by James Axler
Unfortunately, Ryan and the others found nothing useful, aside from some underwear and a few mismatched socks. However, Doc located a costume shop, and mixed among the more bizarre and outlandish theatrical outfits were much needed replacements for his nineteenth-century trousers, frilled shirt and frock coat. Sealed inside an airtight shipping container, the Civil War costume was in excellent shape, and Doc gleefully exchanged his own worn clothing for the superior facsimile.
Returning to the convoy, the companions assumed their earlier positions, and it rolled away once more, the drivers impatiently cracking their whips over the teams of oxen.
“Nuking strange duds,” Nye muttered, looking over Doc. “Something wrong with buckskin?”
“Indeed there is,” Doc said, minutely adjusting his new cuffs. “I am not Davey Crockett.”
“Who?”
“Exactly, madam!”
Sitting at the front of the lead wag, Colonel Fife was driving, with Ryan alongside riding shotgun, the Steyr lying across his lap.
Ryan had been pleasantly surprised to learn that all of the sec men took turns at the work of maintaining the convoy, from the easy work of driving, or digging a latrine. Nobody in the Concord force was above getting his or her hands dirty, including the sec chief. The son of an East Coast baron, Ryan considered that very wise. The first step toward tyranny was a baron forgetting that he was just an ordinary man with an extraordinary job. There were no nobles, or bluebloods, or any of that high-born nonsense. People were just people.
“Ownes...” Fife growled, shaking the reins for no reason. In response, the team of horses quickened its walk to a trot.
“At least we’ve got back the barrel of guncotton,” Ryan reminded, tracking a shadow moving in the undergrowth. Without warning, a sleek opossum burst into view to streak across the bracken and tackle a rabbit, then dash away with the bloody corpse victoriously held in its teeth.
“Yeah, we did get it back,” Fife muttered. “But only because his fragging horse went lame.”
“True, but was that our good luck,” Krysty said from the rear of the wag, “or his bad planning?”
Glaring over a shoulder, Fife grunted in amusement. “Probably a little of each,” he admitted with a weary grin. “Still would have loved to put some lead in the head of the dirty little traitor. Jacking his own ville. It’s...it’s...”
“Unthinkable?” Ricky supplied, both hands busy darning a hole in his sock.
“Exactly!”
“Now, I wouldn’t use a head shot, those are too quick,” Nye said, sharpening a predark scalpel on a whetstone. “Blast him in the knees. It hurts worse, and he’ll be a crip afterward.”
“Double punishment!” a sec man guffawed, taking a piss out the rear of the wag. “Now you’re talking sense.”
“Good Lord, I thought you were a healer?” Mildred gasped in admonishment, looking up from writing in her journal.
Spitting on the whetstone, Nye continued grinding the blade. “First and foremost, I work for my baron.”
“Frag him,” Jak drawled, thumbing fresh bullets into an empty magazine. “Coward not worth brass to ace.”
“True enough,” Betty stated thoughtfully. “Then again, we do have lots of rope.”
A ragged laugh filled the wag at that, and there followed a jovial conversation on more colorful, and less sensible ways, to execute the would-be thief.
Asleep in the back, J.B. and Doc were curled up in a soft mound made of sleeping bags and soft hay, their rhythmic snoring almost musical.
Slowly relaxing in the sunlight, Ryan listened to the sec men bitch, and lie, and blow off steam, but always kept a careful watch for any unusual movements in the greenery along the serpentine road. Occasionally he would spot a fox in the bushes or a squirrel in the trees, but nothing big enough to spend a live round. Which was good, and bad. The convoy had lots of guncotton, but lead and brass were another matter entirely.
Oddly, there seemed to be few muties in this section of the state, which was probably just the result of overkill. When the horrid things appeared a generation after skydark, a weakened and starving humanity had bravely rallied against them in a manner never seen before in the annals of history. The ruthless slaughter went on for years.
Afterward, muties were few and far between in the area, and villes became prosperous, then began to spread.
Unfortunately all sorts of new muties seemed to be making a serious comeback in recent years, and again Ryan wasn’t sure if that was just natural evolution in action. Most of the creatures people called muties were in fact genetic creations, designed and bred in predark laboratories as organic weapons.
“Lunch!” announced a sec man opening a wicker basket and passing out smoked fish with small loaves of cornbread.
“Loaves and fishes,” Doc said, making a crude sandwich.
Mildred scowled. “Don’t go there,” she warned.
“I, madam? Never!”
Sometime around late afternoon, the Concord wags broached a series of low hills, and started across a vast expanse of wetland that skirted the ragged shoreline of a huge lake, or possibly an inland sea. The waves were a deep azure, as clear as spring water, and large schools of fish could be seen darting around in the shallows and inlets.
“Welcome to the Nelson Archipelago!” Fife announced with obvious satisfaction. “Almost everything here belongs to Baron Linderholm, and Concord ville.”
“Almost?” Ryan asked, resting a boot on the seat.
“There are some coldhearts hidden among the inlets,” Fife replied brusquely. “Fish-stealing bastards who’ll stick a blade in your back faster than crapping on a campfire.”
“How often do they attack your ville?” J.B. asked, using a moist towelette from an MRE foodpack to clean his hands.
“Mudders attack Concord?” A sec man laughed, picking his teeth with a twig. “Shitfire, Four-eyes, they’ve never even gotten close! We got the biggest—”
At a sharp cough from Nye, the sec man stopped talking and wordlessly continued his after-diner dental care.
“The biggest...?” Ryan asked.
“That’s ville biz,” Nye said bluntly.
“Alas, it would seem that we are still considered outlanders.” Doc sighed, templing his fingers. “Strangers in a strange land.”
“Less every day,” Fife added, steering the wag around a white marble obelisk sticking out of the dirt road. “But you’re not from my ville, or blood kin. Just friendlies.”
“Same here,” Ryan replied coldly.
For a long moment the two big men looked at each other in silent communication. Then they both nodded and turned their attention back to the road.
Clustered along the shoreline, fiberglass cabin cruisers tied to stubby trees. More of them skimmed across the gentle waves. The crews threw nets overboard and hauled them back full of wiggling fish. Sporting a red bandanna, the captain of each boat would examine the catch before it was tossed into the hold.
Every now and then, they would throw a fish overboard for some unknown reason. Opening a third eye, a fat trout wrapped tentacles around a man’s arm and tried to bite his neck. As the captain wrestled with the mutie, a sailor stepped in close, withdrew a flintlock blaster and blew off the creature’s head.
Even before the roiling cloud of gunsmoke cleared, the captain flipped the decapitated mutie back into the lake. Meanwhile, the disembodied head flipped and flopped across the deck, still snapping at anybody who got close.
“I’m not going swimming in that,” Ricky commented, running fingers through his dark hair.
“Wise choice,” Krysty stated, easing her blaster back into its holster.
As the convoy rattled over a wide wooden bridge, Fife sharply whistled and the boat crews spun with weapons in their hands. Then he whistled again a
nd they relaxed to wave in greeting.
“Password?” Ryan asked without an expression.
“Sorry, don’t know what you are talking about,” Fife replied coolly.
“I guess they’re all just music lovers.”
“Could be, could be.”
Angling away from the lake, the convoy started directly toward a walled village. Along the way, they passed large fields of corn surrounded by a tall wall of notched logs, the top sparkling with embedded pieces of broken glass.
“They cleared a forest, then used the felled trees to make a wall,” J.B. muttered, tilting back his hat. “Triple smart!”
“Nobody steals from Concord,” Nye stated, slinging her mailbag over a shoulder. “Not twice, anyway.”
A wide bulwark had been dug around the village, a deep gully dug into the earth, the loose soil piled high alongside. Combined, the bulwark was twenty feet tall and bristling with pungi sticks.
The dirt road led to the only visible breach in the bulwark, and Ryan could now see that the village wall itself was built from the usual mishmash of anything and everything; bricks, cinder blocks, highway K-rails, notched logs and concrete slabs. Coils of barbed wire hung along the walls like military ivy, and armed sec men walked along the top carrying crossbows, blasters and throwing axes.
“Those tough learn,” Jak said. “But kill good.”
The front gate was made from overlapping pieces of assorted sheet metal, riveted and welded together to a formidable whole. Tall wooden guard towers rose from inside the wall, offering the sec men inside the cupolas a commanding view of the road and bulwark.
“The design on the sleeves, those lines of circles,” Mildred said, leaning forward. “Are those decorations or medals of valor?”
“Number of muties aced?” Ricky asked.
“Nothing like that,” Betty replied. “It’s to show who’s in charge. One rung means you’re a private, two for a corporal, and so on.”
“An actual chain of command,” Doc observed. “But is that not dangerous? During a fight, the enemy would know whom to shoot first.”
“Which is why the sec chief doesn’t wear them,” Fife said, raising an arm to display its complete lack of embroidery.
“And just before a fight, we ditch our coats,” Nye said, reaching into her bag to pull out a green jacket. Sliding it on, she brushed off the triple rings of a lieutenant.
Using an elbow, J.B. nudged Ryan, and he smiled in return. He was impressed with the ville, and starting to like their baron more all the time. If the man wasn’t a jolt addict, despot or a sex deviant, as so many of the others often were, the companions might stay here for a while and get some much needed rest before continuing onward to the next redoubt. It had been a long time since he’d last shared a warm bed under a strong roof with Krysty.
As the convoy approached, a bell started to ring and the gate swung ponderously aside. Rolling through, Fife again gave a loud whistle, and this time it was returned with a flourish.
Once inside the ville, the companions studied the place carefully, just to make sure that the colonel hadn’t lied to them about anything. But Concord seemed to be everything he had claimed. The streets were paved with bricks, the homes clean, and there was no sign of a whipping post, just the standard gallows for executing ordinary criminals.
“I’m liking what I see of this place,” Mildred said, pointing down a side street.
Past the blacksmith and a tanner, Ryan could see a row of small cinder-block buildings with doors marked with a half moon. The latrines were a good block away from the closest artesian well, and surrounded by a patch of fragrant wildflowers to obviously help cut the mandatory smells.
“Smart. Cinder-block outhouse stay warm in winter,” Jak said in approval. “No freeze to seat.”
“Been there, done that,” Doc said, rubbing his backside. “In my youth, I often carried more splinters in my rear than you could imagine.”
Suddenly a bell started to ring and people rushed from every building to smile and wave at the sec men in the wags, and to point at the companions. Laughing in delight, little children started running alongside the rattling buckboards. The sec men tried to maintain a stern professional demeanor, and failed completely.
“Whacha bring us this time, Sergeant?” a gaudy slut called out from the doorway of a tavern.
“Predark cigs and cinnamon sticks!” a sec man yelled back.
Whooping in delight, the woman twirled around, her skirt rising high enough to show her wears.
“Dark night, the ville folk love them,” J.B. said with a crooked smile. “Haven’t seen that in a long time.”
“Indeed not, John Barrymore,” Doc rumbled, gesturing gallantly to the passing crowd. “It takes me back to our sylvan days at Front Royal.”
“We damn near died there,” Mildred scoffed.
“True, but that was not the fault of the baron.”
“Speaking of which,” Ryan said, jerking his chin to the right.
Off in the that direction was a small park in the middle of the village, the grass and trees neatly trimmed. There was even an old gazebo. That was an ordinary sight in the past, but these days it bordered on the bizarre.
“The ville is rich,” Ricky stated bluntly.
A pair of shiny brass cannons from the Civil War stood on either side of the gazebo. Set behind sandbag walls, with a pyramid of cannonballs close by, it was clear that these were functioning weapons and not merely decorations.
Sitting inside the gazebo was a pair of people. As the convoy rolled closer, they stood and went to the railing. The man was middle-aged, and tall, almost gangly, with a wild shock of fiery red hair, a brown mustache and a neatly trimmed black beard.
Curious, Ryan and Krysty glanced at Mildred.
“Norm,” she said dismissively. “He’s probably of Norwegian descent.”
Obviously the local baron, David Linderholm wore similar clothing to that of the sec men, except that he also wore a police-issue bulletproof vest, the outer layer of twilled fabric dotted with shiny gray disks of flattened miniballs. A museum-quality Martini-Henry longblaster was slung over a shoulder, and there was a throwing ax hung at his side, the leather grip worn from constant use.
“Nice,” Jak whispered, but oddly didn’t seem to look directly at the baron.
A few feet away from Linderholm stood a young woman barely out of her teenage years. Still blossoming into womanhood, she was short and slim, with long red hair almost the exact same color as the baron’s, and the most amazing pair of jet-black eyebrows. Her shirt was white silk and covered with intricate embroidery that highlighted her burgeoning figure, and her pants were predark denims in remarkably good shape.
“Is that the baron’s wife?” Ryan asked, hefting the Steyr onto a shoulder.
“Nuke no!” Fife snorted. “That’s his daughter, Sandara.”
“Everybody calls her Sandy,” Nye said.
Defiantly standing with fists akimbo, Sandara Linderholm might have been pretty if her nose hadn’t been broken sometime in the past and set poorly, giving it a slight tilt, so that she seemed to be scowling.
The handle of a Japanese katana was visible over a shoulder, and a holstered Colt .38 revolver rode low on her hip. Her gunbelt was lined with bullets, the soft lead noses cut in a crisscross pattern to convert them into deadly dumdum rounds.
“Greetings, Baron!” Fife bellowed, reining the horses to a stop at the edge of the park.
“Hello, Cam,” Linderholm replied warily. “You’ve brought guests, I see.”
“Honored guests!” Fife stated, setting the hand brake, then hopping down to the ground.
“Are they?” Sandara asked, a hand dangerously close to the holstered blaster.
“Absolutely, my lady,” Fife replied, snapping off a salute.
“These folks rescued my men from the cannies inside the battleship, and helped us chill the whole nuking lot of them!”
A startled hush swept the crowd.
“The cannies are aced?” Linderholm asked.
“Are...are you serious?” Sandara demanded, her face flushed with excitement.
“Absolutely!” Nye added, climbing down from the wag. “We recovered enough of their poisoned darts for me to safely perform operations for the next decade.”
“How many people did we lose?”
“Six chilled,” Fife stated. “But it would have been all of us without Ryan and his people.”
“And the cannies are actually chilled?” Sandara insisted.
“Deader than DeeCee,” Nye said, dropping a handful of the broken blowguns onto the grass.
Throwing his hat into the air, Baron Linderholm cut loose with a whoop. The rest of the population took up the cry, and for a few minutes there was general pandemonium.
“Blind Norad, this is good news,” Linderholm said, hurrying down the stairs to cross the lawn. “Welcome to Concord, outlanders!”
While a mixed gang of sec men and ville folk started carefully unloading the barrels of guncotton from the wags, the groups exchanged names and pleasantries.
“Okay, to biz,” Sandara said. “How much do we owe you as a reward?”
“No charge,” Ryan stated. “Chilling cannies is the duty of every norm.”
“We were glad to help,” Krysty said, tucking a loose strand of hair into her collar to keep it still.
“No reward?” Linderholm asked slowly.
Fife cleared his throat. “Actually, Baron, I promised them all of the brass they could carry.”
“How much?” Sandara gasped.
“That was after the fight,” Ryan corrected with a scowl. “A null deal, just battle talk.”
“Not mercies,” Jak stated, as if that was a vital point.
