Doom Helix. James Axler

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СКАЧАТЬ started popping off all around the perimeter berm,” Big Mike told them. “Ten-foot-high dirt-and-rock wall meant nothing to those cockroach wags. They drove right up and over it. When I saw that I knew who was attacking us, and there wasn’t any point in wasting ammo on them. It was time to head for the hills. But we were already overrun, with no way out.

      “After the gunship leveled the mud hut, I surrendered along with the others. The cockroaches lined us up, about thirty in all, and put a laser handcuff on everyone’s wrist. They didn’t have enough cuffs to do both hands and both feet. They ordered us to collect all the pieces of lasered-up bodies and pile them in a heap. The folks who refused to touch the corpses got their hands whacked off, then and there. Afterward the cockroaches clamped the dropped cuff on their other wrist.”

      Ryan frowned. He and the others had worn those manacles. They were designed not to be a hindrance to hard labor. The bracelets of silver-colored plasteel weren’t connected by lengths of chain. The constant threat of losing something vital was enough to keep the slaves hobbled and compliant.

      “Picking up the still warm, cut-up pieces of their relatives broke them folks’ spirit,” Big Mike said. “After that, they were like walking dead.”

      “All except you,” Krysty said.

      “Weren’t none of my kin, now were they?” Big Mike said. “When I tried to talk to the cockroaches, explain how I used to work for them, one of them recognized me. That’s how I know it was the same she-hes as before. What I’d done for them in the past didn’t buy me any slack, though. She-he said I had one good hand and two good legs, I could move nuke ore until I croaked. That’s all I was good for.

      “Cockroaches trucked us to Slake City in the backs of the wags. About 150 miles, a four-hour ride with no food, just a little water. Took us to the same base on the edge of the nukeglass, only this time it looked a lot different. There were big blast craters everywhere—wags, semitrailers and tractors, gyroplanes, the black domes and tubular walkways all blown to shit. Somebody really did a job on their equipment stash while they were gone. Used high explosive and lots of it.”

      “Given your predicament,” Doc said, “how did you manage to escape?”

      Ryan had been on the verge of asking a variant of the same question: “Whose back did you stab to get away?”

      “The other prisoners didn’t know what was coming, but I sure did,” Big Mike replied. “I told them about the mines. Made ’em see that if we were going to make a move to escape we had to do it before they started marching us across the glass.”

      “They weren’t afraid of losing their hands to the cuffs?” Mildred said.

      “They were afraid, all right, but they were a lot more afraid of dying. If I was willing to take the chance, seeing as I only had the one hand left, they knew I wasn’t kidding about what went on at Ground Zero.”

      A steady, low buzzing sound behind them made Ryan half turn. A swarm of fat black flies had discovered the coyote corpses. The scent of spilled blood and guts was riding on the breeze.

      “Everyone made a break for it at once,” Big Mike said, “heading off in different directions. In the confusion me and a few others got past the base perimeter. Of course as soon as the she-hes saw what was happening they triggered the laser cuffs. All the prisoners lost a hand, including me. It hurt like a son of a bitch, but since there wasn’t any bleeding it didn’t slow us down. We kept running fast as we could.

      “I don’t know what the maximum range of those tribarrels is, but I’ll tell you this—they were cooking hearts and lungs at better than half a mile. And when those green beams hit rocks, they explode ’em like frag grens. One old boy running ahead of me was hit in the side of the head by some rock shrap, and when he slowed down he got a hole burned through his back and out the other side. Almost cut him in two. The she-hes didn’t come after the rest of us, though. Mebbe they figured five one-handed slaves weren’t worth chasing down with wags and aircraft. We drove ourselves hard, following the roadbed of old 84 northwest, trying to get as far away as we could.”

      “How long ago was that?” Dix asked.

      “We were six days getting here on foot,” Big Mike said. “Lived off rattlesnakes and lizards mostly. Yesterday we made it to the south side of the Snake River. That’s when things turned triple ugly again. There’s a highway bridge still standing across the river, two low spans, side by side. We should have cut cross-country, gone downstream and tried to raft or swim across, but we didn’t know what the heck we were getting into. We were just following old 84. Halfway across the span these coldhearts with white-painted faces like ghosts come after us, yelling and waving blasters. Turns out, it’s a rad-blasted toll bridge. Nobody crosses without paying something to the baron. Burning Man is what he calls himself.”

      “Never heard of him,” Ryan said.

      “Me, neither,” Big Mike said, “but I hadn’t been this far north in years. In addition to the war paint, the crazy fucker wears a flamethrower strapped to this back. He isn’t shy about using it, either.”

      “A strange weapon to be hauling around,” Ryan said. “Got to be worthless outside fifty yards.”

      “Not to mention being a waste of good wag fuel,” J.B. added.

      “Take it from me,” Big Mike said, “inside fifty yards that hellfire contraption is nothing you want to mess with. Past that distance his sec men take care of business with bolt-action longblasters.

      “Burning Man wanted to collect his toll from us, but we had nothing to give him except cold, cooked snake. When he saw our stumps, everything changed. Right away, he wanted to know how we lost our hands. He was real what you might call ‘insistent,’ waving that flamethrower nozzle in our faces. A couple of the boys panicked. Couldn’t blame them, really. The smell of gas was enough to knock you down. Seeing the baron and that weapon of his, even a triple-stupe droolie could figure out what made all the great big, blackened grease spots on the bridge deck. Our two boys broke ranks and dashed for the other shore. Then we were all running to save our hides. That’s when Burning Man cut loose with his pride and joy. He set three of us on fire. One jumped in the river to put out the flames. The others were still alive, thrashing and burning on the deck, when me and that poor bastard over there, what’s left of him, made it through the black smoke to the far side.

      “Baron’s sec men chased us out here into this waste. That’s who I thought you were. They didn’t waste ammo potshotting, trying to pick us off. Thought they could run us down, maybe. They chased us for the better part of half a day, but we lost ’em in the lava field. Either that or they just got tired of playing the game. Figured being this deep in the badlands would finish us off. It almost did.”

      The buzz of the flies grew louder.

      Krysty let out a yelp and slapped her bare forearm, leaving a gob of flattened bug and a smear of bright blood. “We need to get the butchering done and get out of here,” she said. “These bastards are biting chunks.”

      Chapter Three

      Ryan swung his panga in a tight, downward arc and the heavy blade chopped through the ball joint of the coyote’s skinned-out hip. He averted his face as he struck the blow, this to keep from being hit by flying gore. Normally, the companions would have throat-slit and strung up the carcasses to let them bleed out, but they had a lot more ground to cover before sundown, and lingering in the collapsed lava dome for long wasn’t an option. The aroma of slaughtered СКАЧАТЬ