by James Axler
Chapter Fifteen
“Nothing?”
“Nothing at all, ma’am.”
“Impossible! Totally impossible!”
“I’m afraid one of the outlanders is extremely skilled at tracking,” Major Svenson reported, loosening his collar. “That means he’s equally good at covering their tracks.”
Sitting in a folding wooden chair draped with the thick fur of an albino wendigo, Queen Angstrom gave no reply for several minutes. Privately, she raged while outwardly watching the sec men refill the fuel tanks of the Fire Hammer with the last of the spare cans.
The journey down from the mountains had been long and hard. She had lost more than a dozen men to frostbite alone before the weather began to warm, and then they were hit by endless waves of muties in every shape and size. Obviously they were dangerously close to a major rad crater, but that didn’t matter. There would be no rest, no sleep, no pause for any of her sec men until the assassin Ryan was lying at her feet, trussed like a pig for the butcher and begging for his life.
Angstrom felt her heart quicken at the monstrous plans she had for the man, and when she told the major he had gone pale and asked to leave the tent. Excellent! That was exactly the reaction she desired. The death of this Ryan needed to be legendary! Generations from now mothers would frighten their children with only snippets of his grotesque years existing in the twisted hell of her revenge! Suddenly the burning need to hug her husband almost overwhelmed the woman, and she lowered her face, breathing in small gasps to try to not cry in public again.
“Your Majesty?” Major Svenson asked.
“What? Oh...very well,” Angstrom stated, forcing herself to sit upright. Slowly she crossed her legs. “Send a pigeon back home to demand fresh troops, fresh horses, more supplies and every drop of fuel and shine available.”
“All of it, ma’am?”
“All of it.” Snapping her fingers, Angstrom saw a slave rush forward with a tray of sandwiches and a tankard of beer. “Also have the Sky Master send pigeons...no, make that hawks, to every ville that I control.”
“With the message...”
“The hunt continues?” Corporal Goldberg asked, hooking both thumbs behind his gunbelt. “That sort of thing, ma’am?”
“Oh no,” Angstrom said as the slave knelt to offer her the tray. She took the beer, then waved the old woman away.
“The message will read—” she took a sip “—every baron is to send out sec men to hunt for the coldhearts. Find and bring them to me alive. Alive. Underline that.”
The colonel did so.
“The reward for bringing them to me alive is...Greenwater ville.”
“Ma’am?” Major Svenson gasped, his eyes wide in disbelief. “An entire ville?”
Draining the tankard, she smiled. “That is correct. That fat old fool who runs the ville needs to be replaced, and this is the perfect opportunity to do so.”
“Yes, ma’am,” he muttered, scribbling away.
“With a reward that large, you’ll soon have every merc, slaver and coldheart this side of the Great Salt hunting Ryan and his gang,” Goldberg said with a crooked grin. “Even Linderholm’s own people may revolt at the chance of their own ville!”
“Exactly.” Angstrom practically purred, leaning back in the chair. “I’m glad that you understand.”
“Does...does this offer extend to your own troops, ma’am?”
Svenson scowled at the question, but Angstrom merely chuckled at the display of raw greed.
“Yes, it does, son of a traitor,” she whispered. “Would you like to be a baron?”
“Yes, my queen!”
“As who would not? Oh, and Major?”
“Yes, my queen,” Svenson replied in a tight voice.
“Add to the message that harming any of the outlanders is a hanging offense.”
He frowned. “Merely a hanging?”
“Ryan aced my husband,” Angstrom replied in a tight voice, her lips quavering slightly. “Anybody who denies me the pleasure of his death will be horribly punished. Publicly, we’ll say a hanging, but in truth I will personally toss them to a vine master.”
* * ** * *
SEVERAL DAYS LATER, the Concord ville convoy was rolling across the wide-open soybean-covered prairies of northern New Hampshire, the blue-green plants waving gently in the warm breeze.
The rain had come again the previous night, but once more it was free of sulphur, and in the morning the air had smelled fresh and clean, unlike anything the companions had experience in recent memory.
“Ah, New England.” Doc sighed, then his face fell, and the man slumped lost in the memories of the past.
At the front of the buckboard wagon, Fife, Nye and J.B. were huddled in a hushed conversation about the item recovered within the battleship.
“So you’re telling me,” J.B. said adjusting his eyeglasses, “that this barrel is full of guncotton?”
“Oh no, that could chill us all.” Fife laughed as the wag jounced through a rain gully in the dirt road. “This barrel is filled with soft grass, the barrel inside that is filled with water, and it’s the little barrel suspended inside that is filled with guncotton.”
“Not packed, of course,” Nye added, turning from the front seat of the wag. “The material often detonates if compressed too much.”
“Yeah, I know,” J.B. said, touching a small glassy scar on his neck. “And this is what you use in your blasters?”
“Cut with a lot of powdered charcoal, of course,” Fife said, patting the barrel affectionately as if it was a loyal dog. “We got six of them on this trip, and just one will load our blasters, make pipe bombs and charge the ville wall cannons for the next year!”
“We call it Black Cotton,” Nye said proudly, as if she had coined the term.
“Appropriate,” Mildred replied. “Our own blasters use something very similar, just with a lot of inert additives. They called it smokeless gunpowder back in the day, but it really was just fulminating guncotton.”
“Battleships use?” Jak asked, stropping a knife on a small whetstone.
“Nothing better,” Mildred said. “Although, you do have to handle it with care. This is one of the most powerful chemical explosives ever created.”
“This we know,” Fife said. “The first time we loaded a brass with nothing but guncotton, the blaster and the sec man holding it disappeared in the fireball that sent bits and pieces of him raining down across the whole ville.”
“The falcons ate good that day,” Nye said, “I can tell you.”
“What will you do when the stores of the ship run out?” Ryan asked,
“Go back to black powder,” Fife said with a shrug, “and keep trying to find the formula for gunpowder.”
At that, J.B. arched an eyebrow, but Ryan shot the man a stern look, so he said nothing. The Concord sec men had saved the lives of the companions, and now were in debt to them after the rescue. But friendship and honor had an odd way of disappearing before the wealth and power offered by having the secret to making gunpowder.
Loudly cracking their bullwhips, the sec men driving the convoy of wags accelerated the lumbering teams of oxen and started curving away from the flatlands into rough countryside full of brambles and fallen trees.
“Muties?” Jak asked, leveling his assault rifle.
“Rad pits,” Fife stated, holding on to one of the curved wooden ribs of the wag as it bucked over something. “There are ruins to the west of here. You can see them glowing at night. Anybody goes near them and the rad sickness hits.”
“Hair loose, teeth fall out, anal bleeding, vomiting, bloating and death,” Nye said, rattling off the litany of woes. “The only cure is a sharp knife from a close friend.”
Pulling a map from his bulging munitions bag, J.B
. carefully checked the area. “Nothing here worth hitting with a nuke,” he said, trying to hide a smile. “Just forest and farmland.”
“Or possibly a graveyard,” Krysty said, attempting to sound casual.
Warily, the companions glanced at each other.
“Must have been a wild shot, far off target,” Ryan said, craning his neck to look at the cloudy sky overhead. “The Trader always said the Seven Sisters did more damage trying to save America than the enemy missiles ever did on purpose.”
“The Seven Sisters?” Nye asked, crossing her arms. “Don’t tell me you believe in that nonsense about a bunch of comp-operated sats that shot down the wrong nukes during skydark?”
“I’ve heard stranger tales,” Krysty said, massaging the bandage on her throbbing neck.
Normally the woman healed much faster than the other companions. But whatever the cannies had used to poison their darts seemed to have the exact reverse effect. She had slept twice as long as anybody else, and was healing much slower.
“Fancy rapid-fires you got there,” a short sec woman said in frank appreciation. “Where did you find them?” She had long black hair tied off in a ponytail that hung to her waist and there was a jagged scar across one cheek.
“Alaska,” J.B. said, which was almost the truth.
She scowled. “Where’s that, near Boston?”
“On the other side of the continent, near the Western Islands.”
“Across the Great Salt? Nuke me running,” she said. “That’s ten thousand klicks of rad-blasted sand, mountains of salt, no water and endless muties.”
“There are a few villes here and there,” J.B. said. “And even a small lake, but it’s hidden and tough to find.”
“Yeah, like a virgie in a gaudy house!”
“No, it’s real enough.”
“Don’t know if that’s firing true, or mutie shit,” the sec woman said with a chuckle, slapping a knee, “but you sure do tell them big, Four-eyes!”
Sharp fangs showed when she laughed, and J.B. flinched at the sight.
“Something wrong?” she asked, squinting an eye.
“You’ve got fangs,” J.B. said.
“Yeah, most people do. Just not as big.”
“Reckon that’s so.” J.B. relented amiably and extended a hand. “The name’s Dix, J. B. Dix.”
“Betty Mohammed. My friends call me Fangs.” She smiled invitingly.
“Do they?”
“Nope! Just shoving a blank up your breech.” The woman laughed, punching him on the arm.
“So, you’ve been from one side of the world to the other?” Fife asked quizzically, pulling out a knife.
“There and back again,” Ryan answered honestly.
For some reason that made Mildred smile, but she didn’t share the joke with the others.
“Now, that kind of knowing could be mighty useful,” Nye said cagily. “Any chance you folks are looking for work?”
“Always can use a couple more studs on the wall,” Fife said, taking out a hard roll and cutting off a slice. “Sure as hell need more healers and gunsmiths! Concord is a good ville, fresh water, strong walls, no whipping post.”
“None?” Mildred asked in surprise.
Taking a small bite, Fife started to chew doggedly. “Nope. Baron Linderholm won’t stand for it,” he mumbled, “and I agree. Just a waste of time. Somebody breaks the law, we hang them on the spot, or throw their ass out the front gate.”
“We’re norms!” a sec man growled from the front seat, shaking the reins. “Why in the nuking world would we want to act like a bunch of muties, tearing each other apart?”
“Why indeed?” Doc mumbled, resting both hands on the silver lion’s head of his ebony swordstick. “Most astute, I heartily concur, sir!”
Swallowing, Fife glanced sideways. “Got yourself a real lib’ary there,” he said, cutting off another slice. “Bet he knows a ton of whitecoat stuff.”
“Library,” Doc corrected. “Indeed, I do, sir. Once I was a teacher, and would dearly love to do so once again, if only to assist your own redoubtable ville—”
“Library,” Nye interrupted, pronouncing the word correctly.
Doc smiled. “You are a fast learner, madam.”
“Better be, stupes die hard and fast in these hills,” Nye stated with conviction.
Just then, Davis gave a low moan from the rear of the wag. Grabbing their bags, Mildred and Nye rushed closer.
“How is he?” Fife asked, squatting with the AK-47 across a knee. The bayonet on the end was clean now, the feathered edge mirror-bright.
Clutching his own weapon, Ryan got the feeling that the man wouldn’t let go of the Russian rapid-fire until he had been buried for a year, and mebbe not even then.
“Seen worse,” Ryan said. “Can you do anything for him?”
“Not too much,” Mildred replied, gently smearing a blue paste across the blisters and scorch marks. The sec man groaned at the contact, then slumped and went blissfully quiet.
“What’s that?” Nye asked eagerly, staring at the inside of the medical kit.
“Mixture of sulfur and eucalyptus leaves, with a little tea tree oil,” Mildred replied. “It’ll help with the burning and ease his pain some.”
“Some?”
“Best I have. Sorry.”
“Better than nothing, I suppose,” Fife growled, his displeasure obvious.
That night, the two groups made camp near the foot of a truncated hill. Parking the wags in a full circle, firewood was gathered from the nearby forest, water gathered from natural spring bubbling out of a granite boulder.
“We camp here often,” Fife explained, hauling a bucket over to the fire.
Dinner was mostly beans and fish, augmented with the beef stew from the MRE packs recovered by the companions. The enclosed slice of military-grade nutcake wasn’t particularly popular, but the chewing gum and coffee were circulated with delighted cheers that helped lighten the mood of the group.
Sometime during the joyous meal, Davis quietly expired. After the meal, Mildred went to check on the man and spread the news. Fife himself dug the grave at the base of an old yew tree. There was no ceremony, or holy words spoken, but the somber reverence of the moment moved everybody deeply.
“Pity he has to be out here,” Fife stated. “No sec man should be buried outside the wall.”
“Isn’t proper,” Betty agreed solemnly. “But his wounds were already beginning to reek, and another three days in the wag...”
“I know,” Fife replied. “I just don’t like it much.”
Walking back to the campsite, Ryan and Krysty stayed close and didn’t speak until they were alone.
“He really wasn’t much older than Ricky and Dean,” Ryan said, using the heel of his combat boots to gouge a couple of shallow hip-holes in the soft earth.
“Think we’ll ever see him again?” Krysty asked, laying down a thick sleeping bag.
“Probably not,” Ryan said, unbuckling his gunbelt and placing it aside. “My son is a grown man now, on his own and traveling the Deathlands. Most likely he’s hoping not to run into me.”
Krysty pulled off her boots. Gathering a handful of sweet grass, she rubbed the inside of her boots to kill the sour smell of sweaty feet.
Ryan did the same thing.
Lying on the sleeping bag, the man and woman wiggled until settling their hips into the shallow depressions and getting comfortable.
“Doc’s graveyard could be just over that hill,” Krysty said, stretching her arms.
“Yeah, but we can’t leave the convoy yet,” Ryan said, rubbing his unshaved chin. “Not until Cam and the others are safe in their ville.”
“Because you gave your word?”
Unable to put the compl
ex matter into words, Ryan merely shrugged in reply. For some things, a man just went by his gut instinct: love, revenge and honor.
In the woods, something gave a low hoot, making them both grab blasters. Then the noise came again, and a large owl took off on a hunting flight.
“Hard to image a world where a bastard owl didn’t make a whole ville rush to defend the walls.” Ryan chuckled, thumbing the safety back on the SIG-Sauer.
Staying close, the man and woman said nothing for a long time, sharing the rare moment of privacy under the clear night sky. The eternal stars twinkled as brightly as ever, and the couple could just barely see the crumbling remains of the ring around the moon.
Most of the people were asleep by now, the few on guard duty sitting around the crackling campfire, the reddish light throwing hugely distorted shadows onto the tents covering the wags.
Unexpectedly, Betty started playing a harmonica, and several other sec men started singing along, something about home and hearth. Sitting off by herself, Nye produced a corncob pipe and began stuffing the bowl with minced cornsilk, mixed with something else that gave off a strong herbal scent.
“Alone at last,” Krysty said, taking his hand.
Ryan squeezed her hand in return.
As this was neither the time nor the place, no consideration was given to the possibly of intimacy. The man and woman simply stayed close to each other, savoring the rare moment of peace deep inside the savage heart of the Deathlands.
However, in the morning one of the younger sec men named Charlie Ownes was discovered to be missing, along with his blaster, horse, saddlebags and one of the smaller barrels of guncotton.
Chapter Sixteen
The dirt road wound through the looping hills and spreading grasslands like a drunken snake. In a staggered line, the drivers of the Concord wags kept a healthy distance from each other, that way, if one of them exploded, the blast would not also set off all of the other precious barrels of guncotton.
Along the way, the convoy passed the partially buried ruins of a predark shopping mall. The stores had been looted many years earlier, but Doc and the rest of the companions asked Fife to stop for a few minutes so that they could do a fast recce anyway. In spite of the adroit repairs done by Nye, some of their clothing was in bad shape and steadily getting worse every day.
