There were more of them than I could count, coming at us from every direction at once, guns blazing.
“Who are these crazy women?” shouted Molly.
“Pan’s Panzerpeople!” Frankie shouted back, from where he was lying prone on the back seat. “Fourth Reich Femmes, the Bitches From Hell!”
“You know them?” said Molly.
“Everyone knows them!” said Frankie. “Mayhem for hire, all proceeds going to fund the return of the glorious Fourth Reich!”
“Mercenaries . . .” I said. “Who sent them?”
“How should I know?” said Frankie. “I only just met you and I wish I hadn’t. It could be anybody. . . . And no, I am not going to sit up and talk to you. I am staying down here where it is relatively safe. If there was a glove box back here, I’d be hiding inside it.”
“Control yourself!” said the Scarlet Lady. “I don’t care how frightened you are, you make a mess on my upholstery and I will make you clean it up yourself!”
“Could be worse,” said Molly, peering out the windows. “Could be dragons.”
“How could dragons be worse?” said Frankie.
“Dragons breathe fire,” said Molly.
“Everything they say about you is true,” said Frankie.
“If someone’s paying mercenaries to kill us, even before we get to the Casino,” I said, “does that mean someone knows who I really am?”
“Why do you keep asking me questions, when you must have figured out by now that the best you’re going to get is an educated guess?” said Frankie, just a bit shrilly. “Somebody might know, or they might not. It’s a Casino! Place your bets! Choose whichever answer will make you feel better. I’m going to keep my head well down and sob for my life.”
“When I find out who wished you on us as our local contact,” said Molly, “I will riverdance on their head.”
“Fine by me,” said Frankie.
“Death from above!” howled the car, throwing all of us over to one side as she charged down a side street, and then plunged back out onto a main street again. The Pteranodons stuck with us, chewing up our surroundings with long strafing runs. The odd bullet ricocheted from the Scarlet Lady’s reinforced exterior, but didn’t even slow her down. The car radio started playing “Ride of the Valkyries,” while the car hummed happily along. Molly and I braced ourselves and hung on to our seat belts with both hands, as the car rocked this way and that. From somewhere deep in the back seat came plaintive noises of distress.
The Scarlet Lady roared up and down half a dozen back streets, taking lefts and rights at random, trying to shake off the Pan’s Panzerpeople. But the Pteranodons wheeled majestically overhead, tracking us easily from above, raking the streets with vicious gunfire. Buildings blew up as we shot past them, flying debris bouncing off the car. A lamp-post was cut in half by savage fire, and the top end crashed down onto the car’s roof. The metal didn’t even buckle under the weight, and the steel post fell away in a series of sparks as the car pressed on, laughing savagely.
I couldn’t help noticing that while all the cars and trucks and other vehicles had disappeared, there were still any number of pedestrians still walking up and down the pavements, who didn’t seem to be paying any attention to the end of the world going on all around them. Fire and bullets and collapsing buildings to all sides, sometimes right in front of them, but never any reaction from the poor souls caught up in it.
Even when some were shot dead, or brought down under falling rubble.
“Frankie?” I said.
“I’m not coming out!”
“Why are all the pedestrians blind to what’s happening?”
“Casino Infernale has half a dozen major league telepaths just sitting around their basement, doing nothing but broadcasting Don’t Notice Anything Out Of The Ordinary, very loudly, in eight-hour shifts. All of the day and all of the night, until Casino Infernale is over. Huge payoffs take care of everything else. The price of doing business in a tourist town.”
“But people are dying out there!” said Molly.
“No one will give a damn,” said Frankie. “No one will even notice anything, until much later. By which time Casino Security will have cleaned up the mess and hauled away the bodies, and silenced the relatives. One way or another. At best, there’ll be some vague story about terrorists, for the outside media. No one wants to scare off the tourists.”
“Could the Casino be behind the Pan’s Panzerpeople?” I said.
“Stop asking me about this! I don’t know!”
“Don’t make me come back there,” I said.
“All right! All right, let me think. . . . It’s unlikely. If Casino Security knew who you really are, they’d have blown you away the moment you arrived. Taken you out with a nuclear grenade, or a hit demon. Made a real mess of you as a warning to others. But, I mean, come on! No one with any sense would try to take down a Drood with bullets! Shaman Bond, on the other hand . . . This kind of overkill has all the hallmarks of a pre-emptive strike, by some other gambler who sees you as a threat.”
The Pteranodons slammed down out of the sky in waves, again and again. Ugly flying reptile things with gun girls on their backs, sweeping in from left and right to try to catch us in a crossfire. The Nazi warrior women called out to each other in harsh guttural voices, laughing raucously, their bony Aryan faces full of the joy of battle and slaughter. They didn’t care how many innocent people they killed, how many pitiful corpses and broken bodies they left lying in the streets. Heavy bullets slammed into the Scarlet Lady’s chassis, over and over, rocking the car back and forth but never breaking through.
“I’ve had enough of this,” I said. “No more innocents dying, not on my watch. Car, do you have any built-in weapons systems?”
“Of course!” said the car. “Your uncle Jack gave me a good going over on his last visit. Lovely man. Lovely hands . . .”
“Hold everything,” said Molly. “What was the Drood Armourer doing, installing Drood weapons in a Department of the Uncanny car?”
“Can we please concentrate on the matter at hand?” I said. “Car, can you fire back at these Nazi bitches?”
“I have front-mounted cannon,” said the car. “But they’re all aimed at ground level. Everything else has to be controlled by the passengers. Rules.”
“Fine by me!” said Molly. “Show me something!”
“Love to,” said the car.
The dashboard suddenly rolled over, to be replaced by a complete computerised weapons system. Controls for automatic weaponry, car-to-air missiles, front – and rear-mounted flamethrowers. Molly and I both reached for the missile control systems, but she got there first. She activated the tracking systems, grabbed the joy-stick provided, and locked on to the nearest rider in the sky. Molly fired the missile, and it blasted off from the rear of the car to blow both the Pteranodon and its Nazi gun girl out of the sky in one great explosion. Blood and flesh fell through the air like hellish confetti. Molly kept working the controls, targeting one Pan’s Panzerperson after another, but she could take out only one at a time, and I just knew there weren’t going to be enough missiles in the car’s armoury to take out all the targets.
“Missiles won’t do it,” I said to the car. “What can I do?”
“I don’t know,” said the car. “What can you bring to the party?”
“I have a Colt Repeater!”
“That’ll do nicely,” said the car.
A sliding panel opened in the roof above me, while the front seat sank down into the floor. I stood up, and the upper half of my body passed easily through the space provided. I drew my Colt Repeater from its shoulder holster, called for standard steel ammo, and let the gun do the rest.
I braced myself as the car plunged back and forth, and screwed up my eyes at the wind that battered my face. I felt cold and alone and very vulnerable. No torc, n
o armour, no protection. If a bullet hit me, I would die. Simple as that. I wanted to sit down again. Let Molly and the car do all the hard work. But I couldn’t just sit there in safety while innocent people were being killed. Because of me. So I turned the Colt Repeater on the nearest flying reptile, and opened fire.
The first bullet hit the rider of the Pteranodon coming straight at me. Slammed right through her left eye. Her head snapped back and blood and brains spilled out through the exit wound, flying off into the slipstream. The pink and grey streamers seemed to just fly away forever. Until the dead warrior woman fell off the Pteranodon, and tumbled bonelessly through the air. The Pteranodon screamed angrily, and just kept coming; so I shot that through the left eye too. The skull was probably bony enough to deflect a bullet. (I did the general aiming; the gun took care of the rest.) The Pteranodon plunged from the sky like a dead plane, and smashed through the roof of a boulangerie.
Sometimes the bullets hit hard enough to punch a Pan’s Panzerperson backwards out of her saddle. Sometimes I couldn’t get a clear shot at a Pteranodon’s eye, and then I’d blow holes in their leathery wings until they couldn’t stay aloft, and they fell scrabbling from the sky to slam into the ground, and spread their guts across the road. Sometimes, if I killed the rider the Pteranodon would just flap away, and I’d let them go. It wasn’t their idea to be here.
The cold rushing air beat me in the face, as I steadied my right wrist with my left hand. The Colt’s aiming system could do only so much. I kept firing, and women and reptiles kept dying. Molly was still working the missile controls, so that the sky above was full of flames and dark clouds, and bloody bits and pieces falling through the air. Bullets still came pounding in from every direction, ricocheting from the sides of the car and sparking from the roof, some increasingly close to me.
I’d never felt so scared. There had been times before when I’d been separated from my torc for a time, but I’d never had to go into battle without my armour’s protection. I flinched every time a bullet flew away from the roof. Sometimes I cried out, involuntarily. My stomach ached from where the muscles had been clenched for so long. It was hard to get my breath. I could have sat down. Said I’d done enough. But I couldn’t, as long as there were still Nazi killers in the air and people dying in the streets. And because if I did sit down, I knew I’d never get my nerve back.
I needed to prove to myself that torc or no torc, armour or no armour, I was still me. With a Drood’s training and a Drood’s duty. I may not always have believed in my family, but I have always believed in what they were supposed to stand for.
That’s usually been the trouble between us.
I switched from steel ammo to incendiaries, summoning them into the Colt from wherever the hell it stores the damn stuff, and the gun made sure I never missed. I killed the Nazi killers, one by one, and dead Pteranodons fell as blazing carcasses from an increasingly empty sky. Falling bodies slammed into burning roofs, and smashed through storefronts, while others hit the ground hard and did not move again. Until finally there was only one Pan’s Panzerperson left, standing up in her silver stirrups as she raked the Scarlet Lady with machine gun fire, screaming obscenities that were mostly lost in the rushing air.
She sent her Pteranodon circling round the car in a tight curve, so that I had to keep turning in my enclosed space to track her. And then she brought the flying reptile all the way round, and urged it hurtling down. The Pteranodon flew straight at the car, just a few yards above the ground. Collision course.
“I’ve run out of rockets!” Molly shrieked at me. “There’s nothing more I can do!”
“And the reptile’s still too far off the ground for my front-mounted cannon to do any good!” said the car.
“Hold yourself steady,” I said.
I leaned forward, across the car roof. The Pan’s Panzerperson was speeding towards me, hunched over her Pteranodon. She saw me aim my gun at her and laughed raucously. She and her mount flew right at me, as she fired her machine gun in short steady bursts. Bullets sprayed all around me, ricocheting harmlessly from the car’s roof. Reptile and rider drew closer and closer, while I waited for a clear shot, and then I aimed the Colt Repeater as carefully as I could, and shot the Nazi warrior woman right between the eyes. Her head snapped back, her hands flying away from the mounted machine gun. She fell sideways, out of her silver saddle, but one foot remained caught in the silver stirrup. The Pteranodon flew on, its dead rider dangling beneath it. I couldn’t get a clear shot at either of the Pteranodon’s eyes as it headed straight for us, screaming with rage.
“Nothing more I can do,” I said. “Coming back in, car.”
The front seat reappeared below me. I sank back into it, and the roof panel closed over my head as I sat down. I slipped the Colt Repeater back into its shoulder holster. I was shaking, shuddering, from reaction. Looking through the windscreen, I could see the Pteranodon flying straight at us, growing bigger and bigger. Its great wings flapped viciously as it built up more and more speed. I fastened my seat belt again, and put my hands on the steering wheel.
“Give me control, Scarlet Lady,” I said.
“Are you sure about this?” said the car. “If you’re thinking of dodging that thing, my reflexes are a lot better than yours.”
“No,” I said. “I don’t think dodging would work.”
“And I really don’t think you should assume that you or I would survive a head-on collision with several flying tons of enraged flying dinosaur!” said the car.
“Just give me control! I’ve got an idea!”
“Oh, well, that’s different,” said the car.
The steering wheel came alive under my hands. I kept us on course, straight towards the Pteranodon.
“This better be a really good idea,” said Molly.
In the back seat, Frankie was singing “Abide With Me.” The car joined in.
I waited till the very last moment, until the Pteranodon was committed and plunging down out of the sky, straight at us. And then, I slammed on the brakes. The car screamed to a very sudden halt, black smoke belching out from the wheel arches. Molly and I were thrown forward against our seat belts. (No airbags. Not that kind of car.) But we slammed to a halt much faster than any modern car could have managed. And the Pteranodon slammed head first into the road, exactly where we would have been if I hadn’t hit the brakes. The impact broke the reptile’s neck, and it tumbled over and over across the ground before sliding to a halt right in front of us.
Dead as a dodo.
I put the car in gear and rode over the reptile, taking my time, just to be sure. I drove on, and then gave control back to the Scarlet Lady. And only then did my hands start shaking again. Molly leaned over and put an arm across my shoulders, hugged me, and kissed me on the cheek.
“My hero,” she said.
The missile control disappeared, as the dashboard revolved back into place again. The car radio started playing “Give Peace a Chance,” while the car hummed along. Frankie slowly reappeared in the back seat, looking very pale as he checked himself for bullet holes. The car moved steadily along at a sane and reasonable pace, and bit by bit the general traffic reappeared, to accompany us. Driving calmly and easily, as though it had never been away. The whole city seemed entirely calm and peaceful again, as though there was no fire and black smoke rising up in the car’s rearview mirror.
“Is there a bar anywhere in this vehicle?” said Molly.
A bar immediately appeared in the dashboard before her, and Molly opened it up and poured herself a very generous brandy. She offered one to me, but I shook my head, tight-lipped. I felt like I needed to stay sharp, in control. I held both my hands together in my lap, and they gradually stopped shaking. I’d risked my life before, in the field. Just never so . . . nakedly. Frankie looked pleadingly at Molly, and she passed him back a brandy. He downed it greedily, and made loud grateful noises.
“They did warn me about you two,” he said, after a while. “But I didn’t believe them. . . .”
“How are they going to remove all those dead reptiles?” said Molly.
“Fork-lift trucks, I expect,” said Frankie.
“I still want to know who sent those Pan’s Panzerpeople after us,” I said. “I want a name. You must suspect someone, Frankie.”
“This is Casino Infernale,” Frankie said patiently. “It could be any number of people. Experienced players weeding out the weaker opponents is not only expected, it’s actively encouraged. This was a bit over the top, admittedly.”
“Can we expect more of this?” said Molly.
“Of course,” said Frankie. “Nothing so obvious, or straight forward, once we’re safely inside the Casino itself, but . . .”
“Then in future,” said Molly, “I think we should get our retaliation in first.”
“You’re going to fit right in,” said Frankie. “You stand up to them, girl. I’ll be right behind you. Hiding.”
“This all happened a bit too soon for my liking,” I said. “This was all arranged; waiting for us. But who knew exactly where and when we’d be arriving, and what car we’d be using?”
“Good questions,” said Frankie. “I’d try to find out, if I was you.”
“Have you got an ejector seat?” I asked the car.
CHAPTER FOUR
Dinner Theatre
For a supposedly secret location, Casino Infernale didn’t believe in hiding its light behind any kind of bushel. We could see the Casino long before we got anywhere near it. The massive building rose up into a cloudless blue sky like a mad cathedral monstrosity on the very edge of the city. Like a mountain manufactured in steel and glass, shining brighter than the sun. The Scarlet Lady tinted her windscreen till the car’s interior was gloomy as a tomb and the light still blasted through. Less and less traffic accompanied us as we approached our destination, until finally we were the only vehicle left heading down the single narrow road to Casino Infernale. The shops were all closed, and even boarded up, and finally disappeared completely, until there was nothing left to look at but the massive structure filling the horizon before us. I was concerned the lack of traffic might indicate another attack, but Frankie quickly put me right.