John Steakley - Armor

“And got killed?”

“No! Well, yes, some of them. I guess a lot of them. God, Jack, those monsters have everything!”

“I know. What about the City?”

“Oh, well they all ran back there to hide. But Borglyn called them and told them to bring him all their guns.”

“Did they?”

“Some did, I think. But most of them didn’t. Then Borglyn said he was going to teach them a lesson and he started bombing them or… whatever he did to us.”

“Mortars.”

“Yes, mortars, He shot them all over the City. Said he was teaching them a lesson.”

I frowned, looked up at the looming slums. Still ugly, but standing.

“Anyway,” she went on. “Then they all came out with the guns and they took them, Borglyn’s people did. But when they got back to the City, he started the mortars again.”

“After they’d given in?”

She nodded. “He said the lesson wasn’t over.”

I looked again at the stacks. It didn’t make sense. Then I reached the end of the perimeter and made the turn inward toward the main square.

“Goddamn!”

“What, Jack?”

I explained to her that I had just found the lesson.

There was no main square. The land was there. Even some of the puddle. But what made it a square, the buildings which surrounded and enclosed it, were gone. Gone. So was most of the far side of the Maze. A square kilometer at least. The only section still intact was the perimeter I had been following. And nothing, nothing at all, was moving. No one.

“Did he kill everybody?” I muttered.

“Jack?” called Lya.

I ignored her, still staring. Then I laughed.

“Jack?” she called again. “Are you laughing?”

“No,” I lied, though I soon stopped. It wasn’t funny, but… I had slept through it. It was too terrifying to be anything but funny. Damn, I thought next, I must have been in a coma. I felt the back of my head again. The lump felt bigger to my trembling fingers.

“Of course!” I cried, seeing what must have happened. “Holly decided to defend the Dome after this.”

She nodded glumly. “That’s right. Jack, can you… is there anything you can do?”

“I have a way to get in,” I assured her. If Holly hadn’t closed it, I amended to myself.

I started my trotting again. The small bridge across the creek-sewer was just ahead and intact.

“You’ve got to get in and stop him. You’ve got to make him listen.”

“I’ll try,” I puffed, tromping loudly across the small span and on to the river.

“You’ve got to. He won’t listen to me or anyone else from the Project. Lewis was the only one he talked to, and that was hours ago.”

I snorted. “Lewis! Great!”

“Oh, no. Lewis is very concerned.”

I had to stop. I leaned over and braced my hands on my legs. “I’m sure,” I managed to reply.

“He is, Jack. You don’t know. He’s very worried. He said he’d rather give the planet away then have Holly Killed.”

“Then why doesn’t he?”

“He tried. Borglyn wants the Dome. But Lewis did say he could have it—he didn’t care.”

I smiled. Now that I could buy.

I looked at the sky. Dawn was coming fast. How many minutes left? I forced myself to stumble ahead, clutching my stomach tightly with a forearm to keep it where it should be. I stopped when I heard the river. I lifted the Comvid and whispered into it. “I’m turning you off, Lya.”

“What’s the matter?” she all but shrieked.

I slammed the volume control. “I’m at the river. Guards will hear you. I’ll talk to you again when I get across.”

She probably said okay. I keyed off and dropped the unit to the ground. Then I crept slowly forward until I could just make out the outlines of the bridge. I didn’t bother to locate the guards I knew must be there. Instead I cut off at a diagonal to the riverbank. The water was still warm. It seemed to clear my head.

Less than a minute later, I was sliding the hatch open.

It was very dark inside, much darker than the false dawn outside. I felt my way along slowly, my arms stretched out in front like a sleepwalker, until I found a wall to follow. I had gone maybe ten meters when lights, blaring and blinding, flashed into life overhead. I groaned, covered my eyes with my hands.

“What do you want?” said a stern voice from close by, Holly’s.

I moved my hands and squinted enough to see the blazer pointing my way.

“Holly,” I said as calmly as I could.

“What do you want, Jack?” he repeated.

“I want to know what you’re doing in here.”

“Why?”

“Why not?”

He stared awhile, determined to be firm and hard and angry. But he hated it and had to fight himself to do it.

He took a deep breath. “Get out,” he said harshly, waving the barrel back toward the hatch.

“No.”

His eyes widened. “I’ll shoot you.”

“Okay.”

A beat. Another. The gun slumped with his arms. Tears pooled in his eyes.

“Jack, how could you?”

My own eyes began to sting. “I don’t know,” I said at last. And I didn’t.

He looked at the floor. His chest shook. I thought I would die.

Something. Not “sorry.” Not enough. Something….

“Holly, one thing.” He looked up at me as though he expected more bad news. I swallowed. “Holly, it was before. I couldn’t have afterwards.”

He understood at once. “Before?” he echoed uncertainly.

I nodded. He made a half smile. He waved me down the corridor. I followed behind him, wondering if from now on the rest of our lives would be divided the same way—before and after Felix.

Holly had no plan. He did have an arrangement of sorts. He started my tour with the Master Ground Control room, the safest room in the Dome, located in its exact center. Holly had managed to get some of each essential packed into this tiny chamber surrounded by consoles and screens.

He had blazer rifles, of course. Two new cases were stacked in one corner between equally new cases of blaze-bombs on the left and concussion grenades on the right. Against one wall he had a long hospital table and lamp, complete with all the medikits and medipacks on a shelf above. Cases of food were littered everywhere, enough for a couple of months at least.

I found his confidence alarming.

Other nooks had other things, books, changes of clothing, every coil from both his and Lya’s files.

“You’ve got everything in here but the suit,” I commented.

He blushed. “The wheelchair wouldn’t fit through the doorway.”

I grinned. “You mean you actually tried it?”

“Sort of. Caught myself trying to jam it through without remembering going to get it. Unconscious, I guess. Or driven mad from the pressure.”

I laughed. “I don’t know. I wouldn’t want it lost either.” Holly smiled his gratitude. “Where is it?”

He led us out of the control room into a large rectangular room easily as big as my suite. It had an extremely high ceiling with beams running out of the wall behind us, down the length of the ceiling, and into the next wall. There were more supplies stacked about. More weapons, more food, more medical things. Against one corner was a desk, Holly’s desk. In the far corner, sitting in the powered wheelchair, was the suit. It looked like an alert pupil, head up, back straight, arms folded in its lap.

I shuddered. “Every time I see it again….”

Holly smiled. “Yeah. Not like before though, you know?”

I nodded. I knew. We had always thought of the suit as Felix’s killer.

“It wasn’t a murderer after all,” I mused.

Holly became thoughtful. “Wasn’t it, though? I mean, what if Felix were still alive? Knowing what we do, knowing what it would do to him to wear it again, wouldn’t we think of it as a murderer once more?”