Borderlands: The Fallen Page 16

  But he couldn’t go on any farther. He was exhausted. Got to. If you don’t, you’ll die right here. Keep going.

  Zac groaned, but forced himself to move onward, along the edge of the plain, just under the bluff, watching for tunnel entrances, pits, hoping to see water. Seeing nothing but dust, sand, rock, and, to his left, the glassy edge of the plain.

  He seemed to get heavier and heavier. He thought of dropping the shotgun, his pack, the artifacts, everything. Just to feel lighter.

  No. Find a place to rest …

  He rounded a gentle outthrust in the bluff … and felt himself pitch into despair.

  Four skags, bigger than any he’d seen, were just thirty paces away. And they were sniffing, turning their ungainly heads toward him.

  He’d come all this way for nothing. Pandora had been tormenting him, playing cat and mouse with him. Now it was done playing …

  “All right you hellhole, swallow me up!” someone shouted.

  Zac realized he’d shouted it himself. He raised the shotgun, cocked it …

  He could take a couple of the repulsive creatures out before he went down. Then if his body was found, maybe his son would know that he’d fought to the end.

  His son. His wife. The deal with Rans Veritas. The DropCraft. Failure. Shame. Futility … Death.

  The skags suddenly charged him, coming in a phalanx. He fired the shotgun and the nearest one squealed, one of its three jaws shot away, but it kept coming. Zac squeezed the trigger again—

  Nothing. The shotgun was jammed.

  Zac shouted, “Damn you!” And he raised the shotgun by the butt, to use it for a club. He waited for the oncoming skag, just a few bounds away from him …

  Then he heard a hiss, and the skag stumbled, its whole body twisting, contorting in pain as it sizzled in a purple puddle. A combat rifle stuttered a series of bangs, and the other skags squealed with pain, turned to run. Another hiss, another splash of purple, and the nearest retreating skag was splashed with acid, rolling in agony on the ground …

  Zac stared, blinking, wondering if he was dreaming all this. Then he said, “Oh.”

  “That’s right,” said Berl, behind him. “‘Oh.’ ”

  Swaying, Zac dropped the shotgun and turned slowly around, wiping dust from his eyes. In the dimness he could see the glowing eyes of the drifter, above Berl, not far away. Bizzy had fried the skags with his toxic exudate. And Berl had fired the combat rifle—which he was now pointing right at Zac. Berl was standing underneath Bizzy, between the stiltlike legs, like a bird in a warped cage. His combat rifle gleamed in the moonlight.

  “Well, I’ll say this, young fella, you’ve got guts,” Berl declared. “You were ready to go down fightin’. You might get the chance to die proud pretty quick here. Only reason I ain’t shot you is, you’re carrying my goods. And I don’t want them busted up by stray bullets. You push me though, I’ll just see if I can put one in your head …”

  “Berl … I’m sorry.” Zac spat dust, spoke in a raspy burr. “But you know, you had me tied up. I was your prisoner. I couldn’t stay there like that. And I could’ve taken more than what I did, when I left.”

  “I wouldn’ta cared none about the shotgun, nor the water. I’ve got weapons and ammo and water. But you took something that matters to me, more’n anything, Zac Finn! The artifacts! Includin’ the one that points toward the crash site. Now, that was one big fat mistake, boy. Also it was a big fat mistake not to cover your trail better. Because here I am! And now it’s high time I figure out exactly how I’m gonna deal with you.”

  You can be food or you can be a child bearer,” chuckled the tunnel rat. The wizened, wiry man pointed a clawed, dirt-crusted finger at Marla and added thoughtfully in his whispery voice, “Or—you can be first a child bearer … and then food. That is the most likely outcome. Yes, yessss …”

  Trying to cover herself better, though her clothes were badly torn from tunnel rats’ claws, Marla cringed back against the wall of the stone cell, telling herself: At least they’re not going to eat you right away. There’s hope.

  Maybe Vance would come, after all, fight his way to her, and save her from them.

  But she knew he wouldn’t. Vance was just the wrong kind of guy for that. He was tough, and brave, but he was not going to take that big a risk for her—or for anybody else.

  The tunnel rat had removed his gas mask when he’d first squatted down to inspect her. His face was rather rodentlike itself, but human. His eyes were large; his nose pronounced, his chin weak. He was bald, except for an occasional random bristle of hair. His skin was pallid, and speckled with crusty sores. A smell came off him like week-old roadkill. He wore a leather jerkin over a long-sleeve shirt of some synthetic, its glossiness dulled with dirt. His trousers and boots were worn, coming apart. As he inspected her he toyed with a machine pistol of some kind, itself so dirty she marveled that it could work. The tunnel rat had a shield on at his waist, its energy field glowing faintly.

  Behind him, holding up a dim lantern, was another tunnel rat wearing his gas mask and carrying a very large shotgun. He seemed dressed in a hodgepodge of clothing, probably taken from various victims. Hanging from his belt loop was a string of five sausage-like objects. After a moment she realized they were human fingers. They were brown and dried, like the jerky she had made of skag meat. Finger jerky—for a snack, she supposed. Whose fingers were they? Had they ever imagined their fingers would end up as dried meat on a tunnel rat’s belt?

  A third tunnel rat was a shadowy shape in the opening behind the one with the shotgun. No hope of slipping past these three for now. The only way she could hope to do it was through cunning, biding her time. For that, she needed time to bide. Which meant she’d have to start stalling.

  Especially as the one hunkered in front of her was creeping closer …

  “Maybe … I will test your possibilities for mating,” said the tunnel rat, scooching closer. “I have the status to mate with you! I’m the chief tunneler here!” He showed his yellow, filed teeth in a rattish smirk. “It was I who engineered the trap that captured you!”

  “Oh really!” Marla said, mimicking excitement. She raised her hands to hold him back—but trying to make the gesture look as if it were saying, Wait, I’m very interested in hearing about this. “That was brilliant! However did you do it? I mean, isn’t it solid rock around here?”

  “Here? No, much about here is soft sandstone, not so solid, with pockets of dirt. I can tunnel through it with my bare hands. But I don’t use my hands much—I have tools, I have a good tunneling equipment! We took it from the miners who were here—after we killed them. But before we ate them.” Sequence seemed important to him.

  “So—what did you do first with the pit?” she asked, feigning interest as best she could. Keeping the quaver of fear out of her voice wasn’t easy. “I mean—to set the trap you used to catch our truck.”

  The tunnel rat scratched the bristly place where his chin should be. “Well of course, we have tunnels everywhere in this area—because the long-ago explosion here, long before men came to this world, created many cracks and possibilities of tunnels hereabout. So, this is where we come for our annual feast! All of us, those who are not the enemies of the tribal boss, come from around the continent, and converge here! My tribe comes early, to prepare! Next full moon—we feast! It was when we came to prepare for such a gathering that we noted traffic in the area! Our vibration forks rang to tell us: Men coming! Trucks, outrunners, outriders, sandtrackers! So we built the barrier—under my supervision of course! Just a few explosives, carefully placed, and a little leverage applied, and there you have it! The ideal method for pushing your truck onto the glass plain! There, we have traps, and tunnels hidden! And we made sure you were likely to drive onto ours! I ordered the pit dug out just hours before you arrived! So fast, so cleverly do we work! And crack, down you come!”

  “That’s amazing!” she said, clapping her hands. “Very impressive!”

  “Tunne
l droppings!” sneered the tunnel rat with the shotgun. “She’s playing with you, Broncus! Toying with your affections! She means not a word of it!”

  “Droppings back to you, Flemmel!” hissed Broncus, glancing back at the masked tunnel rat. “More likely she sees a fine opportunity for mating with one who can provide good burrowing, food meat, and warmth!”

  “True,” Marla said, trying not to gag.

  Broncus leered at her. “So—I am desirable, eh? Perhaps you may live longer than we had planned!”

  He moved toward her again, and she asked hastily, “But … tell me this—you wear gas masks, yet the air seems breathable here. More or less. So why … ?”

  “The masks? They are badges of honor! Like the helmets of ancient heroes! Once we needed them, in the old days, when my grandparents, and the others, they were attacked by the Psycho Midgets—terrible things happened to them. So they hid underground, in the mines they’d come here to work in, where there were many poison gases. And they chose not to go up again where the vicious little brutes dwell! How we hate them! How we love to sneak out at night and capture them as they sleep and bring them back for our cooking spits!”

  “You only go out at night? Except for the traps?”

  “Only at night! The sun is cruel!”

  Interesting, Marla thought. They dislike being in direct sunlight.

  Flemmel growled. “Listen to her—she wants information! She is interrogating you, Broncus! You cannot trust her!”

  “Of course I don’t trust her! I trust no one!” Broncus snapped. “But I know when a woman desires me!”

  “You have never had a woman,” Flemmel sneered.

  “I had one! She was dead when I found her, but I had her!” Broncus protested. “I know how to … to do it. What is done with a female!”

  “Ha! To a dead body, yes!”

  Marla thought it imperative to change the subject, and fast. “I’m sorry my companion Vance killed some of your people back at the truck. He was just trying to protect me. What will happen to the truck? Will you be able to get it out of the tunnel so you can drive it—at night?”

  “Oh, perhaps we could, but more likely we will strip it for parts, use them in the many devices we make down here! We have many skills! The body of the truck will make a good tunnel brace, for shaky places!”

  “Female, if you are so eager to please Broncus,” Flemmel said, “perhaps you might tell us where your friend has gone! This Vance of yours. If we knew where he goes to—we could capture him more easily!”

  “Oh, he was looking for something out here,” Marla said, shrugging. “An alien ship. He gave up trying to get to it. He said he was going to find the nearest way out of the glass plain and head back to … to the Trash Coast.” It seemed absurd to be protecting Vance. He had abandoned her. But she couldn’t help herself.

  Broncus was scowling—a revolting sight as it made his teeth project crookedly over his lower lip. “Did you say … an alien ship? That one? If he had found it—he would not be alive now! Even we do not dare to go near it! That vessel does strange things to those who approach it!”

  “You give her information with every babbling word!” Flemmel complained. “You are a good tunneler, but you never could control your tongue! Babble babble babble!”

  “Silence, Flemmel!” Broncus spat. “I am in charge here! You are next down in status, one lower than me, and do not forget it!”

  The evident rivalry between Flemmel and Broncus might be of use, she mused. If she could talk to Flemmel alone …

  “Now, I will rut with you,” said Broncus. “Lie on your back to facilitate the process.”

  “Ah, yes, well,” Marla said, “let me just, uh… .” She was stalling as she pretended to remove some of her clothing.

  She wondered if she could grab his gun and kill him and the other two. Probably not. If she got one, at least one of the other two would shoot her dead. And she would prefer that to letting this thing violate her.

  “You there, Broncus!” shouted someone from the doorway to the cell.

  Broncus turned. “Who? Ah!” He stood up, and made a peculiar rat-clutching kind of genuflection to the new visitor with his claws. “Engineer Gluck!”

  A tunnel rat pushed past Flemmel to stand over Marla, looking balefully down at her.

  He wore a rubber gas mask on his head, complete with snout filter and goggling eyes. But it was more elaborate than the others, studded with gold, and crested with a silver spike. His leather and metal outfit seemed a bit cleaner too, and his shoulders were decked out in braids. He reached up with a gloved hand and pushed the mask back on his head to get a better look at her.

  He was a little cleaner, a bit less obviously inbred. His lean face with its pointed chin and small eyes seemed not as rattish as Broncus. But as he spoke, she saw Gluck’s teeth were filed to points. “What goes on here? This is clearly a premium prisoner! All such are to be brought to me, for assessment!”

  Broncus wrung his hands, and ducked his head repeatedly, cowed by this superior being. “Yes, yes, Great Engineer, it is so! I was just checking her to make certain she had no weapons hidden on her person!”

  “Did I not hear you making your plans for rutting with her, Broncus? You do not have a tunnel status that gives you the possibility of rutting with a premium prisoner unless I sign off on it, in triplicate!”

  “I … I only spoke of rutting in the most maybe, possibly, could-be, might-be sense, Great Engineer!”

  “You are a subengineer—a mere tunnel digger! You have pretensions to be more!” sneered Gluck. “Don’t think I don’t know it! If you were not occasionally useful …”

  “I’m sorry, Great Engineer, but please be assured …”

  “Great Engineer—may I speak?” Marla said timidly. “I have information that may be of use to you.”

  The engineer—clearly the leader of this tribe—looked at her in surprise. “Oh, and what’s that, prisoner?”

  “Your man there, Flemmel—he tried to tell Broncus that he did not have sufficient status for such a thing! But Broncus would not listen! Flemmel, though—he was truly fiercely loyal to you.”

  “Indeed!” The engineer tittered skeptically. “And what do you know of tunnel status, sun-basker?”

  “I … have longed for the safety of the tunnels,” Marla said, as sincerely as she could manage. “I ask here, and there, of those who might know …”

  “No one knows but the Tribe!” insisted Gluck. “And as for your hopes—don’t get them too high!”

  “Of course, Great Engineer!” Marla said, genuflecting in the way she’d seen Broncus do. “But I cannot help thinking … that I am destined for the honor … the supreme tunnel status … of bearing your children!”

  “Pretentious creature!” Broncus said, slapping at Marla.

  “Silence, Broncus!” Gluck snarled. “I will decide this matter! Bring more troops, Flemmel, and take this prisoner to a locked cell. Have her securely guarded there! Indeed, guard her yourself! The tribes will soon converge! We have preparations to make for the feast. And we shall see what her part is to be in that feast …”

  The attack came at dawn, coming over the rim of the crater with the first sunlight, moments after Cal woke, rolling from his bedroll under a sandtracker.

  The chatter of the Zodiac Turret was what announced the attack: Roland’s tripod automatic weapon, set up to watch for enemies on the crater rim, hammered at the charging enemy. Wounding one; taking one down. Not stopping all of them.

  They came from the blaze of the rising sun—Psycho Midgets riding Primal Beasts. Six of them got past the Zodiac Turret, bounding over the rim, one of them heaving a barrel of explosives as it came. The explosives hit an outrider and covered it in flame. A man just waking up beside the outrider woke to find himself on fire—and ran screaming past Cal, flailing at himself.

  Cal gaped at the oncoming Primals—the bizarre sight of the midgets riding on the backs of pumped-up four-armed bipeds. A thrown axe whiz
zed past Cal’s head—then Roland grabbed him, pulled him out of the way of a Primal that stampeded past, the maniacal midget on its back cackling madly.

  At almost the same moment Roland fired a combat rifle from his hip, shooting a Psycho Midget off the back of a Primal. The little lunatic went down, but didn’t die immediately, and began crawling in circles as the Primal ran off in confusion.

  But Cal turned to see the other Primals rending their way through the mercenaries, smashing, crushing, slashing as they went. Primal picked up a mercenary and threw him at two others just as one of them was preparing a hand grenade—the grenade blew up, shattering all three men.

  Debris flew, smoke drifted, men screamed, guns boomed. Crannigan fired his Eridian rifle sloppily and missed—he was still disoriented from sleep and surprise—and then threw himself aside to avoid being trampled.

  Cal saw a merc grabbed by a Primal thundering by, the Psycho leaning down, whacking at the man’s neck with a short axe, severing it as the Beast dragged him along. The Primal tossed the severed head in the air, its neck streaming blood, spinning so the blood made red spirals; the Psycho, on cue, used the axe to strike the head like a baseball striking a bat, knocking it out of the crater.

  The Primals raged back and forth, around and around, crushing, slashing; their riders threw axes and shrieked in glee—and mercs fell. Shields flickered here and there, but most of the men had turned theirs off for the night to save power. The sentry had been killed almost instantly, at the beginning of the charge.

  Cal found he had his pistol and fired it at a Psycho Midget, then saw a red flower blossom in the center of its forehead. He threw himself flat, firing at the Primal as it thumped past. It bounded, screaming, out of the crater.

  Cal looked up from the ground to see Roland vaulting onto the back of a passing Primal, right behind the Psycho Midget riding it. Roland jerked the Psycho from its saddle and threw it in front of the Primal Beast so the Psycho’s own mount trampled it to death. The Primal reached back and slashed at Roland—who blew its brains out even as he rode it, and jumped off as it went tumbling down, the Primal plowing headfirst into the dust, skidding on its belly … dead. “Mess with the bull and you get the horns!” Roland shouted. “Come on, boys, spray ’em and slay ’em!” He pulled a sidearm and opened fire at another Primal.