Thunder Road (16 page)

Inside the hollow metal shell, the sound from outside as it struck the metal walls caused reverberations that made teeth rattle, that made skulls pound. It was hard for any of them to concentrate, to focus on what was happening.

Part of J.B. wrestled with the wag, tendons and sinews standing out in stark relief on his arms and shoulders, the force of the wag’s skidding trajectory almost wrenching his arms from their sockets. A section of his mind coolly assessed what was happening.

If they had found the edge of the redoubt where the mystery rider was based, then it had shit-hot defenses, and was going to be a bastard to crack. What they had on their side was the probability that the rider did not want to chill them. Otherwise, why issue a warning and not finish them off? His mines had been so well disguised that J.B. would have driven them to their doom without even realizing what he was doing.

Something the rider had said to them while they had been paralyzed came back to him—the coldheart crazie wanted to enlist their help in his mission. Of course he didn’t want them to buy the farm. Part of taking Krysty had been to help persuade them.

J.B. was damned if he could understand the reasoning, but he was willing to go along with it if it gave them the edge.

The torque on the vehicle became easier to handle, the pressure on his aching shoulders began to decrease and the reverberations within the vehicle lessened. His ears were still ringing, but the pain was less. His vision wasn’t blurred by the pressure and the movement. His teeth didn’t feel like they were being shaken from his jawbone. The whine of the engine under pressure became the predominant sound as everything outside returned to quiet. He was aware that he had the wag in the wrong gear, and that he had run into a sandbank thrown up by the upheaval of the explosions. The front wheels of the wag were deep into the pile, and were running without purchase. But at least he could now see calm sky over the top of the piled sand.

He killed the engine. It was a risk that it would not start again, but one worth taking rather than burn it out.

In the sudden silence, no one moved for a second.

“You thinking what I’m thinking?” the Armorer asked Ryan.

The one-eyed man fixed him with a stare. “Warning rather than attack? Keep us at bay but still alive? Mebbe make us wait, then make contact and bargain? Yeah, I’d guess that. Also guess that we found the bastard’s redoubt.”

Ryan turned to take a look at the others. Jak was nursing a cut on his temple from the collision with Mildred, a crimson streak visible on the pale white skin, matting the lank strands of hair that fell over his face. His red eyes were unfocused, but he still managed a grin.

“Need better driver,” he said shakily.

Mildred was bent over Doc, who was moaning softly. In the red light, J.B. could see that the skin on her cheekbone had been broken in the collision with Jak, but she had been luckier. It was a part of the skull less likely to lead to a concussion. Instead of worrying about herself, she was tending to Doc.

Ryan moved from his seat and crouched beside her. There was no blood, no cut that was visible, but a contusion was already spreading darkly from under his ear down to the point of his chin.

“What happened?” the one-eyed man asked.

“Not too sure, I was kind of occupied myself, trying to stay upright,” she answered wryly. “But from the look of it, I’d say that the old buzzard fell onto that edge—” she tapped the metal surface above him “—and got himself just at the hinge of the jaw. Looks like it was a hell of a blow, and he might be a bit concussed, but there doesn’t feel like any major damage.”

Doc’s eyes fluttered open, staring blankly. He muttered, “Major Damage? Sure, did I not serve under him at Gettysburg? Always so accident prone…”

“Must be okay, talking shit like usual,” Jak said.

Ryan looked around at him. “You want to watch for concussion yourself.”

Jak shook his head, looked like he instantly regretted it. “Just get Mildred dress it.”

Ryan rose to his feet and turned to look at J.B. “Figure it’s safe we take a recce?”

The Armorer grimaced, massaging one bruised shoulder while feeling the pull on the other. “If we’re careful.”

“Never anything else,” Ryan said, shrugging. J.B. frowned in thought. “No follow-up blasts of any kind. No incoming. Wherever they are, doesn’t seem like they want to finish us off…not yet, anyway. Can’t do any harm to see if we can get some kind of location for them.”

Ryan nodded, looking at the others. “You stay here, Mildred. Look out for Doc and Jak. I don’t want them moving until they’re right. Same goes for you.”

“You got it. Hell, always thought you and John should be first in the firing line.” She grinned.

The two men left them, climbing up the turret ladder of the wag, Ryan in front, opening the hatch and tentatively looking out.

He was greeted with a vista of perfect calm. The only sign of the recent violence came from the small splashes of sand that had landed in a fan pattern from the blast, and the craters left by the mines. Now that the dust and smoke had settled, even these looked as though they had been there for an indefinite amount of time. It was a tableau that may have existed since the days of the nukecaust, untouched, and just stumbled upon.

Ryan climbed out and slid down the side of the wag, making sure that he took cover in the hollow formed by the body of the vehicle and the bank of sand into which it had plowed. He moved over to allow J.B. the room to slide down at his side.

“Shit, it doesn’t give us much to go on, does it,” the Armorer said softly.

Ryan stretched out an arm to indicate the sweep of the craters. “Look at that arc,” he murmured. “We must have been driving right into that, heading that direction. They’ve been set off to send us back this way.”

“Worked, then, hasn’t it?” J.B. commented dryly.

Ryan’s mouth quirked. “Yeah. But the question is, why?”

“Because the redoubt lies in a straight line from our course at an indeterminate distance,” J.B. mused.

“I’ll go with that,” Ryan agreed. “Question, again, is, how far?”

“Look at it,” J.B. commented, screwing up his eyes against the horizon. “Flat. Unless it’s a concealed tunnel entrance, and even then…”

“Yeah. It ain’t anywhere we can get to in a hurry. If they knew we were coming they have much better recon than we have. Probably know we’re standing here talking about them.”

“It’s a big place—the area they cover,” J.B. said. “You see those old fence posts rotting away about half a mile back?”

“Yeah. If that was a boundary to this place, and the defenses don’t even start until here, then we’ve got some serious opposition.”

“So what we’re saying is that they can see us, we can’t see them, that they have a massive area around their redoubt that is well protected, and that if we take so much as one step they can fuck us up before we even have a chance to know it?”

“That’s about it, as far as I can see,” Ryan stated. “How wide and deep is that minefield, for instance?”

“So what the fuck do we do about this?” J.B. questioned.

Ryan thought for a moment. “Nothing. Not yet. Doc, Mildred and Jak aren’t exactly combat ready right now. Give them some time to stop seeing double, mebbe puke a little. We’ve got no choice but to wait.”

J.B. frowned. “Think that’ll work?”

Ryan grinned. “Hell, yeah. If we just sit here, it’s gonna drive the coldheart bastards mad. They’ll have to come and get us eventually. Right now, there’s no opening for us. Mebbe they’ll fuck up and give us one. It’s all we’ve got, right?”

J.B. shrugged. “I’ll be a stickie rolled in honey if I can think of anything else.”

Ryan nodded. Yet, even as he did so, there was something nagging at the back of his brain. There was another option, but he was damned if he could bring it to mind right now.

“S
TATUS REPORT
, Hammill,” Howard demanded.

“Systems primed, on red alert. The objective has not moved for the last thirty-one minutes. The two men designated Cawdor and Dix have remained in station. The other occupants of the vehicle—sensors have a ninety percent probability of three—are also stationary. Nothing’s happening, Howard. Analysis suggests that they are waiting for you to make the next move.”

“I would if I was them, I guess,” Howard said softly. “What on earth could they do, right now? They’re not stupid. They wouldn’t have got this far and been through what they have unless they were smart, so they’re waiting for me to make the next move.”

“Which is, Howard?”

The young man sighed. “I don’t know, Hammill. I haven’t decided as yet. Two can play the waiting game.”

“But for how long?”

Howard smiled. “That’s the sixty-four-thousand-dollar question, Hammill. Or it would be if there was still such a thing as U.S. currency.”

He slid his chair along the track, checking the monitor screens in front and above his head. Krysty was in her quarters and seemed unconcerned by what was happening. In truth, she seemed absorbed in what she was watching on the terminal in front of her.

“Sid? What is Krysty doing?”

“She has one of the old videos online, Howard,” Sid’s smooth tones replied.

“She seems very interested in it,” he commented. “Have we got audio as well as visual?” he continued, frowning as he tried to bring up the sound on her monitor, and was met with a fuzzy blur of white noise.

“There seems to be a minor malfunction,” Sid answered. “Perhaps it has not been noticed before as the room has not been in use for some time, and resultantly the equipment has not been called into use.”

“Hmm…Get a worker in there to effect repairs next time the room is vacant,” Howard commanded.

“It has already been logged, and will be realized at the earliest opportunity,” Sid replied.

Howard sat back. If she was that absorbed in an old video, then so much the better. She would not notice what was going on, and she would be immersing herself that much more in the culture of Thunder Rider, becoming Storm Girl.

I
T WAS TRUE
to say that Krysty was absorbed in an old video, but Sid had not revealed the whole of the truth to Howard. He could not lie. Part of the computer programming that had become melded with his identity over the past century had made this an impossibility. But Sid and Hammill still retained enough of their humanity, despite the gross physical distortions they had become, to be able to think outside of the box, to defy the logical paradigms of the machine. They were able to exchange ideas and thoughts and, at the same time, to bypass the memory of the mainframe that would record those exchanges and make it possible for Howard to stumble upon them if he should ever suspect.

They knew that they could “lie” to Howard when necessary not by telling mistruths, but by an assiduous pruning of the truth: by omission. If they did not tell Howard the whole truth, if they were selective about what they said, chose their words with infinite care, then it would enable them to only let him know that which they wanted him to know.

Of course, for the vast majority of the time, while he was alone in his bunker, this was not necessary. But they had both known that such a time would come. They had been ready for it, and had been prepared to test their theory to the limit, whichever of them had been called to task.

It just so happened that it was Sid. For instance, the question of the lack of sound on the monitor from Krysty’s quarters. Sid had not lied to Howard when he told him that there seemed to be a minor malfunction. He knew this to be the absolute truth. He knew that for one simple reason: he had sent a worker in there earlier to cause this malfunction. But as Howard had not asked him that, and he had chosen his words with care, he had not lied. Sid and Hammill knew that they were trapped. They were in a half-life, in thrall to the man who was now the last of his line. After him, as things now stood, there would be nothing. They would be left to their half-life existence in the twilight world of the empty bunker forever…or at least for the thousands of years it would take for the nuclear-powered facility to finally die. Even if they were to be invaded by outsiders, they would be inactive as none would hold the genetic key to open up the system. But at least in such an instance they could hope for a frustration-fueled destruction to take away their torment.

But now they had another way. Sid had genuinely taken a liking to Krysty Wroth. She had divined the sadness and dilemma that lay at the root of the surviving souls of both Hammill and himself. She did not blame them. She also realized that Howard was not responsible for who he was, while at the same time realizing the threat he could represent.

Sid felt sure that she could be their salvation. She could end their suffering and eliminate the threat that Howard could represent to the outside world. From their intelligence, they knew that it was a far from perfect world. But Howard was not sane. He had access to weapons that could cause far more harm than good.

That was why Sid had downloaded the file now playing on Krysty’s terminal. It was an old video, as he had told Howard. It was not one of Thunder Rider’s favorites, as he had assumed.

It was the last sane testament of the intellects that had built this place before it had become a travesty.