It was close to dark. He was on a backstreet, as far out from the city center as possible and pushing the Terror on foot. Fusion cycles were very quiet in comparison to their combustion engine predecessors but they still made noise, a droning sound that, if listened for, could give a biker away. The enemy had many years to lay traps and ambushes and Eli had run afoul of a few. One or two had been near misses, and his nerves were keyed up.
When the ragged silhouetted figure stepped out of the brush in front of him, he braced his motorcycle and pulled his handgun in less time than it took to blink. It was only the need for silence which prevented him from pulling the trigger but when the person stepped out of the dark shadows, he was very glad he hadn’t.
“Hello, Eli.” Ghost Wind said. He noticed she was limping, and seemed none too steady on her feet. As she came close he saw her face was bruised and scratched and she looked like she had a shiner on her left eye, just above her old scar. She’d obviously been through the wringer.
And she still took his breath away.
“Ghost Wind! Good God! What happened? Are you all right?”
“I am now. Get me the hell out of this place! These bastards are all insane.”
He noted the heavy wool military coat, with her revolver sticking out of one large pocket, and her heavy knife in one hand. What surprised him most though was that she was wearing what appeared to be a pair of Beforetime tennis shoes, the kind that had been nicknamed “Chucks,” on her feet. Her legs were bare.
“We’re almost through the Shark’s home turf. If we can get a little further south, I can fire up the Terror and we can make some time. I can’t risk starting it up now.” He told her, “You get on and steer, while I push and you’re going to have to be the alert one so I don’t run us into one of their ambushes or traps.”
“They’re searching for me, the ones who haven’t gone up to New Hope.”
That brought him up short. “New Hope? What’s going on there?”
“The people they have guarding the slave pens are not exactly the sharpest tools in the shed. They tended to drop bits and pieces of information. They’re planning on some sort of attack of the compound tomorrow night.”
“I was on my way down to the meeting they’re calling at the old High Desert Museum. I would bet the meeting has something to do with this attack they’re planning. New Hope is not an easy target.”
She was silent a moment.
“Eli? I think I am well enough to ride, if you will take me with you. If I can get off my feet for a little bit, I might even be useful.”
“I should just find a good place to hide you until I get back, this is going to be a little iffy, danger-wise and I don’t really want to risk you getting captured or killed. Don’t think I don’t have a lot of respect for you and your skills, but I’m not sure I could stand it if I got you killed.”
“When is the meeting?”
“I’m pretty sure it’s later tonight, so I need to get my ass a movin’ and I can’t look after you at the same time.” He expected an argument, hopefully a quiet one, but her next suggestion mangled his own argument with a totally unfair dose of common sense.
“I can warn New Hope and possibly tell Yama No Matsu what is going on while you’re down there. I just need your help.”
“My help? Ghost Wind, how the hell are you going to get back there in time?”
“You are going to help me steal a fusion cycle.”
****
“Nuthin’ like a warm fire on a cold night,” Olaf said to himself.
Olaf was not exactly the prime example of a Road Shark. Oh, he enjoyed the privileges of being one of the gang, but in another far off age, he would have been considered ‘shy.’ Not the shy that has trouble speaking to strangers, but more along the lines of a complete lack of desire to do anything dangerous. He took a lot of shit for that, but as he often told himself, many of the ones who had called him chicken hadn’t survived long, and he was still kicking.
Not wanting to rely too heavily on his fighting spirit, his leaders had given him a lot of duties that bored the hell out of most of their men. Olaf was fine with them.
He didn’t mind sitting for mind numbing hours at a roadside checkpoint-ambush, he didn’t mind guarding the bikes, he didn’t mind walking half the length of town to scrounge something the boss wanted. What he minded, was being shot at or having to fight people who had a vested interest in spilling his blood. Didn’t want that, didn’t want to have to try to chase people down, when he could just pick ‘em off from the brush and he didn’t want to ever have to face that Eli bastard again. He’d wound up with a dislocated shoulder at New Hope, and even though Doc Mullins had put it back in place, it still ached. He hadn’t even seen that son of a bitch coming before he was down in the dirt screaming.
At least he was better off than Pid and Stanley.
No one was likely to be coming down the road in the dark, and he probably should have gone back to the ‘barn’ to see if they wanted him to do some other bullshit job, but he had built a small fire to keep warm, and was in no hurry.
“Nice night,” a voice said.
Olaf looked up, and the devil stepped out of the darkness in front of him. Olaf froze, not even thinking about reaching for the deer rifle next to him and trying very hard not to pee himself.
“Olaf, isn’t it?” Eli said. “We’ve crossed paths a couple of times now, as I recall. Um…. did you want to try for your rifle there?”
“Oh shit, no!” The reluctant Road Shark kicked the rifle hard enough to send it into the brush. “Please don’t kill me, Eli!”
“Wellll, I dunno. I mean you are a Road Shark and all, and I DID let you off pretty easy a day or so ago. A smart man might have taken the hint and cleared out, but here you are, goin’ about the Shark business of setting ambushes. I will admit, your heart obviously isn’t in it. Kinda hard to ambush someone when you’re staring into a warm fire.”
“I just been doin’ what they tell me, man! I don’t want trouble, but y’know when you’re in the Sharks, you do what Shell tells you. Or… at least we did.”
“Make yourself valuable, Olaf. What’s the situation there? And if I find out you’ve lied to me…”
“Shell ain’t in charge no more! Axe Man is. Shell’s bombed out of his mind on meds since some hardass chick kicked him out a third story window and broke his back.”
“Hmmm. Interesting.” Eli smiled widely at Olaf, knowing who the hardass chick had to have been, “Say, Oley, I hear there’s a meeting down at the old Museum tonight. Brief me.”
“Uh, Axe is goin’ down there to recruit all the indie bikers in the areas to the south and east….”
“Recruit them for what?”
“Um,” Olaf knew he’s said too much now and was trying to figure out something to tell this demon from hell. Unfortunately, he did not have the best poker face.
One moment, Eli was on the other side of the fire, the next he was standing next to Olaf and had his right hand in a vice-like grip. He slowly bent Olaf’s middle finger until the tip was pressing against his palm, and then pushed down on the joint next to the knuckle. Pain exploded throughout Olaf’s world and he went up high on his toes.
“Okay! Okay! Okay! Stop! Please, Eli!” he said, panting for air. “I’ll tell you! I’ll tell you everything!”
“Good fellow. Now what is the plan?”
Olaf had no idea what, if anything Eli knew, but he wasn’t going to take a chance and tell him a lie. The Road Shark’s plans were not worth his own ass.
“Shell has been tricklin’ guys up into the New Hope area for the last day or so. Tomorrow night, after almost all the troops are up there, hidin’ in the trees, they’s gonna blow a section of their wall with C4 they got from this “empire” to the east. Then they’re gonna rush in while everyone’s still stunned and take the place and make the farmers into their own personal food workers.” Olaf was spilling his guts so fast, he had to pause a moment to catch his breath. “Then
the Road Sharks will control the farm food supply for the this whole region, enough so that we won’t have short rations in the winter and the Sharks’ll have more clout to take over the whole region.”
“Quite a plan.”
“Goddamn, I didn’t come up with it! That’s about all I know other than the attack is supposed to happen around midnight, tomorrow night! AH! GOD! Please, Eli, let go m’ hand!”
“Oh,” Eli said, absentmindedly, “Sure. So, I have one more question, Olaf, an important one, so pay attention. This afternoon, the Sharks had a young woman trussed up. They beat her and were making some pretty awful threats. Oley, were you one of those men?”
“Shit no! I been stuck out here since sunrise, Eli! I didn’t have nuthin’ to do with it. When those guys start in on them girls, I make myself scarce. I know you won’t believe it, but I hate the screaming. It’s just pure awful to hear.”
“I see. Well, let me confirm that. Ghost Wind?”
She stepped out from behind a nearby tree and one look into her intense blazing eyes convinced Olaf that if she decided to say she recognized him, Eli would snap his neck right then and there, no appeal. She looked at him for a moment, contempt in her eyes and turned and walked away.
“I didn’t see him there,” she said over her shoulder. She blended in with the darkness like a shadow.
“Well, I think that’s all we need.” Eli paused a moment. “You mind if I borrow your bike there, Olaf?”
He gulped, but Olaf was no fool, “Take it if’n you want it, man. I’ll figure out somethin’ to tell ‘em.”
“About that… Olaf, you’ll agree, I could have killed you this morning, right?”
“Uh…. Yeah?”
“And yet, here you are, still with the Road Sharks. It seems it would be folly to give you another chance, when you didn’t take the first one.”
“Oh God! Please, Eli! I promise…” Eli held up a hand, and Olaf went silent.
“Ole, you’ve been very cooperative, and I have to count that in your favor, so, tell you what I’m gonna do. The next time I see you in Road Shark colors, I’m going to tell that young lady there, who by the way makes my skills at stealth look sick, I’m gonna tell her you need your throat cut. And you know what? You will NEVER see her coming until your life’s blood is running down your hairy chest. Do you see where I’m going with this?”
“Uh… you’re gonna let me live?”
“Yes. I’m gonna let you live. But let me spell it out for you so there’s no mistake. I’m going to wipe out the Road Sharks. If I find you with them, you’re dead, sorry to tell you, Oley. So, if I were you, I would pack my gear, steal another ride, and quietly get the hell outta here. I think you might live a lot longer if you do.”
“Dude, by tomorrow morning, I swear to you I will be a hundred miles from here. You got my promise!”
“Okay, then! I think our business is concluded. Hopefully I won’t see you later, Olaf.”
“No way. Eli, thanks for not killin’ me!”
The tall man waved as he walked away. Eli looked back over his shoulder as he turned Olaf’s fusion cycle down the road, the way he had come. “I got your promise, right?”
“Fuck, yes!”
“Good man.”
****
Later, after sneaking into the fairly depopulated garage with a backpack and a pair of saddle bags, Olaf found Shell’s personal fusion cycle, beauty that it was, unguarded and fully charged. Just before dawn the next day, somewhere near the Nevada border, he thought about his former companions and started to laugh.
He’d never liked those fuckers anyway.
CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN
You're Not the Boss of Me
****
Axyl began to miss Shell in a very short time.
Well, not actually miss the man so much, Shell was actually just across the room in the new office they were moving everything into. He was lying in a portable bed they had scrounged from the hospital, high out of his mind on their precious dwindling supply of Beforetime pain meds.
What he missed was Shell’s way of thinking. Axyl was good at short-term planning and keeping the troops in line but he wasn’t much good at the long-term big picture stuff. His current question was whether to continue their current campaign against New Hope without Shell’s guidance or to abort and pull back.
“Axyl,” Doc Mullins peeked around the door. “We’ve made him as comfortable as possible, and I’ve got him on Perc 3 to ease the pain. Our meds are a bit past their prime, but a least he’s not in agony. His back is definitely broken and with the facilities we have here, I doubt Shell will ever walk again.”
“You don’t seem to be too broken up about it, Doc.”
“I’m here because he gave me no choice, Axyl. I took a healer’s oath to help those who need medical attention, but I often wish I was helping a group who was worth it.”
“You never know, Doc. Someday maybe we’ll be better.”
“Or I’ll find a better class of patient.” Doc walked out the door.
Axyl smiled. Everyone would be singing a happy song if they could get control over New Hope and all the food production, even Doc. And that brought him to the Indies. He had to be the one to go down to the old museum and convince all the outside operators to join in the attack with the Road Sharks. Axyl had always been the one to do the convincing when it came to troops.
He needed to delegate the task of getting the troops in place around the farming community and who the hell could he trust from this bunch? If Cord wasn’t such a namby pamby asshole, he would have been the ideal choice, being smarter than most of the Road Sharks, but Axe couldn’t trust him.
“Porter is out. Sky Rider? Yeah, maybe.” The Rider was the oldest member of the Sharks, and had been a real badass back in the Beforetime. The thing was, he was almost seventy years old now and had pretty much drawn the light duty jobs for the last several years. “Sure, he’s old, but he’s managed to not get killed during the collapse of the old republic and to survive everything the after times had thrown at him. He’s pretty sharp for an old guy.”
Sky Rider could also take directions and carry them out, generally without fucking up. Axyl would just have to lay down the law that anyone who didn’t follow the old man’s orders would be in for a ton of bricks coming down on their skull.
He rose from the desk, carrying the small notebook he had been filling with knowledge from Shell. Axyl realized with a start, that he no longer thought of Shell as his boss anymore.
If the newly crippled man could be of some use with strategy and planning, then he might still be worth keeping around. If he was going to just sit there and suck down their medical resources, well, he was gonna have to go. Maybe Doc could wean him to just pot. Plenty of that around.
Axyl smiled for a moment. By God, he was starting to think like the big boss… he WAS the big boss. And Shell was either an asset, or a liability.
And if it was the latter, he wouldn’t be around long.
CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT
You've Got to Believe
****
There was no real reason they couldn’t go back to New Hope or Yama No Matsu. They knew the main gist of the Road Shark plan and with the Sharks you probably couldn’t make any plan too complicated. Eli doubted they would learn much more about the plan by sitting in on the meeting taking place at the old museum. He was for turning around and heading back to tell their allies what was up and he was surprised when Ghost Wind resisted.
As he checked over their newest bike, she said. “If Shell isn’t the one to address these ‘Indies’ then as his second-in-command, Axyl will probably be the one to go, won’t he?”
“Probably.” He looked up at her, “Why?”
“Because then I, for the first time in almost a year, know where he will be, and when.”
“And you’re sure the Road Shark’s Axe Man is the one who, basically, ruined your life, killed your teacher, got you banished?”
“I
saw him, Eli,” she growled. “He was there in the room when they hung me from a chain and threatened to gang rape me until I told them what they wanted to hear about you. In his defense, he DID plead for his boss to just shoot me in the head, so there’s that.”
“Fuck.” Eli felt anger rising deep in his chest. “What are you thinking about him being there at the museum?”
“I’m thinking of coming up behind him and chopping his head or his balls off so that they all go bouncing across the concrete. Maybe both, balls first, head second.”
“Ghost Wind, you’re so sore and lamed you can barely walk straight. Besides, you and I, we need to be in two places at the same time.”
“What do you mean?”
“We need to warn both Yama No Matsu and New Hope about what’s goin’ down. I intend to convince Kita we need to get our warriors to sneak up on the Sharks from behind, while you have Horace and his people ready to kill them as they get near the walls.”
“I have a better idea. I’ll go to this museum, you can come along if you wish, and end this. If I kill Axyl, and the one called Shell is crippled, then these Road Sharks will have no leadership.”
He pondered for a moment. There was some merit to what she said, though he doubted in her condition she could deliver on her promises as well as she thought she could.
“Yeah, I see there’s some wisdom there, but you’re not taking into consideration the variables.”
“WHAT variables?” she said angrily. “I kill him, they have no leadership, and maybe the whole gang falls apart.”
“You’re assuming all the Road Sharks are as stupid as the foot soldiers you’ve seen. I know for a fact, there are some old wolves in the pack who can think for themselves, and they’ve probably been deployed to the farming village to keep order. The plan is fairly simple, and there is no guarantee if Shell and Axyl don’t show up they won’t go ahead and attack. Once they’re in, they are in control of the compound and it’s going to be very hard to remove them. Who knows how many of the farmers will be killed or injured in the process.”
The Road Sharks Page 13
