“Quite a plan.”
“Goddamn, I didn’t come up with it! That’s about all I know other than the attack is supposed to happen around midnight, tomorrow night! AH! GOD! Please, Eli, let go m’ hand!”
“Oh,” Eli said, absentmindedly, “Sure. So, I have one more question, Olaf, an important one, so pay attention. This afternoon, the Sharks had a young woman trussed up. They beat her and were making some pretty awful threats. Oley, were you one of those men?”
“Shit no! I been stuck out here since sunrise, Eli! I didn’t have nuthin’ to do with it. When those guys start in on them girls, I make myself scarce. I know you won’t believe it, but I hate the screaming. It’s just pure awful to hear.”
“I see. Well, let me confirm that. Ghost Wind?”
She stepped out from behind a nearby tree and one look into her intense blazing eyes convinced Olaf that if she decided to say she recognized him, Eli would snap his neck right then and there, no appeal. She looked at him for a moment, contempt in her eyes and turned and walked away.
“I didn’t see him there,” she said over her shoulder. She blended in with the darkness like a shadow.
“Well, I think that’s all we need.” Eli paused a moment. “You mind if I borrow your bike there, Olaf?”
He gulped, but Olaf was no fool, “Take it if’n you want it, man. I’ll figure out somethin’ to tell ‘em.”
“About that… Olaf, you’ll agree, I could have killed you this morning, right?”
“Uh…. Yeah?”
“And yet, here you are, still with the Road Sharks. It seems it would be folly to give you another chance, when you didn’t take the first one.”
“Oh God! Please, Eli! I promise…” Eli held up a hand, and Olaf went silent.
“Ole, you’ve been very cooperative, and I have to count that in your favor, so, tell you what I’m gonna do. The next time I see you in Road Shark colors, I’m going to tell that young lady there, who by the way makes my skills at stealth look sick, I’m gonna tell her you need your throat cut. And you know what? You will NEVER see her coming until your life’s blood is running down your hairy chest. Do you see where I’m going with this?”
“Uh… you’re gonna let me live?”
“Yes. I’m gonna let you live. But let me spell it out for you so there’s no mistake. I’m going to wipe out the Road Sharks. If I find you with them, you’re dead, sorry to tell you, Oley. So, if I were you, I would pack my gear, steal another ride, and quietly get the hell outta here. I think you might live a lot longer if you do.”
“Dude, by tomorrow morning, I swear to you I will be a hundred miles from here. You got my promise!”
“Okay, then! I think our business is concluded. Hopefully I won’t see you later, Olaf.”
“No way. Eli, thanks for not killin’ me!”
The tall man waved as he walked away. Eli looked back over his shoulder as he turned Olaf’s fusion cycle down the road, the way he had come. “I got your promise, right?”
“Fuck, yes!”
“Good man.”
****
Later, after sneaking into the fairly depopulated garage with a backpack and a pair of saddle bags, Olaf found Shell’s personal fusion cycle, beauty that it was, unguarded and fully charged. Just before dawn the next day, somewhere near the Nevada border, he thought about his former companions and started to laugh.
He’d never liked those fuckers anyway.
Axyl began to miss Shell in a very short time.
Well, not actually miss the man so much, Shell was actually just across the room in the new office they were moving everything into. He was lying in a portable bed they had scrounged from the hospital, high out of his mind on their precious dwindling supply of Beforetime pain meds.
What he missed was Shell’s way of thinking. Axyl was good at short-term planning and keeping the troops in line but he wasn’t much good at the long-term big picture stuff. His current question was whether to continue their current campaign against New Hope without Shell’s guidance or to abort and pull back.
“Axyl,” Doc Mullins peeked around the door. “We’ve made him as comfortable as possible, and I’ve got him on Perc 3 to ease the pain. Our meds are a bit past their prime, but a least he’s not in agony. His back is definitely broken and with the facilities we have here, I doubt Shell will ever walk again.”
“You don’t seem to be too broken up about it, Doc.”
“I’m here because he gave me no choice, Axyl. I took a healer’s oath to help those who need medical attention, but I often wish I was helping a group who was worth it.”
“You never know, Doc. Someday maybe we’ll be better.”
“Or I’ll find a better class of patient.” Doc walked out the door.
Axyl smiled. Everyone would be singing a happy song if they could get control over New Hope and all the food production, even Doc. And that brought him to the Indies. He had to be the one to go down to the old museum and convince all the outside operators to join in the attack with the Road Sharks. Axyl had always been the one to do the convincing when it came to troops.
He needed to delegate the task of getting the troops in place around the farming community and who the hell could he trust from this bunch? If Cord wasn’t such a namby pamby asshole, he would have been the ideal choice, being smarter than most of the Road Sharks, but Axe couldn’t trust him.
“Porter is out. Sky Rider? Yeah, maybe.” The Rider was the oldest member of the Sharks, and had been a real badass back in the Beforetime. The thing was, he was almost seventy years old now and had pretty much drawn the light duty jobs for the last several years. “Sure, he’s old, but he’s managed to not get killed during the collapse of the old republic and to survive everything the after times had thrown at him. He’s pretty sharp for an old guy.”
Sky Rider could also take directions and carry them out, generally without fucking up. Axyl would just have to lay down the law that anyone who didn’t follow the old man’s orders would be in for a ton of bricks coming down on their skull.
He rose from the desk, carrying the small notebook he had been filling with knowledge from Shell. Axyl realized with a start, that he no longer thought of Shell as his boss anymore.
If the newly crippled man could be of some use with strategy and planning, then he might still be worth keeping around. If he was going to just sit there and suck down their medical resources, well, he was gonna have to go. Maybe Doc could wean him to just pot. Plenty of that around.
Axyl smiled for a moment. By God, he was starting to think like the big boss… he WAS the big boss. And Shell was either an asset, or a liability.
And if it was the latter, he wouldn’t be around long.
There was no real reason they couldn’t go back to New Hope or Yama No Matsu. They knew the main gist of the Road Shark plan and with the Sharks you probably couldn’t make any plan too complicated. Eli doubted they would learn much more about the plan by sitting in on the meeting taking place at the old museum. He was for turning around and heading back to tell their allies what was up and he was surprised when Ghost Wind resisted.
As he checked over their newest bike, she said. “If Shell isn’t the one to address these ‘Indies’ then as his second-in-command, Axyl will probably be the one to go, won’t he?”
“Probably.” He looked up at her, “Why?”
“Because then I, for the first time in almost a year, know where he will be, and when.”
“And you’re sure the Road Shark’s Axe Man is the one who, basically, ruined your life, killed your teacher, got you banished?”
“I saw him, Eli,” she growled. “He was there in the room when they hung me from a chain and threatened to gang rape me until I told them what they wanted to hear about you. In his defense, he DID plead for his boss to just shoot me in the head, so there’s that.”
“Fuck.” Eli felt anger rising deep in his chest. “What are you thinking about him being there at the museum?”
“I’m thinking of coming up behind him and chopping his head or his balls off so that they all go bouncing across the concrete. Maybe both, balls first, head second.”
“Ghost Wind, you’re so sore and lamed you can barely walk straight. Besides, you and I, we need to be in two places at the same time.”
“What do you mean?”
“We need to warn both Yama No Matsu and New Hope about what’s goin’ down. I intend to convince Kita we need to get our warriors to sneak up on the Sharks from behind, while you have Horace and his people ready to kill them as they get near the walls.”
“I have a better idea. I’ll go to this museum, you can come along if you wish, and end this. If I kill Axyl, and the one called Shell is crippled, then these Road Sharks will have no leadership.”
He pondered for a moment. There was some merit to what she said, though he doubted in her condition she could deliver on her promises as well as she thought she could.
“Yeah, I see there’s some wisdom there, but you’re not taking into consideration the variables.”
“WHAT variables?” she said angrily. “I kill him, they have no leadership, and maybe the whole gang falls apart.”
“You’re assuming all the Road Sharks are as stupid as the foot soldiers you’ve seen. I know for a fact, there are some old wolves in the pack who can think for themselves, and they’ve probably been deployed to the farming village to keep order. The plan is fairly simple, and there is no guarantee if Shell and Axyl don’t show up they won’t go ahead and attack. Once they’re in, they are in control of the compound and it’s going to be very hard to remove them. Who knows how many of the farmers will be killed or injured in the process.”
Ghost Wind scowled towards the north.
“There’s one other thing,” he said. “You’re injured.”
“I’ll be fine.”
“Bullshit. You’ve been trying to hide from me that your ankle is pretty badly sprained, and you keep babying your left wrist. It’s obvious to anyone with eyes that you’ve had quite a beating, and I can’t even tell what injuries you’ve got under that big ol’ coat. Right now, I think you’d have a tough time slipping through to New Hope, much less through a multitude of Indies to reach Axyl.”
The uncertainty in her eyes was all he needed to see to know he was right. She hid it quickly, and he braced himself for the inevitable argument. She surprised him.
“You’re right, Eli.” She glanced at the ground, with a look of shame. “The pain in my ankle keeps getting worse, the more I’m on it. But I’m a warrior and if I can’t help with this, of what use am I to you, or your people, or the people of New Hope? I must do this or I am worth nothing!”
And there it is,
Eli thought,
a need for self-worth. To be useful. And being a warrior is the only way she knows to be useful.
Eli stepped toward her, carefully and slowly. He gently enfolded her in big arms and drew her to his chest. He leaned his cheek against the top of her head and said in his low rumbly voice, “You are worthy, Ghost Wind, just by being you. As for my people and me, we can be pretty sure that in a short time, we’ll all marvel at our luck that you’d stay with us.”
He felt her begin to tremble, and he hoped he hadn’t overstepped his bounds. She pulled back and looked up at him and the man from the past was surprised to see tears flowing down her face.
“I want to help,” she said, wiping her eyes, “not for revenge, but to show Kita I am useful. She said I was unwelcome…”
“Kita and I had a little talk.” He said, “After hearing how you saved my life, she said she would give you an opportunity. What you do with that opportunity is up to you.”
She looked at the ground, considering. “What can I do then, Eli? I know I can crawl through the vermin surrounding New Hope, without standing on my ankle, but it will take half a day to make it there on my belly. Then how do I get Horace’s attention?”
“I don’t think that plan of having you go to New Hope is the best way to go, now.”
“Then what?”
“I think that you need to go see Kita and convince her to deal, not with the fellows hanging around New Hope but—”
“The indies coming north with Axyl!”
“Precisely, Kita can field fifteen half-trained warriors with rifles. If you all can get a proper ambush set on the main road up from Bend, maybe we can divide and conquer the Road Sharks.”
“Eli, she won’t listen to me.”
He looked at her, not quite certain of what he was about to say, but somehow, he knew if he let it flow, it would come out right.
“Listen to me, he said, “you are the warrior scout Ghost Wind. You were trained by the masters of the Clan of the Hawk. There is very little you cannot accomplish if you BELIEVE that you can do it. I’m not gonna to tell you how, I’m only going to say what must get done, then I’m getting out of your way. Convince her, Ghost Wind.”
She looked at him a little dubiously.
“All right, but you need to teach me how to ride this infernal machine first.”
****
There was a certain amount of evidence that Eli was trying to kill her, not teach her to ride a six hundred pound fusion powered motorcycle.
It seemed for the last few days, her life had been one of fear and flight but when she had told the big dark handsome man that she needed to learn to ride this monster, she’d left herself open for a different kind of fear.
He had ridden beside her for a time, as she had learned the basics of balancing the monstrous machine, actually holding onto the cargo bar in back while leaning across from the Terror. He had shown her how to accelerate with the hand throttle, the basics of braking and the foot shifting of the gears, but he couldn’t show her how to be comfortable on the big machine.
“AHHH! Hellbats!” she yelled as she dumped the bike for the third time that evening. “Damn it! Damn it! Damn it!”
She had rolled away at the last second, narrowly missing being under the bike and had left a little of her hide on the ancient pavement. If she had still had her deerskin pants, she would have come out unscathed, but the thought of that just made her mood darker. She kicked the overturned machine.