by James Axler
“Checking...zero fuel. Operating on emergency power source.”
Slowly, the ceiling lights brightened and a cool breeze began to blow from a nearby wall vent, dissipating the reek of the dead sergeant.
“Excellent,” Angstrom said, turning her face fully into the air flow. “What’s the power source?”
“Nuclear batteries. Present power levels are at...half capacity. Cannot maintain full operations for more than...twenty-seven days.”
“A month!” She laughed in relief. “That’s more than enough to get me back home, then I’ll fill the fuel tanks with whatever you need. Is shine okay or—”
“Alert, we are under attack,” the computerized voice calmly interrupted. “Authorization needed for immediate defensive measures.”
“What’s happening outside?” Angstrom asked, her heart beating wildly. She strained to hear the sounds of blasters, or grens, but there was only the gentle murmur of the air vent and the clicking spiders.
In ragged stages, a row of monitors pulsed into life showing different angles of the APC. Dozens of stickies were crawling over the machine, pulling on the door handles, trying to get inside.
“Enemy unknown,” the APC said. “Possible genetic weapon. Maximum environmental seals now engaged.”
“Muties! They’re muties,” Angstrom snarled, utterly disgusted with such an intimate view of the horrid things. One of them was only an inch away from a video camera, and she could see straight down its inhuman gullet.
“Mutants?” the APC asked.
With a shiver, Angstrom turned away. “We call them Stickies.”
“Identification accepted, Commander.” A glowing green crosshair appeared on the center monitor, and it swung around to settle on the face of the largest stickie. “Destroy or ignore?”
“Chill them all,” Angstrom growled, tightening her grip on the armrests.
“Kill order confirmed.”
Across the control board, meters swung their needles high into the danger zone, and a low hum filled the interior of the APC. On the monitors, the stickies began thrashing wildly. Their bodies burst into flames and fell away as electricity surged through the armored hull.
“Excellent,” Angstrom whispered, an almost sexual surge of pleasure coursing through her at the sight of the slaughter. “Now, tell me what else this...what else you can do. Tell me everything!”
“Of course, Commander,” the APC said, and the monitors began scrolling lists of command and functions....
* * ** * *
A CRESCENT MOON dominated the clear night sky, the twinkling stars shining as brightly as polished diamonds. The so-called Seven Sisters could be clearly seen orbiting the world, and far to the northeast roiling clouds of toxic chemicals rumbled on the horizon, heat lightning flashing to warn of an approaching storm.
On the ground, Ryan and J.B. were waving big sticks back and forth along the old highway, while Fife and the rest of the companions stayed with the motorcycles, watching their every move.
“Easy does it...” Ryan said, walking backward until the rad counter in his hand stopped clicking. Reaching into a pocket, he extracted a white stone and laid it down at that point.
“Stay razor,” J.B. answered, the rad counter silent at the end of his stick.
“Clear...no, wait!” Ryan cursed as the rad counter gave a single click. As he turned to the left there was a flurry of clicks, so he went to the right until silence returned. Once more a white stone was laid down.
The area around the ruined city was riddled with hot spots, but no actual bomb craters. The companions could only guess that some old world stuff called Depleted Uranium had been used here. The so-called dead-lead from nuke reactors was often machined into bullets. Super dense, the stuff made lead seem as soft as cheese. It punched holes through anything, and was often still hot enough to register on a rad counter a hundred years later.
“Look at the trees and the mountains,” Mildred said, pouring some water from a canteen onto a handkerchief and mopping her face. “There is no blast damage, or mutations that I can readily see. This must have been an air burst.”
“A nuclear explosion in the air,” Doc said with a pronounced frown, never removing his gaze from the distant forest. When Angstrom returned it would be from that direction. Almost certainly.
“Strange, town not hurt,” Jak said, squinting in that direction. “Still got windows, no fire damage.”
“Perhaps it missed,” Ricky said, the DeLisle carbine tight in his two-handed grip.
“Nuke missed?” Jak laughed, studying the surrounding hills.
“I’ve seen a gren miss,” Ricky replied. “They went off close enough to knock people down, but nobody got aced.”
“It happens,” Krysty agreed. “The glow scares away most people, and any animals coming this way would simply walk along the highway, going right over the buried shells—”
“And die,” Mildred finished, unable to keep the excitement from her voice. “An untouched predark city...”
“What my ville could loot from such a place,” Fife added, his eyes bright with greed. “Meds, tools, books, comps, generators...the list is endless.”
“So is this bastard field,” Ryan told him, going carefully around yet another hot spot.
The hole in the macadam was small, but his rad counter was going crazy. If these were Depleted Uranium rounds, they had to be incredibly huge, 40 mm rounds at least. That sounded more like a Navy gunship, or an Air Force interceptor than anything else.
The M-16 strapped to his back had a 40 mm gren launcher, but he only had a couple of shells, while this nameless city was slammed with hundreds of them, maybe thousands. An invisible rad wall, only the ionization at night made the deadly radiation visible.
“Think somebody deliberately made a hot fence to keep out folks?” J.B. asked, swinging the stick back and forth. “Mebbe protect the graveyard?”
Ryan shrugged. “Why not? It’s the fastest way to encircle a town that I’ve ever heard.”
Reaching the city limits, Ryan and J.B. paused to take a brief rest, then continued onward. However, the moment they stepped past the faded sign, the clicks stopped completely.
“We’re in the clear,” Ryan announced at last, taking the device off the end of the stick and returning it to the lapel of his shirt.
“Come on!” J.B. shouted, waving at the others.
Very carefully following the zigzagging trail of stones, the rest of the group slowly pushed their motorcycles to the town limits.
“Had fun before, this not it,” Jak drawled, inching along.
The last in the line, Fife picked up all of the stones and tossed them far away to make sure that nobody else could follow them into the ruins.
“Grave town?” Ricky said, squinting at the old splintery sign.
“Groveton,” Mildred corrected. “But I can see why you choose another pronunciation.”
“No, he’s right. This is Graveyard!” Krysty exclaimed. “This is what Doc meant. Not an actual cemetery, but the name of the town where—” She stopped short and cast a furtive glance at the Concord sec men.
“Where we’ll find a bank?” Mildred finished for her.
“Exactly!”
“Indeed, this rustic locale does seem vaguely familiar to me, dear lady,” Doc said uneasily.
“What are you folks talking about?” Fife demanded with a puzzled scowl.
“I’ll explain later,” Ryan said, quickening his pace.
The small mountain town lay in front of them in windswept disarray. The front lawns of the homes had spread to become a jungle of ivy, roses and kudzu. The streets were dotted with abandoned cars and pickup trucks, their bodies streaked with rust, and the tires long ago eaten by insects.
A couple of the newer cars had withs
tood the passage of time, the fiberglass chassis just as bright as the day they had come off the assembly line. Those vehicles with the windows all rolled up, had the drivers still sitting behind the steering wheels, the desiccated corpses slumped forward.
The main street was covered with leaves, and a small tree was growing out of a pothole alongside the sagging wreck of a public works truck. There was a park in the center of the town, now reduced to brambles and bracken, only the hat of a bronze statue still visible from the overlapping layers of ivy and bird droppings.
There were no real skyscrapers, the tallest building no more than ten stories high, not including the water tank on top. All of the windows were so dirty they appeared to be painted a frosty white.
“How find bank?” Jak asked, scowling at the ivy-covered buildings. “Sign gone.”
“Hey, my bike is almost out of juice,” a sec man said. “So why don’t I leave it in the middle of that rad field to lure folks in?”
“Egad, what a dastardly suggestion,” Doc said with a pronounced scowl. “That might slay innocent pilgrims!”
“Still a good idea,” the sec man insisted, then went stiff. Twitching slightly, he started to make strange gargling noises, then a wellspring of blood poured out of his mouth and he fell limply to the dirty pavement.
As Mildred rushed to the fallen man, Fife shouted as he tossed away his AK-47 assault rifle. It landed with a clatter on the broken sidewalk, a stubby arrow sticking out of the wooden stock.
“Cannies!” Jak snarled, spinning to try to locate the source of the attack.
“Get the bikes together!” Ryan snarled, stepping fast to the side. “And keep moving!”
Quickly, the rest of the companions pushed their motorcycles into a circle and ducked behind them. As J.B. did, an arrow slammed into the seat of his Harley, right between his fingers.
“You okay, John?” Mildred asked in concern, holding tight to the drive chain.
“Never better,” J.B. replied, flexing his hand. “Dark night, that was close!”
“Is Roger aced?” Fife asked, pulling his sawed-off Remington.
Ricky craned his neck to look at the body. “Yes, sorry.”
“Arrow in the back,” Fife stated, cracking open the breech to check the shells. “Hell of a way to get chilled.”
“Thought the cannies would be using darts to take us alive,” Doc rumbled, stroking the trigger of the assault rifle. A mailbox dented from the arrival of a 5.56 mm round, the ricochet shattering the front window of a small cottage.
“Not anymore, I guess,” Ryan snarled, risking a shot into the weeds.
More arrows arrived then, the wooden shafts smashing into splinters on the steel frames of the big Harleys. A tire went flat, J.B. lost his hat and Mildred cursed as she got cut across the shoulder, the barbed tip only reaching cloth and not the skin underneath.
“Where are?” Jak demanded, clearly furious that he couldn’t locate the snipers. “Rooftops?”
“Sewers!” Ricky shouted, firing the DeLisle carbine. The rifle coughed and a man screamed in the darkness behind the rusty grille.
Now everybody cut loose, pouring hot lead into the narrow gratings. But there were no more cries of pain or any more arrows.
“Hold it, they’re gone,” Ryan said, reloading the Steyr. “This was just a probe to test our reactions.”
“Yeah, but they’ll keep sniping, trying to take us out one at a time,” J.B. added, reclaiming his hat, “until they can rush the last few survivors and take them alive.”
“Not gonna happen,” Fife retorted, pulling a pipe bomb from his backpack. “When I go, I’m taking some of them with me!”
Defiantly, the man shook it at the windy city. “You want me?” Fife bellowed. “Well, here I am mutie-humpers!” There was no response, then a flight of ravens arched out of a field of spiky weeds in the park.
In a sweeping motion Doc emptied his assault rifle across the field and was rewarded with an anguished cry of pain that warbled into silence.
“Stay icy, Cam. We’re not on the last train yet,” Ryan said, slowly standing. With a weapon in each hand, he waited, half expecting another attack. But there was only the gentle murmur of the breeze through the thick green foliage and the distant rumble of thunder.
“Smells like acid rain,” Krysty said with a scowl. “We better find cover.”
“Preferably one with lots of brass,” Ricky added.
“Bank or police station?”
“Police station,” Doc stated. “What keeps people in, also works to keep out invaders.”
“Jails are a natural fort,” Ryan agreed.
“Better leave the bikes,” Fife ordered, using his boot to press down the kickstand. “They’ll only slow us down, and we can pick them up on the way out of town.”
The thunder rumbled again, only much louder this time. Oddly, it didn’t stop, the noise steadily increasing in volume and power.
“Angstrom!” Krysty cursed just as the APC appeared on the road leading into town.
As the halogen headlights crashed on, the companions scattered into the ruins.
Chapter Twenty-One
Rapidly separating, the companions and Fife dispersed into the ruins, jumping over fences and crawling through fields of grass, trying to put as many things between them and the oncoming tank.
Pausing to remove the sideview mirror from a car, Ryan took refuge behind a brick wall, then used the dusty mirror to sneak a peek over the top.
The APC was slowly moving straight up the middle of the street, as if the buried slugs of radioactive material meant nothing to it whatsoever. The large black box on top constantly swiveled left and right, like it was searching for targets, but the front flaps were tightly closed.
Broaching the city limits, the APC deliberately changed course to knock over the abandoned motorcycles, the eight massive military tires crushing the front yoke of each Harley into mangled trash.
“You can run, Ryan,” a voice boomed from the loudspeaker set alongside an empty machine gun mount, “but you can’t hide!”
In reply, several weapons peppered the armored hulk of the APC from different directions, the bullets ricocheting off harmlessly, only leaving behind shiny smears.
As the black box swiveled away, Ryan stood and fired twice. Instantly both headlights winked out as halogen lamps shattered with the arrival of the hardball-tipped 7.62 mm rounds.
Pneumatic brakes hissing, the APC rocked to a halt, and tiny hatches opened to release a swarm of spider-like droids that swarmed over the smashed headlights.
“Take them!” J.B. shouted from the roof of a garage.
Everybody cut loose once more, only this time the incoming lead smashed the little droids apart.
“Fools!” Angstrom laughed over the loudspeaker. “I can do this all day!”
As the hatch popped open once more, pipe bombs with sizzling fuses arched out of the ruins to land all around the APC. A moment later the machine was engulfed with overlapping explosions, the droids were obliterated and a woman screamed from inside the APC.
Moving quickly to a new location, Ryan barely got behind an RV with flat tires before there came a low hum and the laser slashed across Groveton. TV antennas were snipped off, a dozen roofs caught fire, trees whoofed into flames and telephone poles toppled over, the attached cables dragging down the next one in an endless series of splintering crashes.
Stepping into view from behind the bronze statue in the park, Doc emptied his assault rifle at the APC, the hail of bullets bouncing off the armored black box.
Then the beam moved across an office building. The laser burned off the accumulated layers of crud in a microsecond, then the mirrored windows briefly reflected the beam back, splashing it randomly across the town before violently shattering.
/> As the rain of twinkling shards descended into the street, a large cannie covered with tattoos dashed out of hiding, his clothing and hair ablaze. Beating at the flames with his bare hands, the cannie ran straight into the deluge of falling glass and was vivisected alive.
Stationed behind a tanker truck, J.B. smashed the padlock with the butt of the shotgun, then twisted the release valve. It took some straining on his part, then the wheel turned free. There came the strong exhalation of trapped fumes, but not a drop of gasoline came out. Biting back a curse, he moved on to a strip mall and disappeared into the back alley.
Trailing a leather belt, a pipe bomb came flying over a small cottage. It missed the APC and landed amid the wrecked motorcycles. Quickly revving the engine, Angstrom started to move away when the pipe bomb exploded, the blast setting off all of the additional stores of explosives, fuel and ammunition in the rear saddlebags.
A roiling fireball completely engulfed the APC, and it briefly disappeared within the fiery smoke. Taking advantage of the distraction, the companions openly charged across the debris-littered streets to converge at the police station.
“Where’s J.B.?” Ryan panted, his hands clenching the Steyr.
“Strip mall,” Krysty said breathlessly.
“Must have found something good,” Ryan replied, worrying the stock of the Steyr.
“Unless he located a National Guard armory full of LAW rockets we’re shit out of luck,” Fife growled, checking the 40 mm gren in the launcher.
“Will that ace the APC?” Ricky asked hopefully.
“Wouldn’t scratch the paint,” Fife replied honestly.
“Hey, over here!” Jak whispered, waving a hand from around a corner of the building. “Found coal chute!”
Dashing around the police station, Fife rammed the bayonet of his AK-47 into the wooden jamb, and actually bent the longblaster before the lock ripped free and the chute opened. As the expected gases inside vented, the companions stayed very still, listening for the approach of the APC. Or the hum of the laser.
