question of what I would have to do if either of them became pregnant. Because if the stories were true, babies always became like the Children and usually right away. Monsters. They came right out of the womb like that, literally burning their way out and killing their mothers in the process.
Could I let Janie or Mickey suffer like that?
And better, would I have the balls to put them down if and when it happened?
9
The Hatchet Clans came not thirty minutes later.
Just when you think things can’t much worse, they usually do.
I decided to let the old man and the girl go. We didn’t need them and I was pretty sure they didn’t need us. I didn’t know what to do with the old man. I did my best splinting his leg. He looked like he wanted to tear my throat out the entire time.
Carl cut them loose and the girl ran off. The old man looked at us one last time, spit at my feet, and out the door he went, hobbling off with a broken broomstick for a crutch. He looked almost casually at the corpses of his posse and then went on his way. He didn’t make it half a block before he screamed.
Carl and I were just dragging Morse’s corpse out the door…and I saw three Clansmen hacking on the old guy. Scouts. That meant the main body was coming. I got back inside and told the others to hide. And just in time. For rolling down the streets like a storm, the main body was coming. Screaming, breaking windows, they had arrived.
I watched them storm past the front of the diner in their filthy, ragged olive drab overcoats and gas masks, scalp locks greased, axes and pikes, chains and clubs in their hands. Several carried decapitated human heads. They swung them by the hair. They found the bodies of Morse and the teenagers and set on them in a pack, more pressing in all the time like swarms of insects. They scalped the teenagers. They eviscerated them, dismembered them. They took Morse’s head with them.
We were in unbelievable danger.
If it came to it, we could kill quite a few, but I knew that in the end they’d overwhelm us with sheer numbers. They mulled about for about an hour, marching around and hissing to one another through their masks. None of them came into the diner. I figured that was a real spot of luck.
I thought we were going to make it.
Then twenty of them charged. They weren’t as stupid as I thought. They knew where we were and they played us, let us relax, let our guard go down slightly-because with the Clans in the street it never went down completely-then they attacked.
We killed at least ten of them, ducked into the back room and went out the rear door into the alley. Right into a nest of those assholes. We started shooting and dropped quite a few, but it was close-quarters combat and they came from every direction.
I saw Carl go down beneath a tangle of five or six of them.
And Texas Slim shouted: “Nash! On your left!”
I turned and shot another that was bearing down on me with an axe. And then Texas knocked me to the pavement and took a spear in the belly for it. He’d saved my life but sacrificed his own. They kicked my rifle away and beat me down with clubs. They had Texas down. He was screaming as he was jabbed repeatedly with five or six spears.
I fought to my feet and something collided with the back of my head. The last thing I saw was them hacking on Texas and Janie being dragged away down the alley.
10
I remember coming awake to the sound of my own voice: “Janie? Janie? Janie…where are you, Janie?”
I blinked and blinked again. Finally my eyes opened, focused, and I saw the Hatchet Clans. We had been taken to some kind of encampment outside town. In the distance I saw those crucified mummies up on the crosses. There were fires burning, canvas tents pitched. I was tied to a post driven in the ground. Mickey was to one side of me and Janie was to the other. Both of them were unconscious. They were still dressed, so I supposed they hadn’t been raped or tortured yet.
But that was coming.
Because that’s what the Clans did with women. With men, they generally killed them outright. But maybe they had a special purpose for me. Maybe they would make a grand spectacle of my death.
For the time being, we were of no interest to them.
I watched them sharpen axes and spears, fashion weapons from slats of wood and lengths of iron. If they had voices, real voices, I never heard them, just that indecipherable hissing. Now and again they’d make ratlike squealing sounds as a fight broke out between individuals. And when they fought, trust me, they fought to the death.
I watched a couple of them-women, I thought-threading things onto a length of metal bailing wire. Human heads. Five or six of them. They jabbed the wire into the ear and pushed it right through and out the other ear. Then they tied off the wire between two green tree limbs jabbed into the ground.
One of the heads belonged to Carl.
11
I must have went out cold again because when I awoke, two of the Clansmen were standing right before me and I could smell the hot stink of raw meat, filth, and urine coming from them. One had a knife and he cut me free. Numb, I pitched straight forward like a tree into the grass. Blinking in the hazy sunlight, I looked up at those gas masks on their faces. I knew the subhuman things that were beneath them.
They hissed something at me.
And when I didn’t understand, one of them kicked me.
I wanted them to kill me. It was the best I could hope for. I didn’t want to see what they did to the girls. Texas and Carl were dead. I was having trouble wrapping my brain around that. Because with their deaths, in a way, everything had died. The core of my posse was gone. My connections were severed. Because Texas and Carl connected me to Sean who connected me to Specs who connected me to Youngstown and Shelly and my life. And now it was gone. I had no center.
“Fuck you,” I said at the Clansmen which is what stupid, thick-headed idiots like me always say when we know we’re the ones who are fucked.
They said something in their garbled voices.
Then I heard thunder. Or what I thought was thunder. But it wasn’t thunder at all. Because it came again, a lot closer: a shrieking explosion that vaporized five or six Clansmen, scattering pieces of their anatomy in every direction. Another round hit. Another and another. I could smell fire and smoke and blood.
The encampment was under siege.
The Hatchet Clans were scurrying around madly. I heard the reports of automatic weapons. I saw Clansmen fall beneath volleys of bullets. Through clouds of twisting smoke and around blazing tents I saw the raiders step into view: forms in shiny plastic orange suits with helmets on. There were faces behind the darkened plastic helmet bubbles and air lines leading from the mouthpieces to tanks on their backs. They were completely enclosed. They carried stout, short-bodied submachine guns in their hands.
I remember thinking: Those are Hazmat suits, biocontainment suits. The kind of suits people like Price wore when they worked with hot agents. Space suits. That’s what Price called them.
