Blade was praying for a distraction. Something. Anything.
The Doktor, evidently unable to resist the allure of a captive audience, continued to speak. “Come to think of it, there are some words I’d like to say to you. I want to praise you.”
“Praise me?” Blade finally asked.
“Oh, not you personally. Your Family. Specifically, the accursed Warriors. You have created more difficulties for me than anyone else in the past one hundred years, and that’s quite an accomplishment,” the Doktor said.
“I’m flattered,” Blade snapped sarcastically.
“Seriously,” the Doktor stressed, “Haven’t you ever heard that you can measure the quality of a man by the excellence of his competition?” The Doktor sighed. “Believe it or not, I shall be sorry to see you go. You and the rest of the Warriors. There is no place in a society like ours, where peace is promoted at the expense of personal liberties, for Warriors like yourself.
You are an anachronism Blade. You and Geronimo and Hickok and the rest.” The Doktor laughed. “Especially Hickok. I’ve heard of some of his escapades and listened to some of the tapes of monitored Family conversations. Does he use that phony Wild West jargon all the time?”
Blade nodded.
“Remarkable,” the Doktor stated. “But then, the Family is remarkable. It has produced an astonishing quantity of outstanding individuals. Plato. Joshua. Your own father.”
“My father?” Blade repeated bewildered. “You knew my father?”
“Haven’t you ever speculated who was responsible for your father’s death?” the Doktor inquired, a wicked gleam in his eyes.
Blade’s mouth fell open as he gawked at the Doktor. “You?” he asked in stupefied amazement.
“Who else?” the Doktor said, smiling arrogantly.
Blade’s mind spun, his emotions staggered by the revelation. He vividly recalled the day, about four years ago, when the runner had told him his father had been attacked by a mutate while on a hunting trip. At the time, his father was the Family Leader. He had been with two other men from the Family. They had dropped behind while one of them removed a stone from his boot. Blade’s father had been 30 yards ahead of them, near a growth of dense brush, when what the men thought was a mutate had charged from cover and attacked him, ripping and slashing with its fearsome claws. Regrettably, Blade’s father had passed on to the higher mansions mere minutes prior to his own arrival on the scene. Blade had knelt in the grass and held his father’s hand while tears streaked his cheeks.
The men with Blade’s father had rushed to his aid, but the mutate responsible for the savage onslaught had whirled and vanished in the underbrush. Both men had claimed there had been something unique about that particular mutate; they had insisted it had worn a collar, a leather collar.
The collar!
Blade’s memory flashed back to the run Alpha Triad had made to Thief River Falls. He remembered the ferocious creatures called the Brutes, the bestial beings the soldiers had used for tracking and guard duties. Blade had barely survived a fierce fight with one of them, and it had worn a leather collar!
Blade was feeling dizzy. He abruptly recalled an incident during the trip to Kalispell. What was it the officer had told him? Yes! Now he recollected what it was: “That metal collar is how the Doktor controls his freaks. His earlier creatures… just wore leather collars.”
Damn!
Damn! Damn! Damn!
Right in front of his nose the whole time!
“It was necessary to dispose of your father,” the Doktor was saying. “He intended to send out expeditions to ascertain if there were other survivors of the war. So long as your Family remained comparatively isolated, we were content to periodically send monitoring teams to eavesdrop on your conversations, using sophisticated electronic equipment, as we do with all the other outposts of civilization beyond the borders of the Civilized Zone.
But we couldn’t allow your Family to contact the others. We weren’t quite ready to commence reconquering the United States, and we wanted all surviving factions to be as disorganized as possible to prevent them unifying against us. Consequently, I sent in a team with one of my little pets. Your father conveniently left the security of the Home, and the rest you know.”
Blade felt an intense fury mounting within him. His fists clenched into compact clubs.
“I would have done the same to Plato,” the Doktor revealed, “only he decided to send Alpha Triad out so abruptly we couldn’t assassinate him beforehand.”
Blade’s cheeks were flushing from the passionate rage welling up inside him.
“Killing your father wasn’t anything personal,” the Doktor commented.
“It was strictly business. Killing Joshua, on the other hand, was purely personal.”
Blade wasn’t sure he had heard correctly. “Joshua?”
“Oh? Didn’t I mention it?” The Doktor chuckled. “The foolish pacifist tried to convert me to the path of life and light! Imagine!” He tossed back his head and gave vent to uncontrolled mirth.
Blade’s muscles tightened. He no longer cared if the Doktor held a gun.
He didn’t give a damn if Thor was nearby. He wanted one thing and one thing only: to wring the Doktor’s neck!
A gigantic, thunderous explosion erupted from the west end of the town square, sounding as if several charges went off simultaneously.
Both the Doktor and Thor involuntarily glanced in the direction of the cacophonous blast.
It was the moment Blade had been waiting for. He charged, forgetting to draw his Bowies, his arms extended and his fingers rigid.
The Doktor detected Blade’s assault out of the corner of his right eye.
He turned and fired.
Blade experienced a burning sensation along his rib cage on his right side, but he disregarded it and leaped the final four feet.
The 45 boomed again, but in his haste the Doktor missed, and before he could aim again the Warrior slammed into him and bore him to the ground.
Thor, about to hasten to the Doktor’s defense, saw four forms hurrying toward the center of the town square from the west. He recognized them almost instantly; the fat one with the beard, the guy in black, the Indian Geronimo, and, trailing a few yards behind, the gunfighter called Hickok.
What should he do?
Thor glanced at the Doktor and Blade. The Doktor had landed on his back with the Warrior on top, but he suddenly swept his left knee up and rammed it into Blade’s left side. Blade winced and doubled over, releasing his hold on the Doktor.
“Doktor!” Thor yelled. “Hickok and the others…” He pointed in their direction.
The Doktor never bothered to look up. “Kill them!” he ordered, scrambling to his hands and knees.
Thor ran to the rear of the half-track and climbed over the tailgate to the mounted machine gun. He pivoted the gun, sighting on the four defenders, and let the sledgehammer fall to the floor.
Blade, his left side in excruciating agony from the Doktor’s blow, was lying on his right side. He felt something hard being pressed against his left temple and twisted his head to find the reason.
It was the Doktor, and he was holding the 45 next to Blade’s head.
“Don’t move!” the Doktor hissed.
Lynx abruptly began moaning.
“No one lays a hand on me!” the Doktor snapped at Blade. “No one!” He sounded as if he were on the verge of going off the deep end, his tone strident and ragged.
What was he waiting for? Blade wondered.
The Doktor’s face conveyed the fanatical nature of his insanity: his eyes were wide, the pupils distended; his nostrils were flared; his lips were curled upward in a fake grin, exposing his teeth; and his entire countenance seemed to be aglow with a bizarre inner light.