Chapter Eleven
The Broken Mountain
Martin had lost everything when he was swept overboard; his gun, his journal, everything. All he had was a box of bullets and even that was only a third full.
He carried it with him, though he had nothing to load the shells into, as he walked up over the foot of the mountain, back toward the river.
Water beaded and rolled off his suit. His hair was damp. Though the day had started out easily enough, he had dark circles beneath his eyes.
The ground beneath his feet turned from the dusty, broken soil that was so familiar into rough, coarse scree and rubble. He wove to the left, bending down to steady himself with his right hand.
A hammer-like blow struck him in the middle of the back, and he fell forward.
His suit's helmet slammed shut, and he tumbled down the side of the rubble-pile.
Struggling back to his feet, he crouched low, and glanced around. A figure was visible on the mountainside, behind him and high up.
No feature but a red bandanna was visible.
Martin scrambled toward cover, hoping to put a wall of broken stone between him and the shooter.
Without a weapon, he couldn't hope to fight back.
A bullet whizzed by his head, and he slid down the slope. Turning right, he began to run up a narrow gully that wound down the side of the mountain, between two shifted masses of stone.
A faint ticking came from his wrist unit, and he covered it with his free hand.
Higher up in the gully was a depression, a hole into which he could crawl and hide, possibly to ambush the legionnaire if the man passed to close.
Rushing as fast as he dared, he wriggled into the hole, finding that it was not a depression, but a tunnel of sorts, a short passageway with a kink in the middle that hid the sunlight.
At the other end, he found a drop of about ten feet, and ended up in a pile, growling curses under his breath.
About him were the remains of some facility, a bunker hidden within the mountainside. He glanced around, unsure of where he had ended up.
The walls of it were made of steel, distended, warped, and broken by forces from the inside.
He paused for a moment, listening to his wrist unit tick faster and faster.
Behind him, the legionnaire came closer. Licking his lips, he dove into the nearest buckling in the bunker's armor.
Evangeline glanced up, like a hunting dog sniffing the air.
“What is it?” the boatman asked.
“Gunshot,” Lee explained, chambering a round in his submachine gun.
“Mr. Baker?” Evangeline asked.
“Couldn't be,” Lee said, “there was only one shot. He can't hit anything.
There was a muted crack! And the boatman fell; blood began to pool beneath him, seeping through the cracks into the rising water beneath it.
Lee leaped from the raft and waded toward the shore.
Glancing toward where she imagined the shooter to be, synapses fired in Evangeline's brain, and she slipped into the water, swimming toward the shore.
Before she had jumped, she had seen rough men with red cloth tied over their mouths descending the mountainside. She had been unable to count them, but she had seen the hungry, dead look of them.
Dripping wet, she climbed up onto the bank of the river, and moved in a fast, low crouch toward the nearest cover, an outcropping of rock.
Lee lurched as a bullet tore into his shoulder, grunting.
He turned, and held up the submachine gun, bracing it with his left hand. His gun gave a low, chattering laugh, like the rattling of dead bones.
The crimson legionnaires scattered, looking for cover of their own.
“Head around the mountain!” he shouted, “put as much rock between you and them!”
Evangeline didn't question, following the mercenary's command.
She found the bed of a dry stream that lead down into the narrowing river, and dropped into it, settling into a belly crawl and heading up the stream, toward its dead source, toward the ruined bunker.
The inside was lit by faint emergency lights, and his suit ticked in time with his thudding heartbeat.
A logo was on the wall, and he leaned close to examine it:
PROMETHEUS STRATEGIC NUCLEAR APPLICATIONS LABORATORY
His gulp echoed in the confined space of his helmet. He glanced right, and saw a wall of debris and scrap metal; to the left was an open corridor. He crept down that direction, in the not-quite twilight of the hallways.
Doorways opened up on either side of him, into offices and empty laboratories.
Patterns of dust were scrawled on the floor, blasted by the event that had torn away the rocky facade of the mountainside. Now, the treaded soles of his feet were etched into the dust, clear for any who might follow him in.
He breathed through his nose, breathing out from his diaphragm. His stomach relaxed, and his shoulders sagged.
Glancing around, he stopped.
Behind him, he could hear footsteps.
Martin didn't glance backward; all the tension returned to his body; his eyes, already adjusted to the dark, dilated even further. Turning left, he spotted an open elevator door.
The legionnaire dropped to a crouch raising his pistol, and casting about for a target. He licked the lips behind the crimson bandanna over his mouth, and looked down at the footsteps in the dust.
He thumbed a switch on his gun, and a low-power lamp illuminated the hall before him. The thrill of the hunt was upon him.
Shuffling forward, the bandit glanced in every office he passed, searching for his white-clad quarry.
The light slowly panned over the elevator door, enough space to slip through, but there was no floor on the other side, the elevator car could be any distance below.
As he walked past, a white-clad arm reached out and grabbed him by the collar. He gave a yell as he was pulled through the door.
Martin pulled the man off balance, and jerked him through the door; he held his enemy briefly, his fingers straining on the emergency ladder; his hand loosened, dropping the man.
The bandit's eyes widened, his arms flailed, as he dropped down the elevator shaft, looking up into the inhuman, reflective face above him.
Thirty feet down, he struck his head on something, and tumbled end over end, almost twice again as far down, the man struck the ground his broken body illuminated by the faint, unbroken light from his lamp.
Martin reached over, and tried to grab on the open doors, found it too far to get a grip and considered for a moment.
Cursing, he climbed down the ladder.
“I'm running low on ammunition,” Lee said, crouching low.
He and Evangeline were crouched in a bowl-shaped depression that was connected to the arroyo they had been following up the mountainside.
Their enemy had spread out, crawling forward on their bellies or hiding behind gnarled trees.
“We'll have to wait for them to come closer, then,” she said, “take their weaponry, or ammunition, if it will work.”
“How many of them are there?” Lee questioned rhetorically.
“'My name is Legion: for we are many.'”
The two of them turned, and saw a rangy man wearing the traditional red bandanna of his soldiers and a pair of darkened goggles. From his belt hung bundles of braided scalps.
The man, who sat on his hams, elbows resting on his knees. His right hand held a pistol in a lazy grip.
Reaching up with his left, he pulled down his bandanna.
“Why don't y'all surrender, now?” he asked, “I've got years of experience on you both, and my men are moving into flanking positions as we speak.”
Lee raised his submachine gun. He felt the cold steel of a gun's barrel press into the crown of his head.
Evangeline raised her own pistol, pointing it at the legionnaire.
The tall man hopped down, and raised his own weapon.
“Not so fast, there, girly. From where I'm standing, I take out both you and Mr. Big, right there, without even really trying. This is a Mateba model nine autorevolver, chambered for .44 rounds; from what I've read, one of those can even take down a polar bear. Think either of you can take that?”
Evangeline didn't lower her weapon, but swallowed, an icy ball formed in the pit of her stomach.
“Lower your gun,” Lee growled, “I can handle this.”
The rung supporting Martin's weight snapped twenty feet above the base of the shaft. The gas bladders in his suit inflated, and he bounced once on the ground, dazed from the impact. The bar of metal clanged loudly to the ground.
He rolled onto his belly, and forced himself upward, shaking his head.
The legionnaire was dead, his head a bloody ruin.
Martin took the gun, and checked. Luckily, it chambered 9mm rounds. He gripped it in his hand, its deadly weight feeling reassuring in his hand. He fitted it into the webbing from which his possessions had dangled, before being washed away.
The emergency ladder was ruined; many of the rungs had fallen off and a nasty-looking crack tore up that wall.
The door on his level was open wide enough for his fingers to fit between, but he couldn't apply as much force as necessary to open it.
Picking up the metal bar, he attempted to use it as a crowbar.
On the first try, it slipped from his fingers, and he stumbled, catching himself on the wall.
He grabbed the bar, and tried again, fitting it between the parted doors, and trying again.
There was the sound of bending metal and he strained harder, rocking backward, putting his whole weight into the effort.
The bar snapped, breaking between his left and right hands. He fell back, stumbled, and landed atop the corpse.
He looked down into the ruined face, and breathed through his nose.
“I'm too weak to open it,” he choked out.
He pushed himself upright, and squared his shoulders.
With a newfound resolve in his voice, he declared to the darkness and the dead:
“But I don't want to die...not alone.”