Scene 8
Both Carter and Lawman had heard the shot.
They stood guns drawn, stock still, each aiming square at the other's heart, but the overriding emotion wasn't anger anymore. They didn't feel the cold fury that had ensnared them moments before. Instead their eyes were locked, but they expressed nothing but confusion – puzzlement.
Neither of them had pulled the trigger.
Their guns lowered slightly as they both looked to where everyone else's shocked gaze had turned. Their eyes widened with terror. They saw Kees, his knees trembling, mouth opening and closing like a fish out of water gulping for air, and blood – streams of blood spilling forth from his gut, soaking the once immaculate white suit he was wearing.
With one shuddering gasp Mr Kees, that enigmatic bastard of a man, crumpled to the deck and lay motionless. The crowd stood disbelieving at the dead man and the pool of blood that spread out from him. Lawman didn't know why but he could suddenly hear the song playing in his head, the same one that had haunted the slaughter ground of so many Brotherhood soldiers. You'd better watch yourself…
"AMBUSH!"
Leicester had scarcely bellowed the warning when a hail of bullets ripped the air like silk. In the distance the flash of firing guns flickered like mourning candles from deep within the shadowy willows beyond the mist. Everyone dived for the deck as splinters of wood blasted into the air.
Carter crawled hastily over to Leicester as everyone else kept their heads down, yanking the blonde merc to face him. "Get the guns! Inside the hull! Get them now, you flaccid prick!"
Leicester darted for the hatch.
Three seconds. That was the window of time it took for Lawman to see Leicester's face transform. One moment he saw him scrambling to his feet and darting to the hatch, Leicester's face wearing a look of wild eyed fear. The next moment that face was ripped into by a stray bullet, the contents of his head blasted behind him like streamers of blood and flesh.
Leicester's body flopped to the floor.
"Shit! Shit! Shit!" Carter exclaimed as he lunged for the hatch, and almost fell through it, clanging into the corridor below. He raced for his weapons.
Lawman, Vyatch and Katherine had drawn their revolvers and began firing into the bushes and trees the other side, returning fire at shadows and silhouettes dancing amidst the mist and gun smoke. They tried aiming for the little sparks of gunfire, those flashes spitting death from the other side of the river.
"Where's Vance?" Katherine shouted over the thunder of gunfire.
"He's where he always is – at the helm!" Lawman shouted back.
"Well, someone should tell him to steer a course away from this place!"
"I'm on it!"
Lawman crawled along the deck before racing up to the helm. He burst through the door and into a room that was now littered with shards of broken glass from the shattered windows. He spotted Vance hunched at the steering wheel.
"Vance, I hope you're getting us outta here!" Lawman bellowed.
Vance made no reply. He simply focused on steering the ship and muttering the same prayer over and over. It was clear that he was doing his best to steer the ship out of harm's way but…
"Can't you go faster?" Lawman shouted. He flung himself down behind a wall as another round of fire thudded into the ship, splinters and shattered glass streaming over him.
"Faster?" Vance yelled back. "Do you want to crash? Do you want to become lodged against the rocks? Do you want to make us sitting ducks?"
"Go faster, Vance!"
"Are you mad? I can scarcely peer over the top of the wheel!"
"Do you think we have a choice right now? How long will the Mayweather hold against this barrage?"
"The Mayweather's withstood worse than this, mark my words! You want me to go faster than you're gonna have to get Kees to give the order himself!"
"Kees is dead, Vance."
"What?"
"Go faster!"
With that Lawman scurried back through the hailstorm of fire to the others. Carter was at the hatch trying to clamber out, a number of automatic rifles slung across his back along with a rucksack of ammunition, but hadn't the opportunity as the enemy's fire seemed to focus in on him.
"Carter, we need the grenades!" Vyatch bellowed.
"Cover me and you'll fuckin' get them!"
"We're doing the best we can, but without grenades to stun them we can't create an opening."
"Well then you're fucked aren't ya!"
Lawman looked over at Kees' corpse, his white suit stained red with blood and the little walking cane he used rolling on deck, the tip of it still clicked against the deck – almost as though you could hear his ghost pacing up and down. Lawman thought that was what they might all be soon. Lawman's Geiger counter on his pip boy click-clicked as his heart hammered in his chest. His gun almost slipped out of his hand as he kept firing, reloading and firing again, his hands were so clammy. He looked over to the guide sprawled on deck, not dead but unconscious from her beating. Lawman got an idea.
They needed a grenade, and he knew just where to get it.
He crawled over to Kees and, with the thunderstorm of bullets and ammunition flying overhead, he grunted as he turned over the body. Kees' eyes stared glassily up at nothing, strangely dim and lifeless. Lawman rummaged in his pockets. He soon found the detonator switch to the collar and shortly afterwards found the most important item – the keys to the bomb collar.
He scrambled over to the unconscious guide and seized upon her bomb collar with his sweaty hands. They slipped on its surface as he tried to press the key into the slot, his jittering hands messing up his efforts. Christ, here he was doing his best to survive and keep everyone alive and here were his hands just wishing they had a fucking drink…
He pushed the key into the keyhole at last and twisted it. It clicked as the thing sprang open and released the guide.
"The fuck do you think you're doing!" Vyatch bellowed. He beat Lawman across the jaw with his elbow sending Lawman tumbling over the guide. Lawman lay sprawled on the deck for a few moments, gathering his wits, when Vyatch thundered towards him again, on all fours like an animal. Vyatch's hands seized around Lawman's neck. Lawman swung the bomb collar around and clonked him on the side of the head. Vyatch toppled over, unconscious.
"I'm getting the grenade, you dumb bastard," Lawman breathed hoarsely.
Lawman didn't waste another second as he saw Carter still struggling to get out of the hatch, Katherine still firing at shadows in the distance and Vance steering the ship as fast as he dared away from the shoreline.
Lawman threw the bomb collar dead centre into the lights of the firing guns.
He pressed down on the trigger and immediately there was a flash. That was the most surprising thing. There was no sound. No sound but the ringing in Lawman's ears now as he pressed his hands to his ears. A pillar of earth and dirt rose into the air from where it fell as a tree was uprooted and capsized into the river. The gunfire had stopped and Carter clambered out of the hatch wielding a grenade launcher.
Carter fired a dozen rounds into the forest all whilst screaming, "How'd you like me now, bitches?" Each one shook the Earth as it exploded and eventually cleared out the trees, sending them crashing to the ground. It wasn't until a minute or so later that he stopped, pressed his back against the railing of the ship and waited for return fire.
There was none.
All was deathly silent.
Lawman didn't know who it had been that had ambushed them but he felt certain that it couldn't have been the same people who'd shot down the Brotherhood of Steel. If it were they wouldn't be alive right now. No. This felt more like a raiding party and yet the question surfaced, in Lawman's adrenaline filled mind, as to where on earth a set of raiding tribals would find working guns down south. Guns preserved from the pre-war period were aged things prone to break and yet Lawman could tell from the sound alone that these guns made that they were new.
Whatever the answer was Lawman didn't give it another thought for now. His body needed to rest. He made to get up.
"Where do you think you're going, partner?" Carter's voice felt as though it had slammed into his gut like a concrete block. Before Lawman could do anything he crashed to the floor as Carter pommelled him with the butt of his grenade launcher.
Everything faded to black.