Читать книгу Oblivion Stone - James Axler - Страница 8

Snakefishville stank of death.

Thick clouds of flies swarmed about the ruins, their furious buzzing echoing like an angry symphony of dying lightbulbs between the debris of collapsed buildings. The remains of bodies—and they could only be described as “remains” now, as most of them were no longer truly recognizable as human—lay in the streets and occupied shadowy corners of the rubble scattered at nightmarish angles within the wrecked circle of the ville’s high walls.

The walls themselves were destroyed almost beyond recognition, just a few jagged concrete struts remaining here and there, like the last few tenacious teeth in a crone’s rotting mouth.

Towering above the devastated streets like a two-fingered salute from some blank-faced god sitting in silent judgment, the last struts of the central Administrative Monolith remained, their jagged peaks clawing at the rain-heavy clouds that trundled disinterestedly over the inconstant sky. The Administrative Monolith had once been the radiant jewel in the city’s tiara of lights, but it was now hardly a shadow of its former self, just a few spindly posts all that remained as though marking the place where once there had been high walls. The struts leaned sideways like some ruddy-faced drunkard trying to find his bearings, a few smashed windows and chunks of masonry clinging to its otherwise lost structure as though the building’s body had been eaten away by cancer. The smaller structures around it had fared little better; it was as if the whole fabric of the ville had been struck by some virulent disease, an architect’s cancer.

Swooping down from above, circling through the jagged shards of buildings, carrion birds cawed their bitter cries of possession as they spied new morsels to feast upon among the rotting flesh that still clung to the bones of those most recently deceased.

Three living figures trudged among the ruins, masks over their faces to protect them from the corrupted air and the stench of death that hung all about.

The shortest of the figures looked somewhat like the Angel of Death herself. Her skin was a pallid shock of chalky whiteness, like something carved of bone, her eyes a ruby red like the flaming depths of Satan’s realm. Like her skin, her hair was white as a specter, cut short to accentuate her feral eyes. She was a petite figure, dressed in a protective shadow suit of a light weave that clung to her lithe body like a second skin, drawing attention to the bird-thin limbs and small, pert breasts that jutted from her diminutive form like some perfectly imagined china doll. She had added a light jacket over the shadow suit, reaching down past her hips but still loose enough to allow ample movement, its material the black of the Grim Reaper’s shroud. Her name was Domi and she was one-third of a field team sent out by Cerberus to investigate the remains of the destroyed ville.

Snakefishville had been one of the nine great baronies constructed across North America under the instruction of the hybrid barons. Once the barons had been revealed to be the chrysalis state for the higher, godlike beings known as the overlords, their baronies had been left leaderless, struggling to fend for themselves. Just a few weeks ago, a terrible earthquake had struck Snakefishville and several other communities, mortally wounding them like an assassin’s final blow. Operatives from Cerberus, a military-style group dedicated to the preservation of humanity in the face of the rising threat of the Annunaki, had been present during Snakefishville’s destruction. But it was only now, a few weeks after the event, that they had returned to survey the full extent of the damage and to scout for salvage.

Domi hated jobs like this. Though an operative for Cerberus, she was a wildling at heart, a child born of the Outlands. Being cooped up in a ville, even one as utterly scragged as this one was, set her teeth on edge. She looked around her, swatting flies away from her face as she took in the chunks of masonry, the cracked metal ribs of the broken buildings. If there was a Hell, Domi thought, it would probably look something like this—a ville with nothing left to offer but its own festering corpse.

Clambering over the fractured remnants of the main street came Domi’s two partners. Both of them were dressed in loose clothes with masks over their mouths. The first was a man called Edwards, whose shaved head and wide shoulders made him an imposing form even with his features obscured by the mask. Edwards’s hair was cropped so close to his scalp that his head shone in the sunlight, drawing attention to his bullet-bitten right ear. Edwards had the bearing of a military man and the patience of a raging inferno. Beside him came a man called Harrington, with pince-nez glasses and dark hair streaked with white that fell past his shoulders in a series of neatly layered steps. Harrington was consulting a handheld Geiger counter as the three of them made their way across the wrecked ville, scouring the rubble.

“Radiation’s at normal,” Harrington confirmed, stumbling for a moment as his foot got caught in a rut in the ruined roadway.

“Careful there, Poindexter,” Edwards growled, grabbing the scientist’s elbow and yanking him out of the pothole.

A few paces ahead, Domi stopped in her tracks and stared up at the spindly struts of the Administrative Monolith, watching as tar-feathered carrion birds circled around in its updrafts, nesting in the jutting metal bones that had once held a nearby structure together. Domi’s ruby eyes scanned the broken glass of the last remaining windows, searching for movement among the wreckage. As if on cue, a gull came swooping out of one of the shattered windows, its feathers a smoky gray, its impressive wingspan reaching almost three feet. The gull shrieked its ugly call as it took off, a pinkish morsel of bloody meat held in its claws.

As Domi watched, a trio of black carrion birds swooped down at the gull, chasing it through the jagged teeth of buildings that were all that remained of the once-proud ville. The birds flew around one of the lopsided building shells, disappearing from Domi’s sight in a clamor of ugly squawks.

Harrington peered up from the plate of the Geiger counter at the noise, taking in the abandoned ville as if for the first time. “This is weird,” he commented.

“What’s that?” Edwards asked, glancing back at the scientist as he climbed a mound of rubble that had once been a residential block.

“This place,” Harrington said. “Like walking through a cemetery.”

Domi shot Harrington and Edwards a look, hushing them immediately. “People coming,” she said, indicating one of the wrecked structures that abutted the ruins of the Administrative Monolith.

Edwards’s hand automatically went to his hip, pulling free the Heckler & Koch USP he had strapped there. “Keep your head down, Harry,” he ordered Harrington, his voice low.

A few paces ahead, Domi had pulled her Detonics CombatMaster .45 from its hidden holster at the small of her back. The handgun, finished in silver metal, looked large in her tiny, milk-colored hand. Domi scampered forward, leaping over the potholes that marred the road, making her way toward the crooked doorway of the building shell where she had detected people. She moved like something liquid, each motion blending effortlessly into the next as she sped toward the door. Edwards chased after her, his long strides struggling to keep up with her swift progress.

As Domi reached the open doorway, its lintel hanging at an awkward thirty-degree angle, she saw a figure moving within, its features hidden in the shadows. Warily, Domi waited at the door until Edwards caught up with her.

“On three?” Edwards proposed, mouthing the words without speaking them aloud.

Domi nodded, and watched as Edwards counted down on extended fingers.

When Edwards’s count reached zero, the two Cerberus warriors rushed through the doorway, guns held out before them, scanning the lobbylike room where they found themselves. The floor was littered with rubble and, when they looked up, they saw that the ceiling had almost entirely disappeared. Just its edges remained, clinging to the scarred and pitted walls of the higher stories. The whole structure had sunk by at least two stories, and so they found themselves on what was in fact the third or fourth story, despite being at ground level. There was no one inside the room, and the two warriors made their way swiftly into the next room, Domi taking point as Edwards covered her from beside the doorway.

The movement was so quick that Domi almost missed it. In fact, it most likely would have been missed by anyone else; only Domi’s eerily heightened senses caught the motion before it disappeared from her field of vision. The figure was rushing from the room, a foot visible for a fraction of a second as it ran through the crumbling archway of the next door, the dust of rubble puffing up in its wake.

Domi initiated pursuit, shouting, “Stay where you are. We mean you no harm.” It seemed a curious instruction. Technically, it was Domi and her team who were trespassing here, and yet they hadn’t expected to meet with anyone else after the ville had been destroyed.

Domi dashed toward the doorway, and another of the gray-feathered gulls came swooping out, shrieking an ugly cry as it flew at her. Domi ducked, and the confused bird flew on, flapping its wings and ascending into the open area above through a gap in the broken ceiling. Behind Domi, Edwards tracked his pistol on the bird as it disappeared, before returning his attention to her progress.

Ahead, Domi rushed through the next doorway, leaving the corridor behind her. She found herself face-to-face with a half-dozen people dressed in the ragged clothes of Outlanders. They were huddled around a fire that had been set in an upturned canister, warming their hands as they cooked several rats and birds at the ends of greasy sticks hung over the yellow flames. Domi cursed herself for missing the cooking smells—the breath mask had hidden them from her, obscuring the natural senses that she relied upon.

The room itself was a vast open area. The floor was tiled in terra-cotta, a swirling pattern like sea spray created using a series of darker tiles within the mosaic. The tiles had been cracked by the earthquake that had shaken the ville weeks before, and a number of them were missing, now just crumbled to dust. On the far side of the room stood a counter at roughly chest height, indicating that the room had probably been some kind of reception area just a few weeks before. Now it was simply a corpse, the rotting remains of a once magnificent building.

As Domi dashed forward, she became conscious of something coming at her from behind, and she moved just swiftly enough to avoid a harsh blow to the back of her head. She spun to face her attacker, seeing the tall figure dressed in a dark, hooded cloak with a lighter pattern in the weave. The lighter pattern was almost undetectable now, so much dirt had become ingrained in the man’s clothes.

“Submit,” the hooded man spat, following through on his first attack.

Domi ducked as the cloaked man lunged at her again, inexpertly driving a heavy fist toward her face. As the man’s fist sailed over her head, Domi rushed at him, barreling shoulderfirst into his gut and knocking him off his feet. The man fell backward and became tangled in his cloak even as he struggled to right himself. Leaping back, Domi held her gun on him, instructing him not to move. The whole attack and rebuttal had taken less than four seconds.

Behind Domi, Edwards was making his way through the doorway, the black barrel of his Heckler & Koch nosing into the room before him. “Everything okay in here?” he asked.

“Just peachy,” Domi said. “Fuckwit here tried to ambush me.”

Edwards glanced at Domi’s would-be attacker sprawled on the cracked tiles. “Looks like you had it covered.”

Domi’s red eyes flicked to Edwards for an instant, and he saw that her expression was one of irritation. He ignored it, turning to assess the other people in the room.

“Now, why don’t you nice people tell us what the shit is going on here?” Edwards asked, striding toward the group huddled around the fire.

For a moment, no one answered. Edwards glared at them, his snarl visible through the transparent cup of the breath mask. Then, keeping his movements slow and smooth so that everyone could see just what he was doing, Edwards lowered the Heckler & Koch until he had it held loosely at his side. Still, he left the safety catch off so that he could fire it at a moment’s notice.

Then, her voice timid, a woman with ragged ginger hair and dirt-caked clothes spoke to Edwards, her pleading eyes wide. “Are you the new baron?”

“What?” Edwards spit. “Shit, no. The barons have all gone.”

“But how can we have a barony without a baron?” another of the ragged figures spoke up, this one a man with stubble darkening his jowls, a woollen cap pulled low over his brow.

Other members of the group muttered their assent as they cooked the vermin over their little, contained fire.

Domi backed across the room on light feet until she was standing beside Edwards, her pistol still pointed firmly at the hooded man sprawled on the floor. Wisely, the hooded man stayed where he was, his eyes locked on the silver barrel of Domi’s CombatMaster.

“These guys are looking for a baron,” Edwards explained.

“So I heard,” Domi replied, her words laced with cynicism. She glanced over her shoulder, turning her attention from the hooded man for a moment while she addressed the group. “Care to explain why your friend here attacked me?” she asked.

“He’s a Magistrate,” the ginger-haired woman who had first addressed Edwards explained. “You must have broken laws.”

Domi spoke to Edwards out of the side of her mouth, keeping her voice low. “The way he attacked me—guy was no Mag. Way too sloppy.”

Edwards addressed the ginger woman, his gaze taking in the other people in the group before him. “Has your friend here been a Mag for long?” he asked. When no one answered, Edwards turned to the hooded form lying on the floor, casually turning his gun over in his hand so that it caught the light. “Well?”

The man in the hood groaned as he spoke. “Three days,” he said. “Volunteered three days ago. Ville needs Magistrates, right? What the hell did your freak girlfriend hit me with?”

Domi reacted angrily. “What did you call me?” she asked, taking a menacing step toward the self-proclaimed Magistrate, jabbing her gun at his face.

“Mutie, right?” the hooded man asked. “Figures.”

Domi looked irritated, but Edwards told her to ignore the man’s comments.

“So,” Edwards asked, “you’re all here building a ville? That right?”

As one, the group of stragglers shook their heads. “No, sir,” said the stubbled man in the woollen cap, “we came back. This is how people should live. Within walls. Within rules. There’s a place for you here. Can’t you feel that?”

Though not a man given to introspection, Edwards was taken aback. “I think you want to be careful what you breathe in around here,” was all he could think to say. “Lot of nasty crap in the atmosphere just now. Quake churned up a lot of shit.”

The stubbled man nodded. “Thank you, sir. Won’t you stay and help us to rebuild?”

Edwards smiled and shook his head. “Not today, ace.”

As the people stood watching the strangers in their midst, grease from one of the cooking birds spit and the fire flared brighter for a second.

Wary of the locals around them, Edwards and Domi made their way slowly out of the sunken building, both of them feeling somewhat unsettled by what they had seen.

“Seven of them,” Edwards growled, “and they’re planning on rebuilding a ville. Waiting for the new baron to appear. Crazy.”

“The villes do shitty things to people,” Domi told him. “Mangle them.” She glanced back, confirming that no one was following them.

“But there’s no barons anymore,” Edwards pointed out. “They all vanished and became overlords. So what’s drawing these people back?”

Domi stopped for a moment, fixing Edwards with her demonic eyes. “Like I said, the villes mangle people. Give them tangle-brain. The Outlanders know this, and that’s why we didn’t come to the villes unless we had to.”

Edwards looked at the petite woman, his brow furrowed in confusion. “Didn’t you grow up in Cobaltville, Domi?” he asked.

“No,” Domi told him, shaking her head. “Settled there for money. Saw the way people were on the inside.”

“Hah.” Edwards laughed. “You make it sound like a prison.”

Domi said nothing. While she had recognized the differences in ville dwellers from Outlanders, she had never seen anything quite like this—people coming back, choosing to live in the ruins while they waited for the next epoch to begin. It was almost as if the villes themselves had some kind of magnetic pull over their citizens. Domi, who had spent a portion of her life as a sex slave in Cobaltville, knew little of the scientific principles of magnetism, but she understood fatal attraction all too well.

Outside of the wrecked skeleton that had once been a building, Domi and Edwards found Harrington sitting on a mound of rubble that looked out over the ruined streets. He had found three chunks of rubble and was juggling them while he waited for his partners.

“You find anything?” Harrington asked when he noticed Edwards and Domi approaching.

“What do you think you’re doing, man?” Edwards barked. “This is a danger zone—gotta keep alert.”

“I am alert,” Harrington replied petulantly. “You think I can juggle like this when I’m asleep?”

Edwards shook his head, muttering something about eccentric scientists.

“We found a wannabe Magistrate,” Domi explained, “and a group of people waiting for the next baron.”

Harrington sighed. “And so the system reboots itself,” he said. “Are we reverting back to…well, the Deathlands era? Jumped-up little barons fighting it out for their little piece of land?”

“There’s no baron,” Edwards clarified. “They just think there will be. So they’re waiting here, eating rats and setting up a hierarchy of Magistrates to keep the peace.”

Domi looked around her, taking in the ruined structures of the ville once more, seeing the mangled struts where its old Administrative Monolith had once stood noble and proud. “Somehow, the villes call to people,” she said. “Like boys in heat, hormones drawing them to the honey trap.”

Edwards shook his head. “You may be right, but it’s all way over my head.”