“Me and the boys’ve been sneaking supplies, parts and guns into the Happy Bend Bakery solar van. If you’re supposed to load your med stuff into one of the vans, why not that one?” Cord said, looking the older man straight in the eye. “As soon as you’re done, we head out, saying Axyl’s told us to get the van on the way to this Nevada ranch. When we get out, then we head north, and see if some of these people they attacked might be willing to listen to our side of the story.”
“That sounds pretty risky, son.”
“Doc, me and the boys feel we’d rather risk our lives to get free than risk having our souls destroyed by being part of this any longer. If I die today, just trying, I figure it’s a risk I’m willing to take.”
Mullins stood a moment longer in thought. He looked up. “When?”
“Soon as you’ve got sickbay loaded, we make a break for it.”
“All right. If you help me load, we’ll be out that much faster.”
“So, you screwed up the plan, didn’t you, Axyl?” Shell’s dry voice rasped out and Axyl’s irritation at being verbally waylaid by his crippled mentor was just on the sparking edge of fury.
He had done everything according to the plan as it was laid out by the very man who was road-rashing him, and the main reason it hadn’t worked could be described in two words.
Ghost Wind.
“Shell,” Axyl said quietly, with little of the respect he had shown his former boss in happier times, “They knew we were coming. They had two different ambushes ready for us and I should have pulled the plug at the first one. And YOU know HOW they knew we were coming.”
“We don’t know—”
“SHE told them! Yes! Ghost Wind! The one I told you to forgo all your stinking rape threats and just shoot her between her fucking eyes! Little Miss Death on a Stick!” Axyl looked down at Shell’s paralyzed legs. “Bet you wish you’d listened for once, instead of craving the sound of your own voice, am I right?”
Shell’s face reddened with anger. “I gave you a foolproof plan, you young moron, and you can’t get around the fact you couldn’t pull it off!”
Axyl hit his tipping point. He wanted, for a moment, to just put his boot into Shell’s face, but Shell was a thinking man and the way to express things in a way to kick the older man’s ass was to put them into words.
“Dude. You don’t get it. You can sit there, and call me names and say it’s my fault, when your busted-ass plan failed, but you’ve sent others to do your dirty work for so long you don’t remember what it’s actually like out there” Axyl looked grimly at Shell. “But NONE of that matters. None of it!”
“And why is that?”
“I’m taking the remainder of the Sharks, and as much gear and food as we can carry, and we’re headin’ to the ranch in Nevada.” Axyl paused for effect, “Guess which liability ain’t goin’ with us?”
“Now Axyl,” Shell’s voice became fatherly and conciliatory. “There’s no need to go off half-cocked…”
“That would be you! Mr. Dead from the Waist Down! You can stay here and be our night watchman and run off all the mean people when they come in to loot what’s left!”
“Axyl, I can still be very useful! There’s no need to be like this!”
“Yeah? Hey, y’know what? When I came in here, I was working out how we were going to get your cripple-ass self down there, how much in the way of supplies we’d need to leave behind to get you in one of the solar vans,” Axyl started grinning in a way that did the name of his gang proud. “Now? Problem solved! I’m already sending guys and stuff south man, and by late, late tonight, you can have the entire place to yourself. Then you can bitch at me all you want without my fucking size twelves leaving their imprint on your broken old butt.”
He started toward the door and Shell tried to roll his wheel chair after him. It caught on the rucked up rug near the door, spilling him out onto the floor.
“Axyl!” he nearly screamed. “Wait!”
The younger man looked back at him, no trace of pity anywhere to be seen. He flipped off the man lying on the floor, and walked down the hallway.
“H’asta la vista, asshole.”
****
“Honest, boss! I didn’t know!” Ballsy hysterically reported. “You said we was all goin’ to the ranch! Cord said they was goin’ to the ranch, so I thought you’d sent ‘em!”
“Fucking, Cord!” Axyl snarled. “Why on God’s green Earth would I send that backstabber off with his boys by themselves? Particularly with Doc and all our medical supplies! You can’t trust that bastard. He’s just been with us to save his skin, only now he doesn’t have to worry about it, does he, Ballsy?”
Ballsy started to shake. For a moment, Axyl was tempted to pull his pistol from its behind-the-back sheath and just end this shit-for-brains. He mastered his anger, remembering that his forces had just been cut in half, and instead focused on the problem at hand.
Was it worth it to send some boys after them? To catch them, retrieve Doc, and to shoot Cord and his boys down like the unfaithful dogs they were? Not in the shape the Road Sharks were currently in.
“What’s done is done. We don’t know which side road they may have taken, which direction they went or what their true destination is. Or if they’re going to get themselves some help.” Axyl said to the man quaking before him. “I think we’ll just have to write it off for now, and see if we can replace the drugs, and find us a new medic.”
“Sure, Axe! We’ll find someone!”
“Oh, Ballsy?”
“Yeah, boss?” Ballsy tensed, knowing Axyl’s habit of speaking softly before beating the living shit out of someone.
“If you’re not sure of something, make sure to come and ask me next time. You’re the one who’s gonna have to do the extra scrounging for med supplies from now on,” Axyl said calmly. “Oh, and Ballsy?”
“Yeah… boss?”
“Don’t fuck up like this again.”
“I won’t, boss! No worries!”
“Oh man,” Axyl said as he walked away, “we’ve GOT worries, plenty of them now. No fucking way around that.”
“I think this as close as we can get with the truck,” Kita said.
They’d been moving south as carefully as possible with an untrained force, bringing the remainder of the mountain apprentices and twenty of the farmers, both male and female. There would be no bows and arrows this time for most of them, they were instead carrying the best firearms of both villages could muster for the assault on the Road Sharks. The only exceptions to this were Kita and Ghost Wind, who carried both guns and bows.
They drove to within five miles of the administration building, and then left the fusion cycles and the big farm truck, powered by homemade bio-diesel, hidden in derelict structures out of sight. Fortunately, the Road Sharks had done little to clear their lanes of sight from the natural world’s encroachment of trees and bushes. Even the large parking lots had young trees growing through cracked pavement.
Ghost Wind and Eli helped all their followers find hiding places and sat to wait ’til darkness fell. No one wanted to assault what was in effect a citadel in broad daylight. They kept their distance.
Sitting in the shade of a partially collapsed electronics store, Ghost Wind was staring at the dead computers, stream boxes and tablets without really seeing them. Contemplating her possible future, she let her mind concentrate on what had been said earlier. If Kita was serious, then Ghost Wind was one of their own, a member of the village.
I might actually have a place with these people.
The back of her mind was trying to tell her something…
I might actually have friends.
The little voice inside of her suddenly over-rode her roaming thoughts and her awareness realized she was hearing vehicles approaching.
“Dammit!” Ghost Wind looked down the street, and saw Eli. He had noticed she was up and moving. “I’m supposed to be on point here and I let my…”
She immediately stopped thinking about her error, and went into action, signaling Eli that they were about to have visitors. Eli’s dark skin allowed him to simply slip back, disappearing into the shadows and moving to tell the others. Ghost Wind moved forward to get a look at who was coming and saw five bikers and a dirty white van approaching. By the time they reached her position, every gun Kita’s people had would be trained on them.
No one went through these rubble-strewn side streets of old Bend fast, unless they wanted to lose a tire and leave skin behind. The approaching group was carefully weaving between debris, derelict cars and young trees growing through the deteriorating asphalt. Looking more closely, she saw the man leading them on a large fusion cycle.
Cord.
In a few moments, they would be in the kill box, and she doubted the farmers would be likely to show much mercy. It was also doubtful the riders would have a chance in hell of surviving. She looked into the front window of the van, and saw an older man, seated next to a Latino woman, who looked very much like the one Ghost Wind had shared a cell with.
She heard Jannelle’s voice in her head clearly.
Stop them. Save them.
Ghost Wind stepped out in front of their convoy.
****
Eli had quickly lined up the hidden ‘troops’ into a passible ambush, and was waiting for just the right moment to spring the trap on this contingent of Road Sharks when Ghost Wind stepped directly into his line of fire.
“Goddamn it, woman! What the hell are you doing!?” Eli watched as the small convoy stopped in front of her. “Everyone get your fingers off your triggers unless I tell you to shoot!”
The big dark-haired Road Shark in the lead stopped his fusion cycle, and slowly got off. Infinitely slowly he picked up the rifle attached to the bike, handling it by the barrel and walked forward to meet her.
“Oh no you don’t, you son of a bitch!” Eli growled and raised his own weapon, sighting down on the man. He felt a hand on his shoulder, and looked over to see Kita looking at him.
“Wait, Eli. Watch.”
Looking at the scene before him, he saw the man place the weapon at Ghost Wind’s feet, take five steps back, and kneel in the dust, placing his hands on his head. The man turned his head and yelled something to the bikers behind him, and they each dismounted and walked forward with their hands up. Each kneeled in the dust beside their leader.
“Eli! Kita! Horace!” Ghost Wind called to them. “Please come down here and join me.”
Horace and Kita stood, dusting themselves off and began to walk towards her, an action that Eli very strongly disagreed with. He was out-voted, so he followed them, rifle on the men kneeling on the dilapidated street.
****
Ghost Wind stood, arms crossed, looking down at the men kneeling before her. As Eli and the others slowly came to her position in the street, all eyes were on her, expectant as to her thoughts on this turn of events.
“Cord, isn’t it?” she said, looking the man kneeling in front of her directly in the eye.
“It is. And I understand if you want to shoot us all, but there’s women and a half-wit kid and a couple of old guys in the van, and one of ‘em is a doctor. If you’re gonna kill us, I’d ask that you spare them, those folks’re all just Road Shark victims.”
“Yet, here you are, wearing Road Shark colors.”
Cord looked down at the vest he was wearing and cursed. “Damn it, I forgot when we snuck out we were still wearing these pieces o’ shit.” Not caring how many rifles were on him, he stood, shrugged out of the vest, threw it to the ground and stomped on it with vehemence.
“Boys! Lose them vests. If were gonna die, I’d prefer not to do it wearing the colors of the asshole army,” he said, hatred in his voice.
“Oh, that’s reeeeaall convincing,” Eli said, his voice dripping with sarcasm. “I’m so damn impressed with your change of heart.”
“Cord, I remember you from the interrogation,” Ghost Wind said. “I remember that—”
Eli cut her off. “You were one of the animals that tortured her? One of the ones who were going to rape her!” The rage coming off the big man was like the heat of the summer sun radiating from an old blacktop road.
Ghost Wind reached over and grabbed the barrel of his rifle, slowly pushing it skyward. “Eli, he was the one who stopped another man from abusing me.”
“He saved us all, too!” a woman’s voice yelled to them. It was the woman Ghost Wind had spoken to in the slave pen. “He and these others slipped in, cold-cocked our guard and took us with them. They coulda been caught tryin’ to help us, but they did it anyway. Don’t shoot!”
Reason returned to Eli’s eyes. “What do you want, then?”
“The old fella is a bona-fide doctor of medicine, and he needs a new place to practice. The boy… well, he needs a place where people will be kind to someone whose brain ain’t up to speed and these ladies and ol’ Willard, they’ve got nowhere to go now. We all heard there was civilized people to the north and hoped we could be part of that.” Cord kneeled back down in the dust. “As for me and my boys here, we was hopin’ to join up with Eli.”
“What!?” Eli exclaimed, confusion in his tone.
“Everyone knows how you’ve been lone-wolfin’ up and down the territory, trying to be the guy who brings some sanity and law back to the area.” Cord replied, “Whether you think of it this way or not, you’re the sheriff around here. Sheriffs needs deputies.”
The silence on the dusty street was impressive. Only the sounds of a few birds in the pavement-breaking trees wafted through the air. Somewhere, a cricket chirped.
Cord continued, “I know. We were Road Sharks but goddamn it, we was drafted. Me and my boys rode into their territory and they caught us and gave us the choice of joinin’ up or havin’ our throats slit. We’re kinda fond of our necks, but now, after ridin’ with the Sharks for a while, we’re not all that sure we made the right choice.”
“So why should I work with you?” Eli growled.
“We need to atone. You need help.” Cord looked down at the dirty asphalt between his knees. “I’m asking you, please let us be good guys again.”