“Ready and willing!” Krysty answered, working the clutch and gearshift on what had once been a Nissan. “Just say the word!”
“Then let’s roll!” Ryan shouted, shifting into gear and starting forward.
Forming a ragged line, the six speedsters rolled into the exit tunnel, maneuvering easily past the series of antirad zigzags.
“Half a league, half a league onward!” Doc sang out over the noisy engine of the Saturn SUV. It wasn’t a very powerful wag, but for some reason he felt drawn to the machine. He had no logical idea why.
“Aw, stuff it, ya old coot!” Mildred shot back. “You know I hate that damn poem!”
“Hate Tennyson, madam? Impossible!”
“Mebbe just hate you!” Jak added, trying not to smirk.
Looking over a shoulder, Doc flashed his oddly perfect teeth. “Now that I believe!”
The massive blast doors at the end of the tunnel loomed. Braking to a halt, everybody got their rapid-fires ready, as Krysty hopped out to tap in the exit code on the wall keypad and press the lever. She immediately raced back to her speedster, and was safely inside the locked cage before the doors parted to expose the wall of water.
Anxiously, Ryan touched the fresh bandages under his shirt as he waited to see if any of the muties would come out of the rushing barrier. But nothing happened. The one-eyed man stomped on the gas pedal.
Shooting forward, he literally flew through the pounding water and was airborne for several seconds before dropping into the lake with a resounding splash. Veering away from a boulder, he jogged to the left just as Krysty burst into view, closely followed by J.B., Mildred, Doc and Jak.
The lake was chest-high on them, completely covering the tires. Choppy waves smacked the engines, making them sputter and cough, but then they surged with life.
Steering wildly, the companions did their best to avoid the assorted obstacles submerged in the shallow lake, and Mildred clipped a boulder hard enough to rattle her teeth. But the physician held on to the steering wheel with both hands and got the little speedster back under control before it smashed headlong into another large rock.
Watching out of the corner of his eye, J.B. whistled in relief. That had been close. Too damn close.
Shaking the spray from his face, Ryan searched for hunters waiting for them in the trees or bushes, but then the shore was upon them. Bracing for the impact, the man jounced up the mossy slope and went flying again for a moment before landing on top of the bamboo stand, sending out broken pieces in every direction.
Angling past a tree, he plowed into a bush, and a rear wheel slipped in the greenery turning him abruptly back toward the lake. Savagely twisting the steering wheel, Ryan fought to stay out of the water and managed to angle back into the bushes to careen off a banana tree in an explosion of bark. Fruit fell from above like green and yellow rain as Ryan rejoined the others rocketing through the dense jungle. J.B. gave the man a game thumbs-up, and Krysty nodded, then they were among the banyan trees. Hanging vines were everywhere, and the companions concentrated on their driving. Even shouted conversations were pointless over the six engines and the steady rustling of the plant life smashed aside by the steel cages.
Colorful birds exploded from the trees at their approach, and the little monkeys ran away, screaming and waving their arms in an almost human manner. Running over a hissing snake, Ryan dodged a large flower that turned to follow the speedsters, then something heavy landed on top of the cage, and a hairy arm clawed for his face. Hunters!
Leaning away from the limb, Ryan flipped a switch on the dashboard and the entire cage crackled with fat blue sparks. On the dashboard, a meter showed the first line of nuke batteries in the rear of the speedster draining slightly, but nothing serious.
With fat blue sparks crawling over it, the mutie blindly tried for the man, missed and accidentally touched the door. Now the second set of batteries surged, completing the circuit, and the mutie shrieked as it burst into flames from the massive electric shock.
Shifting gears, Ryan smelled ozone and cooked flesh, as the aced mutie tumbled away. Unfortunately the gas gauge was dropping at an alarming rate. Every time he fried a mutie, the power drain made the engine slow. But there was nothing that could be done about that now. He would just have to stay low, stay fast and trust that the welds were strong enough to hold.
A snarling mutie leaped from a bush, all four arms spread. Dodging the creature, Ryan saw the other companions in their speedsters darting about. Jak had an aced mutie on the front, partially blocking his view. The albino teen was fishtailing the speedster in an effort to get the smoking corpse off, but was having no luck.
A large mutie was clinging to the side of Doc’s cage, holding on with both feet while four hands grabbed for the old man’s long, flowing hair. Ryan could see the scholar stabbing the button on the dashboard, but nothing was happening. Fireblast, he thought, something had to be wrong with the bastard wiring!
Quickly angling in that direction, Ryan bounced over some exposed roots, nearly losing his seat, then saw Krysty slam her speedster into Doc’s wag, crushing the mutie between their two cages. There was an electrical shower as their cages touched, sizzling sparks zapping the creature. A gory ruin, the charred hunter hung on with a single arm, then fell away to disappear in the clouds of bluish smoke pouring from the exhaust pipes. Only the arm remained to sway to the motions of the racing speedster.
A stuttering burst rang out, and Ryan turned to see Mildred trigger her rapid-fire at a hunter perched on top of her cage. Bleeding from a score of wounds, the mutie thrust downward with a stick, knocking the Kalashnikov from her grip. The AK-47 hit the floor and tumbled to the rear of the speedster, lying on top of the nuke batteries.
Stomping on the accelerator, Ryan went cold at the sight. If the metal blaster made contact with the terminals, Mildred would be fried alive!
Shouting a war whoop, Jak turned his speedster, streaked along an earthen mound and fired a single shot from his Colt Python. The Magnum round hit a tree branch ahead of the crouching physician, the wood exploding into splinters. Dropping free, the branch hit the bleeding mutie across the face, fangs and blood gushing from the brutal impact. As the mutie fell off, J.B. ran over it with his speedster, grinning like a madman.
Then Mildred slammed on the brakes and the Kalashnikov flew to the front of the cage and dropped onto the dashboard. Snatching the weapon with one hand, she rammed it back into the clip on the floor, then shifted gears to accelerate to full speed.
There were spaces among the trees now, and occasionally Ryan could see open sky. They had to be reaching the end of the jungle. He had no fragging idea what lay beyond, but without the cover provided by the trees, the danger from the muties would be eliminated.
Suddenly a rock bounced off the cage near Ryan, stony splinters peppering his face. Cursing vehemently, the man veered away from the attack, then realized his mistake and spun back again just it time to avoid a barrage of rocks thrown by other muties.
From somewhere there came the sound of shattering glass as a headlight was destroyed. Doc cried out in pain. A fist-size stone shot through the opening of a cage to hit the back of Krysty’s chair, nearly throwing her into the dashboard. Suddenly they were out of the jungle, barreling along an uneven grassland that stretched to the horizon.
Loud cries from the furious Hunters could be heard coming from the jungle, but they were growing fainter with every heartbeat. The muties were not allowed in the lake, so maybe they were also not allowed out of the jungle? That made sense. What good were guard dogs if they could run away?
A low earthen mound sent Ryan airborne over a ravine, and he landed with a jarring crash on the other side, nearly losing control of the vehicle. The terrain was getting rougher, wild and jagged. With no other choice, the one-eyed man slowed his speedster. Unexpectedly, a blaster fired. Ryan turned to see Jak shaking his head vehemently and heading to the west. He was puzzled for a moment, then understood the teen was still following the trail of Delphi from the redoubt.
Downshifting the gears, Ryan and the others followed the albino youth through the churned countryside and onto a smooth grassland. Young trees dotted the landscape, but they were few and far between, and easily avoided. Slowing for a minute, Jak studied the ground, then took off again, the others staying in his wake.
Squinting at the grass, Ryan caught a glimpse of the signs of an old campsite, then it was left behind. Fireblast, had there been four cook fires? That could mean fifteen or so people traveling with the cyborg. Ryan wanted to go back to look for more details about the weapons and wags of the cyborg’s convoy, but they were still too close to the mutie to risk stopping.
Checking the fuel gauge, the man grunted at the needle trembling near the quarter-tank mark. Half of their juice was already gone.
High above the racing speedsters, thunder rumbled in the turbulent sky, and there came the faint smell of sulfur. Ryan fought the urge to increase his speed and stayed close to Jak. If they lost the trail now, they would never find it again after an acid rain. On the other hand, if they were caught out in the open, after the storm there wouldn’t be enough of the companions left to stuff into an empty cartridge.
Casting fast glances to the other companions, Ryan saw that they comprehended the situation and wanted to stay on the trail. There really was nothing else to do but keep moving and hope they outpaced the coming rain.
Concentrating on their driving, the companions sped along the untamed grasslands, listening to the distant thunder and waiting for the first sprinkling of fiery death from above.
“Yah! Move, you nuking bags of bones! Yah!” James Keifer shouted, cracking his whip in the air just above the running team of horses. Already straining against the leather harness, the animals surged forward, redoubling their efforts, and the buckboard increased in speed across the rough terrain.
The valley rose sharply on each side of the small convoy, jagged boulders dotting the landscape from where they had tumbled down the sloping hills. Sagebrush and scraggly juniper bushes grew in wild abundance, tall cacti growing higher than any norm, their thorny arms outstretched as if praying to a blazing sun god.
A dozen of the armed slavers rode their horses in tight formation around the rattling buckboard, the big men hunched low, their hands gripping blasters. One man had an arrow through his shoulder, the wound bleeding from the front and back, his shirt soaked black and crawling with flies. But the grim man was still in the saddle, his blaster raised, the hammer cocked and ready. The cargo had been aced, and now they were fighting for their lives. What a nukestorm of a job this had turned into!
“Any sign of ’em yet?” Stanley Frederickson demanded from the rear of the buckboard, pulling back the drawstring on a huge crossbow. The spread of the weapon was more than a yard wide, and few people could even load the massive bow, much less control the staggering recoil. The string locked into place, Frederickson pulled an arrow from the quiver on his back and knocked it in place.
“Nothing yet!” shouted one of the other slavers in the shaking buckboard. Facing backward, he stood with one sweaty hand holding a longblaster, the other wrapped tight around the iron bars of the cage.
Stout poles supported a canvas awning that kept the blazing sun off the heads of the remaining slavers. Blood stained the floorboards from a chance hit that chilled Vera Nazarene, the body of the aced woman tossed out to give the others more room to fight. The grim slavers had said nothing as they’d heaved their friend to the sand, consigning her to the scavengers.
“Think we lost ’em?” G. W. Barton asked hopefully, a bloody rag tied around his throat from a near miss by the attacking cannies. At every word, the trickle of red seeping from under the crude bandage flowed faster.
“No fragging way!” Keifer replied loudly, over the pounding hooves of the team of horses. He licked dry lips and started to add more, then changed his mind. “Yah! Yah!” he bellowed, cracking the whip again. “Come on, ya big bastards, move!”
Whinnying in response, the animals increased their efforts and the buckboard surged forward, which increased the wild shaking. Grabbing the low wooden sides of the buckboard, the slavers held on tight and prepared for another assault by the cannies. Longblasters were loaded, knives loosened in sheaths and the fuses checked on a precious few hand-bombs. The homemade explosives were clay jugs packed with black powder and loose pebbles. When the charge blew, the blast sent out a halo of rocks that chilled anything for ten yards, norm or mutie. The bombs were what the slavers used to blow up ville gates. The men they chilled on sight, but the females and babes would be sold or traded.
Lashed securely in the four corners of the buckboard, covered with heavy tarpaulins, were four large barrels filled to the brim with black powder and soft lead to be made into musket balls. A staggering bounty of ammo had been hauled from the Redbone Mountains and paid for with slaves—pilgrims, farmers, fools and feebs, anybody the slavers could capture alive in their nets. Then they rode the Great Salt, trading slaves to Dogrun for lead, exchanging the soft metal to Royalton for black powder, then trading the powder with Cascade for flints, the shiny, brittle little stones that made the powder explode. The barons of the villes of Royalton and Cascade pretended they had no idea that Dogrun used slave labor in their mines, and everybody got working blasters.
The hordes of muties roaming Deathlands never stood a chance against the booming muskets of the three villes, and there soon was a safe zone that reached all the way from Green Hell to the Flat Lake.
Unfortunately, it seemed that news of their wealth had spread.
At first, the slavers had thought this was a simple jack, some outlander mercies doing a nightcreep to get the cargo of ammo. But when the slavers tossed out Vera, the outlanders stopped to collect the body and one of them took a couple of bites out of the still-warm corpse.
“Fragging cannies,” Wilma Fisher growled, tucking her blunt flint into a pocket. Even after being sharpened again, the rock would be too small for a longblaster musket, but would work just fine in a handcannon.
Taking a fresh flint from the row of small pockets sown across the front of her rawhide shirt, the busty slaver tucked it into place and tried not to think about what would happen to her if taken alive by the cannies. Raped, of course, which might not be too bad, but then she’d be tied to a rock and slowly cut apart. The cannies believed that the death songs of people sweetened the meat. Maybe that was just a story, but Fisher would eat her own blaster before that happened.
Inserting a fresh flint, Fisher twisted the screw to lock the rock into place. A charge of powder and lead was already in the barrel, but the woman checked the cover of the flash pan to make sure the priming charge was still in place. With the fragging buckboard bounding and jerking all over the place it was surprising that any of the slavers still had teeth in their heads, much less powder in their weapons! she thought. But a sniff of the pan filled her nose with the reek of rotten eggs. That told her the powder was still place, primed and ready.
“Frag ’em all!” Fisher roared, her long hair lashing freely in the wind. “It’s chilling time, boys!”
Nobody replied, saving their breath. Every slaver wanted to bed the woman, and nobody ever wanted to face her in battle. Fisher liked chilling more than getting rode, and she loved getting rode more than breathing.
Everything had gone fine on the way to the Redbone Mountains, lots of empty miles and a few stickies. Nothing serious. Several times along the way, Vera Nazarene had sworn that she saw a flash of reflected light from the sand dunes, or a rock formation, almost as if somebody was watching them through a longeyes. But that nonsense had been ignored. As if anybody had a working scope anymore! But it seemed the woman had been right. The cannies hit the convoy near the Dune Sea, and she had been the first to get chilled, a hole blown clean through her belly from a sniper.
Just then, a great cloud of dust rose from behind a hill to their east.
“Here they come again!” Barton yelled, pulling out two muzzle-loading pistols and cocking back the hammers.
If the Red Shakes hadn’t taken so many of the slavers last winter, the convoy would have twice the number of blasters than it did now. More than enough to deal with any attempted jack! But now…
A moment later half a dozen predark bikes burst into view from out of an arroyo, sunlight glinting off the windshields. Carrying throwing axes, the cannies looked lumpy from the pieces of hardwood strapped to their bodies as protection from the soft lead bullets. Here and there was a flower of splinters sticking out showing where a lead ball had hit but failed to achieve penetration.
Following behind the group of two-wheelers was a massive war wag. The huge Mack truck was pulling a long, eighteen-wheeler, flatbed trailer with wooden walls added. The planks were studded with nails, and louvered shutters hung protectively over the big tires. Even the cab was coated with wood and nails, making it resemble a thornbush, and a colossal eye was painted across the planks covering the grille, the inhuman orb staring directly forward in singular purpose.
Wooden armor studded with nails, Barton raged, squinting at the bizarre sight. Who ever heard of such a thing?
The slaver found the painted eyeball oddly disturbing as he tried to aim at the war wag, which was probably what it was intended for—to scare people into running away so that they could be more easily run down. That realization brought a cold wave of adrenaline to his stomach. Nuke-sucking cannies were trying to play him!
Trying to ignore the big eye, Keiffer took aim and unleashed the crossbow, the arrow lancing harmlessly between the dusty covered riders and burrowing itself deep into the planks covering the front of the war wag, just missing the eye.
Fiendishly, the cannie driver of the Mack grinned in response, displaying sharpened teeth, and increased the speed of the big rig.
Cursing bitterly, Keifer started to reload the crossbow.
“Dumb-ass gleeb! Now watch how it’s done by a real gunner!” Fisher snarled, raising her longblaster and firing. A foot-long lance of flame boomed from the end of the muzzle, along with a huge cloud of dark smoke. A split second later, the windshield of a bike exploded into sparkling pieces, the rider jerking backward as red blood exploded from his exposed throat. As the body fell, the bike veered away to disappear into a gully. A few moments later there was a fiery explosion and a huge gout of smoke rolled upward into the sky.
“That was for Vera!” the woman shouted smugly, pulling out a ramrod to start reloading her own weapon.
Just then, the buckboard hit a rock, sending her over the side. The slavers watched in horror as the woman hit the ground, her blaster flying away. She was still rolling in the sand when the cannie bikers roared past, the leader swinging a hand ax. Still stunned from the fall, Wilma feebly tried to dodge, but the blade hit, cleaving her head wide open and splashing her brains onto a nearby rock.
Startled for only a moment, now all of the guards in the buckboard began hammering at the cannies with muskets and crossbows. Grinning widely, the bikers spread out and opened fire with their handcannons, the staggered volley of smoke temporarily masking the outlanders. But then they reappeared from the roiling fumes, throwing hand axes. The blades spun across the intervening space and slammed into the horses.
Screaming in pain, the animals reared, throwing several of the slavers to the hard sand, bones audibly breaking as the bodies crazily tumbled along like windblown leaves.
As the other riders struggled to control their mounts, Keifer knelt to fumble with a butane lighter, then stood and heaved a hand bomb. Instantly, the eighteen-wheeler slammed on the brakes, tires squeaking and screeching, while the sleek two-wheelers quickly separated. The clay jug hit empty sand and violently exploded. Two of the cannies wobbled on their bikes from the concussion, but none of them fell.
As the bikers sped away, more cannies stood up in the rear of the Mack war wag, and started firing predark handcannons at the slavers. Raising his arm to throw another bomb, Keifer as blown backward with most of his face gone, the hail of blood, brains and teeth splattering across Frederickson. The driver cast a single brief look backward, then crouched and started insanely whipping the horses.
“Yah! Yah!” the fat slaver bellowed, spittle flying from his mouth. “Faster, ya motherless gleebs, or it’s the stew pot for all of you!” The whip cracked constantly, the pounding of the hooves sounding like distant cannon fire, it was so loud.
Fumbling to reload his musket, Barton could not believe what had just happened. The cannies had predark blasters? Then why were they throwing axes before? Mebbe to conserve ammo? He’d never seen live brass in his life, only black-powder blasters. So why were they using the brass now, unless…Nuking hell, this wasn’t a jack!
“Ambush!” Barton shouted, firing his longblaster. “We’re heading into a fragging ambush!”
His eyes going wide with understanding, Frederickson started pulling the reins to the left, toward the open desert. But the terrified horses didn’t want to obey and kept going forward. Frantically, he whipped the animals, but that only made them slow down in confusion, and the bikers grew closer….
S
PUTTERING AND COUGHING
, the engine of the modified Saturn died away completely. Pumping the pedal, Ryan tried to coax the speedster a little farther until coasting to a full halt near the foot of a large hillock. With squealing brakes, the rest of the companions stopped nearby, Jak’s engine sputtering and dying before he came to a complete rest.
“Guess that’s it.” Krysty sighed, yanking off the handkerchief and running a hand through her hair. “We made it farther that I thought.”
“At least we left the acid rain behind us,” Ryan grumbled, cracking his knuckles. He knew the storm might still be coming this way, but even on foot they should be long gone before it arrived.
“Any sign of the hunters?” Mildred asked in concern, yanking out the spent rounds from her blaster and shoving in live brass.
“Don’t see how,” Ryan said, turning off the power to the cage, then throwing the bolt before unlocking the door.
Pushing it open with a boot, the big man got out and stretched with obvious relief, then reached into the backpack on the floor to unearth a soup-can-size object. With a snap of his wrist, the predark Navy telescope extended for a full three feet, and Ryan placed his good eye to the end and looked around, carefully studying the distant horizon. The telescope was an amazing little thing they had found in the ruins of the Virginia Beach Naval Station. The unbreakable plastic lens was kind of heavy, but the scope compacted smaller than binocs and was perfect for the one-eyed man.
Turning slowly, Ryan could only see barren desert. There were some reddish mountains to the north, along with several sand dunes, but nothing else. “Clear,” he announced with some satisfaction, compacting the telescope. “Didn’t think the muties could follow us this far, but it never hurts to make sure.”