by James Axler
Astonishingly Bry Raker ran outside his home. He was dressed just in a pair of pants—barefoot, bare-chested, hair spiky and as wild as his eyes. He held a long black M-16 in his hands.
“Fight like a man!” he heard a woman scream. “Get out there and fight for what’s yours like a man! Stop cringing like the backstabbing coward you are!”
Movement drew his eye up. Somehow Kit Ross had gotten on the pitched corrugated-metal roof of the big house. She stood atop the flat porch roof, her hair flying free in the rising breeze like black flames.
Apparently driven by her shrill imprecations, Bry Raker uttered a scream of rage and charged at the mass of running animals. He fired his blaster from the hip on full-auto, and he seemed intent on ripping through his whole 30-round magazine in one flaming, chattering burst.
Then he was knocked sprawling by a lowered head the size of an oil drum. His wife raised her fists above her head and laughed like a crazy woman to hear the screams of agony as black hooves cut and smashed him like stamping dies in some horrible machine.
“Note to self,” J.B. said. “Don’t piss that one off.”
He looked back east. “Herd’s still coming,” he said. “We need to move. I’m gonna drive this baby, see if we can bulldoze a way out of here.”
The animals were pressing against the side of the tractor now. Ryan started dropping them as J.B. went down the rungs on the far side to dash for the cab.
How were they going to get out of the yard? Ryan wondered. Even if they could get the show on the road before they all get plowed under, how would they get out?
No sooner had the thought crossed his mind than he heard the answer, spoken loudly and with authority.
And the yellow-orange flame tongue of Ma Deuce.
* * *
AFTERWARD NOT EVEN Ryan could have told how they got the surviving wags not just moving but lined up for the western gate of Raker’s Rest.
One way was simply the .50-caliber Browning mounted in the bed of the pickup blasting a path through the bison. The thumb-size slug would chill a beast instantly; getting caught by a burst could rip an animal the size of a sedan into steaming, spattering chunks.
But even more than the carnage the big blaster wrought among the buffalo, the tremendous noise and flame the weapon generated terrified them. When the wag pulled up on the west edge of the yard and ripped a blast toward that gate, the herd parted and split north and south as if being opened with a zipper.
Apparently dodging the wags and buildings around the main yard had slowed the herd momentum. The last of the stampeding animals was coming in from the east. But they hadn’t had enough head of steam to break out the west side yet. Instead the whole compound was gradually filling with slowed-down but skittish beasts.
The problem was, the wag park still got the brunt of animals galloping in terror of something their relatives already inside had already forgotten about. That was the disadvantage to the plan Jak reported Olympia had cooked up on the fly.
Ryan couldn’t hold that against her. He knew the alternative was worse.
With the little black-haired sec woman with the white bang backing her up and helping her reload, and Mildred steering where her redheaded friend directed, Krysty had finished breaking the main force of the flood where it came into the yard. But now, as Bass’s command wag led the way, with a couple of the cargo wags behind, then the tanker with Ryan up top and J.B. at the wheel, and then the remaining vehicles, with the wag blaster bringing up the rear, the way to freedom and safety was blocked by a few hundred tons of milling, bawling bison.
Bass kept driving through them, standing on the horn. His armored wag was more than powerful enough to push the beasts aside. They were doing terrific damage to the less robust buildings to either side, which was most of them—and to the rest of Raker’s Rest, too, by the bellows, crashing of collapsing walls and screams. Ryan didn’t expect to lose much sleep over that.
The bison kept flowing back in among the vehicles, slowing the convoy’s progress to a crawl. The risk remained they might upset one of the cargo wags still on their wheels, or Chef’s chuck wag, which had survived. Several wags had refugees clinging to the top like baby opossums.
After a tooth-grinding eternity Bass’s wag reached the gate. Now a new problem developed. The sturdy metal barricade resisted the armored wag’s efforts to push through it.
The tractor’s air horn blared. Ryan saw J.B. gesturing out the window, vigorously waving his hand to the right.
The driver of the wag right ahead got the idea first. He or she pulled the wag to the right, crunching into a collapsed wooden porch and chasing away some ambling buffalo.
J.B. took the tractor out of gear and gunned the engine. He kept the air horn hollering.
The other cargo wag got the idea and cleared. Then Bass caught on. His improvised armored wag backed away from its futile nudging of the gates and into the space between the perimeter fence and the outermost building.
Ryan caught on, too. He began shooting ahead of the tractor, trying to hit low enough not to endanger the wags ahead and also kick up some dirt to help the buffalo get the idea to clear the road.
It would have been nice to have the big .50 help out, but Krysty didn’t dare shoot along the right side of the street, for fear of hitting the wags that had ditched that way, nor the left, for fear of scaring the buffaloes on that side back into the road.
But J.B. was going for it. He let in the clutch. The huge diesel engine roared and the big tractor surged ahead.
Running over a full-grown buffalo could still bring disaster, not to mention spectacular personal extinction for J.B. and Ryan if the tanker ruptured and the fuel lit off. But clearly there was a difference between driving too fast and charging. Having a roaring, howling monster bearing down on them at speed got the attention of the buffalo still wandering the right-of-way. Especially when a cow too slow on the dodge got clipped by the right front of the coffin-snouted tractor, which punted the vast beast through the front of a wooden structure that had survived intact until now.
The path cleared. Ryan clung to his blaster with one hand and the straps holding the sandbag atop the tanker with the other. He braced for impact and felt the elastic push-back of gate and fence. Then the chain or cable or lock that had secured the gate broke with a wrenching screech. The gates flew open, the right wing flying off the hinges and bouncing off the prairie with a musical-saw twang as the rig pounded on for freedom with Ryan whooping and pumping his fist on top of it.
The other wags pulled in behind as J.B. headed out for the far black wall of the Rockies.
Chapter Twenty
“I’m worried about him, Ryan,” Mildred said.
It was early afternoon of the day of their escape. The convoy had put some miles between them and the compound and the buffalo herd. Then, well into the Rockies’ foothills Bass called a halt.
The remaining wags had formed a circle in a bowl-shaped depression with a skinny stream trickling through it. The grass was longer here and showing streaks of green. The mountains loomed nearby.
Mildred guessed they were in what in her day had been Wyoming, some miles north of the Platte River.
She was dead tired. They hadn’t had a restful night. The day of jouncing travel they’d spent after breaking out of Raker’s Rest hadn’t exactly been conducive to sleep. She and Krysty had taken turns dozing fitfully, sitting against the side wall of the truck bed hoping not to get bounced out while the other kept watch.
They’d made the trip without incident. Mildred had no idea how many miles they’d actually traveled. Bass had called a halt, because they were all exhausted, and in no shape to try crossing the Rockies.
So they had made a camp and lit fires. The day wasn’t actually chill despite an edge on the winds that blew up from the plains and eddied here hard by
the mountain wall. Now the twenty or so survivors huddled around two dried buffalo-chip fires for both physical and spiritual warmth, drank awful-tasting but warming chicory, and tried to sort things out.
She spoke to her companions, huddled by their own fire. Except for Jak, who was prowling off somewhere out of sight on the spare mountain bike, keeping watch over the camp from the heights. He could run for days like a wolf without sleep. Then again, he could also nap like a cat, wherever and whenever, and get good rest.
Heads turned to the other fire. Bass sat on a rock, his big hands cradling a half-empty bottle of Towse Lightning that he’d just opened when he’d sat half an hour ago. His eyes, sunk deep in dark pits beneath the bushy crags of his eyebrows, never seemed to leave Olympia.
Their enigmatic paying passenger stood well off to one side. Her arms were folded beneath her small breasts. Her face was turned to the wind, and her hair hung in one gleaming braid down her back.
Sitting on his haunches beside Mildred, J.B. sighed. He took off his hat and scratched the thin spot on top of his head.
“Well,” he said, “hard to blame him much. He’s suffered some hard hits, these last twenty-four hours.”
“Seems longer,” said Ricky, who sat with his knees up, staring into the low and near invisible dance of flames in front of him.
Doc cackled. “Indeed, lad! It was a lifetime to many of our companions. And even more of our foes, doubtless, for what comfort that may bring.”
“Mr. Croom seems more upset about losing his people than his wags or goods,” Ricky commented.
“I think that makes him a good boss,” Krysty said. “A good man, certainly.”
“Even if we did lose but one cargo wag,” J.B. said, “it’s a pain the bus got wrecked. And losing that blaster wag could come back to bite us in the butts before we reach our destination.”
“Croom knew enough not to expect to make it all the way without losing wags and goods,” Ryan said.
He stood by the fire. By the slight slump to chin and shoulders, Mildred knew he was feeling fatigue as much as the rest of them. But he clearly felt restless.
“That’s why he brought so much,” he finished.
“Couldn’t expect to cross the Deathlands without losing people, either,” J.B. said, putting his hat back on his head.
“Ten people killed or missing is a lot,” Ricky said. “Just over thirty to begin with. And we lost poor Horwitz right out of the gate.”
“Eleven,” Mildred said. “Marconi died before we halted.”
The wrench had been knocked sprawling by a rogue buffalo bull. Fortunately, or so it seemed at the time, he’d actually been knocked back into the clear space beside the fallen bus. Friendly hands had dragged him on top of Bass’s wag, and he’d been transferred to the passenger seat of the chuck wag while the convoy got sorted out to make its break. But he’d never regained consciousness.
“I think he drowned on his own blood,” Mildred reported grimly.
“Bullshit!”
Everyone turned and looked at the other fire. Dace Cable had been squatting on his haunches next to his boss, talking. Not quietly but Mildred hadn’t exactly been listening.
Now he started pacing back and forth, not quite breaking the circle around Ryan’s fire before turning back to his own bunch. His eyes were bright, his thin cheeks flushed.
“He’s hyper,” Mildred muttered.
“Do you blame him after last night?” Krysty asked. “He lost two of his own people, remember.”
Mildred shrugged. “I’m not thinking of blame. Thinking trouble.”
J.B. put his hands on his his khaki-clad thighs. “Yeah. Storm’s been a spell brewing. Reckon it’s due to break.”
“It’s all that bitch’s fault!” Cable shouted, pointing at Olympia’s back. “No wonder you’re obsessing on her now! She comes out of nowhere. She’s nothing but trouble. Then she brings that whole fucking herd of buffalo stamping down on us and kills a third of our people.”
The woman in question showed no sign of even hearing him, but Bass was roused to protest.
“Now, Dace,” he said, clearly trying for a conciliatory tone. But instead the words came out in a raven’s croak.
“No, boss! No more excuses! That triple-stupe stampede came within an ace of chilling us all. Even that white-skinned mutie should’ve had more sense than to go along with that dreck!”
“Here now,” Mildred said. She stood.
“Now, Mildred,” J.B. said, trying his best to sound conciliatory.
But she was hot past nuke red. She hated injustice, wherever and whatever form it took.
“That doesn’t come within a longblaster shot of being fair, Dace Cable,” she said. “Bry Raker and his bastards had us dead to rights. Without the buffalo herd hitting the camp all we would’ve done is died a lot. Yeah, we lost a shitload of people. That’s what happens when we all—you included—walk into a trap with eyes wide open. She, Jak and Ricky are the only reasons any of us are still breathing.”
Cable turned bright red, then white. He advanced on her with fists clenched by his sides.
“You’re no better than any of them, bitch,” the sec boss snarled. He was close enough she could see spittle flying from his lips. “Just another fucking coldheart, wanders in out of the Deathlands and spins a line of lies and bullshit—”
J.B. stepped between the two. “Easy now,” he said. As always, he didn’t raise his voice.
“No.”
For some reason everybody froze. Cable turned his head to look at the speaker as if it were a massive tank turret being cranked by hand.
“It’s me you’ve got a beef with,” Ryan said. “I hoped we could get past it.”
“You mean you been dodging me!” Cable almost screamed.
Mildred saw Sandra Watson over by the fire leaning close to Croom, whispering urgently in her boss’s ear. Mildred guessed she was trying to get him to step in and call things off. But he just sat and stared as if he’d been hit between the eyes with a pickax handle.
And truth to tell, Mildred doubted the showdown could be averted any longer. Some wounds—of mind and body—festered until they got broken open and debrided.
“Not now,” was all Ryan said.
* * *
“LISTEN, SON,” J.B. said, leaning his face close to Ricky’s ear. “Whatever happens, don’t try to horn in.”
Ricky stood practically dancing from one sneakered foot to the other. His cheeks burned and his heart raced so fast he feared it would explode. He actually thought he might die of anxiety.
Ryan and Cable had stripped to their shirts and squared off in a circle formed by the members of the convoy. The remnants of Cable’s sec crew stood on the far side from Ryan’s friends. Bass and Morty stood to the left, with Sandra looking anxious by her boss’s side. The wrenches and drivers were spaced out right and left.
“What if they try to help him?” Ricky asked.
“Relax,” Krysty said from Ricky’s other side. He felt a different kind of rush—the thrill he always felt whenever she spoke to him.
“If they do, we’ll let you know when to move. But I don’t think they will. Look at them.”
He swallowed and nodded. The fact was the sec men and women didn’t look eager at all. They looked mostly glum.
He did notice Dezzy was missing, and wondered where she was.
Standing upright with fists raised, Cable advanced on Ryan. The one-eyed man stood calmly with hands about the level of his breastbone. With a swiftness that shocked Ricky, the sec boss’s leading left hand flashed out in two quick jabs. Both struck Ryan’s jaw with a smack the boy winced to hear.
Ryan moistened his lips with his tongue and just stared at his opponent.
Grinning so wide it looked as if the top of his
head was in danger of falling off, Cable waded in. Ricky didn’t know much about unarmed combat, but he started unloading what looked like very powerful punches on Ryan. Straight shots from his right hand, mean-looking out-and-in blasts with his bent left arm.
Ryan held up his forearms and bobbed from side to side. Still a couple of the blows landed with sounds that seemed to hit Ricky in the gut.
“Ryan!” he screamed. “Do something!”
Over among the sec men somebody shouted, “Go, Dace! Show him!”
To Ricky’s astonishment another sec man turned and muttered something to his cheering comrade. The first one slumped and looked sheepish.
J.B. chuckled. “See? They’ve fought beside us. They’re willing to let their boss work out his problems with our boy.”
“But J.B.!” Ricky almost moaned. He had to blink back tears. “Cable’s pounding him!”
“You think?”
Ricky sensed motion from his other side. Glad of the excuse to look away as Cable stepped in to hammer at Ricky’s beloved leader some more, he saw to his amazement the slight form of Jak Lauren, squatting on his haunches beside him.
Jak saw his friend glance his way. “Olympia,” was all he said.
Ricky nodded. He was getting used enough to his friend’s clipped speech that he reckoned he understood. The tall, mysterious woman had spelled Jak on his one-man patrol so he could come support his companion Ryan.
He heard gasps from the far side, and some from Mildred and, worse, Krysty. Then he felt something take hold of his left hand.
He looked quickly around and controlled his reflex to snatch his hand away.
Dezzy stood close beside him. She looked at him with dark eyes big in a pale, expressionless face.
Ricky felt himself blushing hotter and looked back at the fight—in time to see Cable whip through some kind of spinning kick that slammed his right boot heel against Ryan’s left cheek.
