David Robbins - Madman Run

Both rounds were aimed at the visor, one of them flattening against the metal with a distinct ping and not quite penetrating while the second went through the right eye slot, bored through the brute’s brain, and pinged a second time when it struck the back of the helmet.

Elphinstone halted, his arms sagged, and he swayed. Although his brain had ceased to function, his body hadn’t quite gotten the message. His fingers twitched, as if he wanted to grab something, and his left knee jerked forward as if about to intitiate another step. Then, like a towering tree in the forest, he toppled with a tremendous crash.

“Two down and two to go,” Hickok said, departing without a backward glance.

Geronimo slowly lowered the rifle and looked at Blade. “I didn’t want to do that.”

“I know.”

“There was no other choice.”

“I know.”

“I don’t think being a Warrior is all it’s cracked up to be.”

Blade wheeled and stepped into the corridor where the gunfighter was waiting. “Endora mentioned something about a control room. If we find it, we’ll find Morlock.”

“A control room for what?”

“I don’t know.”

A reserved Geronimo joined them and fed new bullets into the Winchester. “Let’s get this over with as quickly as possible.”

“What’s the matter, pard?”

“I may not become a Warrior.”

Hickok’s mouth dropped. “Why not?”

“I’m not like you, Nathan. When I kill someone, I feel a hurt inside.”

“And you think I don’t?” Hickok responded, his tone betraying bitterness. “I feel it too, but I don’t let it get to me. I control it. I tell myself it has to be done.” He turned and walked toward the stairs.

“Nathan?” Blade said.

“What?”

“Why did you shoot her?”

“One of us had to do the job, and it might as well have been me,” Hickok said and kept walking.

Blade glanced at Geronimo, whose melancholy visibly intensified. “He did it so we wouldn’t have to,” he stated in a whisper.

“Me and my big mouth,” Geronimo remarked.

They hurried to catch up, and the three of them were soon climbing the steps to the next floor. There were no candles lit, no sounds indicating any of the rooms were occupied, so on they went to the next level, and the floor after that, until eventually they reached the uppermost one, ten stories above the ground. An arched, open window gave them a view of the glittering stars and the inky expanse of countryside and explained the breeze they always felt on the stairway.

A sole candle burned next to a partly open door along the left-hand corridor.

“He’s mine,” Hickok said, leveling both Colts and stalking forward to the door. He kicked it open and darted inside.

Blade and Geronimo were right on his heels. The giant marveled at a large chamber illuminated by two lanterns that revealed banks of electronic equipment aligned along all four walls. There was no sign of Angus Morlock.

“The crud has skipped,” Hickok guessed.

“What is all this?” Geronimo asked, moving to a console and studying a series of switches and knobs.

When Blade noticed a dozen blank squares of glass arranged in three rows on the far wall, curiosity impelled him closer to study them. Their shape prompted vague memories of photographs he’d once seen in a book in the Family library, but he couldn’t put his mental finger on the exact photos. Two knobs were positioned under each square.

Hickok walked to a piece of equipment and flicked several toggle switches. “I wonder what these do?”

“Maybe we shouldn’t touch anything,” Geronimo said. “Morlock might have this room booby-trapped.”

“No way, pard. He wouldn’t want to damage all this stuff,” Hickok said and worked another toggle.

Suddenly, from a speaker mounted on the north wall, came the sound of leaves being stirred by a strange breeze, the distant wail of a coyote and the croaking of tree frogs.

“Where the blazes is that coming from?”

“Outside somewhere,” Geronimo said. “But how?”

An answer formed unbidden in Blade’s mind, and with it came comprehension. “A microphone.”

“What?” Hickok said.

“A microphone. It’s a device that can hear sounds and relay them elsewhere. There must be a mike planted outside the castle walls connected to this room by an underground wire, or else the equipment in here operates on battery power.”

“How do you know all this?” Hickok asked.

“I remember reading a book about the electronic age, as it was called, and all the wonderful devices available before the Big Blast. The people had devices for playing music, washing clothes and cooking food in a minute flat,” Blade said, indicating the blank squares of glass. “And unless I miss my guess, these are monitors used to keep watch on the grounds.”

He twisted one of the dials.

A screen in the upper row crackled to life and showed one of the gloomy underground passageways.

“See what I mean,” Blade said.

“But how could this gear work after so many years?” Geronimo wondered. “Electricity is a thing of the past.”

“Not if the Morlocks have a stockpile of rechargeable batteries,” Blade said. At least he understood how Morlock had known he entered the castle from the mausoleum.

“Keep turnin’ those dials,” Hickok advised.

Blade did so, going from monitor to monitor, and one by one corridors and rooms were dimly depicted, all empty. When there were only three screens left, the weapons room materialized with its grisly carpet of pale, grinning corpses.

“Morlock must have seen the whole thing,” Geronimo said.

Blade twisted the second to last dial, revealing yet another corridor, and was disappointed at not finding Morlock. Where was the madman?

From the number of monitors, he concluded only the main corridors and some of the rooms were part of the surveillance network. There weren’t enough to cover the entire castle. “If the runt saw the whole thing, why didn’t he try to help the serfs or sic his walkin’ fur rug on us?” Hickok brought up.

“He probably believed we’d be no match for the serfs,” Blade guessed.

“And I doubt he expected us to kill Endora and Elphinstone. Like Endora said, he’s been taking us too lightly all along.”

“His mistake,” Hickok said.

Blade twirled the last dial and stiffened.

The last scene depicted was the roof. And there, standing on a rampart and staring grimly directly into the camera, stood Angus Morlock with a shotgun cradled in the crook of his left arm. Somehow, he knew he was being observed because he nodded and made a beckoning motion with his right hand.

“He wants us to go up there,” Geronimo said.

“Let’s not disappoint the crumb,” the gunfighter stated.

Blade didn’t like the setup one bit. Why would Morlock blatantly challenge them to go onto the roof unless it was a trap?

“Are you comin?” Hickok asked, moving to the door.

“Yeah,” Blade said. He stared at the monitor for a few seconds, then went into the passageway with his friends.

“The stairs stop on this floor,” Geronimo noted. “There must be another way up.”

“Each of us will take a door,” Blade directed.

The youths separated. There were seven doors all tolled and it wasn’t until Geronimo opened the fifth one and called out, “Here it is!” that they found a spiral metal staircase to the top.

“Well, this is it,” Hickok said, inspecting the chambers in his revolvers to be sure the guns were fully loaded.

“I’ll go first,” Blade volunteered.

“Be my guest,” Geronimo said.

Blade went up a step at a time, tilting his neck so he could cover a wide door above. Once there, he tested the knob, found it rotated easily, and looked over his right shoulder. “Are you ready?”