Only.
But at least the tank was out of commission.
The tall man in brown was lambasting the troops.
Hickok leaned on the top of the parapet, his arms extended to waist height, and prudently slid his fingers under the strands of barbed wire lining the outer edge of the wall.
“Look!” a nearby woman yelled.
The body of troops was filing into the forest.
What were they up to now? Hickok wondered.
The tall man in brown reappeared, carrying a white flag. Without hesitation, he strode toward the Home.
“One of them is coming this way!” stated a man on the gunman’s left.
What was this action? Hickok squinted, trying to clearly see the man in brown, but he was still too far off.
Spartacus trotted up to the gunfighter.
“How’d we do?” Hickok asked him.
“You won’t believe it,” Spartacus replied.
“How many did we lose?” Hickok pressed him.
Spartacus beamed. “Not one.”
“Are you serious?”
“A few nicks and scratches,” Spartacus elaborated, “but not one dead.
We were lucky.”
“We caught them by surprise,” Hickok stated. “We won’t be able to pull a stunt like that again.”
Spartacus noticed the man in brown approaching. “What’s this?”
“Beats me,” Hickok said, shrugging. “I reckon he wants to palaver.”
“It’s a trick,” Spartacus stated. “He’s doing to us what we did to them.”
“Not likely,” Hickok disagreed. “He left all his men in the trees. I think he really wants to talk.”
“I’ll go meet him,” Spartacus offered.
“Nope.”
“But you’re hurt,” Spartacus objected.
“I can still wobble with the best of ’em,” Hickok responded. “Besides, I’ll have my equalizers with me.” He patted his Pythons. “If he so much as blinks crooked, I’ll perforate his noggin’.”
“I should go along,” Spartacus protested.
“You’ll stay put,” Hickok ordered.
“Hickok—”
“Keep me covered.” Hickok walked to the stairs and descended to the ground. “Lower the drawbridge,” he told the four men.
Hickok stared at one of the dead troopers floating in the moat. Those bodies would have to be removed from the water before they polluted the stream. He gazed at the immobile tank, potentially useless unless it could be driven. How hard was it to drive a tank? Was it anything like driving a jeep or the SEAL? Somehow, he doubted it would be a piece of cake.
The drawbridge clanked to the ground.
The man in brown was waiting on the other side, about 20 yards from the west wall.
Hickok nonchalantly placed his thumbs in his gunbelt and ambled from the compound. He wended his way among the scattered bodies until he was five feet from the man in brown.
“Hello, Hickok,” the man said in a low voice.
Hickok studied the speaker. He was a big one, at least six and a half feet in height, and every square inch appeared to be solid muscle. His brown clothing, immaculately neat, served as a distinct contrast to the man’s animalistic facial features; he had a pronounced forehead terminating in excessively bushy eyebrows, thick lips, a deformed nose, and two of his upper teeth protruded over his lower lip. His nose was deformed, almost flattened at its tip, and his skin was strangely pitted. A shock of black hair added to his bizarre aspect.
“Should I know you, gruesome?” Hickok baited him.
“No,” the big man conceded. “My name is Brutus.”
“So what’s with the white flag?” Hickok inquired. In reality, it was a strip of white sheeting affixed to a branch.
“I wanted to talk to you,” Brutus revealed, his tone low and forceful, the trace of a grin touching the corners of his wide mouth.
“We have something to talk about?” Hickok retorted.
“The Doktor wants his notebooks,” Brutus declared.
“What notebooks?” Hickok answered, stalling. How had the Doktor discovered the Family had them?
“Don’t play games with me,” Brutus warned. “The Doktor’s last radio contact concerned four blue notebooks of his. They’re his journals on his research and other activities. The Doktor wants them back. He knows one of your Warriors, Yama, stole them from Cheyenne before it was nuked. He knows the Family has them. Hand them over.”
“Why don’t you stick that branch where the sun don’t shine,” Hickok told him.
“I take it you refuse to turn the notebooks over?” Brutus asked.
“Ain’t you the bright one!” Hickok stated. “You must make your momma real proud.”
Brutus abruptly clenched his brawny fists, his face reddening.
“Touchy, ain’t we?” Hickok said. Why did Brutus react so angrily to a harmless insult? Suddenly the answer hit the gunman: Brutus didn’t have a mother. Brutus was one of the Doktor’s test-tube creatures, one of his genetically engineered deviates.
“I will have those notebooks,” Brutus vowed, “one way or the other.”
“The Doktor wants them that bad, huh?” Hickok queried, an idea occurring to him.
“The Doktor wants them,” Brutis affirmed.
“Then you’d best take your tin soldiers and skedaddle,” Hickok said, “or I’ll burn the notebooks to ashes.”
Brutus smiled. “Go ahead.”
“But you just said the Doktor wants his journals back,” Hickok said in surprise.
“He does,” Brutus confirmed, “but he wants the Family destroyed even more than he wants his notebooks. Go ahead and burn them.”
Hickok didn’t respond. He knew the notebooks were invaluable to the Family. The Family Elders were close to deciphering the contents, and the information gleaned so far indicated that the cause of the premature senility affecting the older Family members was contained in those notebooks.
Brutus gazed up at the west wall. “I will demolish your Home.”
“In case you hadn’t noticed,” Hickok reminded him, “Some other idiot just tried. The Home is still standing.”
Brutus inexplicably smiled. “Captain Luther was an inexperienced dolt!
He really believed you were going to surrender. He thought you were terrified at the mere sight of our troops and the tank.” Brutus chuckled. “I knew better, of course, but I couldn’t convince him. I knew it was a trick!” he bragged. “I advised him to keep most of our men in reserve, in case it was an ambush. And the jackass fell for it!” Brutus laughed crazily.
“I take it you were rather fond of old Luther?” Hickok quipped.
“With him gone,” Brutus informed the Warrior, “I’m in charge now.”
“From a jackass to a horse’s ass,” Hickok said. “I don’t see where you’re an improvement.”
Brutus glared at the gunman.
“I must say,” Hickok went on, taunting his foe, “I’m impressed by all the fancy words you sling around. I didn’t think the Doktor’s pets were that smart.”
Brutus resembled a beet from the neck up. “I’ll make you eat those words, you bastard! I’m one of the Doktor’s favorites!”
“Whoop-de-do!”
“By this time tomorrow,” Brutus pledged, “you will be dead, you and the rest of your miserable Family. I will show no mercy!”
“I have a question for you,” Hickok stated.
Brutus, working himself into a frenzy over the gunman’s insults, was taken aback by the comment. He stared at the Warrior, flustered. “What question?”
Hickok grinned. “How are you gonna get back to them trees?”
“What do you mean?”
“How are you gonna get from here,” Hickok said, pointing to the grotesque man’s exceptionally large feet, “to there.” The gunman pointed at the forest 130 yards off.
“I’m going to walk,” Brutus said.
“Wanna bet?” Hickok’s hands hovered near the pearl grips on his Colt Pythons.