Nemesis

by James Axler

  From the lead vehicles, right ahead of Croom’s wag, came a burst of giant yellow flame and a roar of noise that overrode the thunder of the hooves. Mildred was firing the big Browning M-2. Cable hadn’t even protested when Ryan brusquely ordered his own sec man out in the physician’s favor, so overwhelmed had he been by the sheer immensity of the herd. To say nothing of the threat it posed, which he clearly had no idea how to cope with.

  Ricky saw little geysers of earth and grass thrown up as Mildred walked a stream of big bullets toward the errant bison. The stream stopped. She was way too canny a machine gunner to risk burning the barrel or tangling the ammo belt with a too long burst.

  Her second burst hit the broken-off clump of bison. The lead and two others behind it fell, tumbling away.

  The surviving beasts made haste to rejoin their fellows. Whatever lay this way, they knew it was death.

  And then they were through, rolling across land that had began to cluster and clump in anticipation of the still distant Rockies, extending to either side, blessedly clear of brown-pelted living missiles.

  Ricky jumped as Bass Croom’s arm stuck out the driver’s window and loosed off four blasts from his .45-caliber ParaOrdnance. Jak showed teeth in a grin at his friend’s reaction, but Ricky wasn’t embarrassed. The shots had been startling. Not to mention loud.

  Having given the signal, the trader—who was driving himself, as he often did—began to brake his wag. Up ahead Mildred’s big blaster wag slowed to a halt. Ricky looked back as the rest of the convoy did likewise. As usual, he marveled they managed to do so in relatively good order, no collisions, although he saw one cargo wag, its driver a little less attentive or quick-reacting than the others, pull slightly out of line to avoid bashing into the wag ahead.

  As Ryan and J.B. drove up to the now halted line of wags on their bikes, Croom got out. So did Dace Cable on the other side. The merchant had ordered his sec man to ride with him while they ran the herd.

  Ricky wasn’t good with relationships, beyond familial ones, which made the thing with Dezzy, whatever it was, even more confusing. That was why he liked machines: they were straightforward. The same with the booby traps for which he and J.B. shared a special passion. People, not so much. But even Ricky could see Croom had a strange relationship with his sec-boss, not much easier and perhaps not so much different than the one with his whiny but somehow charming younger brother.

  “Why the halt?” Ryan asked, bringing his bike to a stop a few feet away from Croom. He had to shout. Although the herd was still heading east at their not-fast-but-relentless lope, thus away from them, the wind from the east meant the roar of their hooves was still strong.

  “Well, the buffalo are headed the right way, thanks to you two,” the trader said. He was bareheaded and in his shirtsleeves. The day was cool, but he seemed to prefer driving without the encumbrance of his bulky coat. “Amazing job you did, by the way.”

  “Yeah,” Cable agreed, coming around from the other side. He seemed stunned, and only partly by having to praise the man he saw too clearly as a rival. But he did.

  Ricky expected Ryan to remind their boss that was why he hired them. Instead the rangy black-haired man said nothing. He just sat there with his boot planted on the ground, next to a lonely early season white daisy that had somehow escaped trampling, and looked a question at his employer with his cool blue eye.

  “So now,” Bass said, and from his perch high up to one side Ricky could see the big man was grinning through his grizzled beard, “we get to go back and butcher some of those poor bastards who got run over by their pals. If any of them have any usable meat.

  “That way we’ll have fresh meat to trade when we hit Raker’s Rest tomorrow. Not to mention feasting ourselves fat tonight!”

  Chapter Fifteen

  From a distance Raker’s Rest looked cheerful and welcoming, with colorful walls and gaily fluttering banners above it.

  As the convoy rolled toward the ville’s gates, Krysty thought it started looking rather tawdry.

  The bright walls were chain-link fences with the usual concertina-wire coils rolled along the top, not much different from the compound they’d left back in Menaville, if several times larger. They had metal panels attached to them somehow, enameled in a variety of colors. Riding behind the M-249 in the bed of the lead blaster wag, Krysty quickly realized that those colors had faded in the sun. As had the pennons, which she now saw were also frayed from the wind.

  Nonetheless she found it a welcoming sight after their journey across the brutal heart of the Deathlands. The gates were open wide, the guards, armed with remade longblasters, waving them straight through. The fact that the lead vehicle was a blaster wag, and some of the wags following had armed guards perched atop them, didn’t discourage the occupants of Raker’s Rest. They could scarcely have expected a convoy to make the perilous crossing of the Great Plains without being triple well-armed.

  Fact is, she thought, they’d likely be more suspicious if we weren’t showing plenty of weps.

  She glanced aside. Standing next to her, bracing himself with a hand on the pillar mount bolted to the bed, was Ryan. He’d asked for the posting late when they finally got rolling. They were all a bit stiff and sore from the work of butchering the retrievable bison carcasses, and had gotten a late start. Cable had scowled and stomped, as usual. But Croom had said sure, and invited his temperamental sec boss to ride in his command wag as personal shotgun. Also as usual.

  Krysty looked at her lover’s face in part because, well, she liked to. It was a beautiful face, to her—most beautiful in the world. She knew well each and every contour and fold and frown wrinkle around the one eye that looked so bleakly out on the world and so lovingly on her. She loved every inch of that face, even the scar. The blows and cuts and hardships were badges of honor that had made him the man he was.

  But she was a bit concerned. He was frowning even more than usual, and looking around way more than seemed necessary as they rolled between wide-open gates overlooked by obvious blaster towers. If danger was pending, it was unlikely to be from the flat ground surrounding the sprawling rest stop, or even the low hills bumping up nearby.

  Nor, did she think, there was much peril to be found in Raker’s Rest. She and her friends had heard about it in their wanderings over the years. The rest stop was located just far enough for comfort from the Cheyenne craters and attendant hot zone—still red-line lethal after all these years—near where the old maps said the borders of the formerly United States of Nebraska, Colorado and Wyoming came together. It was the biggest trading post and rest stop in the area and had been an established landmark for a generation or more.

  “Why so moody, lover?” she asked teasingly. “Worst thing we’re liable to encounter here is sharp trade.”

  He grunted, then gave her just a hint of a smile. Enough to make her feel all warm and fluttery in her belly, as if she were a teenager again.

  I hope we actually get a room to ourselves tonight, she thought. Privacy wasn’t a big issue for her or most of her friends, Doc still had some issues with it, and young Ricky still got shocked sometimes and wasn’t skillful enough to hide it. But lovemaking was still personal. Personal as a thing could be. She treasured the opportunities to engage in sex in private the more for the fact they were rare as interludes of peace and relative safety.

  As this promised to be.

  Almost at once he was looking around. Assessing their surroundings. Her mother had taught her many useful things, not least of which was to never enter a room without knowing how she could get out of it again if the hammer came down. Preferably more ways than one. Ryan took that commendable caution and amped it levels higher.

  Sure, they were likely safe here, but assuming that they really were, and letting their guard down, was a good way to end up staring up at the stars until the crows picked out their eyes
. She didn’t need for Ryan to say the words to hear them in her mind.

  Once inside the place Krysty took in its ramshackle appearance, as if it had been thrown together hastily and maintained not much more carefully since. A lot of buildings seemed little more than shacks of random planks and scraps of plywood and whatnot.

  “Not real luxurious,” Ryan said.

  She laughed. “But then again, lover, we’ve been to baron’s palaces where the dogs waited under the table for bones in the dining hall, and the guests pissed in the corners, even before they got drunk.”

  He chuckled. “True enough. Reckon I should be glad for a chance at a real bed and a roof over our heads and sheets that have mebbe been washed in our lifetimes.”

  She grabbed his arm and squeezed.

  A succession of sec, all wearing orange armbands, stood along the wide central street of what was, dingy or not, a good-size ville inside the wire, waving their wag driver onward. The hard-packed dirt road led to a vast central yard, with a few wags parked around the perimeter. Some more substantial buildings stood by, some adobe, some prefab, that looked to Krysty like workshops and warehouses.

  A sec woman with short red hair and a face seamed with hard living waved them to a halt as they entered the yard. Ryan waved his arm to make sure the rest of the convoy knew they were stopping. The drivers were all waiting for that signal; this was all standard operating procedure, and Krysty guessed that after the horrors and uncertainties of their crossing of the Deathlands, most of Croom’s people were nothing but relieved to fall back into the comforting arms of familiar routine.

  In short order the blaster wag had parked and Krysty and Ryan dismounted. She was glad for the opportunity to walk on solid ground and stretch the kinks out. He seemed to be, as well.

  In short order the rest of the convoy rumbled into the square yard. A mixture of Croom’s people and the rest stop’s sec force saw them to their assigned spaces. Krysty paid them no mind. That was their job, not that of Ryan and his crew.

  Bass Croom and Dace Cable joined them. As they did so a party approached them from the building on the north side of the yard, a two-story structure with adobe walls and a pitched corrugated metal roof. It was the largest ville Krysty had seen in the structure. She guessed it was the owner’s, and that the man with the black handlebar mustache striding across the hard-packed ground toward them on long, lean legs was him. With the owner walked an immense man with a shaved head and a striking raven-haired woman.

  “Welcome to Raker’s Rest!” the mustached man declared. “I’m Bry Raker. Enjoy your stay!”

  With an unerring eye he instantly sized up Bass Croom as the boss of the convoy. He walked up to him and held out his hand. Bass took it and shook it warmly.

  “Thank you, Mr. Raker,” he said. “I’m Bastion Croom. This is my outfit. This here’s my sec boss, Dace Cable. Here’re Ryan Cawdor and Krysty Wroth, a couple of my Deathlands specialists. And this is my younger brother, Morty.”

  Raker pumped Cable’s hand, then Ryan’s. He was about the same height as Ryan, and built along the same lines: rangy, bulked out by a wolfskin coat. He looked to be a fit, energetic man in his thirties, who wore a beefy Smith & Wesson revolver in a holster at his hip.

  When he approached Krysty, she stuck out her own hand to forestall any more familiar form of greeting and was glad she did. His firm, dry grip lingered on hers a few heartbeats, and his brown eyes made themselves freer with Krysty’s face and figure than she really cared for.

  Giving her a flash grin he turned away. “And this is my sec boss, Butler. And finally, my lovely wife, Katherine.”

  Up close Katherine Raker was even more lovely than she had appeared at first glimpse. She was tall, only an inch or two shorter than Krysty, and the coat and boots she wore failed to conceal that her figure was at least trim beneath. Her features were finely sculpted, her nose thin, and her eyes were as bright and shiny as obsidian flecks.

  They in turn seemed to be far too interested in Ryan. Krysty didn’t try to stifle her own grin. He’s a big boy, she reminded herself, and an attractive man. And I can’t very well get twitchy when some trading post vixen flashes her eyes at him, any more than he does when poor Ricky makes calf eyes at me.

  Morty seemed impressed by her, which didn’t really surprise Krysty. He seemed to come on mighty strong with some of his brother’s comelier female employees, and to pay a lot more attention to the mystery woman Olympia than she seemed to care for. Or respond to at all, honestly; she simply seemed not to notice him. But at least he seemed to have taken Mildred’s advice to heart and forgotten about Krysty, probably out of fear of Ryan.

  In his case, an entirely reasonable fear, though he should be little less scared of Krysty herself, had he but the wit to know it.

  Katherine seemed as immune to Morty’s charms as Krysty or Olympia. She gave him a pro forma smile and turned hungry eyes back on Ryan. Krysty glanced toward Raker; she was more concerned that the husband might take a potentially inconvenient interest in her than that Mrs. Raker might harbor designs on Ryan.

  But Raker was talking earnestly with Croom over fees and arrangements. Meanwhile J.B. came rolling up, then Mildred and finally Doc.

  Croom and Raker seemed quickly to come to terms. Both were old hands at bartering, after all. Krysty was mildly surprised they hadn’t spent six times as long haggling for its own sake; then again, Bass Croom seemed a no-nonsense sort of man. Apparently Raker was cut from the same leather.

  He turned to the others and now that devil’s smile came back. “Ladies, gentlemen,” he said. “Make yourselves welcome. It has been years since we’ve hosted so large and grand a convoy. It’s a pleasure for us. We want to make sure it’s the same for you.”

  “We haven’t had many visitors at all for a while,” Katherine said. Her voice was a velvety contralto. Her manner seemed more haughty than anything else. “Your presence is most welcome.”

  From the corner of her eye Krysty caught a look of irritation ripple across Raker’s face. He instantly smoothed it away, so fast Krysty could almost believe she’d imagined it.

  Except she hadn’t.

  Raker’s grin widened to show a fairly decent set of teeth, if yellowed by obvious tobacco use.

  “Kit’s right,” he said with only a quick hint of rasp. “In fact, we’d be honored if you and your people would join us for dinner tonight. In honor of our esteemed visitors from the East, it’s on the house!”

  Bass gave him a big old smile back. “Speaking just for myself, I’m pleased to accept, with thanks. It’ll be good to sample some down-home hospitality.”

  Raker clapped him on the biceps. “Great. Come with me and I’ll show you your accommodations. I’ll have my assistants see to getting the rest of your crew properly housed.”

  They walked off together: Croom and Raker talking like old pals; the immense Butler as stolid as a walking statue, having not said word one during the whole exchange; Cable hanging close beside his boss and Morty trotting after like somebody’s dog. Kit Raker threw Ryan one more smoldering look over her shoulder before following her husband with what looked like reluctance.

  “There goes trouble,” Mildred muttered. Krysty didn’t have to ask whom she was referring to. She only laughed.

  “Speaking of which,” Doc said, shaking himself slightly as if waking from a walking nap of some sort, “you seem troubled, my dear Ryan.”

  Ryan grimaced. “Just pissed,” he said. “I told Jak and Ricky to meet back up with us before we hit the gates. Where the nuke are they?”

  “They’re just kids, Ryan,” Krysty said. “Relax.”

  “Jak’s a grown man, as he never gets tired reminding me. Anyway, they’re with an adult.”

  “Who’s riding a bicycle,” J.B. said. “She probably rode farther than she thought and is having to hustle to get back.
Ricky wouldn’t leave her in the lurch. Jak wouldn’t leave him.”

  “That woman strikes me more as the sort who could tell you to the foot how far she’s pedaled that nuked mountain bike,” Ryan growled. “She should know better.”

  Krysty snaked her arm around Ryan’s so that they were elbow to elbow. “They’ll be fine, this close to the rest stop,” she said. “I don’t know about anybody else, but I’m dying to see if the deal Mr. Croom drove includes showers.”

  * * *

  “CAME BACK.”

  That was Jak, in his usual laconic way, summing up the giant buffalo herd that had come within an ace of zeroing them all out the day before. And true enough: the broad valley a mile or so from Raker’s Rest was filled with a sea of dark brown, as the big animals grazed on what Ricky could only guess was a lush early spring growth of grass.

  With a crunch of dirt under big-cleated tires that was barely audible over the low mutter of the motorcycle engines, Olympia came to a stop beside them. She unshipped a canteen from her belt and drank. Then she offered it to Ricky, who said thank-you but declined, and then to Jak, who merely shook his head.

  She only rode the mountain bike when the convoy was stopped, or moving double slow for some reason. Because Bass didn’t want the two young men on scrambler bikes arriving at Raker’s Rest before the rest of the convoy, he’d pulled them back a few miles short of their goal. Olympia had asked for and received permission to take the mountain bike and the pair on their dirt bikes and scout the surrounding area. Bass had apparently seen no reason to refuse and said yes. After a brief scowl Ryan had given permission, as well.

  Now the shadows of them and their rides stretched far down the gentle slope behind them as afternoon declined to evening and the sun fell toward the Rockies, now a presence almost near and tall enough to feel, though still far enough to remain featureless and blue. Ricky was starting to get anxious to get back to the convoy. He suspected they’d been out longer than the adults would be happy with as it was.