Inca Kings

CHAPTER FORTY THREE

Drake stopped before Dantanion, expecting the usual barrage of bodyguards to launch a last-ditch assault. After ten seconds he began to feel exposed, after twenty a little silly. Finally, after more than half a minute Alicia tapped him on the shoulder.

“Hey, you gonna say something. Drakey? You scared of the mighty cannibal king?”

“No, I’m not bloody scared,” Drake spluttered. “I was waiting for something to happen.”

“Seriously? Because you looked scared.” Dahl peered at him.

“The only thing that scares me, mate, is when the sausage is done before the bacon. ’Cause that way you’re not gonna get your fatty edges nice and crispy.”

“Then I guess this dude and you might sometimes have the same problem,” Kenzie said, placing the point of her sword against Dantanion’s throat. “Do you have any bodyguards lying in wait? A ninja or two?”

The inscrutable leader sniffed but made no movement. “It took ten years of hard toil to build this movement. The shattered bones of many men. It takes ritual devotion and sacrifice to provide and care for this family, something you would never understand. You have come here, invaded us, and destroyed it all in ten minutes.”

“Fifteen.” Alicia tapped her watch. “Maybe even twenty. But then we are dragging weight.” She winked over at Kenzie who flashed a wicked grin.

“We made the world a safer place,” Drake said. “Or this part of Peru at least.”

“The warmongers will never assuage their greed. The hungry politicians will always believe they can kill, maim and take whatever they want by force. And the worst part is — they think they have the right to do it. That they were born to rule and lead and make war, regardless of the innocent people they displace and murder.”

Drake shrugged. “Crazy as you are, pal, you just made sense.”

“Can whacko go full circle?” Alicia asked. “I mean, y’know, all the way around and back to sane?”

“Of course there will always be war,” Dahl said. “But knowing that our current and potential world leaders might be power-hungry dictators, and that others want to live in a post-apocalyptic world doesn’t exactly earn you a medal these days. Turn around, asshole, and put your hands behind your back.”

Drake still waited, still expected an attack. But it never came. For once this maniac, this Dantanion, was all he appeared to be — a calm, intelligent maniac with a long-term plan and the wealth to back it up.

“Maybe he’s a ninja,” Alicia said, turning once more from a quiet surveillance of the room. “Watch him, Torsty.”

“It’s all about the spectacle,” Dantanion said with utter coolness and then threw his hands in the air.

They erupted from behind black banners that ran floor to ceiling — half a dozen spider creatures with blades attached to their elbows and their knees, all capering in mad, haphazard fashion and striking out straight for the soldiers.

With the spiders came a man dressed like a skeleton, bones on the outside, a spear clasped in one hand. Alongside him strode two more seven-foot-tall giants, both with skulls tattooed over their real faces. They were naked and they were eunuchs and they carried maces. Drake was in shock, mouth hanging. Dahl cleared his throat and even Alicia remained speechless.

It wasn’t over — not by a long shot. A hunchback shambled free, face as wizened as ancient bark and, cackling, he raised a crossbow. Finally came the worst of all — a broad, fit individual who once might have caught a lady’s eye. That was before the surgery.

They had taken his lips away, and part of his jaw. The teeth were exposed all the way from ear to ear, and every single one had been impossibly sharpened. Drake suddenly wished for all the world that he had saved a mag of bullets for this terrible circus of horrors.

Dantanion shrieked for an attack, then joined his horrendous sideshow. Drake dodged a mace, bent low and, ignoring his attacker’s nakedness, drove a fist into the muscled abdomen. The mace swung around, missing his body. The second mace-swinger converged on him. Drake skipped back, then dived in, giving them little room. Well-placed punches sent them staggering. Alicia fought the man dressed as a skeleton, took his spear away and fell backward, allowing him to jump after her and impale himself. She then scrambled free, and leapt at Dantanion himself.

Dahl assessed the worst horror of them all, wondering where a weakness might lie, then turned to ward off two of the spider creatures. The four found themselves suddenly beset, surrounded, and unable to defend against every blow and thrust and sharpened edge. Mai then descended, kicking and killing two spider creatures and maiming a third in one leap; and with her she brought the villagers.

Curtis and Desiree still had bullets. Anica and Marco used guns as clubs and scrapped for their very lives. Brynn wielded a knife, stabbing and evading, cutting and nipping aside, the school teacher was fighting for her friends, her village, their very existence. Others came too, mourning their dead, but seeing their killers, their terrorizers, found courage in unity.

Drake caught a mace just below the ball, yanked its wielder off his feet, then slammed the ball itself into the skull of the other man, having to leap upward in the process. Both giants fell hard, bleeding. Mai took out the final spider and then launched a flurry against the hunchback. Dahl engaged the man whose exposed teeth inspired terror, slamming stiff arms and fists into the fleshy part of his body. A strike at the face produced blood only on Dahl’s knuckles.

Alicia pushed Dantanion back and back, toward the rear wall. The man appeared to have no fighting prowess at all, and she pursued him only to put him out of action, giving him no chance of escape. His face grew bloody, his left arm hung limply. Still he stood and still he glared with purpose. In the end, the wall halted his retreat; he stood laughing.

“The end is upon us.”

Alicia flexed her bruised fists. “Stand still and take it. We’re in a hurry.”

“Did you not hear me?”

“Something about the end is upon us.” She walked closer.

“No. before that. I said I would bring it all crashing down upon us. And I meant it. Literally.”

Alicia put it all together in a split instant; the fastest her mind had ever worked. Suddenly it was all forgotten — Dantanion, the horror show, the surviving cannibals.

Suddenly it no longer mattered.

“Drake!” she screamed. “Run! Just fucking run!”

Dantanion reached behind him to the wall, pressed a button and watched a compartment slide open. Inside, a red button glowed. With pleasure, reverence and a sad prayer he pressed it.

The house that was built on the side of a mountain exploded.