The Bastion
A SHORT STORY OF THE FALLEN WORLD
CHRISTOPHER WOODS
Chapter 1
I slipped into the alley and ducked under a small overhang to block the rain that had been falling steadily.
“Good for the garden,” I muttered.
Less worry about Lucy’s garden and more on the task at hand, William Childers chided me from inside my head. Four ruffians ahead.
“I see ’em,” I muttered to the OSF Operator.
Obsidian Special Forces had been Childers’s cover when he was loaded into an Agent. The Agent program was long gone but there were remnants still wandering the city. Remnants like me. Nanite-enhanced men and women, some with psychopathic tendencies. Others who would have been called sociopaths. Then there was me, the schizophrenic. I got the whole enchilada. Now Childers was all mine, along with all the others inside my noggin.
I paused, remembering the lab where I finally managed to come out of the squirrel cage in my head. All of the imprints that had dropped in my head were fighting for control and I, most certainly, would have died without the Agent who kept me alive for the first six months. Then the doctors who showed up kept me alive for the rest of that time. Their way was much more unpleasant as they tried to figure out how to get the database back out of my head intact.
They’d finally given up and were just experimenting to see what reactions they could get with different stimuli. I remembered them all. The shock treatments were the worst. They were trying to bring personalities to the surface. They succeeded, but the one who came to the front was a monster. His name was Luca Stiglioni and it took a long time to get him back under control. The fight to regain control brought me, Mathew Kade, to the surface and I had been the one in charge for the last seventeen years.
In those seventeen years, I had seen the city brought out of that savagery into a better age. It was still a savage place, but it was multitudes better than the city I awoke to. My attention returned to the four guys standing near the door I had been searching for.
“They picked a bad time to park themselves there.”
They may work for the one we came for, Childers said.
“Could be.” I shrugged and stepped out into the rain. Broken glass crunched underfoot as I strode down the narrow alley. Perhaps twenty feet separated the old brick apartment buildings, and the stench of something decomposing was barely discernable. “They’ll regret it if they do.”
“What do we have here?” the one I had pegged as the leader asked. He stepped forward. “What you doing in my street?”
“I need to go in the door you’re blocking. Move aside and this doesn’t have to get ugly.”
“Boss don’t want nobody to come in there.”
“You work for the guy inside the building?”
“I do. What’s it to ya?”
“Do you know what he does?” I asked.
“Do you?” he returned.
“I’m pretty sure I have it figured out. He won’t be doing it anymore after tonight.”
“You came for the Boss?” He looked past me. “And you came alone? You not very smart.”
I smiled. “Ugly it is, I guess.”
“Damn right it’s—gak!”
“What was that last bit?” I asked.
He gurgled and toppled over with a knife protruding from his throat.
“What the—” the next closest of the group of four started, before collapsing with another of my throwing knives sticking out of his eye.
The third had seen how quickly his partners had dropped, and tried to turn and head for the door they had been guarding. I threw a final blade to sink into his neck just below the skull. Number four was already in close, swinging an old hardwood baseball bat.
He swung for my head and I caught the bat with my left hand. His eyes bulged in surprise just before I slapped him across the face with the augmented strength of a Corporate Agent. There was an audible crack as his head spun to face the opposite direction.
That may be the first time I have seen that particular strike, Childers said.
“Seems like I remember it from somewhere,” I said. “But I was a woman when I did it. Which is a little bit weird, because I was still Mathew Kade.”
If you could remember everything, you would have some very interesting stories to tell, he said.
“I wish I could,” I answered as I retrieved my knives.
The one that had severed the spine was a little more difficult to pull out as it was wedged between bones. I pulled a little harder and quickly stepped back to avoid the splash of blood when the skin ripped. It was a short burst of blood, but I didn’t want it on my coat.
Before Childers could comment I said, “It’s my last one. It already has a bullet hole in it.”
I opened the door the four thugs had been guarding. The place used to be an apartment building. This area of the city had fewer scrapers and more of these sort of structures. Eight-to-ten-story brick and stone buildings with numerous small housing units inside.
Somewhere in my cluttered mind I thought of low-income housing. Maybe this had been used for that originally. Now it was something else altogether. The man I had been looking for over the last few days would be inside. I doubted if Lorianne Waldon would still be alive, but I would find her or her body before closing this particular case.
The scuffle outside had made very little noise so I slipped inside and moved away from the door.
My left eye twitched as I took in what I could see. The large atrium of the building was all that was left and it was filled with things that would make a medieval torturer blush. Across the room was a single man with his back to me. I could see a girl strapped to a table in front of him. They seemed to be the only ones in the place. He was holding a serrated tool in his right hand and lowering it toward her.
I was across the room in a flash and I seized the man by the back of the apron-like garment he wore. I threw him across the room to slam into the exterior concrete wall.
He hit hard and dropped limply to the floor.
I looked at the girl, who was gagged and strapped with her limbs pulled painfully tight in a spread-eagle position on the table. My straight razor severed the bonds on her left side and I circled the table to cut the other side.
“You’re going to be okay now,” I told her.
Then I heard him groan from the spot he had landed on the floor.
I could see her shake when he made a noise.
“He won’t be hurting you anymore,” I said. “What’s your name?”
“L . . . Lori,” she stammered.
“You’re Waldon?”
She nodded but her eyes flooded with terror. “C . . . can’t go back there . . .”
My eyes narrowed. “We’ll talk about that in a moment.”
I turned to the man, slowly staggering to his feet, rumored to be a former surgeon and a cannibal. “Doctor Gharik, I presume?”
“Who the hell are you?” he asked as he pulled a large knife from the sheath at his side. “I’m going to eat your heart.”
He charged at me and I met him halfway, slapping the blade from his hand; he screamed as his wrist broke. He dropped to the floor and grabbed the broken wrist with his other hand.
His scream was high pitched and cut off abruptly as my left hand settled on his neck to lift him from the floor.
“Just . . . doing . . . job.”
His gasp was barely audible but I could make it out.
“Who pays for something like that?” I growled.
“Father,” he gasped.
I dropped him. “Her father?”
“Yes,” he groaned, holding the broken wrist.
“Tell me about it,” I said.
“You’ll let me live?”
“No. I’ll let you die quick instead of by inches,” I said. “Either way you die today.”
He looked at all of the torture devices and shivered. “She ran away and her father paid me to make her suffer for it before she died. He gave me a list of things I was to do and she was to know exactly why it was all happening.”
I dragged the doctor to one of his own devices.
He struggled. “You said you would make it quick.”
“I lied.”
I hit him once to stop his struggling, then strapped him into the device and flipped the switch.
The doctor was screaming as I led the girl from the chamber of horrors she had spent the last day and a half in.
She cringed as we passed the four dead thugs outside of the door and I wished I could bring them back so I could kill them again.
Sometimes I wished the bombs had just taken this city when they took the world. It had once been called Philadelphia, before the Corporate Wars. Before the bombs. All that was left was the skeleton of a huge city and the evil that seems to thrive in it. Warlords ruling city blocks, ruling because they had the most guns or they were strongest. Most ruled with fear but, occasionally, there was someone better. I thought of Teresa Manora and her Society of the Sword. They still give me hope that there is something worth saving in this fallen world.
Chapter 2
I looked down at the sleeping Warlord. His face was cruel even as he slept. The two naked girls beside the man made my eye twitch. They were several years younger than the girl I had just rescued from the doctor and she had been fourteen.
Lowering the wooden bat I had brought back with me, I tapped lightly on the corner of the bedpost and the man stirred. One of the girls’ eyes popped open and she cringed away from me.
I motioned toward the door with my head. She slipped out of the bed and circled around to pull her sister from the bed on the other side. I lowered the bat onto the chest of Gregori Waldon. His eyes opened wide and he tried to sit up. I held pressure on the bat so he couldn’t budge.
“What is this?” His eyes landed on me as I smiled down at him. “Kade?”
But it wasn’t Mathew Kade standing over the struggling Warlord.
“Hello, Gregori, Mathew is not in today. My name is Stephen Gaunt. There are things we must talk about.”
Stephen Gaunt was a Corporate Assassin, one of the most feared of the personalities that reside in my head. He has unmatched fighting skills and a love for his job that is quite terrifying.
“I have fifty men within shouting distance. Give me a reason to—”
“You had fifty men. Now you may have two children within shouting distance. After what you did to them, I strongly doubt they will be inclined to help you.”
“You’ll never make it out of this zone alive,” he snarled.
“I will certainly get farther than you will with that shattered knee.”
His eyes widened. “What?”
The bat lifted from his chest and slammed down as Stephen Gaunt chuckled while the rest of us watched from inside my head.
* * *
“I thought I might find you here,” a voice said as I rounded the corner.
A very large black man leaned against the wall with a sword resting point down in front of him. He was over six feet tall and three feet wide at the shoulders. The sword was a huge two-hander that was close to four feet long.
“Hey, Poe.” I grinned. “How the hell are you?”
“Was doin’ just fine until Teresa sent me a message to come get you.” He pushed off of the wall and joined me, walking east. “Ran into a girl who looked pretty rough in the Tees. She was being escorted by a couple of Mardins. Once she told me what happened, I figured I better head this way. Is this gonna be one of those zones that’ll have a Chapterhouse for the Society in the near future?”
The Mardins were the people who lived in the Tees, the tunnels below the city. They kept the water flowing and the sewer working for a large part of the city.
“Maybe,” I said with a short chuckle. “She might think about adding another one. The Warlord seems to have lost his daughter. He’s a little broken up about it.”
“I’m not sure I want to know.”
“Probably not.” I grinned. “Wouldn’t hurt to send word to Teresa, though. Place needs new leadership.”
“No warning this time?”
Several Warlords had been removed over the last year. I typically give them a warning first. The Society of the Sword opened Chapterhouses in each of the zones and they now keep the peace.
“He didn’t deserve a warning.”
“That bad, huh?” Poe asked.
“Yeah,” I said. “Two more girls are on their way to Teresa. I dropped down in the Tees and snagged another Mardin.”
“They’re gonna get tired of being delivery boys.”
“They don’t mind, not after that dustup with Derris’s savages.” I looked toward the big man. “So what does my lovely lady have in mind for me next?”
“There was a request from a Zone over east of here. They sent a message with the Mardins about some cult of savages that were massing to attack them. You know how she is when something like this goes down.”
“Yeah,” I said. “She’s not fond of savage cults.”
“And this place is supposed to be something pretty special,” he said. “Not sure what it is but I figure we’ll find out when we get there. Two Squires are already on their way, Rowland and Green. Several Knights have been notified but they’re too far out to do any good. And then there’s us.”
“Three Squires are an army in their own right,” I said. “And conflatulations, by the way, on your promotion to Squire.”
“I’m pretty sure that’s not the right word.”
“Sure it is.”
“I can’t believe I’m doin’ this again. But when Teresa says go, you go. I can’t just say no, she might cut me up into little pieces.”
“It’s not so bad.” I patted his huge arm and turned to the east. “Just think about all the savage cultists.”
The big man sighed and strode beside me toward the beleaguered Zone.
“What’s the name of the Zone?” I asked.
“They called it the Bastion.”
“Intriguing,” Gaunt said aloud.
“Indeed,” I answered.
“You know that was disturbing when you only had those conversations in your head. It’s even worse when you do it out loud. You gonna be doin’ that the whole time?”
“Maybe.”
He sighed again.
“You gonna be doin’ that the whole time?”
“Probably,” he said.
I chuckled and glanced toward the big man. I had enjoyed his company on our last venture until that sniper had shot him. He’d pushed me aside and out of the line of fire. I had been distracted for a moment and the big man had taken two bullets for me. Luckily, we had been close enough to the Society headquarters that he got medical attention in time. He didn’t have the healing capability of an Agent and I owed him.
We all do, Childers said. That first would have been a head shot. Even an Agent doesn’t walk away from that.
“True enough,” I muttered.
Some debts are more important than others in this fallen world.
Chapter 3
“That group is eyeballin’ us,” Poe said.
I pushed my coat back to bring the Sig Sauer in the shoulder holster into view. The two punks in front of the others lost the swagger they had carried when they looked into the cold, dead eyes of a different person from the one they had initially picked out as their mark.
“Why would they even think of attacking someone as big as a house?” I asked as the Bravos turned to retreat into an alley.
“I wonder that all the time. Worse, they take one look at you and crap their pants.” Poe sounded puzzled. “Maybe I need to start carrying something to get their attention.”
“You could always walk around with a necklace of skulls or something.”
“Then everyone runs, not just the Bravos, and I can’t stop at the vendors along the streets. I think that might be a little too much.”
“Could be.” I shrugged. “So, do you know anything about this Bastion?”
“Not much,” he answered. “I think Martin discovered them some time back. She’s one of the Knights that Teresa would normally have sent over here since she likes to stay in this part of the city. She’s doing some work down south, though.”
“Lori?” I asked.
“Yeah, that’s her.”
“I met her once while I was stuck at the Chapterhouse in Stiner,” I said.
“Stuck?” he asked. “Weren’t you recovering from that thing with the Genofreak?”
“Yep. Teresa wouldn’t let me go home.”
“You had three broken ribs, a broken leg, and you reopened the bullet wounds from that other case.” He shook his head. “You can’t blame her for that.”
“I guess,” I said. “At least I didn’t get wounded on the job for Wilderman.”
“Fenris said you got shot,” he said.
“It was just a scratch,” I said. “Can’t even call that a wound.”
“Probably because you spent the majority of the time watching her cutting that bunch into squishy little pieces.”
“What?”
“That’s what she said, man.” He shrugged. “Sounds about right, though. I remember that time up in Yamato’s Zone.”
“I distinctly remember killing several of Corso’s thugs, along with Corso and his second.”
“Yeah, four. I was left with nine. I think I’ll take her word for it. She is a Knight, after all. They take oaths and shit.”
“Have you ever just watched that woman fight?”
“Can’t say that I have,” he answered.
“It’s glorious, it’s magnificent, it’s—”
“You did just stand there and watch, didn’t you?”
“Well, for a while. I’d already killed a bunch of them,” I said.
“She said you left another Warlord hanging from a wall with a piece of steel through his shoulder.”
“He let close to sixty thugs attack us in his street in broad daylight. He was lucky I didn’t just throw him out the window of his scraper.”
“Sounds like he might have deserved a warning.”
I pulled my coat around and stuck my finger through the hole that had been left in it by the bullet that grazed my side. “Do you see this? This is the last one I have until I get to see the Farmers again.”
“You pinned him to a wall with rebar because they put a hole in your coat?”
“Of course not. He was in on the attack. A lot of those guys were his men. I left him pinned to a wall with rebar for sending his men out to kidnap an innocent girl and kill me in the process.”
His left eyebrow was raised when I looked toward him.
“I broke his arm for the hole in my coat.”
He shook his head.
“What?”
“That damn coat,” he said. “One day it’s gonna trip you up when you try one of those crazy Agent moves. I just hope I’m there to see it.”
“You’re just mad because they don’t make them in your size.”
“Whatever.”
“I could see if Marigold will make you one,” I said.
“I don’t want one of those useless coats.”
“She probably wouldn’t charge more than double price for the extra material.”
“Look how it flops around,” he said. “One day you’re gonna trip over it and, just like that, you’re all dead and shit.”
“I can ask when I go order my next batch.”
“I don’t need one of those damn coats. If I wore somethin’ that stupid, I’d be dead in a week.”
I shrugged as we continued walking down the street. The smell of humanity permeated the air, and the vendor stalls along both sides of the street reminded me of something that hovered just out of reach of my fractured memories.
Faire, one of the voices from deep inside my head said.
I nodded.
He sighed. “Do you think she could do one in black?”
Wonders never cease in this fallen world.
Chapter 4
The sound of fighting ahead barely reached my ears.
“What is it?” Poe asked. He couldn’t hear it, but he could see my pause as I listened.
“How much farther to the Bastion?”
“Next zone.”
“Shit,” I said. “There’s fighting.”
He scowled. “Go. I’ll be there as quick as I can.”
I nodded and launched myself forward. The speed an Agent can attain is much more than Poe would have been able to make. The zone we were in was pretty barren, but you could tell a lot by the upkeep of the streets. Many had clean streets and vendor stalls for the Caravans as they passed through. This one was shabby and dirty. Still, there was no smell of feces in the street as there were in some of them. The Mardins kept the sewers running and I have a great respect for their dedication.
The noise of fighting was closer and my straight razor slipped into my left hand while the right pulled the 9mm from the shoulder holster. It used to have a suppressor but those have a limited lifespan and I had used it enough to make it more of a hindrance than a help.
Rounding the corner, I found the street filled with a lot of armed thugs assaulting a wall of stacked cars. The wall of cars looked to have been there for years and it crossed the entire street between two buildings that had been reinforced with steel plate.
“Bastion,” I muttered.
The defenses looked pretty formidable and it would take a lot of people to get through it.
But there were probably fifty or sixty people in the street brandishing weapons. I could see only about ten stationed along the top of the wall. Not enough defenders to stop this mob if they went at it hard.
The fighting was centered, not on the wall of cars, but on a small group of armored forms who had been caught outside of the walls. They were surrounded and the mob would soon overwhelm them.
“That’s your cue, Stephen,” I muttered and receded into the back of my mind as Stephen Gaunt, the Corporate Assassin, took the lead. He holstered the Sig Sauer and looked at the razor in the right hand.
“Oh, Mathew, I think you’ve done it again,” I said in his voice. “You bring me to the loveliest places. But that is a lot of throats to cut.”
He slipped the razor back into its pouch and drew one of the sturdier knives.
“This should do nicely.”
I would say that I charged into the group but Stephen doesn’t charge. He flowed through the crowd like water and people begin to fall. I severed a femoral artery and flowed past to snake my arm around a neck to pull the chin up and the blade flashed. Then I was gone again. One after another fell before they even realized I was there.
Then there was a roar from behind me as Poe rounded the corner with his four-foot-long blade swinging in a deadly arc. People tumbling backward, several in multiple pieces. The sword swung back in an arc that was just as deadly as the first.
Poe is a very big man and he is all muscle. When he hits something it moves, and he was cutting a swath through the crowd. Another form dropped from one of the buildings to our left. She’d been descending along a fire escape as we hit the crowd.
Peggey Rowland, one of the Society Squires, landed lightly, drawing the rapier from her side. The sword danced around, and those near her died.
I ducked as a club arced through the spot where my head had been, and I grasped the front of the wielder’s shirt. I threw him into several of his cohorts with enough force to send four sprawling on the ground. Then the blade flashed several times and the squirming pile was still.
“Don’t worry,” Gaunt whispered in an ear as I reached around with the blade. “It will be over soon.”
Once again I was moving through the crowded street and screams of rage and hate became screams of fear. There’s something terrifying in witnessing a man giggling as he dances through a throng of people leaving only the dying or already dead in his wake.
But Stephen Gaunt is a terrifying sort of guy. Typically, they don’t stay terrified long.
I ended up looking into the eyes of Peggey Rowland as both of us reached the same person in our path through the much less crowded street. The majority of what was left were fleeing.
“Hello, luv,” Gaunt said.
Peggey looked a bit confused and I stepped forward from the backseat in my head.
“Sorry,” I said and smacked the man who was screaming something that I assumed was supposed to be a battle cry. His head tilted at an odd angle and he fell sideways.
“Hi, Peggey.” I grinned. “How’s it going?’
She was shaking her head. “You should be covered in blood. How did you not get any more than that on your coat?”
“More than what?” I asked and looked down to the right hem she was pointing at. “Damnit!”
There was a red splotch about the size of a closed fist.
Peggey had blood dripping from her armor and I glanced over to our left to see Poe. He was covered with it.
“Last damn coat,” I muttered.
I heard the group of defenders that had been cut off from the Bastion approaching and turned around to see the leader take off her helm.
My mouth dropped open, “Brandy?”
There were memories in my head of this woman. There was someone deep inside the pile of people in my head who was doing the mental equivalent of jumping up and down and waving arms. The barrage of memories was fast but they were detailed. I remembered this woman as a baby, a child, a youth, and an adult. The personality that was hailing me was her father.
“Do I know you?” Brandy Bolgeo asked with narrowed eyes.
I scratched my head. “I know you . . . kind of.”
“I thank you for your timely appearance,” she said. “But I don’t know you. Either way, we need to get inside.”
She waved to the men atop the wall and one of them yelled into the interior. “Jonny! Open the gate!”
One of the metal panels that guarded the building on our right pushed outward. A fellow in coveralls with a pair of short swords in scabbards on his back looked out of the door.
“You still with us, Boss?”
“Thanks to these folks,” Brandy answered.
I can’t believe she’s still alive, Tim Bolgeo said in my head. He had been pretty far down in the depths of my mind for a long time.
Brandy kept looking at me, trying to place who I was.
“I guess I need to tell you a little story,” I said. “It’s about your father.”
She scowled. “My father is dead. The very same people he spent all those years working for sent him on one of those damned missions and dropped the bombs right on top of him.”
I could see the depth of her rage at Obsidian, who more than deserved it. That rage was a common thing to see in this fallen world.
Chapter 5
We were less than ten feet inside the door when she turned to me. “Now, tell me about my father.”
It was an order, not a request. There was an iron in her that filled me with a father’s pride. Bolgeo was just under the surface now and I could feel his emotions.
“Okay,” I said. “You knew what he did?”
“He was an Agent.”
“That makes things easier to explain. Are you familiar with how Agents did their thing? The Imprints?”
“Dad told me how it worked,” she said with a shrug. “I know, it was supposed to be classified.”
“Nothing’s classified now.” I pointed a thumb back toward the door we had come in. “Not much point in that anymore.”
“That’s true.”
“If you know of the Imprints, this is easier still. When an Agent goes out needing a specialty personality, they’re uploaded to the database. Then they’re downloaded back into the body when it returns. There was a copy of your father in the database.”
“What’s that have to do with this?”
“Everything.” I tapped my temple with a forefinger. “When the bombs dropped I was in the Imprinter. Something shorted out and it downloaded the whole database into my noggin.”
“And Dad is in there?”
“That’s how I recognized you. Some of the Imprints are more accessible than others and your father was pretty deep until I saw you. Now he’s right under the surface. I’m going to step back and give you two a couple of minutes.”
“This is just a little too much to take. I believe I have heard enough.” She turned to walk away.
My head dropped for a moment and someone else was looking out of my eyes when my head raised.
“Brandy Marie Louise Elizabeth Bolgeo,” Tim admonished.
Brandy paused in midstride.
She turned back to face me as Tim looked around. “Swimbo? Is she here?”
I could see in his mind the acronym and chuckled inside. SWMBO (She Who Must Be Obeyed).
When Tim said that word, though, Brandy’s eyes widened and her mouth dropped open. Up until that very moment, she had not believed.
“D . . . Dad?” she stammered.
He stepped forward and wrapped his arms around her armored form. “I’m sorry I left you, girl. Wish I had stayed home when they called.”
I felt tears running down my cheeks.
“I’m sorry, Mom didn’t make it, Dad.”
I could feel the well of sorrow as Tim thought of his wife, Linda.
He sighed. “I guess you’re Swimbo, now, not Swimbo Jr.”
“No one’s called me that in twenty years, Dad.”
“Well, they should.”
“They’re coming back for a run at the walls!” one of the guys on the wall yelled.
She grimaced. “Seems like our reunion is going to be short lived. Those bastards mean to kill us all.”
“Then what say we kill them first?” Tim Bolgeo said and turned to the two Squires. “Let’s join the ranks on the walls.”
“One of your Squires is on the front wall,” Brandy said to me. “Should we join him?”
Tim glanced around. “They hitting more than one wall?”
“They hit all four,” she said. “There are hundreds of them.”
“Which one gets hit the hardest?”
“Front.”
“How many fighters here?”
“A hundred and twenty people, about half are decent fighters. The others will fight but they’re not really fighters.”
He scanned the area and made a decision. “One Squire on each of those walls and I’ll take the front wall.”
He glanced up at the front wall and recognized the Squire. “Joe! Take the right wall!”
“Got it!” he yelled back.
Tim jumped from where he stood to the top of the wall of cars. They had welded a parapet for the defenders to stand on.
He heard Brandy start giving orders. “Jonny! On the right! Hillbilly, join him.”
She was motioning to an armored form in the group who had come in with us.
“Got it, Swimbo.”
She stared at him and Tim grinned from the wall down at them.
“I got it, Boss.” He held his hands up.
He was chuckling as he took off toward the right wall.
Tim turned around to look over the wall of cars at the horde of people coming down the street toward the Bastion.
That’s a lot of damn people, I said from inside my head.
“It certainly is,” Tim answered.
“What?” one of the defenders asked.
“Just talkin’ to myselves.”
He looked confused but just shook his head and turned back toward the oncoming horde.
“We have contact!” someone yelled from the right wall.
“They’re in the back, too!” Poe yelled as he climbed the wall.
The whole defended area was about five hundred feet by five hundred feet and there was very little inside the walls.
“What the hell are we defending?” Tim asked.
“The Bastion is underground, Dad. It’s the Bastion of Literacy. We’ve been collecting every book we can find in the city and preserving them. We’re going to need that knowledge in the future.”
Tim grinned. “That’s my girl.”
It explained a great deal about the setup of the defense walls. It was like how the Mardins under the city had walled off the area under Derris’s zone to keep the savages in check. This was the same in reverse.
“You affiliated with the Mardins?”
“We know some of them but we aren’t part of their society. We have our own setup.”
“We can discuss it in a little while,” he said. “Let’s welcome our guests.”
“Ready the pots!” she yelled.
There were about eight big cauldrons steaming along the parapet. They sat on racks with fires burning under them.
“Oil?” Tim asked.
“Boiling water and flour,” she answered. “Sticks to them like glue.”
The horde reached the wall and started climbing the cars. She waited for a few moments before yelling. “Pots!”
The cauldrons were pushed over and the white liquid was falling into the mass of bodies. Battle cries changed to screams as the boiling concoction clung to their bodies. They began falling backward onto the others where the paste-like substance would also get on them.
There was a vicious smile on her face. “Read that in a book, you assholes!
“Ready weapons!” Brandy ordered.
Tim chuckled and drew the Sig from the shoulder holster. He waited until the flour and water had gotten on as many as it looked like it was going to. Then he raised the pistol.
Rifles and pistols were raised by the others on the wall.
“Target the ones who aren’t already injured!”
I felt the great swell of pride that coursed through Tim as he watched his daughter.
“Open fire!”
Tim pulled the trigger and the man he was aiming at toppled with a bullet in his brain. He calmly shifted aim and another head blossomed. This one was a female.
Sometimes a person needs to be an equal opportunity killer in this fallen world.
Chapter 6
“Here’s where it gets nasty,” Brandy said as several of her people placed the rifles on the ground at their feet. “We’re out of ammo.”
She drew the gladius from the sheath at her side. “Now we get bloody.”
Tim shot the last round from the Sig and I muttered, “Going to have to get more mags from the Farmers.”
The mag released and he started feeding cartridges into it at a rapid rate.
“Damnit, man,” Brandy said as she saw the speed the shells were filling the mag.
“Lots of practice,” he said as the last one slid into place.
The savages hadn’t reached the edge of the wall yet and he leaned over and began firing down into them. Sixteen shots and twelve dead.
A little sloppy, Childers said.
“Give me a break,” Tim said. “It’s been twenty years.”
“What?” Brandy asked, looking over toward him.
“Nothing,” he said.
As the first head popped over the wall, Brandy took it off with the sword.
Good execution, Childers said.
Quite good, Gaunt agreed.
Those two agreeing hardly ever happened and it was worthy of notice.
Use the strength, I said.
Tim nodded and stepped close to the edge to punch the first savage who topped the wall in our area. The head jerked back at an odd angle.
The savages kept coming and they died as they topped the wall.
Then the wave slacked and we heard a thump as something hit the building between the front wall and the right wall.
“Shit! They crashed a truck into Building A!” someone yelled. “They’re inside!”
Tim leapt from the wall into the courtyard just as they poured from the building.
“More of your area, Mathew,” he said and let me step forward inside my mind.
My blade was in my hand and I charged toward the screaming savages. I glanced left to see a huge form slam into them as well. Two others dropped from the walls to take up positions on the right and left of Wilson Poe. Peggey’s rapier flashed and Joe Green’s twin swords blurred. There was a wall of steel when the savages reached them. It channeled them in my direction.
If you don’t mind, Mathew?
I grinned.
“What have we here?” Stephen Gaunt said as I let him out. “You’ve brought me playthings.”
I glided forward under Stephen’s control and slipped under the swinging club of the first attacker. The blade flashed and the man dropped the club to clutch his abdomen where his intestines were trying to spill from the gash I had left. He toppled forward but I was already ten feet away severing an Achilles’ tendon. Then a femoral artery was sliced.
I slipped up behind a woman and pulled her chin up with my left hand as the right flashed across her throat.
“This won’t hurt . . . much,” I whispered in her ear. Then I was gone again into the crowd.
“Blow the charges!” I heard Brandy order.
I saw someone in the very center of the courtyard throw a lever but nothing happened.
“Something’s wrong, ma’am!”
“Son of a . . .”
I saw two more forms drop from the right wall. One was the guy she had called Hillbilly and the other she had called Jonny.
They slipped into the building.
“What are they . . . ?” I heard from the wall above me.
CRUMPT . . . CRUMPT.
Debris exploded from the opening the savages were pouring from and I heard screams. Then the whole building shuddered.
“Shit!” Poe yelled. “Back up!”
The Squires all ran away from the building as it collapsed straight down on top of over a hundred savages and a couple of damned brave men. The debris cloud exploded outward and I went into it after the surviving attackers. All that the rest of them heard were screams and maybe laughter.
Stephen enjoys his job a bit more than is comfortable for most folks. Most think Stephen is crazy, but there’s a need for his brand of crazy in this fallen world.
Chapter 7
As the debris began to settle, we could see what the corner of the Bastion that had formerly been Building A looked like. It was a pile of rubble that would be almost impossible to navigate.
Brandy moved up beside me. “Those magnificent crazy bastards. They set the charges off manually.”
I looked toward her and saw the pain on her face.
“Looks like they’re coming back for the walls!”
She grimaced and I could feel the fury growing inside Tim Bolgeo.
Can’t go out there while we’re needed on the wall, he said inside my head.
“I know,” I muttered and jumped the distance to land on the wall again. “We leave the wall and they get in, everyone dies.”
I pulled the Sig and refilled the mag as I watched them come down the street. As soon as the mag slammed back into the pistol I racked it and emptied it into the front of the approaching savages. Fourteen bodies were trampled by the others.
I managed to refill the mag again and unload it with a similar result, then the horde started back up the wall.
I moved back a step and over to the center of the wall where I could go whichever direction I needed.
“You want this?” I asked Tim.
You’re doing better than I was, he answered. Been gone for too long.
I nodded and shot forward as one of the savages topped the wall between two of the defenders. My foot slammed into his chest with a crunch and the body flew backward over his allies’ heads. He landed twenty feet away from the wall on top of a screaming woman.
One of the defenders staggered back as a blade sank into his neck where the armor met the helm. I jumped twenty feet to land where he had been, then hit the woman who had just topped the wall with an open hand that sent her sailing backward.
“Karen! Medic!” Brandy yelled and several people scrambled from the center of the defended area. They ran up the stairs to pull the wounded figure down toward the ground.
She stepped into the spot beside me. “I have this position.”
I nodded and stepped back to where I could watch for any that got through. One got particularly close to Brandy and one of the twelve blades I wore sank into his right eye.
Almost every one of the defenders had taken damage as the sun began to drop behind the buildings to our west, but the horde had not broken through. Then they fell back.
Everyone stood atop the wall breathing heavily. Swords hung from exhausted hands and the bodies were piled halfway up the wall on the outside.
I watched the savages retreat into the growing darkness with a grim smile as Tim stepped forward again.
“They’ve sworn for years they would storm our walls,” Brandy said. “They would have, without you and the Society.”
“They almost had us until those two blew that building.”
“Hillbilly always swore he’d go out blowing himself up,” she said. “I didn’t think he would actually do it. His name was Scott Tackett but we always called him Hillbilly because he came from West Virginia.”
She shook her head, “And damn if Jonny Minion didn’t do the same. It took two to blow the charges that would take the building down. There wasn’t any hesitation in either of them.”
“Brave men,” Tim said.
“Ma’am,” the medic yelled from the center. “We lost Ken.”
“Damn,” she muttered and turned to the tired men on the walls. “I have to go check on things.”
“Ma’am.” The closest of the men nodded.
“They’re regrouping,” Tim said. “Would be a good time to see to the wounded. I’ll watch the wall.”
“They won’t be back ’til morning,” Brandy said. “Phobes don’t fight at night.”
“Phobes?”
“They hate books, they’re bibliophobes.”
Tim grunted.
“We’ll get some rest and see to the wounded,” she said. “Then we get ready to do it again tomorrow.”
“I don’t think there will be any fighting tomorrow,” Tim said as he looked out into the darkness. “They’ve made a fatal error.”
“What?” she looked at him in confusion. “What error?”
“I don’t have to be on this wall any longer,” he said.
My head dropped a fraction and her eyes widened as she saw the transformation. My features became those of someone else. It was the same face but every feature had shifted. As my head raised my mouth curled up in a wide smile.
“Dad?”
“Not at the moment, luv,” I said in Gaunt’s breathy voice. “Stephen Gaunt at your service. Your father has requested my assistance. He is good at what he does, as is Mathew, and William. But I am the best at what I do. And, oh, the things I am going to do.”
She swallowed.
I removed the long coat and held it out to her, “Please be a dear and hold this for me. Mathew would be so upset if I wore it where I am going. Phobes, you say? I wonder if they are afraid of the dark. If they are not, already, they will be. Perhaps it is time for a lesson.”
I leapt over the parapet rail and landed on the pile of bodies. Another jump took me out past the pile where I faded into the night.
Stopping, I heard voices from the wall. I recognized Poe’s voice. “Did he just give you the coat?”
“Yes. He said Mathew would be upset if he wore it where he was going.”
“Looks like someone is going to have a bad night, ma’am. Did he say his name?”
“Stephen Gaunt,” she answered.
“Did someone say Stephen Gaunt?” Joe Green asked.
“Yep” Poe said.
“If it was any other day, I would say those poor bastards. But, today? Serves them right.”
“He’s only one man.”
“Not really,” Poe said. “I agree with Joe. I’d pity the idiots out there if they hadn’t just spent the day trying their best to kill us. As it is, screw ’em.”
I grinned and slipped out into the night toward the Phobes as they set up their camps.
There are more dangerous things than savage, book-burning cultists in this fallen world.
Chapter 8
I sat, patiently, on the edge of the campsite watching the sleeping Phobe. His eyes opened and he sat up.
“Hello, sleepyhead,” Gaunt said. “We’ve been waiting for you.”
The man looked to his right and left with growing horror. There had been thirty-two people arrayed around the fire. Now there were thirty-one obvious corpses. Obvious because their heads had been severed and placed atop their prone bodies. All of them were facing him.
He screamed and leapt to his feet to run but I was next to him faster than any human should possibly be.
“No, no, we have things to discuss.”
I grabbed the man by his neck and dragged him from the camp. He whimpered as he found himself being placed in the single open position where fifteen living, but unmoving people sat.
I put stiffened fingers into a spot so quickly he didn’t even see the hand move and placed him in the open spot in my neat rows of four.
“Now, the lesson begins,” Stephen said.
He turned and walked to a spot where all sixteen of them could see him. “Throughout history people have destroyed cultures and left ruin. Some of them even burned all records of the defeated but there is an inherent folly in doing so. You wished to destroy the books that these folks have spent so many years collecting. They wish to preserve what knowledge they can and you want to destroy it. The folly of such a goal is quite obvious if you only look at it. If you destroy all knowledge of the past, you are doomed to repeat it. Herein is the lesson.”
He pointed to them. “I chose to keep one of you for each fifty. If I had removed all of you, who would tell the following generations of your folly? As it is, this job falls to you. In about a half of an hour the first of you I brought to this place will regain the use of his—pardon me—her limbs. After the rest of you join her, you will go back to your people and tell them of the horrible fate that awaits them if they ever return. Because if they do, I will also return. And if so, I will not be as forgiving as I have been this night.”
I stood up and walked toward the Bastion. Leaving sixteen horrified Phobes behind.
* * *
Karen Boyd looked up as I entered the warehouse-sized library in the facility that had been created as an underground bunker before the war. She was the medic from the battle who had spent the last few days patching up the wounded. I could feel the wonder that filled Tim as I gazed at the many shelves of books. I couldn’t help but feel some of that wonder as well. Just the monumental task of gathering them was not lost on me. I’d dug and scavenged all through this city.
“Mister Kade,” she said. “We can’t thank you enough for what you did. If there’s anything we can do, please let us know.”
Oh, my, Stephen said in my head as he saw a stack of books.
“Might I trouble you for a few of those?” he asked. “I know someone who would dearly love to read them.”
Softie, I said.
“I’m sure we can spare a few.”
I nodded and continued toward the person I had come to the library to meet. I stepped back and let Tim take the lead.
“You’re leaving again,” she said.
“I would love nothing more than to stay here,” he said. He tapped the side of his head. “Mathew has started something we’ve all been needing. He’s walking a path of redemption. All of us did some pretty awful things for people who didn’t deserve it. He wonders what drives him so hard sometimes. He did things he’s not proud of but he isn’t the only one in here. That drive comes from the sins of a thousand souls. Or however many of us there are in here. We have a responsibility to the Society and a bunch of Warlords who want to bring civilization back to this broken city. I know Tim Bolgeo died twenty years ago in Los Angeles, but I’m still here. I will always be here. If you don’t mind, I would like to stop by and visit from time to time.”
There were tears in her eyes as she wrapped her arms around him. “You’re welcome here anytime, Dad.”
She gave me an extra squeeze. “And all the rest of you.”
She stepped back. “There’s a big dinner tonight and I expect you to be there. You can’t go until everyone gets to thank you.”
I nodded.
“I’m going to go get things underway,” she said and made her way out of the library.
I picked up the first book Karen had laid on the table and sat down. “It is Tuesday.”
If you don’t mind?
“Of course,” I said. He was the last one I would expect to ask. Perhaps the time with us had even changed him.
Stephen opened the book. “One fish, two fish, red fish, blue fish. . . .”
There was a sort of movement in the cage inside my mind as Luca happily listened to the words.
* * *
I watched as Brandy raised her glass in the air. The room fell into silence.
“Before we take part in this wonderful dinner Connie and Charmalee have prepared for us I would like to raise a glass. To fallen comrades,” she said.
“Fallen comrades,” I answered along with the others, feeling the pride Tim felt in his daughter. Joe sat on my left and Poe on the right. Peggey was down about halfway on the other side of the huge table where she had been talking to several of the people she had met on her previous encounter with the Bastion.
“Ken Roy,” she said.
A tall man down at the far end of the huge table stood. “I met Ken as we fought together to escape a Warlord named the General fourteen years ago. We found our way here after meeting several of the Explorers. He never regretted joining the Bastion and he died protecting her.”
“Ken Roy,” Brandy nodded.
“To Jonny Minion,” she said and another stood.
“Jonny came to us several years ago. We never knew his last name, he just took the name of Minion. He was driving a big truck that surprised us all. There weren’t many vehicles still being used in the city. He had a trailer full of canned vegetables that we all enjoyed and stayed after he met us. He was a kind soul and selfless all the way until the end. He loved this place, he loved the people, and he loved arguing with Hillbilly.”
“Jonny Minion!”
“Hillbilly . . . Scott Tackett,” she said. “He showed up one day, shot and near death. After he recovered, he started working with Gabe in the forge. Used to be a diesel mechanic before the Fall, which explained why he and Jonny always argued. No truck driver is ever going to get along with a diesel mechanic.”
There were chuckles around the room.
“The two of them were arguing on top of the wall,” Joe added. “Counting how many of the Phobes they had killed.”
I remembered an old movie with an elf and a dwarf and smiled.
The names and stories continued and I listened to each one as the defenders talked about their friends who had fallen.
“Tomorrow, we will have to go out and clean up the bodies and burn them,” Brandy said. “But tonight, we celebrate a victory that wouldn’t have happened without the aid of our new friends. So eat, drink, and be merry! For tomorrow we all may . . . work our asses off!”
I watched the people of the Bastion as they cheered and I realized once again that there were things worth saving in this fallen world.
*
CHRISTOPHER WOODS
Christopher Woods, teller of tales, writer of fiction, and professional liar, is the author of nine novels and a multitude of short stories. He has been writing for six years and with novels in the Soulguard series, The Fallen World series, and the Four Horsemen Universe, he feels he has found his calling. As a carpenter of thirty years, he spends his time building, whether it be homes or worlds. If you wish to see his work, at least the written work, you can find it here: www.theprofessionalliar.com.