Seattle Run

Chapter Nineteen

“I can’t believe you really came.”

“My word is my bond,” Hickok declared. “I told you I would come, and I did.”

Captain Nathan Dale shook his head in disbelief. “Then I’m sorry. It’s all my fault you were captured.”

“How do you figure?” Hickok asked.

“If you hadn’t come here to rescue me, you wouldn’t have been caught,” Dale observed. “I’m really sorry.”

“Don’t be,” Hickok said, winking conspiratorially. “This is all part of my plan.”

“You wanted to be captured?” Dale queried skeptically.

“Naturally,” Hickok stated. “How else was I going to find you?”

Dale laughed. “You’re a card, Hickok. You know that?”

“Just so it isn’t the Joker,” Hickok rejoined.

A mutant suddenly appeared on the wooden walkway. “Get to work, you two! Or there will not be any food rations tonight!”

Dale sighed and returned to cultivating the kelp.

Hickok bent over, giving the impression of going to work, while he surreptitiously surveyed the kelp factory.

Manta evidently did everything on a grand scale. Not content with controlling western Seattle, he wanted to rule the world. He had repaired and rearranged the Seattle Aquarium to suit his needs as a Humarium.

And the kelp factory was equally as impressive, if at least five times as odoriferous. Hickok nearly gagged every time he took a breath.

The kelp factory was approximately one hundred yards long and half that distance wide. All four walls and the ceiling were composed of shaded plastic which allowed only the required amount of sunshine to penetrate to the kelp beds. Walkways divided the beds into sections. The factory was divided into four major areas by three large walkways running the width of the building at 25-yard intervals. Smaller, narrower walkways projected from the main walkway at 10-yard intervals. The mutant guards, the Brethren, patrolled the walkways, armed with leather whips and goading the humans to work. Over a hundred humans were in the factory, involved in the kelp harvesting. A third of those laboring in the knee-deep water were children between the ages of 8 and 15.

Hickok could feel the water seeping into his soaked moccasins. He had refused to remove his footwear and received a lash from a mutant for his obtinacy. But the Brethren hadn’t pushed the issue. Which suited him fine.

Dale was carefully aligning the greenish-brown kelp into precise rows as required by the overseers.

Hickok nudged a lump here, a lump there. He was sweating profusely under his buckskins; the factory was intentionally humid and muggy.

“Say, Dale?” he whispered.

“What?” Dale whispered back.

“How many sailors are in here right now?” Hickok asked. “How many from the Cutterhawk?”

“I don’t know for sure,” Dale replied. “I’d guess about fifty.”

“Are they ready to bust out of here?” Hickok inquired.

Dale froze, a strand of kelp dangling from his right hand. “Do you mean right now!”

“No. Of course not,” Hickok said.

Dale visibly relaxed.

“I was thinkin’ more like in five minutes,” Hickok stated.

Dale glanced at the Warrior. “Five minutes? Are you insane?”

“Okay. Make it ten.”

“But you just got here!” Dale declared in a hushed tone.

“Which is why they won’t be expecting me to pull a stunt like tryin’ to escape,” Hickok pointed out. “This is my best chance.”

“What can we do now?” Dale asked, scanning the factory. “There are over forty overseers in here and they have whips. We don’t have any weapons.”

“What if I could get my hands on some weapons?” Hickok inquired.

“How do you expect to do that?” Dale wanted to know.

Hickok grinned, reached back, and tapped an exposed portion of his gun belt, his fingertips touching the cartridges in the loops on the rear of the belt.

Dale’s eyes widened. “They didn’t take your ammo?”

“Nope,” Hickok said, swiftly covering the gun belt with the lower part of his buckskin shirt. “And I wasn’t about to remind the vermin.”

“Your shirt hangs down when you stand up,” Dale observed. “They probably didn’t see the ammunition.”

“Where’s the storeroom?” Hickok questioned.

“I don’t know.”

“You’ve been here four months and you don’t know where the storeroom is?” Hickok asked in surprise.

“Not the storeroom where they keep the weapons,” Dale said. “They’re real secretive about that. No one knows except them.”

“Do they use weapons much?” Hickok asked.

“No,” Dale whispered. “They prefer to use their nails in close combat.

The overseers use whips. But I’ve never seen them use guns. I imagine they would, in a crisis. Maybe they don’t like guns because guns were a human invention.”

“What a passel of cow chips,” Hickok commented.

“Do you have a plan?” Dale inquired.

“Do birds fly?”

“That’s not much of an answer,” Dale remarked.

“Here’s what I’m going to do,” Hickok detailed. “I intend to create a diversion to distract the overseers. Then I plan to slip out of the factory and go find the storeroom. Once I lay my hands on my Colts, these mangy varmints are done for.”

“There are close to three hundred of the Brethen,” Dale said. “You can’t take all of them on by yourself.”

“I might need a little help,” Hickok acknowledged. “That’s where you and the rest of the sailors come in.”

“What do you want us to do?”

“After I skedaddle for the storeroom,” Hickok instructed him, “make as much of a ruckus as you can. I don’t want the overseers to know I’m gone.”

“Why don’t some of us come with you?” Dale queried.

“It’ll be a heap easier for one hombre to reach the storeroom,” Hickok stated. “I’ll load up on guns and hurry back here. Keep your peepers peeled. When you see me, come a runnin’. By tonight, the Brethren will be twiddlin’ their gills out in the ocean—those who survive, anyway.”

“If any survive,” Dale amended. “We’re going to kill all of the bastards we can find.”

“Some of them are likely out rustlin’ up whales and such,” Hickok said.

“I doubt we’ll get all of them.”

“Just so we get Manta!” Dale stated vehemently. “I want that bastard for myself.”

“First come, first serve,” Hickok quipped.

“Look busy!” Dale abruptly warned, and worked on the kelp.

Hickok did likewise.

An overseer was walking toward them along the walkway. The mutant came abreast of their position in the kelp beds and stopped. “You!”

Some of the other workers looked up.

“You!” the overseer shouted. “The one in the funny clothes.”

“He means you!” Dale whispered to the gunman.

Hickok straightened. “Are you talkin’ to me, Fish Lips?”

“You’re the one in the funny clothes,” the mutant said.

Hickok moved toward the walkway, looking down at himself. Buckskins were typical attire in the Midwest and the Rocky Mountain region, but he hadn’t seen one person wearing them in Seattle. Apparently, when it came to high fashion, the folks in Seattle were downright ignorant. He reached the walkway and looked up at the mutant. “What’s up, gruesome?”

“Manta wants to see you.”