Under the Eye of God (3 page)

Sawyer cocked his weapon loudly, but his voice sounded suddenly thin in the desert air. “Will you come quietly?”

Murdock turned around slowly and saw Sawyer for the first time. Her face seemed pinched and tiny and much too small for her massive head. Her expression, already red and furious, contorted further in crimson rage. Her chins flowed in great disgusting wattles of flesh. The fat rolled up and down her body as the enormous muscles underneath shifted and moved. Murdock billowed and undulated as she rose. And rose. And rose. . . .

“Hi,” said Sawyer. He gave her his most famous smile—

It didn't work.

Murdock's breath steamed. She lowered her head. She growled and started forward.

Sawyer fired.

The needle-beam ricocheted with a loud flash off Murdock's body-armor and blew a hole in the nearby wall. Sawyer stepped back, startled. He hadn't expected that. “I think I need a bigger gun.”

Now she charged. The mountain
moved
. She lowered her head and roared like a bull volcano. She came rumbling forward like an avalanche of flesh. Her speed amazed Sawyer. Her power nearly killed him. Her great head caught him full-force in the chest and pushed him right through the wall of the building behind him. They hurtled into a storeroom, through a supporting wall, and up against a tower of barrels, which exploded in all directions at once. Ceramic splints, wall panels, and ceiling tiles came crashing down around them, shattering and popping with sharp exploding noises. The lights swung crazily, the shadows twisted like snakes.

Finn Markham dropped from above, falling through a hole in the ceiling, grabbing at a two-by-four as he tumbled—it broke off in his hand, dropping him roughly to the floor.

“What kept you?” gasped Sawyer. Murdock pulled back, looked up—

Finn didn't take the time to answer. He started to swing the makeshift club, but Murdock caught him first, almost casually warding off his attack with one gigantic arm. The two-by-four splintered loudly into pieces.

“Aww, shit,” said Sawyer painfully. “Now I think you've made her mad.”

Murdock swung her other arm, backhanding Finn into the opposite wall. He crashed against it. It cracked ominously, held for an instant, and then tumbled him almost gently backward out into the alley. Finn lay flat on his back like an overturned cockroach. He stared up into the sky. “Pretty lights,” he said, blinking. He caught himself quickly and scrambled backward, back up onto his feet.

Murdock moved after him. She followed him out into the alley—

“Last warning,” Finn said, hurriedly clambering back to his feet. “Last chance to surrender peacefully.”

Murdock only growled, a terrible rumbling note of doom. The sound had an ominous quality.

Finn took a prudent step backward—and tripped over an empty barrel. He tumbled into the rubble behind it.

Murdock made a sound like an earthquake, only deeper. A
flesh
quake. She grunted and lowered her head. She began to move again—

But Sawyer acted first. Gasping with the effort, he levered himself painfully up. He staggered after Murdock. He touched a control on his belt. Plan B.

Rule Number One: Always have a Plan B.

Rule Number Two: See Rule Number One.

Lightning-bright suns flared suddenly in the sky. The blazing lights dazzled and blinded. The beams probed, swept, and pointed again, illuminating the shaded valleys of the desert with a frightening intensity. Even the Eye of God faded behind the startling glare.

The lightning-beams searched, hesitated, converged—and caught Murdock in the middle of an incredible wash of whiteness. Everything turned stark. The hulking fugitive froze. She looked up, blinking painfully at the glare. She deep-growled something in an unfamiliar language, a nasty curse, then turned and lumbered toward the darkness. The ground thundered under her feet.

The aerial trackers pursued. The blinding beams followed the mammoth human beast out toward the badlands, out toward the glittering distance and the dark notch that carved deep into the south.

Sawyer pulled Finn quickly to his feet. “We've—
(gasp)
—got to go after her—”

Finn gave his brother a merciless look. His expression said it all.

“We've never gotten this close to her before,” Sawyer insisted. He picked his rifle out of the broken rubble.

Finn considered their options. His whole body hurt. He held his breath for half a second, trying to catch up to himself. Exasperated, he said, “Don't you have a . . . a bad feeling about this, or something?”

“No. Should I? Come on, let's go—Hey, what happened to your other gun?”

“She ate it.”

“Use this,” Sawyer tossed his rifle to Finn. “I've got the grenades.” He started after Murdock, breaking into an eager sprint.

Still disbelieving his brother's enthusiasm, Finn followed, shaking his head and muttering darkly. “You know something, Sawyer?” he called. “All of a sudden, I just don't have the same enthusiasm for this.”

“Think of the money,” Sawyer called back.

“Oh yeah, right. Sure. The money.” Finn remained unconvinced, but he picked up his pace anyway. “I just know I'll regret this.”

As they hurried after the receding lights, Sawyer unclipped the hand-terminal from his belt. The display cycled through the views from each of the aerial trackers. The skyballs still followed their target. From every perspective, the screen showed Murdock the Mountain thundering down a wide ruined avenue.

“Down that way,” Sawyer pointed. The lights burned brilliantly.

“I can see.”

They came around a broken colonnade. Down at the end of the avenue, the blazing animated beams of the skyballs weaved back and forth around Murdock's lumpish, dark, ungraceful bulk.

Finn dropped to one knee and took aim.
One good shot
. . . . He fired. The needle-thin beam hung in the air for just the briefest of instants, cycling up from the infra-red to the ultraviolet and disappearing even before it had finished registering on the retina. Finn couldn't tell if he'd hit her or not. He fired again. And again. Murdock kept moving.

Beside him, just ahead of him, Sawyer tossed a grenade. It lifted up into the dry air with a sharp whine, hesitated at the peak of its arc while it hunted, then began heading vaguely, almost uncertainly, toward its target. It screamed as it flew, its pitch rising and falling as it hunted its objective. The grenade traced an irregular path as it searched, weaving back and forth through the glittering sky like a drunken banshee. Suddenly, its note changed—turned into a sizzling, sawtoothed buzz—as it locked onto Murdock's lumbering fury. Now it drove toward her like the vengeance of hell.

The grenade exploded in a shattering flash of light. It crackled the air, silhouetting Murdock's mountainous form like a hole in the sky. Crimson rays spattered all around, sending snakes of blue-white lightning sleeting through the ruins, leaving purple afterglows burning in the air and startling orange discharges writhing across the ground.

But Murdock remained.

“I don't believe this,” said Sawyer.

“Oh, I do,” said Finn.

The air burned redly overhead—a blistering shot from Murdock! Instinctively, Finn and Sawyer rolled in opposite directions, dodging the next shot and the next.

Finn scrambled for the cover of a broken pedestal. Sawyer kept on rolling, came up swearing behind the corner of an elephant-sized block. He started swearing commands into his hand-terminal. The skyballs began darting and swooping low after Murdock, still pinning her in the light. Now they started firing—the needle-beams scorched the night, laying down a fiery net of thunder and flames.

Somewhere in the middle of that hell, Murdock moved. Untouched.

Sawyer took off down the ruined avenue, across the broken uneven surface, jumping over the smaller of the fallen blocks where they lay, his long black coat flying out behind him. He wove a random course around and through the colonnade. Murdock's sizzling beams carved holes in the air.

Finn fired back, laying down his own sprays of lightning, to cover his brother's advance; then, painfully, he followed. Finn still entertained the cheerless thought that Murdock might end up costing them much more than the various bounties on her head would cover; but he already knew Sawyer's answer to that, he'd heard it too many times before: “Then we have to catch her quickly. The bounty will offset our losses—well, some of them anyway.” Finn knew without asking. Sawyer had already reached the point of no return. He had become obsessed with this one. Murdock had long since graduated from nuisance to nemesis in Sawyer's mind. Finn sighed and followed, moving from block to rock to column, never giving Murdock a clear shot back.

In the distance, the skyballs moved down a distant slope, following their target remorselessly, circling and firing. The beams flashed and ricocheted off Murdock's armor, scorching and blistering the rocks and ruins. Murdock left a trail of small molten pools and burning fires behind her.

Now, she disappeared into the cover of deep gully; it sharpened as it carved its way toward the greater notch along Misdemeanor Ridge. Down beyond, where the ravine widened and then narrowed again toward a dark descent, a wide road led downward toward and through the last broken ruins of the centuries-old mining station. Here, the shadows of Misdemeanor Ridge took on an ominous and haunting look. They writhed beneath the beams of the skyballs and turned jagged and tortured. Murdock's heavy booming steps echoed back up the slope.

Sawyer and Finn came tumbling heedless after, making wide arcs around the still-burning rocks. They headed down the gully, skidding across the broken rocks and following Murdock toward the ruins. The rising light of the Eye of God gave the broken buildings a pale ghostly glow. They hovered in the gloom like sepulchres, a city of the dead. That thought did not make Finn happy.

Somewhere ahead, a laser-beam spat upward and something exploded in the sky.

“Damn! She got one of the skyballs!” Sawyer started swearing.

“Bill the client,” Finn called after him. Despite the partial battle-skeleton he wore, he knew he would ache tomorrow. And probably for several days afterward. Reluctantly, he keyed himself to a faster pace and began gaining on Sawyer again.

Sawyer released two more grenades. They lifted in tandem, then swooped loudly toward the ever-receding beams of the skyballs.

“That won't stop her—”

“Might slow ‘er down, though.”

Another distant shot—and a second skyball disintegrated in a bright scorch of light.

“She's getting expensive,” Finn cautioned.

Sawyer didn't answer. “Better shield yourself—”

The two grenades went off almost simultaneously. They turned the horizon momentarily white. The ground shook with the impact, but even as the detonation faded, a screeching red needle-beam blistered the air over their heads.

“I don't think she likes us,” said Sawyer.

“I can't imagine why not.”

“Come on, let's go.” Sawyer studied his terminal for a moment. “That way—” He pointed downward. “Down the old road.”

Finn charged after him. The hard ground of the desert thudded underfoot. The dry air smelled of smoke and ozone. Murdock's blasts came less frequently now.

And then, abruptly, everything went silent.

Sawyer and Finn stopped in the middle of the ghostly ruins and looked at each other.

“Lost her?”

“No.” Sawyer didn't sound convincing. He frowned at his terminal. He punched in a program.

The two remaining skyballs probed at the tumbled walls and rocks. They hovered and shifted and sprayed their lights across the ground.

Nothing moved.

Finn scratched at his neck abstractedly. “We'll have to go in on foot. I don't like it.” He pulled two pieces of a long-barreled weapon out of his coat and began to assemble it.

Sawyer raised an eyebrow at him. “The rocket launcher?”

Finn nodded. “You saw the thickness of her armor.” He squinted down the barrel, checked the fuel cells, and slapped a magazine of six darts into place. “Well, I've had it. No more Mr. Nice Guy.” He unlocked the safeties and armed the targeting monitor. “I don't have to put up with this. I gave her a chance to surrender peacefully.” He sighted down the ravine.

As if in answer, another beam sizzled out of the darkness. Another skyball blew apart in the air, showering sparks in all directions.

Sawyer said, “I don't think she did that herself. Maybe she has automatics in place. Or mines.”

Finn shook his head. “Why waste it on skyballs? Why not just take us out directly?”

“She likes to play with her food?”

Finn shuddered.

The last remaining probe dodged back and forth, but both brothers knew it didn't stand a chance. The skyballs worked best in swarms.

Down below, from deep in the notch, Murdock's red beam disintegrated the last aerial tracking unit. Glowing pieces tumbled away into brightness.

“Right,” said Sawyer. The now-useless hand terminal disappeared back inside his coat. Instead, he fitted a pair of tracking goggles over his eyes. Finn followed suit and the world took on an ephemeral gray sheen. All the rocks glowed in pastel shades: the ebbing heat of the day, the burning radiation of the night.

“There,” pointed Sawyer. Murdock's footprints throbbed in pale orange, a trail of fast-fading spots across the hard broken ground. “Her armor wastes a lot of heat.”

“Not the armor—her metabolism.”

Sawyer winced at the thought.

The two brothers scrambled down the slope, across the jumble and deeper into the narrowing notch. They advanced like ghosts, gliding silently across the ground. Sawyer moved like a dancer, turning in graceful pirouettes while his weapons probed the gloom; Finn rolled like a tank, swiveling his whole body in cautious circles. Finn focused through his rocket launcher, Sawyer held the last of his grenades ready to throw.