Time Nomads

by James Axler

  The Trader, as silent as ever, had appeared in the main control area of the wag and was keeping score. "That's six."

  "Only gone about a hundred yards," Hun called from the front.

  "Hickory. Some lindens down by that patch of swamp grass. Can't tell what kind of linden they are. Higher up the hill there's lodgepole pine. And ponderosa pine, as well."

  "That's ten," the Trader announced. "Halfway there already, Nick."

  "Quarter mile," Hunaker said.

  They went in silence for a while, and Hun ticked off the half-mile mark.

  The wag went around a steep bend and Nick was able to see farther ahead, and up a fresh slice of the hillside.

  "Spruce and blackjack oak."

  Otis gave a guffawing laugh. "What's that last one, bro? I ain't never heard of no blackjack oak. Come on."

  "Rough bark and leaves that go into wide lobes with tiny needle tips to them. Used to be common alongside highways."

  "All right, I believe you, man." Otis winked at Ryan. "That's twelve. Still got another eight to go."

  "Just over a mile left," Hun reported.

  "Limber pine. Silver maple."

  "You had that one," said the Trader. "Thirteen down. Seven to come."

  "Honey locust and that's a western hemlock on the ridge above us."

  "Five more."

  "Only got a little over a half mile left, Nick," Hun called. "You better start reeling in some more trees."

  "Sweet gum."

  For the next half minute nobody on the wag said anything. Nick moved from side to side, glancing through the ob-slits. For the first time he was starting to look worried. The trail began to climb again, and a whole new section of the mountainside was revealed to him on the right.

  "Ah, that's a mess of chestnuts. And up there's a stand of white pine. Other side there's a mulberry. How many's that?"

  "Nineteen," Ryan said. "That what you make it, Trader?"

  "One to go," he confirmed. "How close to the two miles, Hun?"

  "Less'n a quarter mile."

  "Spruce."

  "No. Had it."

  "Shit." Now Nick was pressing his face against the ob-slits, dashing from side to side.

  "Hundred yards."

  The wag was moving slower, gears grinding as it worked up a steep incline. A part of the blacktop had been eroded by rain, and the wag tilted sharply toward the left side. Several of the crew were already starting to crow with the scent of victory in their nostrils.

  "Coming up to—"

  "Poplars. Lombardy poplars!" Voice cracking with excitement, Nick pointed to the left, on the far side of a dried creek. There stood a whole long row of the tall, narrow trees. Even Ryan recognized them.

  "Glowing night shit!" someone cursed. "Never figured he'd… Son of a bastard bitch!"

  The hubbub died away and Dexter, the mechanic from War Wag Two, began to sing. He was riding with them because of the axle trouble, but he was a popular member of the crew.

  His clear tenor voice began to rise above the noise of the engine.

  "As through this life I wander

  There's funny things I see.

  Some'll rob you with a blaster,

  Some'll rob you with a tree."

  They found an abandoned farm-fort that evening. Its outer defences were virtually intact, but several of the houses had been burned down. Cattle stalls and pigpens still remained, but there was no evidence that they'd been used for a dozen years or more.

  "Make a good camp," the Trader observed.

  Ryan looked around. "Bring War Wag One in and park it against the back wall. Fence looks weak there. And War Wag Two can stand where the main gates are gone. One sentry in each corner fire tower, and we're snug as can be."

  J.B. jumped down and stretched, his glasses gleaming in the late-afternoon sunshine as he looked around. He'd heard Ryan's suggestions about defending the site and nodded approvingly.

  "Good. No high ground to command, and a well. Best check the water. Seen plenty of wells used for dumping corpses." He nodded again. "Good place. We can sleep easy."

  "Just you and July?"

  "Yeah."

  "How come you got a shed with a roof all to your two lonesomes?"

  "Charm, Ryan. Everybody fucking loves me, don't they?"

  She thumped him so hard on the shoulder that he actually staggered. Not only had Hunaker managed to sneak her way into the best accommodation in the small fortress, but she'd managed to talk July into sharing it with her. And now she was offering to let Ryan come in with them as well.

  It was after ten o'clock at night. Over to the north Ryan had heard the distant rumble of thunder and seen the rich purple sky seamed with the silver lace of lightning. The idea of having a roof, even though it was only rough-cut sod, was better than having to crowd into the hot metal box of the wag. And if there was going to be any heavy rain or hail, sleep became the next thing to impossible.

  "July know you're asking me, Hun?"

  The tip of her tongue came out and crept along her full lips very slowly, followed by a smile that Ryan recognized from several previous encounters with her.

  "It was her idea, Ryan."

  "You only want me for my body," he said, returning her grin.

  "Yeah, you got that right."

  The storm was coming closer. Many of the crews of the two wags began to moan and bitch, rolling their sleepers and carrying them back into the wags. Several of them saw Ryan, standing in the doorway of the hut that had been commandeered by the two women.

  "You shit gold, do you, Ryan?" someone shouted. It was too dark for Ryan to recognize him. "Luck like you get, wouldn't surprise me."

  "Come in and prop that old door up, Ryan," Hun said quietly. "Don't want everyone watching us, do we?"

  "Nope." He hefted the door that had rotted off its leather hinges years ago and stuck it into place, wedging it with a couple of tumbled bricks. Inside the small eight-by-eight hut it became suddenly, totally black.

  Someone giggled.

  Ryan was awakened by the crack of bright sunlight that appeared through a small hole in the corner of the roof. He was wearing only his shirt and combat boots. His pants, like everyone's on the wags, were wide enough and slit at the bottoms so that he could pull them off and keep his boots on.

  His body felt stiff, and he stretched, exploring the sore places with questing fingertips. There was a little dried blood across his shoulders, and he could feel the raised welts from one of the women's nails. One of his front teeth felt loose. It had been dealt a cracking blow from July's knee as she rolled about on top of him. There were several bruises around Ryan's ribs, and his right cheekbone was puffy and tender.

  Hun played rough.

  His groin felt like someone had used a rotary sander on it, and he winced as he lifted off the sleeping roll and heard the sticky sound of himself peeling free.

  At his side, one of the two women groaned and turned over. There was just enough light for Ryan to make out July, her cropped blond hair catching the dagger of golden sun.

  Cautiously he sat up, licking his dry lips and experiencing a whole variety of tastes, some of them pleasant in a reminiscent sort of a way. His hand fumbled for his blaster, feeling the reassuring shape and weight of the big Ruger. He became aware of the sounds of the camp stirring awake outside. His nostrils caught the smell of frying food, and the dark tang of bubbling coffee-sub.

  Though Ryan didn't usually worry much about the opinion of his companions, he was almost dreading opening the door and stepping out into the morning. Everyone on War Wag One and War Wag Two would know where he'd been, who he'd been with and what all three of them had been doing.

  Ryan started getting dressed, biting his lip as he pulled up his pants and fastened the heavy brass buckle. He checked that his long-bladed Bowie knife was in its soft leather sheath on his left hip, then slotted the blaster on the opposite side.

  The two women were also awake and beginning to dress.

  H
un was sitting in her sleeping bag, naked from the waist up, breasts tipped with fire in the shaft of bright light. She pulled on her shirt and winked up at Ryan.

  July was tugging her pants over her long, slim thighs, concealing a variety of scratches and bites as she did so. She looked at both Hun and Ryan, and then looked away without saying anything.

  "Don't worry about it, kid," Hun said quietly. "We all had a good time, didn't we?"

  "Yeah. Yeah, we did. I never thought I'd like to do… It was real good."

  Hunaker stood up and kissed Ryan on the cheek. "Guess we gotta go face the rest of the world, huh? Get us some side laughs." She whispered in his ear. "Tell you one thing, Ryan. If all men were like you, I might even give up women."

  Ryan threw open the broken door and led the way into the camp.

  Chapter Eleven

  AS THE TWO-WAG CONVOY rolled toward its destination, the land opened up. The snowcaps were left behind, vanishing through the rear ob-slits, and the highway stretched straight and level ahead of them. It wasn't ambush country, and the Trader agreed to allow full ventilation for the crews. It meant that all doors and obs were left open, so that a current of fresh, coolish air came filtering through.

  The weather was good, and the Trader ordered the noon meal to be served on the wheel.

  Rodge, carrying a tray of plas dishes, made his way through the long vehicle, balancing from months of experience against the swaying and jolting. The biggest meal was generally in the evening, but the Trader made sure that everyone ate a good breakfast.

  That morning there'd been a whole lot of muttered jokes that centered on Ryan, Hun and July. The young woman found it hard to handle and blushed deeply. In the end Hun stopped the teasing.

  Lex had just offered July a fried sausage, making sure in the way he held it that she realized all the crude sexual implications.

  Hunaker slapped it from his hand, as quick as a striking prairie rattler.

  "Hey! What the fuck…"

  She didn't speak loudly—didn't need to. Everyone in both crews knew her reputation.

  "One more word and I take that sausage, Lex, and I stuff it up your ass, grit and all."

  The jokes stopped cold.

  Ryan sat with J.B. and the Trader at one of the metal folding tables that were fixed to the sides of the war wag. The fourth at the noon meal was the senior navigating officer. The oldest member of the team, pushing well past fifty, Beulah Webb, had joined them only a few weeks ago. Her predecessor, who'd been with the Trader for five years, had been a lean black named Jerry Craig. He'd tried to outrun a knife during a fight in a pest-hole drinker. The knife had caught up to him, and War Wag One was shy a navigator.

  The same fight had widowed Beulah Webb when a broken bottle severed her husband's jugular. She'd gone to the Trader and asked to be taken on. She offered to do anything. Then she mentioned that her hobby was old maps, and she had what she claimed was the finest collection in all of Deathlands. Beulah had brought them with her and had stepped straight into Jerry Craig's boots.

  She dipped her spoon into the bowl and peered at it suspiciously. "What in the land of Goshen is this supposed to be?"

  Rodge was passing by and heard her. "We was going to serve cougar's balls on toast, but we done run clean out of bread."

  It was an old joke, but it still brought a yelp of raucous laughter from the listening crew members.

  Beulah slowly raised the middle finger of her right hand to the cook's assistant, glancing at the embryonic beard that was sprouting on the edge of his chin, which was Rodge's pride and joy.

  "I don't understand, young man," she said in her precise Southern accent, "why you bother to cultivate that hair around your face when it already grows wild around your ass."

  The laughter was redoubled, with Ryan, J.B. and the Trader joining in.

  They carried on with the meal, which claimed to be a sort of mutton stew, thickened with flour, dotted with sliced okra and spiced up with shredded red chilies.

  Through the open door Ryan watched the increasingly arid land roll by. Swept by scouring winds, the old four-lane was in surprisingly good shape, giving them an unusually smooth ride.

  "They got some fresh peaches for after," said the Trader, wiping his mouth on his sleeve.

  Cohn, the new radioman, had been eating his stew at his corn-set, one earphone hooked in place. He took it off and glanced around to his boss.

  "Nothing doing," he announced.

  "Still a day and a half from the ville. Might pick up some local scramble tomorrow."

  "You know these parts, Ryan?" Beulah asked, finishing her food.

  "Not much. Me and Trader haven't ridden these roads together."

  She looked up and tucked an errant strand of silver hair behind her ear. "You three have been together for a long time, haven't you?"

  J.B. answered. "Yeah. Ryan joined a year or so before me."

  "I never heard about how you actually came to ride the war wags, Ryan. Did Trader ask you to join up?"

  "Sort of."

  The Trader picked at a shred of meat stuck between his front teeth. "Sort of. Sort of not."

  "Heavens! Why don't you just tell me? I'd be real interested."

  "Okay."

  The Trader had his own sec-locks established in a small war buggy that he used when the war wag was too slow or clumsy. Or conspicuous. Life was even more dangerous a few years ago, and a man didn't want to get in his driving seat and find someone else in there with him. So sec-locks had been fitted that would take the arm off anyone stupid enough to try to tamper with them.

  He checked that they were still set before he used his own personal release code and heard them click open.

  The door slid back and he climbed into the small vehicle, settling himself comfortably into the driving seat.

  And felt the metallic chill of a heavy-caliber automatic blaster jammed hard against the back of his skull.

  The voice was as cold as Sierra meltwater, barely stirring the air inside the cramped little wag. "One move wrong and you get to see your brains all over the windshield."

  "I'd figure that would give you around another thirty seconds of living. You're surrounded by my people."

  The intruder laughed quietly. "They said you were good, Trader. Said it took a lot to move you. Not even a .38 in the neck bothers you any."

  The Trader managed a smile. "I wouldn't say it didn't bother me. Sure it bothers me. And it bothers me how you got past the sec-locks."

  "Easy."

  The Trader knew a lot of men who'd have said that and made it sound boastful. The way the stranger said it made it sound like a simple, honest statement of fact.

  "You want to lift the buggy?"

  "Mebbe. Let's get the hell out of it so's we can talk."

  The door slid open again and Trader got out. The stranger was good, not giving him a chance to swing around and knock the blaster out of his hand. He eased out of the buggy right behind the Trader.

  The Trader was able to get a good look at him. He was used to summing up men and women quickly. Second chances were a rare luxury in Deathlands.

  The man was in his mid-twenties, around six-two, strong, had a rangy build and weighed in close to the two-hundred-pound mark. He had a chillingly pale blue eye, the left one hidden beneath a patch of dark leather. A long scar seamed down his face, from the corner of the right eye to the upper lip. It was an old scar, which showed up pale against the tanned skin. Bushy black hair curled over his nape, and a Smith & Wesson automatic filled his right hand.

  "Name's Ryan Cawdor."

  The barrel of the gun was steady, aimed a little below the Trader's heart—maximum incapacitation without the final necessity of death.

  "You know who I am," the Trader said. "You want to chill me, or you want to join me?"

  "Join," Ryan replied.

  "That's real dramatic," Beulah said at the conclusion of the story. "Kind of like the first meeting of Stanley and Livingstone."

&n
bsp; "More like Johnny Appleseed and Irving Ragweed." J.B. grinned.

  Later Beulah brought out one of her prenuke road maps, tracing their route from where Lox had died, heading eastward. Then she showed the Trader and Ryan her own private maps, amended from her research to show only settlements that still survived.

  "Here it is." Her stubby finger pointed to a neat red square. "Towse ville."

  "Whose the baron there?" Ryan asked. "I got the feeling I heard some things about him. And none of them's good."

  The Trader looked at the map. Though he couldn't read or write he had a rudimentary ability to follow a map.

  "Worst baron I heard of was called Jordan Teague. Owns Mocsin, in the Darks. Got a sec-boss called Strasser. Kurt Strasser. No, Cort. That's it. Got a face like a skull. Figured we might go up there one day and say 'Hi.'"

  "But who's baron in Towse?"

  "Carson. Alias Carson. Folks called him that 'cause he had so many different names. Now he's settled in and gotten some power. Alias Carson. Married too, I heard."

  Ryan nodded. "Yeah. That was the name. Didn't he burn out some Indians? Had their own kind of homestead."

  "Pueblo," Beulah said. "Towse Pueblo. Lots of adobe houses and a church. Close by the Sangre de Cristo Mountains."

  Trader looked solemn. "Bloody massacre. I passed through a few days earlier. Kind of flourishing community they had there. Day's end and Carson and his sec-thugs had chilled every mortal soul. Said he wanted it for his own redoubt."

  "And we're going to trade for gas and ammo?" Ryan asked.

  "Yeah. So watch your backs."

  Chapter Twelve

  THEY WERE a full-day's drive from Towse ville when the lookout on War Wag One spotted the smoke. The message came back to the Trader on the control deck. The whole war wag was wired for sound, and the news brought a new edge of alertness to the entire crew.

  "Condition yellow," the Trader cautioned. "Close main doors and watch the ob-slits. Lookout?"

  "Yo!"

  "Report smoke. Direction? What kinda smoke's it look like?"

  "Gas. Black smoke, curling high. Almost dead ahead of us."

  "How far?"

  He hesitated. "Difficult. There's heat haze. Guess not more'n a coupla miles."