Shadow Fortress

“Like an angel,” Mildred said, pulling herself along a vine and stepping onto a branch. “The Hercules C-130.”

In a short while, the rest of the companions arrived, Jak and Doc last, the elderly man assisting the wounded teenager to a fork in the trunk. The Cajun gave the old man a nod in thanks and settled his aching back against the trunk of the tree.

“No way this thing flew,” Dean stated flatly. “No way.”

“Big mother,” Jak agreed, massaging his throbbing ankle.

Careful of his footing, Ryan walked along the branch and experimentally rested a boot on the tip of a wing. It didn’t move, so he put on more and more weight until he was standing fully on the leafy metal. Nothing moved. He chanced a jump, and the leaves shook a little, but the plane remained firmly in place. There was no way anybody could have moved such a colossal machine into the treetops to make a hidden ville. The aircraft had to have crashed here during a storm, and the branches grew around the trapped plane over the decades, trapping it forever.

Moving to a more secure position, Ryan brushed away the vines to see a smooth expanse of green metal. There was no sign of rust. He rapped it with a knuckle and heard nothing. Too solid to echo. Good enough. If it hadn’t fallen in a hundred years, there was no reason it should this day.

“Okay, it’s safe,” Ryan said to the others over a shoulder. “She’s solid as a rock, moored in place by over a dozen trees. Couldn’t move the damn thing if we wanted.”

Curiously, the rest of the companions started warily closer, with Jak staying behind to guard their flanks. The aspirins had helped ease his pain, but not a lot.

“Yeah, this should be okay for a temp shelter,”

J.B. said, adjusting his glasses to glance at the fiery storm clouds overhead. The metal hull would protect them from any acid rain. If they had to stay somewhere until Jak healed, this was as good a place as any.

“Certainly be a triple-bad bitch to attack,” Krysty agreed, placing one boot carefully ahead of the other as she crossed the wing.

His long hair blowing in the steady wind, Ryan scowled at the pronouncement. Proceeding very slowly with a hand hovering near his blaster, the man surveyed what he could of the downed behemoth. There was no sign of anybody using it as a home. The cockpit windows weren’t broken, the side hatch was still in place and the aft cargo hatch appeared to be sealed shut. He relaxed with the knowledge that they were the first to discover the predark wreckage.

Warily, the Deathlands warrior eased along the network of branches between the wing and the front of the plane to reach the cockpit windows. A layer of dust covered the plastic, and he used a handful of leaves to brush the transparent material clean. The sun was at the wrong angle to illuminate the interior, so Ryan cupped hands around his face to try to see inside. After a few minutes, his eye became adjusted to the darkness. The pilot and copilot were still strapped in their chairs, their skeleton hands on their throats. Their uniforms were mixed; the pilot was Air Force, the copilot Army, the navigator Navy. There were blasters in flap-covered holsters at their sides, and he thought there was another skeleton slumped over a radio set just aft of the cockpit, but it was too dark to tell. But the major factor was the complete lack of vines, spiderwebs or even cobwebs inside the vehicle. The hull hadn’t been breached over the long decades.

“Hull is still intact,” Ryan stated to the others. “There are skeletons inside.”

“How are the seats?” J.B. asked.

“Never been touched.”

“Dark night, our first good luck in weeks.” J.B. sighed.

Careful of his balance, the man traversed the tangled vines to reach the side door and ran a finger along the seam. There was a light coating of moss and some windblown seed pods, but nothing serious. J.B. started pulling out tools from his munitions bag and got to work releasing the ancient catch.

“No structural damage in sight. Doesn’t look like it hit bad enough to chill the crew,” Krysty commented. “So why didn’t they leave?”

It was a good question and Ryan quickly checked the rad counter on his lapel, but saw only the usual background count. There had been “clean” nukes used in the war that didn’t leave lingering rads. Maybe that was what happened here. An airburst caught the plane and threw it into the trees with the crew already dead from the rad burst.

Or perhaps whatever the soldiers were carrying as cargo had burst open on the rough landing and chilled the crew instantly.

Spinning, Ryan started to shout a warning when J.B. stepped away from the aircraft. The Deathlands warrior could only watch as the door dropped open and out billowed a dry metallic wind tasting of ancient death.

Chapter Two

Dust rose in tiny clouds around his shuffling boots and sweat dripped off his haggard face, but Cal Mitchum forced himself onward, raw hatred fueling his every step.

Using his longblaster as a crutch, the chief sec man continued along the jungle trail, pieces of predark asphalt appearing now and then from under the layer of windblown dirt. For some unknown reason, the jungle stopped at the side of the roadway, only the tiniest of creepers daring to grow across the old road. Perhaps it was some ancient science that held off the plants, or maybe it was simply that there was no nourishment in the soil atop the hard black macadam. He had no idea. The world was full of unanswerable questions, and a man would go futz-brained if he tried to solve them all. Mitchum found a simplified view of life was sufficient for him: stand by your baron, keep your word, treat your sec men like children and get revenge in any way possible.

Ryan had betrayed the chief sec man and shot him in the shoulder and thigh, leaving him for dead after Mitchum warned Ryan of the arrival of Glassman. The son of a bitch had said they were flesh wounds and would convince the baron of his story of the companions jumping him. But Mitchum didn’t believe a word of that bullshit. Ryan had tried to ace him to cover his escape, and simply fucked it up. The outlander would pay for that, if Mitchum had to walk every trail to every ville in the Thousand Islands. He would find the one-eyed bastard, cut out his beating heart and make him eat it raw.

Every step was torture, but Mitchum kept moving. His almond skin was turning light gray from the accumulated dust, and his bandaged shoulder stung from the sweat seeping into the wound. His thigh throbbed like the pounding surf. But pain could be controlled. He’d suffered worse defending his ville, and still been alive to watch the crucifixion of the attackers. Pain made you strong.

An odd motion in a bush made Mitchum jerk alert, and he drew a flintlock pistol from his belt with lightning speed. Pushing the weapon across his chest, he cocked back the hammer and leveled the blaster ready to fire when two hands rose above the greenery and waved in surrender.

“Don’t shoot!” a man’s voice called, and out stepped a young sec man in unfamiliar garb. “Damn, you’re fast with a blaster, sir.”

The stranger was in ragged clothes made from beaten hemp fibers. He had a spear in his hand, a bow and arrow strapped to his back and a flintlock pistol tucked into his rope belt.

“Who the fuck are you, boy?” Mitchum growled, the gaping maw of the .75 black powder weapon never wavering from the stranger’s stomach. He normally went for a chest shot, but in his weakened condition, Mitchum wasn’t sure he could ride the recoil of the hog-leg enough to keep the miniball on target. Best to aim for the belt buckle and let the lead hit the other man in the face. Anything above the waist was a clean hit. Afterwards he could cut the kid’s throat and steal his ammo.

The youth started to answer when the sound of engines filled the air and Mitchum dropped the long-blaster to painfully draw and cock the other flintlock pistol. Adrenaline pounded in his veins, giving the exhausted sec man the needed strength to stand and watch the convoy of Hummers appear around a curve in the road. The wags were badly dented and streaked with dirt, the grilles filled with clumps of vegetation. But long .30-cal machine guns rested on fancy supports, the back seats filled with armed sec men. And more importantly, Captain Glassman was in the front wag, his hands on the windshield to keep standing. His light brown hair was pushed off his grim face, exposing the flares of gray at his temples. Liver spots dotted his hands, and he was unshaved.

“Full stop,” Henry Glassman yelled, and the convoy braked to a ragged halt.

The thin commander of the lord baron’s navy was dressed in loose gray clothing and sandals, the standard wide leather belt around his middle serving as a tool belt and holster for his flintlock and an even bigger predark revolver. A machete hung handle down in a shoulder holster. The navvies, as his sec men liked to be called, were heavily tattooed, displaying their ranks on their faces, and dressed in a similar way, making them easy to spot among the others in the wags. Old and young men, their crude homemade uniforms were identical to that worn by the man in the bushes.

As the engines were turned off to save juice, Captain Glassman looked over Mitchum and could readily tell the bad news. The big sec man was battered and bruised, his crew of twenty armed riders nowhere in sight. Glassman could guess what happened; Ryan and the others had ambushed the patrol and aced the riders with only Mitchum surviving—probably from sheer stubbornness. The sec man was stronger than an armored tank, nearly unkillable. Everybody in his ville was terrified of the man, and most considered him a mutie of some sort. But nobody had ever dared to say that aloud.

“This idiot yours?” Mitchum sneered, gesturing at the youngster still standing in the bushes.

“A scout,” Glassman answered. “We sent out a dozen. Private, get your ass in the wags. Campbell!”

“Yes, sir?” the sergeant rumbled from behind the wheel of the first wag. Campbell had a smiling face and laughing eyes. He always seemed amused, even as he sliced off a tongue or testicle. His face was a mask of tattoos, showing his rise, fall and subsequent rise again in the navy of Lord Baron Kinnison, ruler of the Thousand Islands. Unlike any of the others, Campbell was armed with a sleek bolt-action long-blaster, and a bandolier of long brass shells was slung across his chest. He was both the top kick for the captain and his executioner should the officer fail to recover the outlanders.

“When we get back, give this feeb ten lashes with the whip for this failure,” Glassman ordered, climbing from the Hummer.

“Done,” Campbell said and smiled pleasantly.

“B-but, sir!” the private said, fighting his way out of the thorny plants to stand on the roadway. “I was sent to find Colonel Mitchum, and I did!”

Checking his blaster, Glassman snorted in disdain. “Seems more like he found you. And now it’s ten lashes with a whip soaked in salt water. Any more objections, and I’ll make it twenty.”

Silently, the sec man stumbled toward the rear of the convoy to be as far away from the sergeant as possible.

Leaving the rest of the troops behind, Glassman walked over to Mitchum and softly said, “Okay, tell me.”

“They live,” the man replied simply, easing down the hammers of both his blasters. “Caught us in a boobie and fried my men alive.”

Glassman scowled. Alive was all he cared about. Kinnison was going to exchange his family for the outlanders, but only if they were still breathing. Briefly, he considered chilling Mitchum right there, then realized that was stupe.

“Don’t worry, we’ll find them,” the captain said, patting the man on his good shoulder. “Do you have anything that was worn by one of the outlanders, or better, has their blood on it?”

“You got dogs?” Mitchum asked suspiciously, glancing at the wags.

“Something close enough.”

There was only one other possibility. “Hunters!” the sec chief gasped, backing away a step. “Are you mad?”