James Axler Deathlands 062 Damnation Road Show

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Or a floodgate.
He pulled out the stick and flung it aside. Then he started to crank the wheel
over clockwise, shutting the valve.
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"Not the best of ideas," said a loud voice to his right.
Crecca whirled to face a glaring scarecrow of a man. He recognized him at once
as one of Cawdor's party. It was the old, babbling bastard who had to be led
around on a rope. The baron's laughter was muffled by the dull roar coming
through the walls.
"So, old man," he shouted back, "looks like you've got your brain on
straight& just in time for me to beat it in." To demonstrate he bashed the end
of the pipe into the concrete wall.
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His adversary scampered over the rubble and out into the hall. He had picked
up the stick Crecca had tossed aside.
"You aren't going to get away from me!" the baron called to him as he
followed.
The old man was waiting for him in the corridor. "If you think I am trying to
escape, you are sorely mistaken, sir," he yelled. "I just require some room to
work." With that the old bastard did something to the silver handle, and the
wood sheath of the stick came away in his left hand, revealing a long,
tapering, double-edged blade of steel.
"I don't have time for games," Crecca shouted. And then he charged, holding
the pipe out in front of him like a lance.
The tremors that still rippled the floor made his course erratic at best. As
he veered toward his target, a fluorescent light fixture hanging by a thread
gave up the ghost and crashed down in front of him, spoiling his aim.
The old man was more agile than he had any right to be. He sidestepped the
charge and pivoted, and as Crecca rushed past him, the baron felt something
molten-hot lance through the back of his tall boot and into his left calf.
"First blood!" the old man cried. With a back-and-forth slash of the sword, he
cut down the light fixtures that blocked his view.
He now stood between Crecca and the room with the wheel.
To reach it and stop the draining of the pool, the baron was going to have to
go through him. The former carny master realized he had been outmaneuvered and
outfoxed. Infuriated, Crecca made a blind thrust with the end of the pipe,
aiming for the old man's face.
The sword parried the blow, metal scraping metal, then before the carny master
could withdraw, he felt the sharp bite of razor honed steel deep in his right
shoulder. "Fucker!" he howled as blood flowed down his arm. He banged the pipe
on the floor in frustration.
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"Is something wrong, sir?" the old man demanded. "Would you like to pass by
me?"
Crecca charged again, this time swinging. He brought the pipe around at waist
height, slashing from right to left, figuring the bastard couldn't possibly
escape the blow.
The end of the pipe threw a shower of sparks as it hit the concrete wall.
The wall was all it hit.
The old man stepped back into the doorway, out of range, and as he did, with
an ease that a man of his apparent age shouldn't have been able to muster, he
squatted low and thrust upward with his sword.
The point plunged into Crecca's right thigh, a quick in-and-out stab that
wrung a scream from his throat. He staggered back, flailing with the pipe to
keep his opponent from following up with a second thrust.
"You look surprised, Baron," the old man yelled.
The Magnificent Crecca clapped a hand over his most recent injury and scowled
at him.
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"Why should it surprise you," Doc hollered, "that a man carrying a weapon like
this-" he paused to flourish it "-could actually use it?"
Time was running out.
With his good leg, Crecca kicked the fallen light fixture into the old man's
chest and lunged with the pipe. His opponent blocked the hunk of metal and
glass with his sword, sweeping it aside, but before old man could bring the
blade's point back, Crecca was on top of him.
The former carny master never saw the blow that felled him.
He was within a few inches of getting his big hand wrapped
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around the old man's scrawny throat when he caught a flash of silver from
below, as the sword's heavy carved metal handle snapped up in a crisp,
accurate, backhanded strike that he couldn't deflect.
He heard the crunch of his own cheekbone shattering and felt hot blood
spraying down his suddenly numbed face. Falling forward as his knees buckled
under him, he took another blow from the sword's pommel, this time on the
crown of his head.
For a second it made him see black. He crashed to the floor on his knees,
knowing there would be more, and much worse to come, and unable to raise his
arms to defend himself.
The third blow nailed him square in the back of the head.
Everything went black.
Crecca toppled to the floor on his face.
DOC CRADLED the palm of his right hand, which bled from a long, shallow cut
that he'd given himself by gripping the swordstick barehanded. There had been
no time to get the blade's point around, so he'd had to make use of the
pommel.
Effective use.
And once he'd gotten started, he'd had to follow up with successive, similar
blows before the baron could recover.
Doc took a soiled linen handkerchief from the pocket of his frock coat and
tightly bound his wound, then knelt beside the fallen man. There was blood
everywhere. Crecca's blood. His blood. He tried to locate a pulse in the man's
neck and couldn't find it.
As he leaned over the baron, the ceiling tiles on the floor around him started
to move. They were floating, bobbing. The water in the corridor was no longer
standing in puddle; it was flowing in a current. It was already an inch deep.
Doc looked toward the hallway's entrance and saw the steps had been turned
into a series of low, feeble waterfalls. The river he had created was starting
to flood the blockhouse. He dashed into the
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room behind him and spun the red wheel, reopening the emergency drain valve as
far as it would go.
When he returned to the hallway, the water had risen over the prostrate
baron's mouth and nose.
The Magnificent Crecca wasn't blowing any bubbles.
Doc splashed down the corridor and up the stairs. As he climbed out of the
entry well, he glimpsed the destruction he had wrought. A deep, dark torrent
had gouged away the ville and the square and was undermining the near edge of
the blockhouse. He could see no one moving, and a terrible thought struck him:
had he drowned the very people he had been trying to save?
He drew his Civil War-era handblaster from its holster, the
LeMat, and ran along the face of the building, away from the rushing water.
Doc found the Steyr longblaster where he had hidden it. As he shrugged into
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its shoulder strap, he saw shadowy figures hurrying toward him from the base
of the mountain. He primed the LeMat's shotgun barrel, ready to spray any
enemies with smoking shrapnel.
"Do not come any closer!" he warned, aiming the old blaster at the running
figures.
"Doc! It's us!" someone shouted back. [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]

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