Warlord: Dervish (30 page)

“Bronson!” Deirdre called and he sat up, chucking the pistol, catching the AK-47 she tossed towards him, armed men stampeding down the stairs. The Kalashnikov in his hands sounded a staccato rage, Deirdre firing from the other side of the hall, insurgents tumbling over one another, hollering and dying.

A round impacted the ceramic plate covering his chest and Bronson trained his fire on the man, dousing the wall with the man’s blood.

He tried to rise and it was harder this time, his back screaming at him. He had to use the emptied AK as a crutch to get to his feet. Bodies were crumpled on the stairs and floor, bloody and broken. He looked down and there was a lot of red on the floor, his own. Deirdre reached Bronson and coaxed him forward, taking his rifle away and handing him a fresh one.

“You’re on fire, Bronson.” His body armor was smoking.

“Nah, I’m good.”

An RPG blast sounded. As they stepped into the next room, Areya placed an empty launcher on the ground, a smoking hole in the wall. Chan was propped in a corner, still on his feet, blood drenched and face waxen.

Deirdre looked into the hall at the coiling sand that followed. “Keep moving!” The Dyshka blazed as the cloud streamed into the room with the machine gun.

She ushered a staggering, bleeding Bronson into the final room. They were out of RPGs. There would be no more breaching walls, no more hopping from house to house. This large, cool room with rugs on its floor would be their final stand. Chan leaned against a wall, his face drained of color, his back sopping wet from his wounds. Distressed and agitated, Areya glanced from the wounded men to the vibrating door that marked the street.

“Areya.” Deirdre spoke to the child from her place in the doorway. “Just try and take it easy, love. Just try and…”

A whispering drew her attention back to the hall where the wall of sand blotted out the passage. The lower half of the sand churned and simmered in place, accompanied by a roll of thunder. The lights in the hallway flickered.

Deirdre fired her AK into the sand, the bullets disappearing in the mists, shell casings pinging off the wall and floor. When the magazine ran dry she dragged it out and reloaded, calmly and deliberately. With thunderous reverberations the sand commenced to roll forward, swirling and foaming.

She fired the rifle until it was empty and backed into the room with the boy and the men, changing magazines, her last. Bronson had placed Areya against the wall, near the house’s entrance, stationing himself in front of the boy. He waved his pistol at Deirdre, beckoning her. Chan half stood, half slumped on the other side of the door, his eyes staring feverishly towards the hallway and the wisps of sand seeping into the room.

Deirdre stood next to Bronson, the stock of the AK tight against her side, the muzzle trained on the hallway door as it darkened with sand and shadow. Movement in the sand—wheeps as steel blades left their scabbards—and the first dervish came from the mists, its eyes afire, a scimitar in hand. Directly behind it a second, then a third and a fourth form materialized, menacing, mummified figures promising death. An array of exotic, edged weapons: recurved short knives; a cavalry dismounting bayonet that looked like a meat hook; a Turkish Yatagan, its twenty-one inch blade curved inward. The dervish filed quietly into the room as more loomed in the doorway, their eyes glowing firebrands.

“Dee.” She broke her gaze from the malignant specters, the barrel of her AK never wavering. Bronson gripped his M9 in a shaking hand, gesturing to the boy behind him. He meant to kill the child, to not let Areya fall at the hands of these monsters.

“No.” Her voice was resolute despite the hopelessness of their situation. “
Never
.” Deidre looked back at the dark, cloaked forms fanning about the room, the fear and dread on her face replaced by determination and rage. “
No
,” she repeated, taking Areya by the arm—“Come, love!”

—pulling him with her to the door, the metal bars that blocked it clanking on the floor. She would take the boy into the street, into the sand, the better to meet their ends out there rather than here in this room.

Deirdre pushed the door to the street open and bright sunlight flooded the room, forcing her hand to her face. Areya squinted and looked away. The sandmen halted in their tracks. Deirdre stepped out of the light, to the side of the door, a whirligig of motion ripping through, a turbulent storm from the heavens cast down upon them, a blur of sand and steel. The motion stopped abruptly, particles and matter adhering, coalescing into a shape, a form, a man-thing bedecked in torn and grungy military fatigues. On its back it wore an enormous Kite shield, like a turtle’s shell. Its eyes flared and diminished and it stood tall in the room with them, a Squad Automatic Weapon in his arms.

“Jason…”

Belts of 5.56mm snaked their way through the SAW’s receiver, a tongue of flame licking from its muzzle. The closest dervish disintegrated under the hail of lead as others sprang forward, blades poised overhead. The barrel of the light machine gun whipsawed left and right, strafing the things, Deirdre and Bronson joining in, a barrage from her AK, rapid cracks from his 9mm.

“Get out!” Jason’s voice bellowed between salvos, hosing the dark specters, ruby red eyes extinguishing as their bodies crumbled. Chan pushed himself from one foot to another, against the wall, leaving a streak of red, until he pitched through the doorway. Bronson hopped out of the house, one arm around Deirdre’s shoulders, Areya on his other side, helping to support him.

The Sand Men

The streets were lit up as if in daytime, yet no sun familiar to their eyes shined overhead. Swirling clouds of dust glowed red, streams of gas funneling in the empyrean, bright spots winking to life as young stars were born. An anomaly burned at street level up ahead.

A blur of motion emerged from the house, streaking by.

“Jason!” Deirdre cried and it cohered, assuming human form.

“You movin’ too fast, Jay main.” Bronson struggled to reload his pistol. He managed to lose the spent magazine in the street but couldn’t work the fresh mag in place.

Chan had staggered on a few yards before collapsing face-first in the street. “Up!” The thing that was both Jason and somehow not Jason lifted Chan—“
Guilao
!”—back to his feet. “Stay away from there!” It called a warning to the others as they neared a narrow, darkened alleyway. The woman and the boy steered Bronson clear of the passage’s mouth, Deirdre covering the ominous depths with her rifle.

“We have to go through that.” It indicated the anomaly shining bright in front of them, its center white, its periphery purple-sputtering lights that flared and spider-webbed, as if electric. “Trust me,” he told the group, then Deirdre, “You and him first,” he meant Areya.

“But—”

“Just go. You’ll see. You’ll be fine.”

“Jason. Is it really you?”

She reached out, touching his hand.

“Yes.” His eyes gleamed, alive like embers.

“Will I ever see you again?”

“I don’t know.”

“Don’t say that.”

Within the dervish, its receding humanity touched on something Kaku had said, about the possibility of dimensions nestled within dimensions. “I’ll be close.”

The boy was looking up at the sand man, not so much in apprehension as in awe. And as it smiled down on the child, it was vaguely aware of just how ghastly its grin must appear. Yet Areya smiled back, nodding his head, thankful.

Deirdre took the boy by his shoulders, stepping into the light. She turned back one final time. “I’ll see you on the other side?”

“Just look for me.”

The woman and the boy stepped through the cosmic portal and were gone. The purple strands flared, streaking out like lines writ in the air, before collapsing back onto themselves, into the center of illumination, the wormhole winking and closing, gone.

Chan was leaning against it, dead. The sand man let him down.

“You and me, main.”

Bronson stood unsteadily, facing the thing that had been his friend.

“Shit, Bronson…” It said, as if it was seeing the soldier for the first time. “You shot.”

“It’s dark again…”

Shadows had fallen upon the city, the sky gone black, pin points of light against the vault, distant stars and galaxies.

“This some real Twilight Zone, shit, huh Jay?”

A wink of light flowered nearby and Bronson sagged into the other’s arms, a shot reverberating up the street. The dervish wheeled him around, out of the sniper’s direct fire, sinking to the street.

“Bronson…Bronson…Bronson…” It looked down on the mess of a man it cradled, realizing this was no good, this was a man it had called friend, a man it had come to trust. It repeated his name.

A round glanced off the shield tethered to its back, the shield between them and their assailant.

“I’m fuckin’ shot again, main…” There was blood in Bronson’s mouth. “I’m fuckin’ shot, Jay.”

The sand man faced the lone gunman walking down the street. Snork. The mercenary worked the lever of his M24 as he came, ejecting a shell from the sniper rifle. He was a wreck himself, all bloody and bedraggled, face besmirched with streaks of grime and grease. And the look on his face. Like the cat that got the canary.

“What’d I tell ya—?” He yelled out at the two as he came, pausing where he was, sighting and firing, another bullet sparking off the shield. “Said the next time I see you—” his words meant for Bronson, “it’d be through the scope, and you—” he aimed his words at the thing he mistook for Jason, yanking back the slide on his weapon “—you look like I feel. Fuck is wrong with—”

The dog came in low and launched itself for his throat. Snork barely reacted in time, his arm coming up to his face, the dog’s jaws locking on his forearm. He cursed and spun around, trying to dislodge it. As he did, a second canine loped across the street, joining the first, snarling furiously as it leaped on the mercenary.

“What’s happening to him?” Bronson whispered, his voice wavering.

“Dogs.”

A third and fourth dog bore Snork to the ground, his sniper rifle useless on its sling, the dogs shaking frenziedly as they clamped their jaws deep into his flesh. A puppy caught up to the others and stood some distance off, yapping at the commotion as they rolled around in the street, mauling the man.

A crack sounded and a dog dropped, unmoving. A second crack and another dog whined, stepping away from the fracas, wounded. Snork pressed the muzzle of his pistol to the side of a dog’s skull and blew it open. The fourth dog wouldn’t let go of his arm until he put three bullets into its body.

The wounded mutt growled at him and started to hop away. Snork’s couldn’t straighten his ravaged arm. The limb shaking as he fired his pistol, dirt and sand boiling up from the street at the dog’s heels. The pistol sounded again and the dog flopped over in its tracks.

“Fuck!” There was pain and anger in Snork’s voice as he stood, brushing himself off, the dirt, the blood, his flesh gouged, peeling back on his arm. The puppy continued to bark at him, a high pitched yip. “Fuck you!” Snork shot at the dog but missed, raising the dirt a foot in front of the pup, which backed up growling.

“I ain’t forgot about you!” Snork screamed at the two men huddled under the shield. He sighted down his savaged arm and fired the remaining shells from his pistol, the rounds plinking off the Kite shield. “Fuck if I did.” One of Snork’s hands was mauled, awash with blood and the white of bone. He dumped the magazine from his M9 and pressed the pistol between his body and his wounded arm, fishing another magazine from the pistol pouch he wore. “Fuck!” It wasn’t easy loading the pistol one handed, and the little dog had shuffled forward, barking at him again.

“Said the next time I seen you,” he dragged a mangled foot behind him. “Said It’d be through the scope.” He gestured with the pistol. “This’ll do.” He was passing the darkened alleyway—“Come on you fucks”—when the scorpion’s pincer darted from the black, snapping shut around the pudgy man’s midsection. Snork let loose a howl of agony and alarm, the scorpion snatching him into the alley. The barrel and stock of his rifle—slung across his body—wedged the protesting mercenary in the alley mouth. He aimed into the dark, firing the M9 once before the creature pulled Snork completely into the gloom, the sling snapping off his M24, his screams lost in the murky stretches of the alleyway, receding into the depths of the city.

The puppy stood at the entrance to the alley, yipping after the man.

The sand man carried Bronson to the closest house, which was empty. It struggled to remember how one was meant to deal with a situation like this, stripping Bronson’s armor from his body, peeling his fatigues off him. The black man’s body was punctured and lacerated, discolored from contusions, marred.

“We were…we were on the road, into Tehran…”

Bronson’s back was raw, furrows of skin ripped from him.

“…our Strykers were stalled on a bridge. No one knew what the…what the fuck was going on…”

Each time he breathed, blood welled from a hole in his chest and trickled out of his mouth. The red-eyed shade found Bronson’s bandages and packed them into the chest wound, hands guided by instinct.

“…Warthog come in, A-10…must have thought we were Revolutionary Guards…”

The sand man did what it could to staunch the man’s bleeding, to dress his wounds. This man had meant something to him.

“…killed fifteen men in my platoon…”

This man had protected him.

“…few weeks later, I get out the hospital…I tracked him down, the pilot…”

There had been a time of confinement, of terror and uncertainty.

“…he was in a bar in Ahvaz. Drinking. Fucka was drunk…I’d be drunk too I was him…”

This man had been a voice in the dark, a reassuring presence.

“…they’d had an investigation, but no charges…it was an accident…”

He’d been a friend in a friendless place.

“I sat down next to him at the bar…told him who I was…he looked at me, kind a like he knew why I was there. And then I shot him.”

“Why you tellin’ me this?” The red in his eyes had died down, and Bronson found himself looking into the face of the man he knew.

“…don’t know. It’s why I’m…why I’m here…But thanks, Jay main…thanks for listening.”

“Yeah, sure.”

“The MPs that arrested me…said I must a had…must a had a death wish.”

“Bronson.”

“Right. Jay…” For all the pain he must have been in, the soldier looked concerned. “…does it…does it hurt?”

“No.”

“…cause me? I feel like shit, main.”

Jason hit him with a morphine syrette. “How’s that feel?”

“That…” Bronson’s eyes fluttered. “That feel real nice…”

“Stay here.”

Jason took Bronson’s pistol, loading it with the final magazine from the man’s pouch. He left Bronson, stepping out under the crab nebulae, ignoring Chan’s body leaking in the street, ignoring the sniper rifle lying in the dirt at the mouth of the alley, its sling snapped in two. Turning a corner, he was drawn towards the cannonade. A reddish ash snowed down about him, melting as it touched his head and shoulders.

A feral dog trotted past him, keeping well away, a human hand in its jaws.

He spotted an AK, the weapons ubiquitous in this city, in this world,
this
world, which he couldn’t help but think wasn’t so much his world any longer. He was leaving it, becoming something else. This knowledge did not disturb him. He no longer feared the sand or the things he would find in it. He stuck Bronson’s pistol in his pants and took the AK.

He passed a courtyard fronted by a dilapidated wall, sections of it crumbled into nothing more than pulverized building materials. Within the courtyard a grove of palm and date trees, and amid these the metal hulk of a mechanized warrior, unmoving. What was left of his curiosity piqued, he stepped into the yard, over the ornate gates in the dust.

The lower half of the Mech’s cockpit was retracted, revealing the inner workings of the machine and its pilot’s chamber. He became aware of another’s presence and turned his head, eyeing the man who stood near the house, his pants at his ankles, the wall before him stained with fresh urine. The pilot’s face blanched, and as it did, Jason remembered him lying dead, face similarly bereft of color, at a later time in the man’s future.

“Chan.”

The Mech pilot ran, nearly tripping over his pants, disappearing around the side of the house. Jason did not pursue him. He stood contemplating the Mech, a leviathan of iron and alloys unknown to him, bristling with weapons systems. The roar of a truck’s engine sounded behind him, punctuated by the thundering of a heavy machine gun, and he went to the wall, peering between shot out cinder bricks.

A pick up truck careened wildly down the street, the insurgents in the bed clinging on, one standing behind the dual grips of the .50 cal., the weapon shaking on its mount as the gunner poured lead back at whatever pursued them. The truck roared past, tracer rounds from the .50 streaking down the street, until a Mech loped by, long, exaggerated steps. It ran with one arm extended, the auto-cannon embedded in its forelimb blazing as fifty caliber rounds sparkled off its armor. As the Mech passed Jason’s position, the rocket launcher housed over its left shoulder snapped into place and vomited three missiles in rapid succession, the rockets screaming down the street at the truck, explosions followed by more fire from the fifty and a squeal as the truck took a corner.

He waited for the street to quiet or produce its next act. No sooner had the sounds of the running battle between the Mech and the pick up died down than a group of little boys came into his field of vision, turning and firing their AK-47s as they ran, screaming, chased by something inhuman. The boy in the lead… there was something familiar about him, he was not black like the others. As the child sprinted ahead to a house across from him, Jason recognized Areya. The kid flung himself into the house and locked the other boys out.