James Axler - Eden's Twilight

“Fascinating,” Doc said, both hands on the head of his ebony walking stick. “I wonder who is inside. Another civilian like our dear physician?”

“Not with this sort of protection,” J.B. answered, tilting back his fedora. “More likely some big-time politician, mebbe even the president.”

“If it is, I shall have strong words with the man,” Doc muttered, twisting the handle on the stick to withdraw a few inches of the Spanish steel hidden inside, then slamming it shut again.

“Gonna kick his ass?” J.B. smiled tolerantly.

Doc pursed his lips. “Mayhap just a little.”

Silently running her hands over the complex controls, Mildred inspected the indicators showing the vital signs of the occupant. However, the readings were coded, the numbers meaningless to her.

“Wonder how we figure out what to do,” Mildred said.

“How about this.” Ryan rammed the stock of his longblaster directly onto the control panel.

There was a shower of sparks and the displays scrolled wildly. Then everything flashed brightly, and there came a hard series of sharp clicks, followed by a low hiss. The interior of the urban combat vehicle got cold as the gases vented, a white mist crawling across the soft floor. Then the lights began to strobe, rapidly increasing in tempo as a second control panel came online. The quivering needles of digital gauges swung into the red zone, then winked out of existence, closely followed by a fast series of hard clunks. The lid rose slightly, paused, then swung open all the way, revealing only a swirling cloud of icy fumes.

Rushing over, Krysty and Jak joined their friends as the inert gases slowly thinned away to expose an inhuman figure. Roughly the size of a man, the creature was a bizarre mixture of feline and canine characteristics, a doglike body topped with a cat head sporting two saberlike fangs over black lips. There was a hump on the shoulders, and the thing possessed a pair of long tails, each of them tipped with barbed hooks. The paws had claws on the front and spurs on the back.

“Hellhound…” Jak whispered in shock.

At the word, the supine creature trembled and slowly opened its yellow eyes.

Instantly the companions drew their blasters and fired nonstop into the beast. Still sluggish, the hellhound feebly tried to crawl out of the cryo unit, but it was hopeless, and soon the monstrous creature was torn to pieces by the hail of hot lead.

“Fragging mutie bastard!” J.B. snarled, wiping yellow blood from his cheek.

“Not mutie, biowep!” Jak retorted.

Yeah, he knew what those were. The predark government hadn’t been content to just unleash nukes upon the world, they had been developing various bioweps, living biological weapons genetically designed to terrify the enemy and keep fighting through the hard rads of skydark. Only the bioweps were tougher, and smarter, than the whitecoats figured. They got free, went feral, and began feasting on anybody they could find. In a world gone mad, they were living nightmares.

“What about other two?” Jak asked, thumbing fresh brass into the smoking Colt Python.

“Could be other hellhounds,” Mildred admitted grimly. “Or merely the handlers, the folks in charge of the things.”

“Or something even worse,” J.B. suggested.

“I say we let these sleeping dogs lie,” Doc added, waving the LeMat to disperse the thick fumes wafting from the muzzle.

“But if the handlers know how to control the hellhounds…” Krysty began hesitantly.

“Frag ’em. We can’t take the chance,” Ryan declared roughly, tucking the spent clip from the Steyr into a shirt pocket. “Doc and Jak, you two stand guard. If either of these control panels change color, start blasting.”

“Consider us Gog and Magog, sir!” Doc replied, blaster in one hand, bare sword in the other. “No mortal shall reach the golden shore!”

“Fucking A,” Jak added with feeling.

Ryan merely grunted at the literary allusion. “J.B., check the engines and see if this wag can still roll. Mildred, take care of your arm! We might need you soon. Krysty and I will check the Hummers for anything useful, juice in the tanks, oil, whatever. We meet back here in five. Now, haul ass!”

Heading off in different directions, everybody moved with a purpose.

“Need a hand, Millie?” J.B. asked, partially turned toward the front of the wag. “The angle is kind of hard to reach.”

“I’ve done worse, John,” she said, smiling gently, taking a seat far away from the open cryogenic freezer and its ghastly inhabitant. “But thanks for asking.” Everybody could patch a minor bullet wound these days, the skill was as common as the ability to change a car tire from her time.

“No problem,” J.B. said with a nod, and took the driver’s seat to start examining the controls.

The man was unfamiliar with this type of vehicle, but like all military wags, the controls were simple and straightforward, designed for soldiers to operate quickly in the thick of battle, or when wounded and confused. Setting the gearshift into neutral, he pumped the gas pedal a few times to prime the fuel lines, and pressed the ignition button. There immediately came a low whine, several muffled explosions, then a loud backfire, and the tandem engines revved wildly almost out of control. Quickly, he managed to turn one of them off, and the urban combat vehicle settled down to a low purr of controlled power.

“What’s the fuel situation?” Mildred asked through gritted teeth, her hand moving slowly as she sewed the slash in her arm shut. The curved needle had come from an upholstery store, and the line thread was lightweight fishing line. Soaked in alcohol and used with care, the combo always did a fine job. Most of the companions had some of her fine stitching in their skin.

“We have plenty of juice,” J.B. answered, tapping the fluttering gauge with a finger. “Nearly half full.”

“That much?”

“Yep.”

“Must be condensed fuel,” Mildred grunted, using a knife to cut the fishing line. It hurt, but pain was life. Only the dead felt nothing.

“That’d be my guess,” J.B. agreed, cutting the engine to save juice. Obviously the vehicle had nuke batteries, and those could generate power virtually forever. The tanks had to hold that weird condensed fuel they had found in the redoubts. The stuff worked equally well in gasoline or diesel engines, and it flatly refused to evaporate. Incredible. Some amazing major scientific advances had been made just before the world blew up.

Experimentally, the man tried the radio, but it only crackled with background static. Then J.B. switched on the radar, and it gave a steady monotone that puzzled him until he realized it was registering the ring of wrecked Hummers around them. Snorting a laugh, he turned it off. Well, at least it worked. There also was a joystick and video monitor set directly into the dashboard in front of the gunnery seat. Had to be for something mounted on the roof. The Fifty? Fragging excellent, J.B. thought.

A few minutes later, Ryan and Krysty arrived with their arms full and laid the items on the soft floor.

“What this?” Jak asked, kicking a large lump wrapped in canvas. The edges were ragged, and it took him only a moment to figure out that the swatch had been cut from the giant sheet used to cover the UCV.

“That is a .50-caliber machine gun,” Ryan said. “I saw the stanchion when I was on the roof, and knew that one of the Hummers had to be carrying the rapidfire. The soldiers probably took it down when driving through town to not frighten the civilians.”

“And brass?”

“Not for the Fifty,” Krysty answered, setting the toe of her cowboy boot into a recess set in the door and using it to climb into the wag. “But we have a dozen rounds of 5.56 mm for an M-16 rapidfire, and a couple of 9 mm rounds for the Uzi. Plus some rope, couple of maps and some magnesium road flares not too badly corroded.”