She hugged the wall, mindful that the people of New Hope were still at the trap point, shooting anything still moving. She slipped into the darkness carefully, not wanting any of the sentries to shoot her, thinking she was a kilabyker in the dark.
Ghost Wind went hunting.
Once out in the junipers and pines, she could see shapes moving in various stages of panic, and she silently cursed herself for not having Kita’s fighters working on destroying the Road Shark bikes. It was too late to worry about it, now.
“Shit!” She went down. Ghost Wind was not accustomed to tripping over things and reached out, to feel a body under her hand. A quick investigation found an arrow in his back and she was reminded, that in the dark, she could catch an arrow also. She resolved to move more carefully.
She trotted, keeping low and staying silent, and had no trouble finding the main body of Sharks stumbling and yelling to each other. They were totally disorganized, a perfect setup for a wolves-on-deer attack scenario. Ghost Wind had only killed one man in the time before she was banished, a brutal mountain man that had gone cannibal back in Clan of the Hawk territory. She had done what she had to, but it had left its mark on her soul.
But now, somehow, she didn’t feel all that guilty about what she was about to do. Maybe it was the threats, beatings, and humiliation she had endured at their hands. She loosened her big Khukri from its makeshift sheath and pulled it out.
“Where are the fucking bikes?” a voice screeched out of the darkness and a man trotted towards her. A flare went off, coming from New Hope and she saw a big man with an even bigger beard coming her way. “George! Is that you? Where the hell are the goddamn bikes, man?”
“Norv!” a voice yelled to the left, “over this way!”
The big man started, looked to his left and looked back at her. Realizing that he was coming up on the wrong person, he tried to see which fellow Road Shark was in front of him when Ghost Wind swung the big knife in a glittering arc at him. The lower half
of Norv’s beard fell away and he grabbed at his throat. He went to his knees, blood flowing between his fingers.
Ghost Wind whirled away from the dying man, hearing footsteps coming up behind her and saw a lean skinny kilabyker aiming his rifle at her. There was no way she could cover the distance in time or get her pistol out and she readied herself for the bullet’s impact. Just as the man’s finger tightened on the trigger, another shape appeared behind him and knocked the rifle aside and the shot went wild. A punch too fast to see hit the man and he doubled over, another blow loudly broke his neck.
“Lovely night for an ambush, wouldn’t you say, dear?” Eli whispered.
“That was close, thank you.”
A noise behind her caused her to whirl, but it was only Norv, finishing up dying and falling on his face. The majority of the Road Sharks were still ahead of them and Eli pointed where they had gone.
“I’m not a man who likes slaughter, but we’d better take as many of these idiots out as we can while we have the chance. I want them dead or terrified.”
Ghost Wind felt no pity for the Road Sharks, remembering their plans for her when they had her helpless and in their power.
“I’d prefer the former,” she said.
****
We’re so screwed.
Axyl’s self-preservation instincts and youthful muscularity had put him at the front of the retreat towards the bikes, and he sought to outdo himself for speed as he ran. Shadow Rider had fallen far back after a brief run, the old man not able to keep up with the younger Axyl, or in fact even most of his fellow Sharks.
“Good luck, Rider, wherever the hell you are,” Axyl breathed. To say this night had not gone according to plan, would have been the understatement of the Aftertime, and he had little idea what they’d do after this. The understanding hit him that he needed to keep as much of his army alive as he could, and he started to slow, to rally the troops when a young thickly mustached Shark a few feet from him stiffened and fell to the ground. Looking at the body, he saw an arrow sticking out of the man’s back.
Ghost Wind! She’s out there! I’m out here! With her!
He looked wildly around, and realized most of his men had passed him, and were starting to mount their motorcycles. He was near the end of the pack.
“Screw this! If they ain’t made it to the bikes by now, they’re on their own!” he said, once more breaking into a sprint. He had made it another thirty feet when something flashed by him right in front of his nose. He heard a hefty ‘thunk’ as bark exploded from the tree just to his right. He looked and saw a huge curved knife stuck in the wood, a knife he recognized. He turned and looked where the blade had come from, and she was there.
“Axyyyyl!” her scream of rage and hate sounded like a hawk on the attack. The Axe Man, in a panic, fumbled for the old .45 automatic pistol he had taken to wearing and finally got it loose from its holster. As he looked up again, she was gone.
“Fuck!” he screamed, firing several times at the area where she had been. Axyl turned and sprinted again, beating any speed records he’s previously held by a wide margin. He was jumping on his bike when the first pistol shot rang out to his left, shattering his windscreen. He always insisted that his bike be given the best maintenance, and old Willard, understanding where the power in the Sharks lay, made sure it ran like a dream.
The fusion engine fired first try and the bike leapt ahead, just as another shot tore the seat just behind him. He looked back and saw her in the fading light of the flare taking aim with her pistol again and he began to ride a serpentine path. He heard two more shots, and felt a burn along his right side.
He hit a turn in the road, faster than he should have and the bike slewed for a moment but he quickly regained control. Axyl had been riding the metal beasts since he was fourteen years old and Shell had taken him in, and it was his learned instincts that made him lay the bike over on its side in a slide as something went flying over him.
He used the motorcycle’s momentum to throw it upright again, and looked at what had just missed him. It was the dark outline of a man rolling to his feet.
Eli! Shit!
Adrenaline dumped into his bloodstream and Axyl gunned the throttle, throwing dust behind him. The bike surged forward but as he looked back he saw the big man run out of the dust, chasing him faster than any human had a right to move. He turned the throttle to full, knowing there was no way Eli could catch him now. He looked back.
The bastard’s still coming!
His long duster drifting to the ground behind him, Eli was sprinting full out, and he was gaining on the fusion cycle!
Impossible!
Eli was getting close when Axyl remembered his side arm, drew it and began wildly shooting behind him. His pursuer turned, ducked and ran off the road into the junipers and Axyl tore off hell-bent for leather down the road.
The Axe Man kept looking over his shoulder all the way back to Bend.
“We can’t stop now.”
Ghost Wind turned from Kita to Eli in the fading gloom of the pre-sunrise morning. “Eli, surely you see we need to put the pressure on them now, while they’re reeling. This is scout psychology beginner stuff. Don’t let your enemy regroup or dig in.”
“We’ve cut their number in half,” Kita broke in, “but it hasn’t been without cost. Horace has lost three people, and we lost…” She had to stop for a moment. “We lost Mort.”
The pang of grief that Ghost Wind felt at that news surprised her. She had known the older man less than a day, but he had been kind, and he had been a brave fighter.
“Well, I don’t want to seem callous, and I liked ol’ Mort too, but I think we need to look at the bigger picture,” Horace said. “I think the wolf-girl here is right. We need to press ‘em, to make them even sorrier they ever got into the bein’ an asshole business.”
“I’d like nothing better than to be done with all this too,” Eli said, looking at Kita, “But Axyl got away with at least thirty men and bikes. That’s still a sizeable enough force to be a thorn in everyone else’s side, not only that, but he’ll probably, if left alone, decide he wants revenge. At that point, they’ll be actively hunting anyone they can catch and probably making raids based purely on malice.”
“That’s nothing new,” Kita replied.
“Actually, it is,” Eli said, looking at the row of captured fusion cycles. “Before, as much as those sadists might like to hurt people they catch alone and unprotected, their coordinated efforts always revolved around profit in one form or another. Now, they’ll be coordinating on just giving everyone they think wronged them a very bad day. These jack holes need to be given the gift of fear.”
“I agree,” Horace said.
“I don’t want to lose any more of my people,” Kita told him. “We have so few as it is.”
“Same with New Hope, Kita. And you may think they’ll only come after us, but eventually, somebody in that bunch will find a way to Yama No Matsu, and you’ll be wishin’ that we’d dealt them boys a death blow when it happens.”
Reluctantly, Kita nodded. “Let me get my people, and we’ll form a plan.”
****
Axyl arrived back in the big municipal garage fifteen minutes after sunrise, and he was in no mood to take anything off anybody.
“Boss! What we gonna do? Half our guys didn’t come back.”
“Back off.” He told a grimy biker who had a splatter of blood on his face. “You want to make yourself useful? You want to know what to do? Go tell Cook we all need food and drink and to get her ass on it. Then go find me Cord and anyone else that stayed behind and tell them I want them guarding our perimeter.”
The shell-shocked biker looked at him for a moment too long and Axyl grabbed him by the collar, pulling him close. “Why the fuck are you still standing there? Didn’t I just give you a fucking order?” Released, the man turned and ran to do Axyl’s bidding. Axyl watched him go, a sneer on his handsome face.
“Shadow Rider! Where’s Rider? He and I need to strategize!” Axyl yelled.
“I.. ain’t sure he made it, Axe.” One of the burlier Sharks carefully walked up to him. “Last time I seen him, he was on all fours wheezin’ and coughing. He was a pretty old dude, and I don’t think he could run far. I’d guess he’s probably worm food by now.”
Uneasy, Axyl remembered how he’d left the old man in his dust as he fled the ambush. He also remembered he had said “every man for himself” and if the old fart couldn’t keep up, that was his own fault for getting so old.
“I’m goin’ to wake up Shell. I’ll see if he’s able to form coherent sentences this early in the morning before he’s had his meds. Have Cook send my breakfast up to the new office.”
Axyl took the stairs to the third floor two at a time. When he reached the main hallway, he saw Doc Mullins leaving the office where Shell’s bed was.
“Doc. Is he awake? Is he remotely sober?”
“Yes, I was just going back downstairs to get his meds…”
“He gets pot only, from now on. You sabé? He’ll use up every painkiller we got otherwise. Shell ain’t a man to suffer the slightest discomfort.”
“His back is fractured, Axyl, his discomfort is more than slight.”
“He’ll have to deal, Doc. We might need them meds down the line.”
The doctor just nodded and walked towards the stairwell.
“Doc!”
“Yes?” Mullins said, turning back toward the younger man.
“We’ve got those three solar electric vans, and they’re supposed to be charged up. I want you to pack up your sickbay and get it in one of those vans.”
“We going somewhere?”
“The raid went off the rails, badly. We lost a lot of guys. I’m thinkin’ it might be prudent to take the remainder south to the ranch, ’til we can regroup and maybe do some recruiting. So get your stuff ready to go mobile, clear?”
“Like glass,” the doctor said, and turned back towards the stair.
As he headed to Shell’s room, Axyl knew he was not going to admit the real reason he wanted to take the remaining Sharks to their southern hideout. The truth of the matter was simply this: he wanted to go because Ghost Wind was on the loose.
And she knew where he lived.
****
Mullins was carrying a load of medical supplies down the far north stairwell when Cord appeared below him on the stairs.
“Got a minute, Doc?” the dark haired man asked, leaning against the cool concrete wall.
“For you, Cord, I can take a quick break.” Cord was one of the few Road Sharks that seemed to have anything resembling a conscience, and they had both engaged in mutual bitch sessions about being conscripted by the kilabyker gang.
“Doc, I can’t help but notice you’re packing up the med room. Goin’ somewhere?”
“Axyl is planning on pulling out and going to the Nevada ranch. I guess you’ve heard that the Sharks plan went awry?”
“I heard they got their asses handed to them.” Cord half laughed. “Glad I wasn’t there! Looks like they lost over half the gang, and I can’t say I’m sorry.”
“Indeed. Axyl has decided it would be a good idea to get some distance from reprisals and is loading up everything the Sharks need to take with them. Including me.”
“Yeah, about that…” Cord looked up and down the stairwell, making sure they were alone. “They’re hurt, they’re disorganized and they’ve got a lot less people to watch the roads. Doc, I think we’re not going to get a better opportunity.”
“To do what?”
“To get the fuck out of here, away from the barbarian horde. To have our lives back. Me, my boys, and the four women from the slave pen are going to fade like a cool breeze in August. I thought you might like to join us.”
“If it was that easy, I’d have left a long time ago, Cord. They’ve watched us fairly closely all this time, knowing we’re not really onboard with them and their evil God-awful ways.”
“Well, they ain’t watching real close at the moment.”
Mullins stood there for a while, staring at the ground deep in thought. He finally looked up at Cord and asked, “What do I have to do?”