Apocalypse Unseen. James Axler

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Chapter 6

      Grant raced up the last of the stone steps, the sound of his footsteps masked by the cacophony of the tripod cannon as it continued its deadly opera.

      He waited a moment at the topmost step, crouching down and peering warily around the edge of the arched wall where it ended. There was a sort of balcony beyond, wide as a Sandcat wag and made of solid stone. There were cracks in the stone, ancient gouges where rocks had been forced together and held in place by tension. There were two operators working the turret, with a third man visible beside them. The third figure had been hidden before by his low-angled view of the balcony, but now Grant could see him and fingered him for a guard or sentry of some kind because of a stub-nosed pistol resting between his hands. The man was sitting on a box of ammunition and surrounded by almost a dozen more.

      “Where do these psychos get all their ammo from?” Grant muttered to himself with a disbelieving shake of his head.

      Grant brought his Sin Eater around the arch, edging it silently along the wall until the sentry was in his sights.

       Pop!

      The sentry keeled over as the bullet drilled through his hand, slumping forward where he sat as his right hand was reduced to a bloody smear.

      Even as the man slumped forward, Grant stepped out from his hiding place, shooting again. His next bullet ripped through the arm of one of the two gunners, striking the man with such force that he went careening from his position and danced himself straight over the edge of the parapet.

      The second gunner said something that Grant’s Commtact translated as “Who’s there?”

      “Hands in the air where I can see them!” Grant snarled in a voice like rumbling thunder, raising the Sin Eater so that the man could see he was in the center of its sights.

      Only, the man couldn’t see it, Grant realized. He was blind.

      * * *

      “HOW’S THAT INTERPHASER coming along, Baptiste?” Kane asked, nervously pacing back and forth as he watched the battlefield. Grant had disappeared from view up the stairwell and the general hubbub that they had walked into seemed to have moved on, for it was now playing out fifty yards away from the ruined barracks itself.

      “I can’t work miracles, Kane,” Brigid told him, irritated. “Just let me work.”

      “I don’t like being somewhere without a way out,” Kane growled.

      “That explains your inability to hold down a relationship, then,” Brigid snapped back at him.

      “What’s that supposed to mean?”

      Brigid glared at Kane for a few seconds, an unspoken challenge flickering between them. They were anam-charas, these two, soul friends whose relationship reached back through the folds of time, beyond their current bodies. Kane would always be watching over Brigid and she over him, the two souls entwined in a dance that stretched beyond the lines of eternity.

      Mariah saw the look Brigid shot Kane from her hiding place, wondered what was going on between the two of them.

      “What?” Kane asked Brigid. “You getting broody all of a sudden?”

      “No,” Brigid told him. “Just wondering why we keep fighting these abominable wars for humanity when our whole lives are geared to nothing but the fight. I’ve lost everyone I cared about—Daryl, others. And look at us—we’re meant to be anam-charas, soul friends, but sole friends is about the sum of that. I just wonder how we can keep fighting for humanity when we’re so out of touch with what humanity really is.”

      Kane began to respond when Grant’s voice came over the Commtact frequency, interrupting the discussion. “You wanna know why the cannon team are firing blind?” he asked. “Because they are blind!”

      Automatically, Kane looked across to where the cannon was located, realizing that its seemingly incessant sputter had finally halted. “Say again?”

      * * *

      GRANT WAS STANDING beside the tripod cannon, holding its operator’s arm behind his back with such force that the man was bent over until he almost kissed the deck.

      “I said they’re blind,” Grant elaborated. “Both operators, I think, plus their guards.”

      Grant’s captive squirmed in his arms, spitting saliva on the floor as he issued a cruel curse on Grant and his family. The man’s eyes were unfocused, darting wildly in their sockets.

      “The Commtact’s not doing a great job with their language,” Grant continued. “Whatever it is they’re speaking seems to be a combination of Bantu, French, slang and some local patois it can’t decipher. But from what I can tell, they’re either blind or only partially sighted.”

      “And they’re operating big guns,” Kane responded, with a clear edge to his voice.

      “Maybe by luck,” Grant said.

      * * *

      BRIGID SPOKE UP without taking her eyes from the repair work she was doing on the interphaser. “Shoot off enough bullets and you’re bound to get a few lucky shots, right?”

      Kane shook his head, not disagreeing but just trying to piece everything together. The two soldiers he had dealt with had seemed—well, not real aware of their surroundings, that was for sure. Could they be blind, too?

      Kane scanned the area beyond the little enclave, counting the trickle of soldiers still bumbling about amid the fortress ruin. At first glance they seemed normal enough, the usual fretful stalking of people on the edge of stress. But look again, and Kane thought he detected more of an aimlessness to their progress, as though they perhaps couldn’t see where it was they were headed, were just drawn to the noise of battle.

      Kane scampered forward, reached for one of the two soldiers he had dealt swift justice to mere moments earlier. They looked normal, and even their eyes looked normal. How do you know a man’s blind?

      “Baptiste, protect the civilian,” Kane instructed, referring to Mariah.

      Before Brigid could so much as look up, Kane was off, hurrying into the wreck of the fortress, head down and blaster in his hand.

      “Dammit, Kane, do you always have to be so blasted impetuous?” Brigid muttered, shaking her head. Then she called over to Mariah, working the catch on her hip holster where she housed her TP-9 semiautomatic.

      “Mariah, you know how to use a gun, right?”

      Falk looked uncertain, her eyes fixed on the pistol in Brigid’s hand. “Um...kind of.”

      Brigid handed the geologist the gun. “Point and shoot,” she summarized. “Anyone gets too close that you don’t like the look of, just blast them. Not Kane, though. He can be annoying sometimes, but he’ll only get more annoying if you put a hole in him.”

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