Authors: James Axler
She stopped her horse and her scanning and looked at him. Though she had been nothing but crisply professional and respectful, if perhaps a bit tightly wrapped, since they’d met her the night before, the expression she showed him now suggested she was wondering whether he was a feeb.
“Have you found anywhere in the Deathlands that’s safe, Ryan Cawdor?” she challenged. Then, in a softer voice, “And if you did—why leave?”
“All right,” he said, “fair enough. But it’s an honest question. Something’s got you bothered way more than you were just a minute ago. You don’t think pirates rowed all this way upstream to lie in wait for us?”
“Not pirates, no.” She was searching again. “This is just—a logical ambush point.”
“True.” Ryan turned in his saddle. “When our guide gives us the go-ahead, Jak and Ricky, you hang back and cover while we cross.”
Jak gave a microscopic nod. Ricky said, “Yes, sir!” and bobbed his head so hard he almost fell out of the saddle of his stout, pony-size Palomino. He started fumbling with the sling that held his DeLisle carbine across his back. A child of the Tropics, he still hadn’t gotten the hang of cold.
After another moment swiveling her head side to side, up and down, Alysa nodded. “I see no threat,” she said. “We can proceed.”
“I’m right here with you,” Ryan said.
The weathered timbers made muffled booms beneath their horses’ unshod hooves as they rode forward at a walk.
Alysa still swiveled her head restlessly. “We must find a strong place for the night. Soon.”
Ryan nodded. “With you there. How much far—”
Behind him, Ryan heard Jak yell, “Frogs!”
Chapter Ten
The planet hit J. B. Dix in the ass with authority. It whacked his shoulders a moment later. And last the back of his head cracked against dirt as hard as the fist that had put him on it.
“Your asses are mine,” he croaked through puffy lips. He tasted blood, which pretty well had to be his own. Since he hadn’t managed to bite anybody, or hit them hard enough to splatter. Leastways, not on him.
His answer was a boot in the short ribs. Steel-toed, by the feel.
At least nothing was broken. Yet.
But the day was young.
Actually, the day was dying in an explosion of clouds in the sky over the parched, cracked, table-flat land to the west, whose reds and hellish oranges and general clotted-mustard undertones suggested the possibility they presaged acid rain, rather than just sunset. Spring crickets were creaking like unlubricated joints. It was the
fight
that was relatively new.
There were maybe six of them, five men and a fireplug-shaped woman with one ear named Betty Lou. J.B. judged she was the one who had put the boot in.
J.B. was the type who tended not to count the odds when he started something, which meant that he was experienced in fighting when badly outnumbered.
“Think you’re good enough to jump us and push out Ace, do you, punk?” a man asked in a voice that made the question itself sound friendly.
A shape loomed over J.B. His glasses had fallen off, and he was too nearsighted to make out much more detail than that. But his experience on the losing end of past gang stomps served him well: he recognized a boot being raised to, yes, stomp him good.
If people were just looking to rowdy a body up some, the best response was to curl up in a tight ball and try to take most of the punishment in parts that could absorb it best as a general rule. But these rowdies weren’t well-known to J.B., to the extent anybody was after several days on the road, even his boss, Rance Weeden. They
seemed
triple-serious in their intent to do grievous bodily harm. So J.B. rolled to the side. The boot came down onto the hard, cracked, dried yellow mud. He promptly rolled back, grabbed the boot toe and heel in his strong hands and twisted.
The boot, which had a cracked and worn waffle sole separating from stiff and grimy uppers, ended a long, lean leg cased in jeans that seemed to consist mostly of the grease and road dust that imbued them. So it came as no surprise that instead of a hoarse but female shout, the counterattack drew a masculine bellow of pain and fury.
The guy was agile. He twisted with J.B.’s hands, so that the sudden torsion didn’t snap his ankle. It did mean the man planted his face on the ground with an ax-hitting-wood sound.
A kick hit J.B. right by the kidneys—close enough to sting. He rolled with that, up onto all fours, then bounced up. He was resilient, anyway, and all wire-wound armature and spring steel.
He put up his fists in boxing stance. “I warned you,” he said, spitting out a mouthful of bloody saliva.
A blow clipped him on the back of his head. The world whirled. Then the bastard hit him again, this time in the shoulder and the side of his face.
Okay, he thought. Now I’m fucked.
The real stomping commenced. The unfriendly parties were enthusiastically putting the boot in. This time J.B. would’ve been glad to curl up in a ball, which he couldn’t, by way of the savage bootstorm.
He felt ribs crack. A toe to the jaw loosened teeth. At least he had sense to keep his hands balled into loose half-fists. They were his livelihood. If they got broken, Trader would have no reason in hell to keep him on his crew.
“So, what’s the story?”
As if from a great distance J.B. heard the words. They barely penetrated the roaring in his ears.
He heard a meaty thunk that wasn’t associated with any impact to his person he could identify. Have I lost feeling someplace? he wondered in near-panic. Is my spine busted?
He realized light was falling on his upturned face. It was an orange and sour light that warmed his skin slightly. He saw it through eyelids puffed next thing to closed.
“Here, now, Rance, you got no call to do that,” a nasal man’s voice whined.
“Yeah, I do,” she said. “I told you pricks to back off. You don’t listen, I’ll make you.”
“Listen, bitch,” another male voice said. This one came from J.B.’s left side. “Where do you get off—”
J.B. felt as much as heard the man to his left fall beside him. The man rocked side to side, bumping into him. It sounded as if the guy was moaning through his fingers.
The others had stopped thundering on J.B., and he had gotten some of his composure back. Drawing a deep breath, he snapped to his feet. He flicked open a Spyderco lockback folder from his pocket with his right thumb.
“All right, you coldheart rad-suckers!” he yelled. He couldn’t see much for the sweat and blood that promptly streamed into his eyes when he got upright. He waved the four-inch blade before him in what he hoped what a threatening manner. “I got you now. Who wants some?”
“Shut the fuck up, Dix,” Rance said. “Fold your manhood back up and stuff it back in your pants, before I gave you a dose of my pacifier, here.”
Blinking at her, he could make out the blurred, sort-of-feminine figure he’d come to recognize in the past few days. She was holding a long metal barlike thing in one hand and beating its shank against her open palm. Because he knew tools, he recognized the “pacifier” as one of the big open-end wrenches used to fasten external stores and armor plate on War Wag One and War Wag Two. It had to be two and a half, three feet long.
“You chilled Earl!” the nasal voice said. It whined even more now.
“Bullshit,” Rance said. “Just busted his jaw. He won’t die of that unless he’s triple-weak and not much good to begin with. That’s my assessment of him, anyway. As for Leon, he probably got off with a concussion. He doesn’t think double-good on his best of days, so after he stops wobbling and running into things he should be about as much use to you as he was before, Tully.”
Grumbling, the members of the gang still on their feet hauled up the still-motionless Leon and Earl, who was sobbing through his hands now, having found it hurt too much to try to complain in words, and dragged or steered them away, as the case may be.
“Thanks,” J.B. said.
Having obeyed her order about the knife, he looked around for the glasses. Spotting them, he stooped by them. He grinned when he found out the lenses were intact, though the wire wings were twisted a bit out of true.
“What in the name of glowing nuke shit made you get into it with that bunch?”
“They started it!”
“Don’t lie to me, Dix. I’ll make you regret it.”
“Well—” He was fingering his own jaw gingerly. His probing tongue confirmed at least one tooth loosened in its socket, as he thought. But he reckoned it’d firm up in a couple days and he wouldn’t lose it, barring further misadventure. He had a certain amount of experience with that sort of thing, too.
The ribs were going to make it feel as if somebody was stabbing him every time he breathed for a week or so. But he could live with that. He may’ve always been a runt, but he was tough.
“I had to do it, Rance,” he blurted, his mind coming back to her question—and to the way her hazel eyes were fixed on him. “They said the 1911 sucked! Claimed the Glock was more reliable!”
“I’m guessing you ain’t had experience with a wide variety of handblasters, Dix.”
“I know all there is to know about the Colt 1911!”
“In my experience, Glocks
are
more reliable than 1911s. And don’t go getting fresh with me or I’ll bust
your
jaw so I don’t have to put up with your bullshit for a spell.”
“Yes, ma’am!” He had already learned his new boss didn’t bluff.
He had also learned that if you did what she told you, and listened when she instructed you, and tried your best, she was a pretty ace boss. It was belatedly occurring to him that she had stepped up to save his bacon when she didn’t have to.
“Thanks,” he said again.
“Heard you the first time. What the nuke were you even arguing with them about that for? They’re the armorer’s crew.”
“But I’m an armorer, dammit! I’m good, Rance! You know it!”
As if reluctantly, she nodded. “You’re good with your hands and you got a touch with mechanicals. I’ll give you that. You’re even a halfway-decent kid, if you can learn to use a little judgment before your attitude gets you chilled—and mebbe people around you. Which would not please Trader at all. Reckon you might get your shot at showing your stuff as a weaponsmith.”
He stood up straighter despite the aches.
“But not for a spell. And not until you show you can keep your shit together. Before you go and do anything else, you gotta show you can ace the job you got. So shake the dust off your rad-blasted heels, youngster. We got a tore-down engine waitin’ on us, and those parts ain’t gonna wash themselves!”
Chapter Eleven
A gnarled misshapen blob of shadow lurched up and over the wood rail at Ryan.
He met it with a left boot to the face. Or, at least, the head. It toppled backward to crash through the thin scrim of ice with a big splash.
A gunshot shattered the crisp evening air from close by. Ryan was already hauling out his big-bladed panga. Flash decision, it seemed a lot more useful in the present circumstances than his 9 mm SIG-Sauer handblaster.
Apparently their guide thought so, too. She dropped the lever-action carbine to hang on its short sling across her saddle pommel and whipped out her saber as she spurred her mount forward.
As she charged forward, Ryan’s blade hissed free as another shape lurched onto the bridge from beneath the rail to his right. He caught the forward-thrust muzzle with an upward swing. He felt a slightly rubbery impact. Then the head snapped back, flinging a long trail of blood, black in the gathering gloom.
It confirmed his initial impression of a mouth full of huge curved teeth like a great white shark’s.
The bulky, hunched shapes surged up on both sides, along with an evil croaking mutter of malice. A pair blocked the exit from the bridge to the wagon-rutted road, shadowy shapes, at least man-size in heft, but seeming short because of the hunched-over way in which they carried their big heads in front of their barrel chests. They raised wicked-taloned hands to rake the approaching horse and rider.
The bay mare squealed in what Ryan took for terror. Instead of shying back from the terrible living mutie blockade, though, she sprang forward. Her hooves struck the stooped shoulders of both crouching shadows and knocked them spinning.
Ryan shouted, “Krysty! Mildred! Follow me!” and charged after their guide.
There were more of the humanoid frog muties waiting on the far side. Ryan slashed wildly with his panga, left and right, just trying to carve a path for his companions.
He scored no solid hits. The hopping, shambling monsters’ rubbery skin wasn’t easy to cut. And their sloped skulls were apparently thick and tended to send the broad blade glancing away. But the creatures gave way before him and the solid mass of his panicking, eye-rolling mount.
In a moment he was on the open snow-covered ground on the far bank. About fifty yards farther on the road went into a tunnel of mostly deciduous trees, bare but for snow. The mixed woods closed into the riverbank about the same distance away upstream and down.
While Ryan, though a seasoned horseman, wasn’t experienced at mounted combat, clearly Alysa was. She had cleared a space of frogs in the middle of the clearing. Her horse was spinning in place, biting and lashing out with its rear heels, while its rider laid about not just with her sword—its curved blade flinging plumes of blood, inky in the twilight—but the barrel of her Marlin longblaster.
He winced as she slammed the black barrel across the froglike muzzle of a mutie. And not just because he heard the snout bones crunch and the monster squeal in horribly human-sounding pain. Usually using a blaster as a club was a sure, fast road to having a blaster that was only good
as
a club. But Ryan knew as well as any, even in this brutal world, how little use a working blaster was to a chill.
But in that instant of capturing the scene in his one good eye, as he had learned to do by hard practice over harder years, he also noted the distressing fact that only a couple of the weird misshapen forms lay on the ground.
These bastards take a lot of killing, he thought.
As he booted the pinto toward Alysa’s circle of destruction, her bay mare caught a frog full in the side with both hind hooves in a brutal kick. It flung the massive monster a good five feet through the air, with a loud snap of ribs breaking. But Ryan saw that the creature never even went fully down—from a hurt that would’ve at least temporarily incapacitated any human, if not chilled him or her outright.
He kept the panga going, still not trying hard to bite the blade deep. Just enough to clear his way until he could help the girl, whose pale blond hair was whipping like a pennon out from behind her cap. And to help cover his friends...
Reassuringly he heard the sledgehammering of hooves on weathered, sturdy planks as the two women, presumably followed hard by Doc, crossed the bridge.
Then, as he rode up to Alysa, a scream pealed from behind him. He heard a giant, cracking, splintering sound.
He spun to see Krysty’s little red roan mare falling on its side just at the bridge’s end, saliva flying from its face. The horse’s thrashing body smashed free a whole section of the heavy timber top rail on her right.
Blood hosed in a ruby arc from a throat torn open by black frog-mutie talons.
* * *
“U
SE
MORE
FORCE
, L
UKE
.”
The chunk of concrete, twice as big as J.B.’s head and with nasty jabs and hooks of rust-reddened rebar sticking out of it, clanged against the long steel handle of the wrench. The hard sharp-edged concrete bit at his palms. He wished he’d thought to wear gloves.
“What’s that, Trader?” he asked.
Standing in the shade of War Wag Two, Trader chuckled. “Bad joke. And an old one, a reference to an old-days vid.”
J.B. blinked owlishly at him, in part because his exertions had worked his glasses down his nose and he couldn’t rightly see the man as anything but a long, narrow, shadowy blur. But also because he never reckoned a man as triple-hard and bottom-line as the Trader to go in for such foolishness.
As if reading his thoughts, the man said, “I deal in scavvy, son. I like to know the quality of my own merch. What exactly do you think you’re
doing
there, anyway, abusing my tools like that?”
That stung J.B. as deeply, but he had the sense to throttle down the sudden racing of his temper.
“I’m trying to get this cable loose so we can haul that cargo wag out the ditch,” he said, speaking slowly and tautly so as not to lose control of his words. It wasn’t so much that Trader was his boss—he had no reflex fear or deference to authority. To say the least. But the man was
Trader,
as formidable a figure as the Deathlands knew.
“Son, I know that,” Trader said, and now his gravelly voice had a touch of steel in it, like the broke-off chunk of roadway foolishly clutched in J.B.’s chafed hands. “I know what goes on in my convoy. What I want to know is why you are pounding on the handle of my four-foot open-end wrench with a nuking rock?”
J.B. frowned. Sweat ran into his eyes, stinging like anything and blurring out his vision worse than before. He fought the impulse to blink it furiously away. He was afraid that would make him look as nervous as he was.
“Well, I’m trying to get at this steel tow-cable,” he said, struggling a bit as he tried to keep the words from tumbling over each other, without making it sound like he was lecturing a feeb. “The bolt’s froze.”
He could make out Trader’s head turning. His heart sank. The shape approaching through the hot sun was little more detailed to his weak eyes than Trader’s. But he’d learned to recognize his immediate boss and mentor in pretty much any visibility.
“Hear that, Rance?” Trader asked.
She spit in the dust between her and J.B. “What you’re doing would be ace on the line if it was frozen, boy. But it ain’t.”
He shook his head in total bewilderment. “But—but—it won’t turn. I tried and tried. Even tried hanging on the handle. My ass ain’t that skinny!”
Rance sighed in audible disgust. “This is outside stowage, Dix.”
He hated when she called him Dix.
“Do you think Trader wants his shit walking away every time we stop for a piss-break? We can’t have eyes on every square inch of every wag every minute of the day. So the bolts securing outside stores are reverse-threaded.”
Trader was lighting a cigar. J.B. could tell by the smell it wasn’t one of the cheroots Rance favored. Trader liked the big hand-rolled ones.
“Be surprised how well that works,” Trader said, whipping the match until it went out and then holding it to let it cool off. “Most thieves who make a go at helping themselves to my stuff like that react the same way you do.”
The spent match cooled, Trader stuck it in a pocket of his worn jeans, faded near-white by countless suns. He didn’t believe in leaving any more signs of his passage than dead necessary. He insisted his people do the same.
J.B. stared at him as if struck in the head with that damn traitor wrench. He looked at Rance. He still couldn’t make out her features, but the hands on the hips spoke clearly.
“So, what do you think about your new acquisition now?” Rance asked Trader.
The man hunched a shoulder. “I take it this isn’t the best performance he got in him?”
Rance laughed. “No. He’s good with machines—most of the time. But his problem is he has no conception of how good he ain’t yet.”
“So he thinks he knows more than he does?”
She gestured at the wrench and the rock J.B. had forgotten he was holding at crotch level. Sheepishly he let it go, and remembered just in time to hop back to keep it from smashing his own feet.
Trader grunted, then he grinned.
“Your problem mainly is that you’re young, boy,” he said, not harshly. “That’s a problem most of us get over. The question is whether we do it walking or lying down. With dirt hitting us in the eyes.”
He walked off in that purposeful manner of his, not hurrying but going somewhere fast.
Staring after him, J.B. blew out a long breath.
“That could have gone better,” he said.