘em made the doors weaker,” said Angie. “But they’re each more than three foot thick, so you’d be thinkin’ wrong.”

I raised my gaze again to the tops of the doors. As crazy as the words on them were, the fact that the Guardians had managed to lift them up, put them in place and get them working again underscored the sort of dedication and fanaticism they possessed. And fanatics were dangerous. We’d found that out with Finster.

I shook my head. “So what you’re saying is, we’re not getting in.”

“Not through the doors,” said Hell Razor. “But look there.”

He pointed to the walls on either side of the door. They were made of poured cement molded to look like the face of the mountain, but parts of that thick gray cladding had fallen away, revealing cracked and rotten brickwork underneath.

“They may have got the doors up, but they weren’t exactly master masons, and the weight of these big brass bastards is slowly pulling their new walls apart. Could probably get through this mess with a pickaxe if we had the time. Fortunately, some of those party favors we picked up in Sleeper One will work a little faster.”

He started pulling explosives and fusing out of his satchel as the rest of us backed up and took up watch positions.

With nothing to do but watch him work, my mind instantly turned back to Athalia. I didn’t get it. Where had she gone, and why? It had been clear from the beginning that she didn’t like the idea of this raid. But why had she waited until we were all the way here and the fighting had started before she bugged out? It couldn’t be because she was afraid. I’d never seen anyone less afraid of a fight. But what else made sense? Why hadn’t she left as soon as she realized I wasn’t going to change my mind? Had she come all that way because she’d hoped I’d see sense when we got a look at the place? She had to know me better than that by now. Maybe she’d thought the rangers were going to give up when they met resistance. That was pretty foolish, too.

Or maybe she hadn’t left. Maybe she’d been taken. Maybe someone had sneaked up behind us and grabbed her. Maybe the damned Guardians had her locked up inside their citadel. Well, if that was the case, there were going to be a lot of dead Guardians once we got in there. I’d kill one for every hair on her head.

“Alright,” said Hell Razor, as he backed away from the doors and spooled out the fuse. “Take cover. This is gonna be big.”

We stepped back outside of the perimeter wall as he followed us, then knelt, cut the cord, and lit the end. It spit and hissed like an angry cat as the flame followed it through the door and out of sight.

“Cover your ears,” he said.

Vargas, raised his voice. “And check your guns! We’re going in on ‘boom’!”