Nemesis

by James Axler

  Morning Glory, vast, silent and grim, held a knife with a great big bowed blade against Dan’s throat. The wrench looked resigned. He didn’t lack courage, anyway.

  The members of the convoy were rousing from their bedrolls around the cold campfire and near the circle of parked vehicles. The armored wag, the three cargo wags and the chuck wag were on the outside. The prize strategic pieces, the huge fuel tanker with its burly coffin-nosed Peterbilt tractor and the pickup blaster wag with the .50-caliver weapon, were parked inside the outer circle. The smell of dozens, maybe hundreds of idling bike engines had begun to seep down into the hollow and cover up the fresh smell of dew-wet grass.

  Krysty stepped up to stand by Ryan’s side. “Get the gear and start loading it on the wags,” he said quietly. “When we have to move, it’ll be in a triple hurry.”

  “What if it sets them off?”

  “Then we die quicker. Move.”

  It was a tone he seldom used on her, and he heard her utter a slight gasp. Then she was gone, moving with her own liquid grace.

  J.B. joined Ryan. He pushed his hat back on his head and scratched his balding crown.

  “Gonna be a long day,” he said. “Scorcher.”

  “Yeah.”

  With Cable walking at his side, looking around the mob of bikers surrounding them with slitted eyes, Bass walked toward the hill on which Speaker and the captives stood.

  “What’s going on here?” the master trader asked in a clear, strong voice. “This doesn’t look any too neighborly, I got to admit.”

  Even though forty or fifty yards separated them Ryan saw Speaker’s face, as impassive as a tan statue, twist slightly in reaction to Croom’s words. When he spoke, his voice, projected almost as if from a loud-talker, was clotted with barely suppressed emotion.

  “Now that I have your attention,” the Stone Nation boss said.

  He stooped. From the long grass by his legs he picked up something in both his bare, muscle-twined arms.

  Ryan heard a woman behind him stifle a scream. Speaker held in front of him the nude body of a young woman. Her head lolled limp, trailing a single long braid into the grass as well as her unbound dark gold hair. From that alone Ryan recognized the one called Little Feather.

  Her face and bare body bore the chalky, slightly-blue tinge of the well and truly chilled.

  “We found her like this before dawn,” Speaker said. “Our sister. Our daughter. Raped. Her rapist strangled her to shut her up.”

  Bass bowed his head. “My grief is yours, Speaker,” he said, touching himself over the heart with a flattened palm. “But—”

  “To death, he thought,” Speaker continued relentlessly. “He thought wrong. She named her murderer before she let her spirit go up to the Great Sky. So strong was her spirit. She spoke it in my ears with her last breath. And the monster who did this to her was one of yours.”

  “Fireblast,” Ryan muttered beneath his breath.

  “She’s not rigored up yet,” J.B. observed. “Fresh chilled. He’s not lying.”

  “Surely there’s some mistake,” Bass choked.

  “You must deliver the chiller up to face Stone justice.” He raised his head and smiled a terrible smile. “Stone vengeance. For we know the crime, and we know the criminal. Little Feather’s courage has convicted and condemned him.”

  Bass shook his head. “We...we have to think about this.”

  “No.” Speaker didn’t shout, but the word tolled like the single beat of a mighty drum. “There is no thinking. We will have our vengeance. The only question is whether we take him alone, or all of you because you foolishly tried to protect him.”

  The noise was so shatteringly loud and close in the cool morning air that even Ryan flinched at its sudden eruption. He turned, not so see what it was—that was triple clear—but who.

  Dace Cable had slipped away from his boss’s side, a fact Ryan had absently noticed and wondered at, but hadn’t allowed to dwell in his consciousness longer than an instant. Not with more pressing things to think about. Such as not dying.

  But it had been no cowardice that impelled the sec boss’s actions. For all his foibles Cable had never shown the slightest strand of yellow.

  “Stand back!” the sec boss shouted from behind the spade grips of the huge blaster. Its perforated barrel gave off wisps of steam in the still humid air.

  A small, dark figure eeled into the truck bed beside him—Dezzy, come to back her boss and load for him.

  “We’re rolling out of here, and if you try to stop us—”

  Cable’s shaved head exploded.

  Ryan saw a flash from Speaker’s hill, then the sun glint off steel was obliterated by a spray of red as Morning Glory, her face as unmoving as slate, slashed Dan’s throat to the neckbones with a single stroke of her big Bowie knife.

  With a speed no one could have expected from someone of his apparent age, Doc whipped the slim triangle-sectioned sword from the cane he clutched in a knuckly right hand and under his right armpit stabbed Pit Bull in the hip. Though clearly not badly injured Pit Bull hollered and relaxed his grip.

  Ryan was already moving with a purpose. He had seen a flash from a hill to the left—the south. He brought his Scout up fast, slipping his left forearm through the shooting loop of the sling, and looked through the glass. It was set on its lowest power: two. That was enough and more.

  The shooter lay belly-down in a patch of blue flowers on the hilltop, about seventy yards away. Her hair, tied back from her dark, keen face in two braids thrown over her shoulder, was dyed a darker blue. She was startlingly young.

  She was concentrating on the main threat, to her tribe and to their chieftain: the big blaster. She had just thrown her action to rechamber another shot in what looked like a scoped deer rifle. From the sound that had slapped Ryan’s ears about the time Dan got chilled, he made it for a .270 or thereabouts.

  The sniper was good, but as she sighted in on her next target—without needing to look Ryan knew the slim black-leather girl with the one white bang had leaped to take her dead boss’s place without hesitation—she moved a trifle slow.

  The Scout longblaster roared and its butt kicked Ryan’s shoulder hard. When his glass came back down on target after he rode the recoil—and by reflex chambered a fresh .308 cartridge—the spray of blood and brains was still visible out the right side of the sniper’s head.

  He dropped the glass from his eye, spinning toward Speaker. As he did, he heard the man’s voice ring out above the sudden tumult. “Chill them!”

  Other Stones leaped to place their bodies between the enemy longblaster and their chieftain. Ryan looked toward Doc.

  Pit Bull was staggering back, bent over and squealing like a pig, a shockingly high note from such a bulldog body. He was clutching, not his punctured belly, but his face. Blood squirted between his fingers.

  Doc, who had clearly followed his gut poke with a slash across the Pit Bull’s face, was turning back with his sword and cane both clutched ungainly in his right hand. In his left he now held the LeMat.

  The young warrior on Doc’s left, who had fallen back a step when the oldie exploded into action, now closed in, fumbling at his waist for his knife. Doc stuck the long pistol barrel of the LeMat up under his victim’s chin and literally blew the man’s face off with the shotgun beneath.

  As the corpse fell back, Doc turned and raced down the slope toward his companions, his coattails flapping behind him.

  With Doc having freed himself, and Speaker masked by zealous guardians despite his roars for them to clear away and let him fight, Ryan turned and raced for the best vantage point he knew.

  As he did he heard a savage snarling of engines and ten or more big Stone Nation bikes came surging between the western and northern hills. He kept running.

  Ryan reached his
goal and heard the Browning M-2’s mighty voice speak again. Three shots, four, three. He heard screams, metal crashing, and then a whomp as a ruptured gas tank exploded into flame.

  That wasn’t Dezzy, he thought as he began to climb the cold steel rungs. She’d never practiced on the .50. Not even Croom for all his wealth and cunning preparation could afford enough of the huge .50 BMG cartridges to burn on anything but saving the wags and their occupants’ asses. As smart as the sec woman was, cool in a fight, and triple brave, shooting the big beast for the first time in a firefight she would have mashed the butterfly trigger and held it down until either the belt of linked ammo tangled in the big box hung on the side, or the barrel melted down. Sure as she breathed; it was just what people did when they weren’t trained, like their vision narrowing to a tunnel and their fine-manipulation skills turning to crap. Reflex.

  No. That was a pro shooting Ma Deuce.

  When he reached the flat catwalk atop the fuel tanker, Ryan was startled to see J.B. crouching in the aft sandbag emplacement.

  “That wasn’t you?” Ryan asked. His ears were still ringing from the big blaster going off, but he could hear well enough to notice there was little shooting going on, and that mostly outbound. The motorcycle engines noises were dwindling.

  Not being one to waste words J.B. didn’t bother answering.

  As Ryan settled into the forward fighting nest, he heard Morty’s voice crowing from down on the ground. “Run, you cowards! We whipped ’em, Bass! We whipped ’em good.”

  “Dark night!” J.B. exclaimed in disgust. “That young jack fool. The Stones aren’t beat. Not by a .50-cal shot. That’s what you call a tactical withdrawal.”

  “Yeah,” Ryan grunted as he cast a quick look around.

  At least the younger Croom was right as to what had happened, if not why. No Stones remained in sight, nor their bikes. Healthy ones, anyway. Several badly cut-up wrecks sprawled, one still blazing, where the Browning had shattered the first Stone Nation charge. But all Ryan could see on the low heights around were bodies, still or barely moving.

  At least two forms lay on the grass around the campfire. A glance confirmed none of them was his friend, so Ryan looked back at the blaster wag.

  Standing as firm as a teak statue behind the huge blaster and its pintle and pedestal mount was Mildred, looking not the least little bit like a fully trained predark physician. Ryan had guessed it was Mildred when J.B. proved not to be the shooter. On more than one occasion the Armorer had instructed his lover on the finer points of shooting a big blaster.

  How she’d convinced Dezzy to relinquish control of the piece Ryan had no idea. When she was rolling Mildred tended to steamroll any opposition. But the little sec woman crouched at Mildred’s side, her sawed-off lever blaster in hand and looking alertly around, ready to guard Mildred’s back or to reload her piece at need.

  Ricky did well there, Ryan thought. Hope the kid made it.

  “We’re all fit to fight, anyway,” J.B. said as the tractor’s engine grumbled into life. “Doc made it back intact.”

  Three fast blasts of a horn announced Bass Croom’s armored wag was ready to roll. The other wags all answered with a single horn shot each. Whoever had taken the wheel of the tractor let loose a blast from the air horn.

  “Hope Croom’s people know the Stones will be back,” J.B. said. “Just as soon as they calculate how to take out the big blaster.”

  Glancing back, Ryan saw his best friend’s mouth set. He was concerned about Mildred. Right now she had a big red target glowing right in the middle of her forehead. The same as Cable had.

  No matter how otherworldly and naive Mildred was, she was battle-seasoned enough to know it.

  The Peterbilt wag bellowed, and the rig lurched into motion. Croom’s vehicle and one of the cargo wags were already headed out the saddle between the northern end eastern hills. The tanker turned to follow.

  Looking all around in case the Stones should get bold—or triple stupe—Ryan saw motion near the wrecked bikes. He swung his Scout to cover.

  Across the scope of the not-yet-shouldered blaster he saw Olympia wrestle a motorcycle upright. Like all of them it was a huge road bike, a BMW, he thought. Like most it showed little modification, although he knew the Stone Nation tribe heavily tinkered-up their machines for extra endurance and durability. Surprisingly the motorcycle showed no decorations Ryan could see.

  A form lurched up from the grass by Olympia’s right leg, eyes staring out of a bloody mask and a right hand raised up with a knife to strike her down.

  Her right hand whipped around, her telescoping staff snapping open. Ryan saw the biker’s head whip as it was knocked sideways on his neck. A heartbeat later heard the click of it locking out and the sodden crunch of skull giving way.

  He heard Olympia gun the bike engine as the tractor-trailer rumbled up and over the gap. She could take care of herself. He turned his attention to watching their surroundings for the inevitable next attack. Not that he expected it for a spell.

  Speaker was too damned smart. As angry as he was over the horrible crime committed against the girl, he wouldn’t lose his head. He’d rein in his people until they could plan a strategy, one he was sure would chill his targets at minimal loss to the Stone Nation.

  It wasn’t as if those bikes couldn’t catch the lumbering convoy any time their riders wanted to.

  “I just hope one thing,” J.B. called as the train lined out down a long flower-dotted slope toward the still distant Upper Snake.

  “What’s that?” Ryan asked.

  “The Stones keep on letting their greed for all this nice fuel get the better of their hunger to see us burn.”

  “You’re always a fucking comfort, J.B.”

  His friend gave him a brief grin and tipped his hat.

  Chapter Twenty-Six

  Ryan already expected the hit by the time it came, about an hour after they fled the campsite.

  After flattening into a wide basin for a spell, with no more relief than a tabletop, the country had started to become hilly again. The road ran between two series of ridges, not high but close, with rocky caps and steep slopes.

  It was a good road—two-lane, blacktop still mostly intact despite earthquakes and frost heave—enough so the convoy was averaging about thirty-five miles an hour.

  It was also an unavoidable death trap.

  Ryan’s first warning of the shithammer coming down was when Jak came flying down the face of a ridge ahead and to the left, zigzagging the rapid decline with crazy speed and raising a rooster tail of yellow dust in his wake. He waved one arm frantically despite the risk entailed in taking a hand off the bars.

  As he wobbled brutally on the bike, blasterfire crackled from the ridgetops, muzzle-blasts winking like sun glints off glass.

  Ryan raised his Steyr but didn’t target. He didn’t dare fire until he knew what was actually happening.

  “Going for the blaster wag,” J.B. muttered.

  It was true. Twenty or more nomads flowed from the ridges to both sides. Their big bikes came straight down the slopes, but their riders were masters of handling the machines off-road no matter how unwieldy. None of them went down.

  They were whooping and brandishing weapons, spears and hatchets and blasters. Leading the pack from the northern heights was Speaker, his kinky black hair flying like a flag behind him, an AK in his hand.

  The M-2 roared. Its big bullets cast up a series of earth geysers slanting across the face of the slope that led from the caprock. Several bikes went down; one blew up. The rest came on.

  Using their intimate knowledge of the terrain—their home range, after all—the Stone Nation had picked an ambush site that would give the convoy’s ferocious firepower only the briefest of openings to have any effect.

  A blur passed the tanker on the o
ther side, heading toward the rear of the convoy. Olympia, Ryan knew, on her scavenged ride. He reckoned that was nothing but suicide. Then again, what else could she do but fight or flee? She’d already shown she meant to share the fate of the convoy, even if that looked black as a stickie’s soul right this instant.

  Ryan lined up a shot on Speaker, but he was a triple-hard target, jouncing over obstacles and slewing around others. He fired but missed. By the time Ryan cranked the action and readied the longblaster to shoot again, the nomad bikers were swirling around both sides of the pickup like a hornet swarm. Mildred had the receiver of the M-2 shoved way up over her head, trying desperately to bring the blaster’s deadly bullet stream to bear on the fast-moving attackers. At her side Dezzy was firing shots from her sawed-off carbine as fast as she could work the lever.

  The almighty blast and flame from the M-2’s barrel seemed to be having more effect than the half-inch slugs. The bikers sheered away from both. Some were knocked over bodily, to fly into spinning tangles of limbs and frames and wheels.

  But the surviving riders always pressed back in to attack from another angle. More were streaming down to join the fight. By this time Ricky and the sec man with him were shooting at the Stones, as well, from their nest atop the chuck wag.

  Jak’s scout bike flashed by to the north side of the convoy. His giant chromed Python handblaster flashed in the sun. Like Olympia, he was bound to help his friends no matter how hopeless. Unlike Olympia, his motives at least were clear: he lived and died by and for his companions.

  Ryan didn’t even need to look around to know that none of the nomads was attacking the rest of the convoy. They were focusing on the one thing that could otherwise ruin them: Mildred’s .50-caliber blaster.

  He saw Speaker pull up alongside the cab of the blaster wag. He held up his Kalashnikov and triggered three fast shots obviously semi-auto.