Authors: James Axler
Dripping mud, blood and fuel, the four wags stood motionless in the smoky darkness, their hot armor creaking softly as loose stones rolled along the churned earth, and a classic mushroom cloud began to form above the fiery remains of the hilltop fortress.
Bitter smoke lay heavy and oppressive across the battlefield, like a winter fog. Long minutes passed before any sign of life returned to the dented war wags: shapes passing behind windshields, blasters withdrawing from blasterports, muffled curses and low groans of pain. Only the heavily battered War Wag Three stayed dark and still.
“Fireblastâ¦A-anybody aced?” Ryan growled, blinking a few times to clear his vision.
“Don't think so,” J.B. mumbled, glancing around the interior of the vehicle. There was no blood showing, or at least none that hadn't been there before. The wag was filthy from the residue of the aced sec men, some of their knives still lying on the sticky floor.
“No damage that I can see,” Mildred said, pushing up the bodybar of her jumpseat. There only seemed to be the expected array of bumps and bruises. Fair enough. The companions would be sore in the morning, but that was always a lot better than waking up dressed in pine. Then she scowled. “Doc, are you hurt?”
“No indeed, madam, I am not,” the old man replied, brushing at a dark stain on his frock coat. “This is from the assassin I terminated. He perished easily, but seems to have beenâ¦well, particularly juicy.”
In spite of herself, Krysty snorted a laugh, then cringed as her wounded hair tried to flex in response to her emotional state. The memory of the bullet passing through her hair came
unbidden to mind, and for a moment the woman thought she might lose what little she had eaten for dinner. Gaia, it had hurt worse then getting shot! Krystry knew that she would be fine in the morning, her kind healed fast, but right now she had a nukestorm of a headache, her temples pounding so hard it blurred her vision.
“What happened?” Jak mumbled, wiping blood off his mouth. The safety harness had kept him from going through the windshield, but not from smacking his head against the steering wheel. It was cushioned like the floor, but there was still a core of steel in the middle and his teeth had darn near broke finding that out the hard way.
“Those damn missiles must have set off the stores of black powder,” J.B. said, squinting into the smoke outside. Even with the halogen lamps, it was difficult to see anything past the glass. The beams simply sank into the swirling fumes and disappeared.
“Black powder, gunpowder, cordite, grens, brass, dynamite, and everything else Conway had jacked from traders and travelers over the years,” Ryan added grimly, releasing his safety belt. He stood uncertainly, then realized it was the UCV that was slightly tilted, not him.
“Serves him right for storing everything in one location,” Krysty said in a throaty whisper, her fingertips massaging her temples. “The legacy of a fool is always disaster.”
“Triple stupe,” Jak agreed wearily, flexing his hands to restore the circulation.
“Or perhaps, merely overconfident,” Doc suggested, using his ebony stick to flick aside a boot with a foot still inside. “As the good book says, pride goeth before the fall.”
“That Chinese?”
“Good Lord, no! It is from the Holy Bible, Mr. Lauren. Haven't you ever read it?”
The teenager shrugged. “Can only read some. Not good. Not lot books to practice.”
Checking his pockets for spare clips, Ryan said nothing. Peace and forgiveness was all right in theory, but that turning-the-other-cheek crap was for another time and another world. If there was a heaven, then the world was hell, and commandments of a long-past God didn't apply anymore to the damned. The only rules in the Deathlands were: keep your blaster loaded, keep your word, protect kin and stay alive.
Striding to the door, Ryan worked the latch and stepped outside. The smoke moved around the big man like a living thing, and slowly Ryan was able to make out shapes and details. The bunkers were gone, wiped clean off the face of the world, along with the hilltop mansion. There didn't seem to be anything remaining above the ground, except for some scraggly bushes and the bare trunk of a tree, the leaves, branches and even the bark completely removed.
“By the Three Kennedys,” Doc gasped, looking out a side window. “John Barrymore, get on the radio and call the
Tiger Lily
at once!”
“Why?” the Armorer asked, turning. He inhaled sharply. Only a few yards away was War Wag Three. Every window was shattered, there was firelight playing on the ground under the engine of the Mack truck, and a cannon was sticking out of the rear grille, a rivulet of blood trickling off the pitted metal.
“
Scorpion
to
Tiger Lily,
what's your status,” Roberto demanded over the ceiling speaker. There was a pause. “War Wag Three, report! Is anybody alive?”
“
Big Joe
to convoy, don't bother, they're gone,” Scott said woodenly. “That nuking cannon cored them like an apple. I sent out a couple of my people to check, butâ¦wait a second.”
The second became a minute, then two.
“Okay, they're aced,” Scott continued softly. “There were no survivors.”
“Are you sure?” Mildred shouted to be heard over the mike.
Turning, J.B. passed it to her.
“There are many injuries that can make a person seem aced,” Mildred began, but was cut off.
“They're fragging pulp!” Scott retorted. “There ain't no bodies, just ooze with teeth. Savvy?”
“Yes, of course,” Mildred said quickly. “My apologies.”
“We can mourn the aced tomorrow,” Ryan growled, stepping back into the wag to grab the Steyr. “But right now we should do a recce for any survivors in that mansion. If we wait too long, they can get away.”
“Get awayâ¦Hot pipe, man, are you crazy?” Scott demanded incredulously. “The blast damn nearly chilled us all, and we were a hundred feet away behind steel. There's a dent in my port armor bigger than a horse!”
“No,
One-Eye
is right. We have to check,” Roberto said, the signal coming in loud and clear over the static. “
Big Joe,
stay here and watch for stragglers. Take no chances, burn down anybody coming this way.”
“The flamethrower is busted to drek,” Scott replied curtly, “but my crew is already reloading the missile pods. We'll be hard in a few minutes.”
“Good enough.
One-Eye,
meet me at the bunkers in five.”
“Roger,
Scorpion,
see you there,” J.B. replied, and clicked off the mike.
Side by side, the two war wags turned and rumbled back to the ruin of the bunkers. They parked just at the edge of a large depression, the undamaged headlamps shining brightly down into the murky depths. The craterlike hole was yards deep, the blackened sides lumpy with fieldstones, splintery logs and the grisly remains of people, the limbs still steaming from the hellish heat of the explosion.
“Okay, Jak and Mildred, stay with Krysty,” Ryan said, working the slide on the SIG-Sauer. “Burn anybody who tries to get inside without the name code. J.B. and Doc, with me.”
“Consider me Porthos, my dear Ryan,” Doc said, sheathing his sword in the ebony stick.
“Millie?” J.B. asked, holding out a hand. The physician tossed him a small item and he tucked it into a pocket.
“Watch your ass, lover,” Krysty said, shielding her eyes from the glare of the headlights. The red filaments were tightly coiled to her head, revealing how much pain she was suffering.
“I sound horn, come running,” Jak ordered with a scowl. “You hear twice, we on way.”
Nodding, the three men climbed out of the UCV and proceeded carefully through the assorted destruction, the ground slippery in spots from cooked organs. The smell was disturbing, appetizing and revolting at the same time.
As the companions reached the crumbling edge of the blast zone, Roberto and Jessica arrived with a dozen of his crew.
“I really didn't think the baron would be stupe enough to store everything together,” Roberto said. “What a colossal waste of supplies.”
“Might be something in the house,” Ryan suggested, checking the action on the Steyr. “At least we don't have to worry about any more land mines.”
“Why not?” Jessica demanded, then her face softened. “Right. The blast would have set them off.”
“Angelo, Phillip, stay here, and guard our rear,” Roberto commanded, thumbing back both of the hammers on his sawed-off shotgun. “Let's see what the good baron stored in his cellar, other than ammo.”
The steep slope of the hill was difficult to traverse. Clearly there had once been a flight of wooden stairs, but those were long gone, and the loose soil constantly shifted under their boots. The group was almost out of the headlight beams when the arc lights of War Wag One hummed into operation and swung upward, clearly illuminating the way. Warily keeping out of each other's shadow, the group eventually reached the top and paused, weapons at the ready. But there was no need. The titanic blast of the bunkers had razed
the mansion to the ground; nothing was visible above the soil. Starting across the lawn, Ryan saw quite a few gaping holes, showing where land mines had been buried, the explosive charges triggered by the brutal shock wave of the gargantuan blast.
Proceeding around the summit, the group found what remained of the house scattered down the far side of the hill: chunks of walls, wooden beams, roof tiles, carpeting, pots and pans, broken chairs, a bathtub and numerous bodies. The limp figures lay amid the wreckage, all of them wearing the black uniform of a sec man, but none of the corpses were quite intact enough for them to be able to identify it as a man, woman or even norm.
There were also quite a few bent pieces of metal tubes that Roberto and Ryan easily recognized as homemade bazookas, antiwag rockets.
“I don't know if those are strong enough to punch through our armor,” Ryan stated, resting the Steyr on a shoulder. “But there sure as shit are enough of them to do the job!”
“Firepower and friends,” J.B. declared poignantly.
Several of the crewmen muttered agreement. Yep, you could never have enough of either of those.
“Okay, let's make sure those assholes are chilled,” Jessica directed, pointing with the barrel of her big-bore Russian .44 T-Rex. “Everybody knows the drill. Hunt and chill. Don't get too close, watch for grens and don't waste brass just because we have plenty. Use your knives.”
“We could use rocks!” a crewman stated bluntly, kicking over a corpse. The boneless body flopped over to obscenely jiggle for a while.
Uncaring, the tiny blonde shrugged. “Whatever you like. Just get it done.” The job was handled swiftly.
Afterward, the group reformed and finished the recce around the hill, then moved inward to check the rest of the mansion. A flower bed surrounded the crumbling foundation,
the plants reduced to bare stems, the leaves and petals gone with the wind.
Checking the dark earth for mines, the group reached the stoop and finally looked down into the basement. However, there was only darkness. The headlights of the wags were unable to reach into the recess because of the angle.
Surprisingly, several of the crewmen pulled out plastic mirrors to reflect the lights down into the basement.
Rather impressed, Ryan upped his estimation of Roberto and his people. Triple smart. There were unbreakable shaving mirrors in the U.S. Army backpacks they had found in the redoubt, but he hadn't thought to bring one along.
While the crewmen moved around the small squares of light, accomplishing next to nothing, J.B. pulled out Mildred's survivalist flashlight, pumped the handle a few times and clicked it on.
The powerful beam stabbed down into the gloom, revealing a relatively undamaged basement. Furniture was randomly scattered, chairs, sofas and tables, but none of the pieces seemed to be harmed in any way. There were several doors set into the walls, one of them locked with a wooden bar, and in the corner were brick stairs that seemed intact enough to risk, with a good chance of reaching the lower level alive.
“Why isn't all of that stuff in splinters?” a crewman demanded suspiciously, furrowing her brow. The longblaster in her hands was a rebuilt Remington, the wooden stock bound with gray tape, but the long barrel gleaming with fresh oil.
“Shear factor,” Ryan explained. “The blast was so strong that it cut flat across the hill, unable to slow enough to reach down into the basement.”
“Sort of like blowing the froth off a beer,” a crewman said.
“Exactly.”
“Bloody hell, that means there could be survivors down there,” Roberto muttered, drawing the S&W .357 Magnum blaster with his free hand. Testing the balance, he hefted both
of the blasters. “All right, I'm on point! Jessica stays up here as the anchor, Ryan and his crew with me.”
“Yes, sir!”
With the flashlight showing the way, the mixed group descended the stairs and picked a path through the array of furniture to reach the first door. Inside they found a torture chamber, the iron hooks and screws on the walls horribly familiar.
Moving to the next room, they unearthed a mechanical pressing machine, the hopper full of mutie ivy, a ceramic jug under the flow spout catching a slow drip.