Chapter Thirty-One
“Ricky!” Krysty cried in alarm.
But the kid was right on J.B.’s heels.
“He’s fine,” Ryan said. He raised his head from the Scout’s ghost-ring sights to look for other targets. “Blade missed him by at least a foot.”
Krysty, Mildred and Jak had taken up position in doorways and an alley on the same side of the street as the Library Lounge, at the far end of the half-block to the south. Ryan had lingered a few feet out to blast the fleeing Dog. Now he moved to the cover of the alley, too.
The Crazy Dogs and their sec men allies were mostly lined up behind the bulldozer, spilling back up the main street from the intersection. Most of them seemed content to watch the show from a point that made it hard for the gaudy’s die-hard defenders to get a bead on them.
Until J.B. and Ricky made their move, that seemed to be the only fire directed at the invaders. For all their vaunted well-armed status, and the spirited way they’d wielded those arms in defense of themselves and their ville, the Super Dozer’s onslaught seemed to have shocked them to inaction. All their weapons were small arms, and visibly produced no more effect on the monster machine than spit.
From a standing start J.B. and Ricky seemed to pose no more threat to the machine or its operator than a pair of early mosquitoes buzzing around outside the bulletproof cab. But the operator couldn’t
see
them. That clearly worried him.
The dozer lurched ahead to try to crush them. To his relief Ryan saw J.B. and Ricky dart clear. Unfortunately that put them on the far side of the mobile yellow mountain that was the dozer.
The dozer ground ten feet forward across the street, then bucked to a stop. Black smoke chugged from the stack of the dozer’s 12-cylinder diesel engine and its gigantic mass pivoted counterclockwise with startling speed. Realizing he had missed his quarry on his first try, the driver was trying to catch them and grind them beneath the broad treads.
Gunshots had started to crack out again from the west side of the street where the Dogs and Joker Creek sec men were. Then J.B. and Ricky burst back around the blade, running clockwise.
Somehow realizing that his prey had dodged, and which way, the dozer operator reversed the machine’s rotation, which was not an instantaneous process, given the thing’s tons of mass. That gave J.B. and Ricky a chance to circle again between blade and gaudy.
Once more the dozer’s bulk sheltered them from shots from the on-looking invaders. Krysty popped a shot off at the Crazy Dogs from her 640, although at this range she’d be lucky to hit anything. That recalled Ryan to the notion of trying to lay down cover fire.
He sighted on a Dog standing astride his bike cranking rounds out from a lever-action longblaster and dropped him with a shot that went through his chest armpit to armpit.
What are they
doing? Ryan wondered.
How can I help them if I don’t know what they’re trying to accomplish?
The pair ran around the far side of the Super Dozer again. This time the machine backed as it pivoted counterclockwise, ramming its yellow stern into the building on the southwest corner of the intersection.
“Listen well, you blackguards!” a voice rang out. “Your time has come!”
* * *
H
UDDLED
WITH
HIS
back to the blade, Ricky looked at
J.B.
“‘Blackguards’?”
The Armorer shrugged. He had his Uzi slung and the backpack off. He was rooting inside.
Ricky looked back at the Library Lounge. The whole gaudy sagged noticeably toward the immense hole the dozer had punched in the front of it. The front of the second floor had actually split open; a wide crack showed in the floorboards. A figure all in black crouched in a window of the floor right above it, still a good fifteen or sixteen feet off the ground.
Her slim form encased in what looked like tight-fitting black leather, a black coat shrouding her shoulders, Dark Lady crouched like a panther in what had been a third story. She had a megaphone to her mouth and a furious look on what little Ricky could see of her pale face past the instrument.
Even in that flash glance Ricky thought there was something very different about the gaudy owner now. Not just her garb.
Nervously he looked to his left—northwest. The thick steel blade, twenty-four feet wide by eleven feet tall and bulletproof, protected them from invader bullets.
Most
of them.
But with the mighty machine oriented diagonally to the intersection, there was functionally no place he and the Armorer could find cover from
all
of them.
As best of a bad lot of alternatives, J.B. had picked the right front of the blade to hide behind when the dozer came to rest. That put them at the monster’s northeast corner, which meant that coldhearts to the northwest had a clear view of them. And “view,” of course, meant
shot
.
Fortunately that was the side. He and J.B. had cleared most of the enemy from there earlier during the bulldozer’s gyrations. With a little help from Ryan and his Scout. Unfortunately several coldhearts had shifted that way hastily as the dozer slam-backed into the building across the intersection from the Library Lounge.
That meant there was nothing between them and a clump of heavily armed, pissed-off-past-nuke-red invaders but a few yards of air.
But the enemy wasn’t paying the pair any attention. The coldhearts were completely distracted by Dark Lady’s startling advent.
Like a dozing dragon coming awake, the bulldozer’s tremendous diesel engine began to roar louder and louder. The whole fabric of the mighty machine vibrated against Ricky’s back.
“What’s she doing?” he shouted. “She’ll get killed.”
“Buying us what we need,” J.B. said. “Get ready to run alongside this bastard.”
With a splintering screech, the dozer lurched forward out of the building it had back-rammed as the operator put it in gear. J.B. grabbed Ricky’s arm and towed him.
“Follow me!”
* * *
C
ROUCHED
BEHIND
THE
tailgate of a horse wag parked in front of the frame building that occupied the half-block south of the Library Lounge, Ryan stopped sniping at the foe to watch the scene unfold in front of him, whatever the nuke it was.
With Ricky in tow J.B. darted up the street toward Ryan as the Super Dozer lurched forward. The big bastard engine gave it startling acceleration for its size, although nobody was going to confuse the yellow metal mountain with a jackrabbit anytime soon.
Ryan glanced at the coldhearts strung out along the west side of the intersection, ready to blast any who showed the least sign of opening up on the now-exposed pair. But the invaders were all staring at the woman in the window of the stricken gaudy.
The apparently doomed woman. The dozer diver clearly meant to ram the Lounge again, right under where Dark Lady was positioned.
The dozer struck the building. This time was nowhere near as dramatic as the first—it hit mostly the hole its first attack had made.
But Dark Lady did not passively wait for the charging behemoth to bring death to her.
She attacked.
As the machine plunged its blade into the heart of her home once more, she sprang. The dozer’s front deck, between the blade and the guardrail around the engine, was actually not more than a couple of feet beneath the window of the sagging third floor. She landed lightly on her feet, then crouched onto a pale hand to make clear she wasn’t scraped off by the second floor of her own headquarters.
But the dozer stopped. The engine roar dwindled.
Dark Lady straightened. She’d thrown away her loud-hailer. But she didn’t need it to make her ringing challenge heard.
“Now you’ll find out,” she shouted, reaching both hands across her chest beneath her long coat, “what it means to trifle with a
fully trained Combat
Librarian!
”
“Are those really a thing?” Ryan heard Krysty call to Mildred.
“I don’t know, Krysty,” the freezie replied. “I know a lot, but I don’t know everything!”
Just as the coldhearts snapped out of their own temporary inaction and began raising their blasters, Dark Lady’s hands came out of her coat. Each one held what Ryan was flat astonished to recognize as a Micro-Uzi: a foot-long miniature cousin of the very machine pistol J.B. had strapped over his back. Each flashed fire as Dark Lady ripped off short bursts, alternating left and right, with a professional precision Ryan could only admire.
Meanwhile J.B. had darted back to the side of the dozer. He heaved the backpack on top of the right-hand track. The return rollers held the giant loop of segmented metal plates well above the top of his fedora, which he used his recently freed hand to clamp to the top of his head as he raced balls-out for the street that ran down the gaudy’s south flank.
After a quick, befuddled glance, Ricky followed.
Ryan shouldered his Steyr. He fired as soon as his front sight lined up on a sec man aiming a shiny-chromed blaster at the fleeing pair. The man spun down to the street as Ryan’s 7.62 mm round ripped through him.
Ryan wasn’t sure where he’d hit him. He also didn’t care. He jacked the action and looked for somebody else to shoot.
The bulldozer’s engine roared again. The driver started to back up as if he could somehow get away from the slim and vengeful woman in black, spitting two-fisted fire on his very own front deck.
From the corner of his eye he saw J.B. grab Ricky’s sleeve and drag the kid with him into a forward dive to the street. They hadn’t quite made the corner. Apparently J.B. had more pressing concerns.
Those concerns became obvious when the contents of the backpack he had chucked onto the track detonated in an eye-searing white flash. A heartbeat later the savage crack of C-4 plas-ex going off hit Ryan hard in the ears. He actually felt the concussion wave on his face.
Mostly backed from the ruined gaudy, the dozer suddenly began wheeling to its left. There wasn’t much else it could do. Ryan saw that the right-hand track was broken right above where the arm that moved the blade forked into upper and lower supports.
Dark Lady had hunkered down, bracing herself against the engine railing with a right hand still filled by Micro-Uzi. The front of the dozer had protected her from the force of the blast.
Now she leaned out to open fire on the coldhearts once more, as J.B. and Ricky scuttled on all fours the rest of the way around the side of her HQ.
Frantically the dozer driver reversed direction. That only resulted in the huge machine pivoting back right into the front of the gaudy again. Ryan saw Dark Lady duck to avoid being decapitated.
As she did, he saw her let the full-auto handblaster she held in her left hand fall to hang by a short lanyard from her slender wrist. Her right thumb hit the release and dropped the mag of her right-hand weapon. Her left hand plucked a fresh magazine from the harness she wore under her coat and slammed it home. Then she switched off and repeated the operation.
Ryan grunted.
Neat trick,
he thought. He shot the crown of a tall Crazy Dogs’ woman aiming an SKS at the gaudy owner.
And Combat Librarian, he amended, whatever
that
was. Apparently their training worked, though.
It finally dawned on the dozer driver that his invincible machine was functionally now a gigantic yellow paperweight. Unlike a tank, it didn’t mount any blasters. Its only tool was its tremendous mass—and its ability to move it.
Now it could only turn this way and that in place, which was the same as not being able to move at all.
Even with their main cannon and auxiliary machine guns, Ryan knew the armor-wag crew would lose its grit when its mobile fortress turned out not to be so mobile anymore.
The dozer operator freaked out. He yanked open the door of the sealed cab, which had undoubtedly been locked, and tried to dive out.
Unfortunately he found himself looking up at a very vengeful Dark Lady, who now stood on the broad steel step beside the cab—and up the barrels of her full-auto handblasters.
Which blasted a quick burst each. A spray of bright red liquid suddenly painted over the inside of the windshield on Ryan’s side.
The Super Dozer’s engine died away to a subdued dragon purr.
Dark Lady ducked back around the front of the cab as a fusillade broke out belatedly from the intruders. Most of them had gone to ground when J.B.’s track-cutting charges had cracked off—the woman Ryan had just chilled had been an exception.
More blasterfire ripped J.B.’s and Ricky’s way. The two ducked farther back up the street to get out of the line of fire.
Lining up another shot, Ryan frowned. Morale was a funny thing. At a time like this, it could go either way. Seeing their almighty weapon neatly trumped, they could either panic the way the operator did, or they could get double-pissed.
Unfortunately, it looked like they had picked what Mildred would have called Door Number Two.
And there were still
dozens
of the bastards. Ryan heard a familiar voice, now lacking its former electronic amplification but needing it even less than Dark Lady had, roar out, “Never mind the dozer! Boys and girls, we got the taints! Chill them all!”
Ryan looked. But there was no sign of Trumbo. The traitor sec boss of Joker Creek was clearly canny enough to exhort his troops from behind the safety of the now-stationary bulldozer.
Motorcycle engines rose to a triumphant and expectant howl. The Dogs and their allies prepared to attack.
Ryan raised his piece and aimed. There was no running now. They would just die tired. The only course he saw was to chill as much as he could before he himself got chilled.
From the west came a rip of full-auto fire.
Chapter Thirty-Two
The big Dog Ryan was drawing down on had just started his ride rolling forward. He slewed the bike to his left and stared back up the main street in what even through the iron ghost-ring sights Ryan thought to recognize as shocked surprise.
Another snarl of blasterfire rang out. A sec man near the biker dropped, thrashing.
By then Ryan had corrected his aim. The Crazy Dog leaned down over the bars of his big machine as if to accelerate away. Before he could, Ryan had shifted aim a fraction again, drawn a breath, let it partway out, caught it.
Squeezed
.
The Scout boomed and bucked. The Dog jerked as the speeding 7.62 mm round shattered a vertebra between his shoulder blades and tumbled to bring Hell to his heart and lungs. From the exaggerated spray of blood out the far side of him as the longblaster came back down, Ryan reckoned it had to have made a big exit wound.
The motorcycle fell. Another sec man raced north to south across Ryan’s field of vision, frantically shooting a six-gun-style blaster to the west. He stumbled as red burst from his thigh and went down.
“It’s a trap!” Ryan heard Trumbo holler. “Everyone for himself!
Clear out!
”
Like flocks of frightened birds, the invaders broke north and south as if suddenly stone desperate to get away from the main street and the gaudy itself, where J.B. and Ricky had joined their fire to Dark Lady’s.
In passing, Ryan decided the slightly built gaudy owner had to be stronger than he thought to hold up that much ammo.
He saw Trumbo speed past on a bike with double exhaust pipes. Ryan snapped a shot at him but missed. The sec boss simply kept going, south. He was getting out of Amity Springs, just as he’d advised his fellow coldhearts to do.
In a moment the intersection, so far as Ryan could tell, was clear of Dogs. At least functioning ones; half a dozen wounded lay in his line of sight, some stirring feebly and moaning, others flopping like landed fish and wailing.
Her twin machine pistols held at the ready, Dark Lady stepped out from behind the cover of the now-dormant Super Dozer.
Ryan had been focusing on the Dogs and sec men as they fled past. He had decided not to waste any more cartridges on them unless any of them showed signs of turning back to the fight. But they didn’t need his help to keep their minds right. Whatever was coming down the main street at the shattered Library Lounge had well and truly impressed them.
Now from the corner of his eye he saw a young Crazy Dog with short blond hair and a batwing mask over his eyes—whether war paint or tattoo, Ryan knew no more than cared—suddenly rear up. He aimed a big double-action blaster at Dark Lady from thirty feet away.
Something to her right had caught her attention. He had her dead to rights.
Once more a blaster ripped on full-auto, this time from so close the echoes hammering back and forth between buildings stung Ryan’s ears almost as much as the shots themselves. This was no 9 mm handblaster like the pair the gaudy owner carried.
The coldheart’s chest exploded red. His blaster hand jerked up. His chill-shot cracked off into the merciless blue of the cloudless early morning sky.
He fell on his face with the floppy finality that told Ryan he was never getting up on his own.
Into the mouth of the intersection came a startling double apparition. It was Sinclair, the wag yard owner Ryan had last seen apparently getting crushed under a barrier wag overturned by the dozer. His face was a mask of sweat-stuck grime, from which his eyes blazed like beacons of vengeance. His coat and shirt were gone. A rough bandage had been wound around his upper torso. It was red-drenched with blood.
He held his BAR in his right hand. A lengthy sling held the barrel up at waist-level shooting position. His left arm was slung over the shoulder of the stocky, crazy-haired, Asian-looking carpenter named Coffin. The coffin-maker held the wrist in place.
“Feed me,” Sinclair called in a feral croak. He dropped the magazine from the well of his Browning. With his right hand Coffin pulled a fresh twenty-round magazine of out of the canvas pouch he wore open on his chest and stuffed it into the longblaster.
They continued to shuffle forward. The wag yard owner’s left leg didn’t seem to be working well, but on they came, into the intersection in front of the sagging, groaning gaudy.
Behind them, the blond kid named Billy scuttled forward and snagged the dropped magazine.
Behind him came the people of Amity Springs, armed and looking very dangerous indeed.
* * *
K
RIS
HELD
AN
ax two-handed above her head. The ax descended with a wood-chopping sound.
The wounded biker’s shrieks of agony stopped.
Krysty winced.
She knew the whys and wherefores. These people were prosperous and seemed decent. Even kind—as they could afford to be.
But these were still the Deathlands. It was still a brutal wolf-eat-mutie world. And when it came down to survival they were as hard and harsh as they needed to be.
Just like their unofficial baron, the Dark Lady. Though they didn’t show it, she thought, in quite such an unexpected fashion.
Kneeling over an injured male entertainer who’d been carried from the perilous ruin of the Library Lounge, Mildred glanced up at the sound. Or likely the cessation. She nodded once with what seemed grim satisfaction, then returned to tending the young man’s wounds.
Ryan stood nearby. He held his Scout in both hands and kept his lone blue eye scanning constantly for new danger. He and Krysty were nominally keeping watch—and also catching their breath. Jak had vanished into the Library Lounge, where he was helping a crew led for the moment by Mikey-Bob hunt for survivors. That surprised Krysty more than a little; the young albino generally seemed much more about taking life than preserving it, but then again he also felt a strong instinctive attraction to challenge and danger. With the invaders routed, for the moment, anyway, rescue was the most dangerous game in town.
Dark Lady knelt near another entertainer, a young woman whose eyes stared skyward through a mask of grit-crusted blood. She shook her head and shut those eyes with thumb and forefinger. Then she stood and faced Ryan and his group, who had been standing nearby discussing the situation.
“What will you do now?” she asked.
Despite the gleam of moisture in those black eyes, she presented a very different persona than Krysty had seen from her before—even when she was efficiently and ruthlessly chilling the Crazy Dogs who’d delivered the ultimatum in her gaudy. Then she had seemed little more than a person defending what was hers, although admittedly in more proficient fashion than anticipated. Now, with her coat off and her Micro-Uzis slung under each arm, she looked every inch the trained and seasoned blaster.
“Go after our friend Doc,” Ryan said.
“Now? Just the five of you?”
“If need be.”
“Old Diego’s probably going to be in a vindictive kind of mood once he hears about this,” J.B. said, polishing his glasses on his handkerchief. “Baron Sand isn’t in charge up at Joker Creek anymore. Rules’ve changed.”
“We can’t.”
Krysty looked over. Sinclair sat on a coverlet with a cup of water in his good hand. He refused other care while the worse injured required attention.
“We’ve done what we could,” the wag yard owner said. “A quarter of the ville lies in ruins. People have lost loved ones—or had them hurt bad and in need of care. The Lounge is a deathtrap waiting to collapse. We simply can’t do more to help you, son.”
“Some of us are willing to try,” Kris said, walking up with her ax over her shoulder. The head dripped red.
“No, Mrs. Kennard,” Dark Lady said sadly. “He’s right. If you folks can only wait a day, or better two, then yes. Right now we need to look to our own.”
“So do we,” Ryan said in a raspy voice.
“You’ll throw your lives away,” Sinclair said.
His erstwhile assistant, Coffin, was currently helping shift people out of the gaudy. Even though only the living were being brought out now, more than a few of those would become his customers soon. Like the hapless young woman Dark Lady had just bid farewell to—Trixie, Krysty remembered her name was.
“There’s still dozens of the bastards left,” Sinclair said. “Who knows how many for sure? And they got that nuking fortress of Sand’s to anchor them. I know you people are ace at what you do. But against odds like—”
“Wait!” Dark Lady called sharply.
At first Krysty thought she had thought of some reason to contradict her former rival—and current ally, it seemed.
Instead she rapped out a command. She was looking past Ryan and his crew toward where a knot of ville folk gathered around another injured Crazy Dog.
This one was a sandy-bearded man whose once-white shirt was soaked with blood on the left side beneath his open black leather jacket. The right leg of his oil-, sweat-and road-grime-befouled jeans was also shiny with fresh wet. Despite at least two wounds, though, he had hauled himself up to prop his back against the building whose corner the dozer had taken out.
“Might as well chill me, too,” he called.
Dark Lady walked toward him. From the way she stiffened, and the black light that flashed in her eyes at that epithet, Krysty thought sure she was about to give him what he asked for.
Instead she wrapped her arms tightly across her chest, beneath her small breasts.
“You seem in a loquacious mood,” she said, walking up close to him. Out of striking range if he decided to make a suicide strike with a knife, Krysty noted.
She nodded at the Amity Springers clustered around the wounded man. They backed off. Reluctantly, Krysty thought.
Ryan and Krysty were following. Mildred kept at her work. “If that fancy-ass word means you think I’ll talk to you,” the man said, “why the nuke not? There aren’t any secrets about what I got to say.”
“What, then?” Ryan demanded.
“Well, we’re taking over,” the coldheart said.
“Joker Springs?” Dark Lady asked.
He laughed, then winced at the pain that caused, then laughed again.
“For starters,” he said. “Diego and the rest of the boys and girls are back there now teaching the peasants who’s boss. And having themselves some fun with that freak show of that fat-ass Sand’s. Sorry to miss out on that part.”
“My sympathies,” Dark Lady said dryly.
He laughed again, then turned aside to spit blood. It mildly surprised Krysty he hadn’t tried to spit it at Dark Lady. But he no doubt realized the range was too great for that.
“Oh, well. Can’t win ’em all. And you bastards can’t win at all!”
“Meaning what?” Ryan said.
“Meaning Diego’s put out the word to some of our brother and sister clans. The Suave Monks and the Skull-Shaggers. People like that—like us. We’re taking over the Basin. We’ll get Joker Creek beaten into line. Then we’ll come back here and finish the job proper. And after that we’ll take down Río Piojo, and have ourselves an empire!”
Dark Lady looked at Ryan. He looked sternly back.
“Then we can’t hang around licking our wounds.” Mikey-Bob’s voice boomed from behind.
Krysty turned. The two-headed giant had emerged from the wreckage. Both his heads were coated in dirt and sweat. Jak followed him.
“Looks like nobody’s left inside who’s still breathing, D.L.,” Bob said wearily. “A stiff breeze’d blow this kid away to look at him. But he can sniff out survivors like an old bloodhound.”
Jak came up dusting his hands together.
“And you’re wrong,” Mikey said to his brother. “We need to hunker down.”
“He’s right,” Sinclair said, shuffling up to join the others.
Coffin had emerged from the half-destroyed gaudy, as well, and was once more serving as the red-mustached man’s support. Krysty realized he likewise figured the only ones left inside were his clients. And they had infinite patience.
“Now it’s obvious,” the wag yard owner said. “We have no choice but to concentrate on shoring up our defenses against the storm to come.”
“Speak for yourself, Mr. Sinclair,” Kris Kennard declared. “Plenty of us are willing to march right on over to Joker Creek and settle this for good and all. One way or another.”
While much of the ville’s population was involved with rescue and aid missions of their own, the confrontation with the shot-up captive had begun to attract a growing crowd.
Now they raised a many-voiced growl of agreement.
Sinclair shook his head. “There are too many of them to overcome by storm, anyway. We have no choice but to get ready to defeat them here, protecting what remains of our homes!”
“Good luck with that,” the Crazy Dog coldheart said, sneering. “The storm Diego’s raising will wipe this rat hole right off the Basin slicker than that triple-stupe dozer ever could. He’s a magic bastard, and he’s got a plan.”
Krysty thought he was miffed at losing center stage.
From somewhere came a rising growl of engine noise. Ryan stiffened. Krysty found her snub-nosed blaster in her hand without conscious intent. Around them the knot of ville folk gathered around the wounded coldheart lost their sullen looks in favor of varying degrees of alarm and readiness.
Billy came running out the mouth of the main street. “It’s Mr. Dix and Ricky!” he cried excitedly.
A moment later the Crazy Dogs’ machine-gun wag rolled into view and stopped. J.B. and Ricky got out of the cab.
“Your shot just busted the tire,” J.B. said. “Nothing structural. And they had a spare.”
Dark Lady and Ryan exchanged glances again.
“I believe this shifts the odds in our favor,” she said.
“What about Sand’s castle?” Bob said. “It’d take that dozer to make any impression on it.”
“Say! What about it?” his twin asked, brightening. “You’re some kind of mechanical wizard, Dix. You even got you a likely sorcerer’s apprentice. Can you fix that tread?”
“In a few days,” J.B. said, “and with the proper tools. It’s not like changing a tire on a wag, friend.”
“I have some more blocks of C-4 plas-ex,” Dark Lady said thoughtfully. “And blasting caps.”