by James Axler
The other end of their snaking maze of metal and rope was attached to the heavy-duty fender on the front of the wag cab. At a signal from Ryan, who was looking down into the pit, Ray began to reverse the wag cab slowly, pulling at the armored wag.
It didn’t give easily. Despite the disparity in weight, it was harder to shift than any of them would have thought. Zarir’s reactions had been so slow that, as he had piloted the armored wag into the pit, he had still been at full throttle. As a result, the momentum of the wag had driven its nose into the hardpacked earth, and the ground was a harsh and unforgiving medium.
Raven sat up in the cab with Ray, watching Ryan closely. She still felt as though she hardly knew the one-eyed man, but like her friend Ramona, had instinctively known that she could trust his judgment. Ray, on the other hand, she didn’t trust. The old man was a less than full tank up top, and he was still babbling away to her about nothing much as he reversed his wag. At least, she figured it was nothing much. She was focusing her attention on Ryan, and Ray’s words were nothing more than a blur of sound to her. As she watched the one-eyed man, she noticed his rippling muscles and the rugged handsomeness of his face. Sure he had that scar, but that only added to his macho charm. On the other hand, the red-haired bitch was his, and looked far too tough for Raven to take on. She was a feisty woman, but she knew her limits. Besides which, now was not the time.
Ray yelped as she hit him on the arm, just for emphasis, every time that she yelled at him to stop or to increase speed. He punctuated his monologue with complaints that fell on closed ears.
Raven watched Ryan, and then the lip of the pit. She saw the chains and ropes they had attached to the top of the armored wag start to slacken. They had tied them at different lengths, to allow for the discrepancy that would occur when the wag began to right itself as it hit the flat. Even so, it seemed that their necessary haste, and the need to judge it by eye alone, had been more than a little out. She only hoped that the bottom of the chassis could take the extra strain that would now be on it.
Ray, despite the constant stream of words from his mouth, had not been jockeying wags for so long without learning something along the way. Despite his seeming lack of attention, he had felt the sudden jerk of the cab when the armored wag had freed itself from the earth’s grip, and so had eased off on the throttle to allow for that. Even now he was regulating his speed, actually one second ahead of the barked commands and punctuating punch of Raven.
On the lip of the pit, Ryan stared down at the wag as it was released from its prison. The ties on the top of the vehicle were slack too quickly for his liking, leaving the bottom to take the strain of the pull. The wag was strong, but it was also heavy. And while the cab had enough power to pull it out, it was a question of whether or not the wag jockey had the skill to pull it out in one piece.
The armored wag made a slow and sure ascent until it reached the lip. The rear wheels fought for purchase on the dusty, crumbling soil, seeming at times to willfully drive the earth from beneath them, leaving nothing but empty space for purchase. Ryan swore softly to himself, realizing that if he had thought about it quicker, he could have organized planking from the shanties of the ville—what was left of them—to shore up the unsafe surface and allow for greater purchase.
But it was of no matter now. All he could do was watch and pray, directing the efforts of the old wag jockey as best as he could.
The rear wheels finally gained sufficient grip to allow the wag to drag itself toward the horizontal. As the length of the wag allowed for the underneath to scrape along the surface with a squeal that made his teeth ache, it reached a point where the ties on the upper section finally came into their own, growing taut once more and pulling the body of the wag upright so that the front wheels dangled over the abyss that had been their prison.
Ryan sucked in his breath. If there was to be one moment where the wag could succumb to the tensions that were working within the structure and render it asunder, this would be that moment…
He indicated to Raven and Ray that it was the moment to put pedal to metal. Before Raven could even open her mouth or move her fist, Ray had stamped on the accelerator, the big rig moving backward with increasing speed, dragging the heavy armored wag onto the flat before it had the chance to rip itself to pieces.
Ryan heaved a sigh of relief, and he wasn’t alone. In the cab of the wag, Raven, too, sighed heavily.
Ray looked at her. “Hon, I don’t know why you were worried. You tie it well enough, I can shift it.”
Raven looked back at him, realizing that she had been looking at Ray as some old crazie for too long. She’d forgotten why Armand kept him on for so long.
“Next time I underestimate you, hit me,” she said.
Ray grinned. “Shit, I’ll settle for you not hitting me anymore. My arm’s numb from the shoulder down.”
WHILE THIS HAD BEEN going on, LaGuerre was moaning in every sense of the word. So much so that Mildred sincerely wished that the trader had bought the farm down in the pit, and not the wag driver who, she understood from J.B., had been silent. In truth, if the miserable bastard didn’t shut up soon, she’d succumb to the temptation to fill the man so full of morphine that he’d be too blissed out to speak. The only thing that had stopped her was that she really didn’t like him, and the thought of the idiot suffering some pain was a pleasant, if not particularly charitable, thought.
“Man, you better hope that my wag ain’t badly damaged. I need that machine, and I need for us to get on the way soonest possible, so they better not be fucking around in trying to get it out of the ground. Man, if they take as little care as they took in getting me out, then my machine ain’t got shit in the way of a chance. I thought I could trust that bitch Eula, then what does she do? Leave me down there with Zarir, man, leave me down there with a fucking chill boy while she and that man of yours get to make a break for it. Thank fuck you people were able to do your job and get rid of these crazies—man, what did happen up here?—and get me out. Shit, who runs this show, man? Ow. What the fuck are you doing?” he yelped as Mildred deliberately jabbed a hypo full of antibiotic into a particularly fleshy and therefore more painful part of his rear end.
“Sorry,” she murmured, realizing that her tone belied the word, but not caring. Hell, she didn’t even need to do it in his ass. His arm would have done just as well, but she’d hoped that flipping him over might dull the noise. No chance. Not that LaGuerre seemed to notice any of this.
“You damn well should be,” he grumbled. “This was supposed to be a straight run with you people heading off trouble at the pass. Stead of which I get left in a shallow grave while my two supposed armorers turn tail and run.”
That was too much for Mildred.
“You ungrateful fuck,” she gritted in his ear. “J.B. nearly bought the farm, so did Eula. Hell, we all did. We were up here fighting while you were hiding in the dark. Couple of busted ribs never stopped any of us fighting when our lives depended on it. Your people did good, and we’re all alive. Including you. And if you hadn’t pumped that driver of yours full of junk to keep him awake, then he might have had the sense not to drive into a fucking big hole in the ground.”
LaGuerre turned onto his front, and looked at her with a quizzical expression that, in the circumstances, surprised her.
“Shit, what’s your problem?” he said in a tone that, bizarrely, sounded as though he was wounded more by her words that the injuries sustained in the crash. He added, “I was only saying, that’s all…”
Mildred, shook her head, openmouthed. “Just pull your pants up and shut up,” was all she could say, dumbfounded as she moved on to the next patient.
Next was Cody, who had sustained a graze across the shoulder from a stray slug in the firefight. The bleeding had been staunched, and it was a matter of simply cleaning and dressing the wound to avoid infection. Despite the fact that it was raw, and still fresh, the skinny fighter didn’t flinch.
“Pay no mind to
Armand. He’s stupe about some things ’cause we’ve been lucky. Hell, guy’s the luckiest trader I ever run with,” he mused, “which I guess is why I stick around.”
Mildred shrugged. There was nothing more to say. Besides which, she had other things on her mind.
After the firefight, as the convoy had regrouped in the wake of battle, and assessed that they had no casualties of any import, with nothing more than a few superficial wounds, J.B. had sought out Mildred to speak to her. She had known J.B. for what seemed like forever; despite the short amount of time it represented in her actual life span, the nature of her life after awakening from cryogenic freezing had made every experience seem deeper. As a result, the bonds forged among the traveling companions had gone deeper than any she had known. Particularly those she shared with the Armorer.
What J.B. had said to her, and the tones in which he had spoken, had made a deep impression on her. He told her of the way in which Eula had saved his life, and of the change in her attitude prior to that. It was clear that he was confused about what had prompted it, but felt no inclination to be anything other than convinced that her ambivalence had been resolved. He didn’t know why. He only knew that in the act of saving his life when there had been compulsion, she had made her choice clear.
Well, Mildred could live with that. It was John’s choice, even though she was inclined to wait and see this change for herself. What had concerned her more was what he had said next.
In the aftermath of battle, when he had thanked her for her actions, Eula had told him that she wanted to leave LaGuerre after they reached Jenningsville. What she was looking for could not be found with the trader. She wanted to travel with J.B. and his companions. With them she could find what she sought.
J.B. was puzzled but willing to take her word when he relayed this to Mildred. Her actions had been proof enough of intent for him.
But Mildred felt differently. While she was more than glad that Eula had stopped J.B. from buying the farm, she was damn sure there was another motive behind it all. There was no way that she could believe such a sudden and total about-turn in attitude. Maybe John was right. She had never known his judgment to be so flawed. But for Mildred, something was itching at her. Perhaps it was just old-fashioned jealousy.
WHILE MILDRED PONDERED this, the rest of the convoy checked out their wags while they waited for Ray to haul the lead wag from the pit. It wasn’t a process that took them long. In the firefight, they had sustained little damage from blasterfire, and only some superficial damage from the impact of the pack as it had driven them onto this path.
In truth, the majority of their time had been spent combing the remains of the ville for anything that could be salvaged and put to use. It had been a mostly fruitless task. The damage incurred when the ville went up in a chain reaction had left little behind that was identifiable. The inhabitants who had retreated to their shanties had been reduced to ash and charred debris like their homes and whatever belongings they had plundered over the years. Any indication of how they had lived, how they had survived, had been eradicated in the fierce blaze. There was nothing to even suggest to the convoy what their fate may have been had they not fought so well. All that had survived the scorched earth were a couple of ramshackle barns with the remains of some feed, which had obviously been used at some point for part or all of the pack, perhaps to raise the young so that they were responsive to their masters, rather than growing completely feral.
Maybe it was better that they had no idea of what may have become of them. Better to maintain ignorance than risk nightmares.
While the members of the convoy had, for the most part, contented themselves with rummaging in the remains, so J.B. and Eula had made it their task to get LaGuerre from his wag before Ryan and Raven directed its removal.
The young woman had said nothing to Mildred while the medic had treated her for her injuries—the same injuries that had prompted Mildred’s comments to LaGuerre sometime later—and this as much as anything had caused the doubt in Mildred’s mind when J.B. had told her what Eula had said.
Back then, Eula had been keen to get away from the healer, and to return to her task with the Armorer. Her ribs strapped and precious morphine dulling the pain, she had joined him in scrambling down the incline, trailing ropes that were held at the top by Ryan and Raven.
They used flashlights to see their way in the interior of the wag. Although the sun was now up, the pit was deep and the angle of the wag meant that light was blocked by the solid panels of the armoring. There was, at best, a dim illumination in the interior as they picked their way past the stinking remains of the mutie dog and the still open rear door of the wag. Some of the blood and filth from the corpse had leaked and trickled into the wag, making the foul and stagnant air within worse than it would otherwise have been.
The stench of Zarir’s body, decomposing already in the heat, didn’t do much to help matters.
LaGuerre had been where they had left him the previous night, lying awkwardly and uncomfortably on the dash and windshield of the wag. He was semiconscious when they got to him, and was muttering to the chilled wag driver, cursing him in a patois J.B. recognized as similar to the Creole that he had heard people using in the areas where Jak originally came from.
Ignoring his ravings, the smell of decay that infested the wag and the screams of LaGuerre as they moved him and the pain cut through his delirium, J.B. and Eula made a sling in which they secured the injured man. Keeping talk ing to a minimum in order to keep breathing as shallow as possible and so avoid the desire to puke from the odor of chilling that permeated the air around them, J.B. signaled to Eula that he would climb back the way they had come and take the weight of the sling.
Slithering past the sticky wetness caused by the corpse on the back of the wag doors, J.B. was glad to attain the relatively fresh air of the morning, even though the scent of blood and buying the farm was starting to rise with the sun.
Cody had driven his wag almost to the lip of the pit, reversing it so that the raised bar around the roof of the vehicle could be used as a pivot to pull the sling. J.B. looked questioningly at the wound on Cody’s shoulder.
“Can wait,” the thin man said dismissively.
The two men attached the ropes to the bar. J.B. went to the lip of the pit, yelled down to Eula that they were ready to begin, and while she steadied the trader in the makeshift sling, the Armorer and Cody began to haul on the ropes that ran through the bar.
LaGuerre was a heavy weight to haul, surprisingly so, but the level of delirium into which he had sunk had taken the fight from him, and he dangled helplessly, unable or unwilling to help them as they pulled. It took no little effort for men who had recently been exhausted by the rigors of combat to haul the injured trader up from the pit. In return, their only reward was a mouthful of semicoherent abuse in both English and Creole patois as the trader bumped over the lip of the pit.
As LaGuerre lay on the earth, both men realized that they were too tired to carry the trader to where Mildred had established a makeshift medical station, and also to help Eula out of the pit.
Cody swore softly to himself, then yelled out in a voice that made J.B. wince. It did, however, have the desired effect, and brought Raf lumbering over. The heavily scarred, dreadlocked warrior was immensely strong, as well as big, and plucked the trader off the floor as though he weighed no more than a grain of sand.
J.B., breathing heavily with the effort of hauling LaGuerre from the wag in the pit, could only look on in a kind of admiration as Raf carried the trader off to Mildred. Then he looked at the sling on the ground, where Raf had left it.
“This should be easier,” he said to Cody.
“Sure hope so,” the thin man replied, wincing as he flexed his injured shoulder.
J.B. was right. Taking the sling to the lip of the pit, he called to Eula and flung it down, aiming for the open door and seeing the rope harness disappear into the darkness. There was a brief pause while she made hersel
f secure, and then she called back to him.
Her injuries were such that climbing from the wag would have been difficult—perhaps almost impossible—without aid. Getting down there had been okay, but the reverse journey would have put too much strain on her cracked ribs, which had already suffered during her forced climb of the night previous.
Fortunately, all she needed was someone to take up the slack and bear some of her weight as she made the climb. Bracing themselves, Cody and J.B. found that they had little to do in the way of hauling. As long as they stood still, she was able for the most part to haul herself out of the wag and up the sides of the pit. It was only near the lip, where the dry soil was at its most treacherous, that they were called upon to really exert any effort.
When Eula was out of the pit, and lay gasping on the flat earth, she looked up at the two of them as they stood over her.
“Anyone asks, it wasn’t this difficult, right?” she panted.
“Hey, no more than it would be for anyone with busted ribs.” Cody shrugged.
“’Sides which, look at how LaGuerre took it,” J.B. added.
Eula managed a grin. It was the first time Cody could ever recall her cracking her face since she had joined the convoy.
“Think he’ll teach us some of those words when he feels better?” she asked. “Only, seems like some of ’em were really filthy.”
Cody grimaced, flexing his injured shoulder. “Kid, we don’t get on with hauling his precious wag out that pit, he’ll give us a practical demonstration of ’em.”
