Authors: James Axler
“No coal.”
“Fair enough.”
“Hell of a landmark,” Ryan noted, angling away from the scorched earth around the roaring giant. “A nuking blind man couldn't miss that big bastard.”
“Wonder if natural,” Jak mused. “Or if Cascadians set?”
“Why would they do that?” Krysty demanded askance.
The teen shrugged. “Help find way home.”
“Out of the mouths of babes and fools.” Doc smiled, toying with the lion's head of his ebony stick.
“Come again?” Jak muttered, tilting his head forward so that his snowy hair fell across his face.
“Ahâ¦babes, fools and stalwart Louisiana warriors!” Doc quickly corrected. “My mistake, Mr. Lauren.”
Jak nodded. “Better.”
“Well, at least you didn't call him Lochinvar again,” Mildred said with a snort.
Just then the radio came alive.
“Okay, we're getting close,” Roberto said over the ceiling speaker, the radio broadcast oddly clear of the usual static of background ionization. The grasslands must be a clear zone, a place where the nukes never fell. “From here we head due east for those mountains. Watch for a railroad bridge crossing a river valley!”
“Roger,” Scott replied.
“Better have your people get hard,” Ryan suggested. “This would be the perfect place for Pete toâ”
Suddenly there were tiny flashes of fire from a stand of trees on the horizon, and the radar began wildly beeping, the tones sounding faster every second.
“Shitfire, those are missiles!” Scott cursed over the radio. “Full reverse! We gotta try to outrun them!”
“Frag that!” Roberto commanded. “Fire all blasters! Take them out!”
Instantly the .50-caliber machine gun of War Wag One cut loose, filling the smoky air with streams of copper-jacketed lead. A split moment later, the M-60 machine gun of Two opened fire, yammering away in short bursts as the gunners tried to track the incoming warbirds. Grabbing the joystick of the Fifty, J.B. added the firepower of the UCV to the massive outpouring of destruction.
For several seconds nothing seemed to happen. Then the protective hatches of the big laser dropped and the cylinder swung around, waves of heat visibly rising from the primary reaction chamber. But suddenly there came a tiny puff of gray smoke in the air, followed by the dull thump of an aerial explosion.
“Got 'em!” Scott cried in triumph.
“Not yet,” Ryan growled, working the controls of the MRL to center the crosshairs on the monitor on a stand of trees set off by itself. Savagely, he touched the release and there was a low rush from above, then flames washed over the UCV as a rocket launched to streak away, almost too fast to follow.
The copse of trees became alive with the twinkling firelight of blasters. But where the convoy succeeded, the others failed, and the entire island of trees was violently removed from the landscape.
“Least know Pete cheap,” Jak stated with conviction.
“Five or six,” Mildred agreed, removing her ZKR from a blasterport. A lot of folks seemed amazed that the compan
ions were such deadly shots, but there was a perfectly ordinary reason for that. They used their weapons a lot, while most barons and coldhearts never wanted to use brass unless absolutely necessary. The end result of which was that the companions lived and the coldhearts died. Back when she was trying to qualify for the Olympics, the physician spent several hours at the gun range every day for months. One of Ryan's favorite sayings was that it was better to spend five brass and learn how to make the last one hit, than spend six and end up in the ground.
“Five or six,” Krysty stated grimly, removing an M-16 rapidfire from another blasterport, and dropping the empty magazine to insert a fresh one. “Pete may be cheap, but he is persistent.”
“Indeed, madam,” Doc said, lowering his own rapidfire. “His range of dirty tricks is most impressive. Drugged food, spies, ambushes, land mines, snipers and now a missile attack!”
“Wonder what he's going to hit us with next?” Ryan growled, shifting into gear and putting the UCV in motion.
Two hours later, the companions found their answer, when the convoy reached the river valley and discovered that the bridge crossing over the chasm was gone.
As the convoy rolled to a halt a supposedly safe distance from the cliff, something exploded under War Wag Two and the machine tilted slightly as a tire was blown off the armored rim. Backing away, the wag stayed within its own tracks until on rocky ground, then Roberto and his crew climbed out to replace the tire with the last spare. Afterward, everybody gathered between the three hulking machines as protection from possible snipers.
“Well, we're shit out of luck now,” Jessica drawled, cradling a Remington bolt-action longblaster in both hands.
“Seems so,” Ryan agreed, the Steyr resting on a shoulder, a finger on the trigger.
Although it was out of sight from this angle, the man could clearly hear a white-water river crashing and thundering at the bottom of the wide gorge. No mist rose from the waves below, so the yawning crevice had to be good and deep. However, the real problem was that the bridge was gone. Not wrecked or smashed apart, but removed. There were drag marks on the opposite cliff, where the entire structure had been forcibly hauled away.
“Olivia! This must have been Olivia!” Roberto declared, thumping a fist against his stiff leg. “Only her bastard steam trucks are strong enough to drag a damn bridge!”
“The damn thing is probably just out of sight, past the next hill,” Jessica said, craning her neck. “Dragged just far enough away that we can't even try to sink a harpoon into the trestle and haul it back with our winches.”
“That would never work!”
“Yeah, but we would have tried!”
“Chief, do you think Olivia is working with Broke-Neck Pete?” a crewman asked hesitantly.
“Not willingly,” Roberto answered gruffly. “Those two hate each other more than stickies and howlers.”
“Iâ¦did not foresee this,” Yates muttered uneasily, tugging on his black beard. The doomie constantly shifted his stance, as if trying to dodge invisible bullets from snipers. “My sincere apologies, sir. I have failed you, once again.”
“Never thought you were infallible,” Roberto snarled, staring hard at the bridge. There were grappling hooks in the armory of the
Big Joe,
but even if they could get close enough through the land mines planted around the moorings on this side of the cliff, not even all three of the wags working together could drag the bridge back into position.
“And even if we got it here, what are the chances Pete, or whoever did this, hasn't rigged the bridge to collapse with us in the middle, or mined the other side,” J.B. added, obviously thinking along similar lines.
“Yeah, this is a dead end,” Ryan agreed, casting a look around the countryside. “Unless there's something in the journal about another way across. What's that to the south?”
“A dried lake,” Roberto said, scowling in that direction. “At least, it's supposed to be there, according to the journal.”
“But that sounds splendid, sir!” Doc cried out happily.
“Not really,” Roberto snorted, pulling the slim volume out of his shirt pocket. Briefly, he thumbed through the yellowed pages. “Yes, here it is. The lakeâ¦no name, is dry only a few weeks out of the year, the rest of the time it's a mud pool, impossible to cross.” He closed the journal and tucked it away once more. “There are mountains to the north. No way we could ever drive the wags up there. Those big bastards are hard enough to climb on foot, even if we find a logging trail or predark highway.”
“Not to mention there will almost definitely be more bridges to cross,” Krysty added, her hair flexing angrily.
Roberto nodded. “Unfortunately, yes.”
“Plus, by the time we got to Cascade, Pete would have already been there for weeks,” Ryan added, sucking a hollowed tooth. “Exactly how long is War Wag One?”
“Exactly? Grill to spikes, a hundred and twenty-two paces,” Jessica replied promptly, then her face darkened. “Hot pipe, are you smoking jolt? We are not, repeat, not going to ram our wag across the gorge as a makeshift bridge and then cross over on foot! Put that right out of your motherfragging mind!”
“Agreed,” Roberto stated, crossing his arms. “Besides, I'd say that we're a couple of feet short, anyway.”
Raising both eyebrows, Jessica said nothing in reply, but her body language clearly said that in her opinion, even considering such an action was beyond sacrilege.
“Time is short!” a voice decreed.
Everybody turned to face Yates.
“Even now Pete approaches Tumbledown!” the doomie exclaimed, reaching out blindly to try to touch the sky. “Soon, he shall reach the Lost Road, and thenâ¦Hurry! We must hurryâ¦if weâ¦are toâ¦to reach the⦔ His strained voice faded away at that point, and the bearded man slumped as if totally exhausted.
“Get him to a bunk!” Jessica snapped, jerking a thumb. “The poor bastard always falls asleep after doing that.”
Several of the crewmen rushed to the doomie's side, and helped him stumble toward War Wag One. Feeling the weight of time pressing down upon them, the rest of the group mentally shifted through dozens of possibilities, each less likely than the one before, until they unanimously reached an unspoken conclusion.
“Okay, we have no choice here,” Roberto muttered unhappily. “We have to divide the convoy. Scott, take the
Big Joe
back for wood from those trees we blew up by the geysers and try to jury-rig some sort of bridge. Ryan and the UCV stay with me.”
“What about the mines?” Scott asked with a scowl.
“We'll take care of them before we leave,” Ryan said. “At least, on this side of the gorge.”
“Fair enough,” the wag chief said. “We can blow a safe passage through the other side with grens and blasters.”
“Better use knives,” Jessica corrected sternly. “You may need that brass to handle Pete, if we get chilled.”
Grimly, Scott nodded. Digging up the land mines by hand would take forever, but the crew of the
Big Joe
had just been made the spare tire in this fight. Fair enough.
“We got your six,” Scott declared resolutely. “If we find Pete alive, the last thing he'll ever see is our tires in his teeth.”
“Do twice, make sure,” Jak said. “He slippery.”
Grinning humorlessly, the wag chief nodded and shot the teenager with a stiff finger.
A bald crewman frowned. “How could steam trucks cross a mud lake?”
“Can't. But Fat Stephen has delivery vans that are light enough to do it,” another crewman suggested. “Mebbe he's working with Pete.”
The companions exchanged glances. Fat Stephen, that was a name they had not heard in some time. Long ago, they had been forced to travel with him across mutie territory, and it was a bloody journey none of them would ever forget.
“More likely he's been aced, and Pete now owns his wags,” Jessica guessed. “The little bastard is gambling everything on this one trip. He has got to seize control of Cascade, because after the news of this spreads, his word is going to be pure crap, and a trader lives by his rep.”
“Only now he is a traitor, madam, not a trader,” Doc said, stressing each word.
She curled a lip. “You can load that into a damn blaster, old man.”
“Whoever gets to Cascade first, help guard the ville, and warn them about Pete,” Ryan stated, returning to business. “I hate to say this, but it'd be better if their baron doesn't trade with anybody than let Pete get his hands on unlimited brass.”
“That's for damn sure,” Roberto agreed, pulling out the radio and pressing the transmit button. “Heat 'em up, boys, we're moving out!”
Using the armored fork, it took the UCV only a few minutes to clear a wide strip of earth around the concrete bridge abutments, the few unexploded mines dumped over the cliff to detonate below in the churning waters of the nameless river.
As the
Big Joe
disappeared into the west, Ryan took the lead and rolled due south, War Wag One staying close behind in case of any more surprises. From the other side of the gorge there came a few bright flashes on the top of trees that might have been signal mirrors, or sunlight reflecting off the telescope of a longblaster, but there was no way of telling for sure. Unwilling to spend a rocket on an imaginary enemy, the two wags did nothing, and soon the suspicious flashes were left far behind.
Over the long miles, the ground sloped gently downward until reaching the same level as the river, the rushing water spreading out to cover the land in a shimmering expanse of unknown depth. Advancing slowly, Ryan dipped the fork and used the steel tines to gauge how deep the water was ahead of them. The armored prongs dug easily into the soft muck, plowing aside mounds of moist earth.
The gooey mixture was alive with small fish and frogs, but thankfully there were no signs of gators, swampies or anything else more dangerous than the occasional snapping turtle.
Riding high above the watery quagmire, the urban combat vehicle made good time at first, but then had to slow down to let War Wag One keep pace. Set much lower to the ground, the heavy armored wag was almost a good foot under the dark water, the thick mud spraying out sideways from the sixteen tires like black wings.
Spotting a low island of relatively dry ground rising from the shallow lake, Ryan rode over the land to give Roberto a
chance to clean his wheels and get better traction. But the moment the UCV reached the weedy crest, the soggy dirt detonated in a loud series of sharp explosions from a cluster of hidden land mines. The combined blasts shook the wag hard, but Ryan saw nothing on the dashboard go into the red and doggedly kept on driving. However, Roberto wisely kept his war wag in the mud and slogged around the tempting island.
“Clever. They're trying to force us into the deep mud,” J.B. said, watching the smoky landmass recede.
“Fireblast, I think it's working!” Ryan snarled, looking at the rearview mirror. Falling rapidly behind, War Wag One was now moving at a snail's pace, the whole vehicle shuddering as the studded tires began to spin freely in the soupy ground.
“
One-Eye
to
Scorpion,
hold on!” J.B. said into the mike. “We have a tow chain and can haul you out in a jiffy.”
But there was no reply, only the crackle of static.
“Shitfire, we're in a dead zone,” the Armorer cursed.
“They'll figure it out,” Ryan said, braking to a halt. But as the one-eyed man started to leave the driving seat, the UCV listed slightly and there came a distinct sinking sensation. Quickly getting back behind the wheel, Ryan revved the tandem engines and got back into motion. The war wag struggled for a few seconds, then lurched forward and continued on smoothly.
“Dark night, we can't stop, either!” J.B. cursed vehemently. “How the frag are we going to get the chain to them now?”
“Circle. I bring chain,” Jak said, shucking his jacket and unbuckling his gunbelt.
“Good heavens, what are you doing, lad?” Doc demanded.
“Stripping. What think?” the teenager replied, bending to unlace his combat boots. “Old bayou trick. Mud stick to clothes, bring you down.”
“And it won't cling to your skin?”
“Not if he's wearing a good layer of this,” Mildred said,
passing over a square plastic jar. “Use it carefully, that's all we have.”
“Make do,” Jak muttered, opening the container and digging out a large translucent gob. Carefully, he started spreading the petroleum jelly over his pale legs.
As Ryan slowly drove back to the trapped war wag, Krysty threw open the rear doors and Jak jumped out to sink waist-deep into the black ooze. Wading forward, the teen was halfway to War Wag One when the UCV made another pass and Doc heaved out a bulky duffel bag directly in front of the pale youth. Moving fast, Jak grabbed the canvas strap of the bag before it sank from sight, then started forward once more, awkwardly dragging the heavy bag behind him.
Alert to the new presence in the lake, several snapping turtles began going for the semiclothed teen, but the big-bore .50-caliber machine guns of War Wag One triggered a brief salvo, the heavy rounds blasting the turtles apart, spraying out gobbets of pale flesh and watery blood. The rest of the turtles instantly changed directions and converged on the tattered corpses of their fallen brethren.
Reaching the trapped war wag, Jak opened the duffel and took out a coiled length of steel chain. Setting a hook onto the front grille, he jerked as the horn sounded, and behind the windshield Roberto shook his head and pointed to the prow. Nodding in understanding, Jak waddled directly in front of the wag, trying very hard not to think what would happen if the wag suddenly found traction now. Well, at least it would be quick.
Fumbling under the heavy grille, Jak found a metal hoop sticking out slightly, and mentally praised the trader for thinking ahead. Dropping the hook into the eye, Jak hauled the chain away from the shuddering vehicle and waited for the UCV to pass by again.
Going as slow as he dared, Ryan fishtailed the wag near the mud-encrusted youth and felt a hard jerk as the chain went
taut. Shifting gear fast, he pumped the gas and the tandem motors struggled under the new load, several of the gauges on the dashboard swinging into the high numbers, but not quite reaching the red zone. Their speed noticeably decreased, then began to gradually pick up.