The Men in the Jungle Page 6

  “All right, now let’s pick up all those nice guns that are laying around,” Vanderling ordered, leading the Sangrans around to the front of the truck and the horribly mutilated bodies. The Sangrans moaned when they saw the mangled Killers, but made no move to obey.

  “Pick up those guns, you cretins!” Vanderling said. “Don’t worry, I promise you’ll have the chance to use ’em on more of these creeps later. I’m your friend. Now hop to it!”

  “Ain’t right…” one of the Sangrans muttered.

  “ ’Gainst the Natural Order…”

  “Stuff your Natural Order!” Vanderling shouted. “Now—”

  Suddenly, he heard a weak shout behind him, a dry croak that sounded something like “Kill!” He whirled, saw that one of the Killers he had sliced in half was lying in a great pool of blood behind him, eyes glazed, jaws snapping weakly like those of a dying turtle. He saw the razor-sharp teeth flecked with blood futilely trying to nip at his leg, heard the rattling croak of the dying thing, and a spasm of loathing went through him.

  Convulsively, he whipped the snipgun around, sliced the near-moribund head from the dying body. The ten Sangrans uttered shrill little surprised cries.

  “Now pick up those guns, or you all get the same,” he said shrilly.

  Gingerly, as if they were touching something at once dirty and holy, the Sangrans finally gathered up the guns and the morningstars. Vanderling had to stand over them all the while, brandishing the snipgun menacingly.

  “Now that wasn’t so bad, was it?” he said. The Sangrans said nothing, stood waiting phlegmatically, holding the weapons and shaking their heads slowly.

  And Vanderling had to prod them, curse them, herd them like balky oxen carrying unfamiliar loads up the hill and into the jungle toward the base of the mountains and the lifeboat.

  What yuks! Vanderling thought as the ten Sangrans stood torpidly in the little clearing in the jungle. They weren’t even showing any particular curiosity about the lifeboat which sat incongruously in the low underbrush, surrounded on three sides by the dense wall of tree trunks and shrubbery that was the edge of the concealing jungle. Yet they could never have seen a lifeboat In their lives.

  None of it made any sense. Look at the crumbs, Vanderling thought. Full of scars, skinny as rails, chained in the back of a truck like animals. From what he had seen, and from what Bart had told him of how the planet was run, these boys should be all full of piss and vinegar, ready to tear apart the first Brother or Killer that came along, once they had the chance. They should’ve been dying to get their hot little hands on some guns… What was wrong with ’em? Any man with anything left in his scrotum who was treated the way these creeps were should be fighting mad.

  Not these crummy Sangrans, though. They carried those weapons like they were honeybuckets.

  “Okay, boys,” Vanderling said, motioning with the snipgun, “put down the weapons and rest your bones. This is base camp.”

  Vanderling sank to his haunches. The Sangrans simply dropped the rifles and morningstars where they stood, folded their legs under them and sank to the ground. Sourly, Vanderling found himself wishing Fraden were there. Dealing with nuts was more Bart’s line of evil. When it came to snowjobs, Bart was the pro and he was the amateur…

  Nevertheless, Vanderling did his best to look earnest, comradely and concerned. “I suppose you guys are wondering just what’s going on here, eh?” he said. “Well so am I. What were you boys doing chained up in that truck? You convicts or something?”

  “Convicts?” the gaunt redhead said. He seemed to be more talkative than the rest—which was not saying a hell of a lot. “What’s ‘convicts?’ We’re Animals, Brother Boris’ quota this month, ’course. What’re you?”

  Vanderling puffed himself up in his old Belt Free State General’s uniform. “I am… er, Field Marshal Willem Vanderling (Well, why not a promotion? he thought) formerly Commander in Chief of the Belt Free State Armed Forces, and now Commander of… er… the People’s Army of Sangre. What’s your name, man?”

  “Gomez. Lamar Gomez. Got two names in my village,” he said with what was almost a trace of pride.

  “Okay, Gomez. You seem to have the most on the ball here, so I’m appointing you full colonel in the People’s Army of Sangre and my aide de camp. Rest of you guys can get in on the ground floor too. In fact, I hereby commission you all captains. Why not? Now, Colonel, suppose you brief me. Just what in hell do you mean by Brother Boris’ quota?”

  Gomez stared stupidly at Vanderling. “Y’on Brother Boris’ estate, ’course. Got a quota of ten Animals a month. That’s us, this month. We’re now slaves of the Prophet. For the arena, or the Larder, or whatever the Prophet says. He owns us now.”

  “Owns you? Slaves? Arena? Larder? What the hell is a Larder?” Vanderling said.

  “Y’Sadians gotta eat too,” Gomez replied. “Y’think they get t’eat Meatanimals? Only Brothers and Killers eat y’Meatanimals. Y’Sadians, they gotta make do with old meat like us.”

  “You mean to tell me that they were gonna eat you?” Vanderling shouted, “Just like that?”

  “All Animals’re eaten sooner or later,” Gomez said laconically. “For us, sooner. Others, later.”

  “Well, if that don’t—Look men, you don’t have to take that kind of crap any longer! This is your chance! We’ll show those crumbs what happens to creeps who think they can treat people like pigs, right? I’ve got guns in the ’boat, and we’ve got guns here. Enough guns for all. And we’ll use those guns to raid the estate and get more guns and free more men and raid more estates and get more guns and more men and more and more and more and before you can say ‘Comes the Revolution,’ we’re an army, and we’ll know what to do then, eh?” He grinned wolfishly.

  The Sangrans looked vastly shocked. “Y’guns are for y’Killers,” one said. “Y’crazy?” said another. “What y’talking about?” said Gomez.

  “What…?” Vanderling grunted. “Look, you jerks, I’m talking about Revolution! We arm ourselves and we boot the Brothers and their Killers out on their asses! I gotta draw you a picture? I know the Revolution game backward and forward. We’ll show those crumbs a few tricks they haven’t seen before, don’t you worry about that! In a year, we’ll wipe ’em all out to the last man. You saw what I did to those Killers. One man with one gun. Think of what ten thousand men with ten thousand guns can do!”

  “That’s blasphemy!” one of the Sangrans shouted. “T’kill Brothers! T’fight Killers! ’Gainst the Natural Order!”

  The rest rolled their eyes fitfully and looked scandalized.

  Vanderling felt like Alice down the rabbit hole. They were all raving nuts! Slaves, eaten, for chrissakes, and they wouldn’t fight back!

  He decided to change his tack. “Okay,” he said, “so I’m new here. What did you guys do before you became a… a quota?”

  “Were Brother Boris’ slaves, ’course,” Gomez said. “Herded and tended his Meatanimals, what else?”

  “Meat animals? Sheep? Cattle? Pigs?”

  “What’re those? Only one kind of animal on Sangre—human animals. Everything else is some kind of insect or other. Can’t eat ’em, they’re all poison. We tend y’Meatanimals, till they’re ten. Butcher ’em, dress ’em, smoke the surplus for later t’feed Brother Boris and his Killers.”

  “You mean to tell me you butcher your own children?” Vanderling exclaimed.

  Gomez laughed, “Y’crazy?” he said. “Our kids’re mongrels, tough stringy meat. Y’Meatanimals are purebred, fat, and tender. Y’think Brother Boris’d make do with mongrels?”

  “And with all this crud going on, why won’t you yokums fight? You dig being slaves? You dig being eaten?”

  “Dig?” said Gomez. “Just the Natural Order. Y’Brothers rule, y’Killers kill, y’Meatanimals’re eaten, y’Animals do what we’re told, y’Bugs do what we tell ’em. Natural Order.”

  “Bugs? What the Sam Hill are Bugs?”

  “Y’native Sangrans, ’
course. Big smart insects. Each village got a Bughill, Y’Brothers give us a tame Brain, y’Keeper tells y’Bugs what to do, y’Bugs grow our food so we don’t starve. Y’Brothers don’t want slaves starving on ’em. Each got his place in y’Natural Order.”

  “And none of you imbeciles want to change any of this?” Vanderling roared. “You’re not fed up? You don’t want to kick the Brothers out on their fat asses and run things yourselves?”

  “ ’Gainst the Natural Order!” the Sangrans shouted, to a man. “Blasphemy! Y’crazy!”

  Vanderling groaned. These jokers had been so thoroughly snowed for so long even Bart couldn’t talk ’em into fighting. Clean stables long enough, and you get to love horse-hockey. Some planet! Some “high revolutionary potential!” He furrowed his brow in thought These chickens had no guts at all, so he could probably force them into fighting. But what kind of army would that be? A bunch of zombies you couldn’t turn your back on for a minute! What this mudball needed was an army of kill-crazy herogyn-heads, and…

  Wait a minute! Wait just a damned minute! Sure, we’re rolling in herogyn! Pounds and pounds of the stuff. Why not?

  Vanderling smiled. “Enough palaver,” he said. “How about some refreshments? You guys stay right here, I’ll be right back with some goodies.”

  Keeping his eye on the Sangrans, Vanderling opened the ’boat’s outer airlock door. The Sangrans made no move to flee as he watched them through the open airlock while he rummaged around and came out with a bottle of small blue pills.

  He loped back to his prisoners, squatted, measured out ten pills, passed them around.

  The Sangrans stared dubiously at the small blue pills.

  “Go on, take ’em,” Vanderling ordered, “Satisfaction guaranteed! And if you don’t, I’ll slice your heads off with this.” He brandished the snipgun.

  Vanderling grinned as the Sangrans phlegmatically downed the herogyn pills. Instant army, that’s what it was! Herogyn was illegal on every ball of mud that called itself a civilized planet, and for good reason. The stuff had been developed by the Jovian Hegemony during that brush with the Far Satellites, A dose of the stuff gave you about the best high there was, but then, brother, you were hooked, but good! It did permanent things to your hormone balance. Eight hours of paradise, and then you started to come down. Ten hours later, you were in deep withdrawal, a mindless, savage killing machine—so savage, so bloodthirsty, that you were useless as a soldier. But in between, ah in between, you had a fearless, homicidal soldier-fanatic utterly obedient to whoever supplied the stuff. The Jovian desertion rate had been zero. Of course once the war was over, there was the Total Wipeout, but…

  We’ll cross that bridge when we come to it, Vanderling thought as he watched the bodies of the Sangrans go limp, saw their eyes glaze, watched inane beatific smiles engrave themselves on their lips.

  “That’s it, boys, enjoy yourselves,” he said. “We’ll have some work to do tomorrow, and by then, oh, how ready you’ll be to do it. Relax, have fun. After you’ve had your kicks, I think maybe you’ll start to see things more my way. In fact, I’m sure you will!”

  In the red heat of the Sangran sun, two crescents of men trotted down the slope of a small hill, obscured by the gently undulating tall grass, toward the low complex of buildings surrounded by a high wooden palisade in the valley below. In the forward crescent were ten men carrying rifles, naked except for the rough green loincloths and green sweatbands around their foreheads that Vanderling had adopted as the closest practical thing to a uniform for his People’s Army, under the circumstances. A similar skirmish fine of twenty more men followed about fifteen yards behind the first, with Vanderling, his snipgun at the ready, sandwiched in between.

  So far, so good, Vanderling thought nervously. He had few illusions about his embryonic army under these tactical circumstances. About the only thing he felt he could count on was that they would more or less fight.

  The herogyn, at least, had worked perfectly. The original ten Sangrans had lain around in a euphoric stupor for most of the night. Then, around dawn, as the withdrawal set in, they had begun to squirm, fidget, mutter, snarl, bicker among each other, whine for more herogyn, their eyes reddening, growing vulpine, hungry. And then Vanderling had laid it on the line—they would have to fight for their next fix and the one after that and the one after that. There were no real complaints—in the early withdrawal state, they wanted herogyn and they wanted to kill, and if one brought the other, all the better. Not trusting them with snipguns, he had armed them with captured weapons and waited by the road for what would come along.

  What had finally come along was a convoy of three trucks loaded with “quotas” from other districts: eighteen Killers and a total of thirty-six Sangran prisoners. The Killers were not much trouble—Vanderling had wrecked the trucks and cut most of them down With the snipgun before the hopped-up Sangrans were sent in to mop up what was left, and in their kill-crazy state, the Sangrans had not had much trouble in killing the few survivors. (Though the Killers, decimated and dying though they were, had taken four guerrillas with them.) But the Sangrans were a bit too far into the herogyn withdrawal, and they had gotten the taste of blood and they had started in on the prisoners. Vanderling had had to cut down three of his own men with the snipgun to regain control.

  Two other raids on isolated squads of Killers had gone better, since the guerrillas were simply required to kill everything that moved, not distinguish foe from potential friend.

  But now, at least, he had thirty men and enough captured guns for all, though not one hell of a lot of ammo. But if this first really big raid went off as planned, ammo and arms would not be a problem for quite a while.

  Target for today was the estate-compound of good old Brother Boris, the local poobah. Vanderling refused to kid himself—it was a mighty iffy situation.

  Trouble was, so many factors were unknowns. From what he had been able to pump from the Sangrans, who just didn’t seem to notice such things, the compound would be guarded by thirty to forty Killers. He had never really seen the Killers fight—the three previous actions hadn’t really given the Killers a chance to do much of anything—but from what little he had seen, they were mighty good indeed. And his own troops, if you could call them that, stank on ice. All he could really expect to do with them at this point was to point them in the right direction and pray. It had to be a set-piece, a plan that required that the guerrillas be pairs of legs carrying rifles and nothing more. The word for them was gunfodder.

  And this was the acid test. Knock out the compound and get rid of Brother Boris and Company, and the whole estate would be left hanging, and recruiting would be that much easier. Fail this early, and bye, bye, baby!

  Now the forward line of men was about two hundred yards from the compound wall, well down into the valley, but still hidden by the tall grass, which was cropped only immediately in front of the single gate in the palisade.

  Vanderling held up his snipgun, shouted, “Halt!” Sloppily, the two lines stopped, and with angry gestures, he managed to close the two ranks well enough to give them their final orders without advertising their presence from here to Betelgeuse.

  “Okay, men,” he said sourly, “just do as you’re told and it’ll be a piece of cake. On the first signal, the forward line charges, firing at will and making as much noise as possible. Remember, advance to ten yards from the gate and keep firing. We want them to come out and get us; we don’t have a Chinaman’s chance of storming the wall.

  “Second line follows the first on the second signal. I’ll be right behind you with the snipgun. Remember, the second line stops fifty yards from the gate and takes fixed firing positions, and you stay put, no matter what The Killers come out to attack the first line, and we cut ’em down before they can close. I don’t want any infighting. Remember, we’re outnumbered. Okay, got it? Now give ’em hell!”

  The response was something less than reassuring. The Sangrans stood there silently, their red eyes s
unken and glazed, their mouths unreadable slits, and Vanderling had no way of knowing whether one word he had said had penetrated the herogyn haze or their thick skulls.

  He shrugged. Here goes nothing! he thought. He waved the snipgun over his head and somewhat sarcastically shouted, “Geronimo!”

  The forward line hesitated, then broke into a dogtrot that quickly became a ragged run, a mindless, pell-mell charge. They began to fire their rifles randomly, hopelessly into the air as they ran, and they started to scream, shrill, ululating, wordless demoniac cries, working their way up swiftly into a fine berserker frenzy. Vanderling flinched for a moment—they were further out of their heads than he had thought…

  The forward crescent was about fifty yards away now, churning up the tall grass into an angry sea of screaming, firing men. Vanderling waved his snipgun again, and the second crescent started forward, breaking almost immediately into a dead run, screaming even louder, firing even more wildly.

  So far, so good, Vanderling thought tensely as he trotted forward a safe distance behind the howling second line. Berserker stupidity had its uses, if you knew what to do with it. The first line of men were decoys; they were as good as dead. The second fine would be firing right through them, and the Killers would be sure to get them if the fire from their rear didn’t. Fortunately, they weren’t exactly the thinking type.

  Sure are making enough noise, Vanderling thought, as the shrieking, wildly running men got to within about thirty yards of the gate, their bullets tearing splinters out of the wooden palisade and the heavy wooden gate. Now if the Killers will only oblige and…

  And here they come!

  With the forward fine of guerrillas less than twenty-five yards from the gate, the second line another fifty yards back, Vanderling twenty yards behind them, the gate suddenly swung open. Instantly, five, ten, twenty men, clad in the black uniform of the Killers, swarmed out into the cleared area, firing straight ahead even as they emerged, twenty-five, thirty, and still they kept coming.