by James Axler
“Until this moment, I always thought so, too, but now…” Petrov left the sentence hanging. Slowly, the man holstered the SIG-Sauer. He could see the footprints in the grass leading to the edge of the depression, and then they stopped. Wildly, he wondered if the lump at the bottom of the hole was all that remained of the war wag and its crew. Dimly, he recalled his father talking about implo grens and how they created a microsecond gravity vortex. That was tech talk for a reverse explosion, an implosion. Apparently, there had been an exhibit of the grens in the museum, weapons of the future, that sort of thing. Only now it seemed that they were very much real. The man felt giddy at the idea, almost drunk. This had to have been what it was like to nuke a city. Power. The raw power of a god held tight in the palm of your hand.
“Got any more?” Rose asked excitedly, licking her lips. “We could take over a ville and make ourselves barons with only a couple of those things! Or trade it for a war wag.”
“Nope, that seems to have been the only one,” Petrov told her, carefully checking inside the munitions bag.
“I know where we can get more,” Charlie said, tugging thoughtfully on his beard. “Those folks we jacked gotta know where they got it. There could be more. Lots more!”
“Mutie shit.” Petrov snorted. “If there were any more, don’t you think they’d be carrying them?”
“And those slavers must be on the other side of the Missy Sip by now,” Rose added, slinging the Uzi.
“But—”
“Which changes nothing,” Petrov stated, climbing onto the hog and kicking the bike into life. “We stick to the plan. Ride to Deepwater, jack more fuel, then set up base in the ruins outside of Modine.”
“After that, we lay out traps for travelers and start selling prisoners to the East Coast slavers,” Rose finished, starting her own bike. “Then it’s the easy life for the rest of our lives!”
“We have the blasters, the hogs and the moss,” Thal said, patting a bag on his chugging hog. “Those are real, my friend. Let your desire to become a baron pass. Mortal man may dream of flight, but feet alone carry him to the stars!” Twisting the throttle, he felt the engine sputter for a few moments, then it settled down into a powerful purr. It seemed that the lady trader had dealt with them fair and square. The fuel was working smoother than the bore of a new blaster.
Sullenly, Charlie nodded his agreement. But as he rode away with the others, his gaze kept drifting back toward the western mountains, his private thoughts on a distant ville and a certain female baron kneeling at his feet, stripped to the waist and begging for her life….
Chapter Ten
In the garage, the companions found a van parked in the middle of the garage, surrounded by a score of civilian wags in various states of repair or disassembly—it was hard to tell. A ramp led to a wooden door that was in pitiful condition. It looked as if somebody had blasted their way out of the garage and the bonemen had clumsily tried to nail the broken planks back together.
“How did these people ever manage to repair military weapons?” Krysty asked scornfully.
“Big Joe must have done all of the gunsmithing,” Ryan replied. “A good way to stay in power is to make yourself absolutely vital.”
She scowled. “But if he got chilled without passing on that knowledge, his men would be helpless.”
“I guess he didn’t care.” The man shrugged.
The cargo van proved to be too small to carry the entire inventory of the Boneyard, so the companions concentrated on taking the best of the brass, along with several dozen blasters and a crate of assorted rapid-fires. The spare tires were strapped to the outside of the wag, along with some leather skins of clean water and a bag of the dried moss. Mildred had great plans for the material, that was, if she could dilute it down to a more usable potency.
Unfortunately, the medical supplies in the bomb shelter were so old they were completely useless, and it seemed that the bonemen relied upon raw shine for most of their medicinal needs. Mildred was sorely disappointed, but understood the thinking behind the decision. For people who held human life in such low esteem, preserving it wouldn’t be a high priority, not even their own.
“Pity about the Napoleon.” Doc sighed, mopping the back of his neck with a cloth. “But without any roads, the carriage would break in pieces after the first mile or so.”
“Cannonballs,” Jak added with meaning, the single word saying volumes.
Once the vehicles were fully fueled, double-checked and ready to go, Ryan and Krysty climbed onto the Harleys and kicked the bikes alive. The sidecars were packed with barrels of spare brass and the hand-operated Gatling Gun. That alone should buy them anything needed at the ville. Or help them get out again, in case Dunbar was lying.
Climbing into the saddles of a couple of horses, Jak and Doc checked the ropes tethering the other animals to follow along behind. The packhorses were piled high with boxes of trade goods, kegs of black powder, tools, bundles of books and extra cans of fuel. There were also a couple of bags of smoked fish taken from the kitchen of the Boneyard, the exact same kind of fish carried by the slavers.
Getting behind the wheel of the van, Mildred started the engine and let it idle for a few minutes to warm while J.B. finished jury-rigging the rad counter from the bomb shelter to the cig lighter in the dashboard.
“You sure that’s going to work?” the physician asked just a moment before the dials brightened and the speaker began to softly click.
“You say something, babe?” he asked, getting into the passenger seat.
“Not a thing, John,” she replied, trying not to grin.
“Is that really a rad counter?” Dunbar asked from the rear of the van.
“A rad counter? Bet your ass,” J.B. replied, cradling the Atchisson. As the gunner for the van, the man needed something with range, and the devastating power of the Atchisson offered that in spades.
Driving the hogs up the ramp, Ryan and Krysty waited outside for the other companions to join them before circling around the boulevard and then heading due north, toward a banyan tree with a hangman’s noose dangling off a high branch.
“It’s a pity that Big Joe didn’t own a compass,” Mildred said, the cargo van shaking as it rolled over the carpeting of roots.
“We’ll get mine back soon enough,” J.B. growled, squinting at the thick canopy of tress for any suspicious movements. For the time being, his plan was to shoot first and ask questions later. Spend the brass and save your ass. Wise words from the Trader, indeed.
“What’s a compass?” Dunbar asked curiously, holding on to a ceiling stanchion.
As the man and woman attempted to explain about the invisible magnetic field surrounding the planet, the convoy left the jungle behind and was soon deep in a proper forest of pine trees, oak and dogwood. The predark ruins were soon left behind.
WITH DUNBAR GIVING directions, Mildred drove the cargo van out of the ruins and soon the companions were crossing a rolling field of miniature wheat, the tufted shafts only reaching a yard high.
“Perfect for minimuffins and doughnut holes,” Mildred said, chuckling.
“What was that?” J.B. asked, tilting his head.
“Nothing.” She sighed, shifting gears. “Forget I said anything.”
“Now, be careful out here,” Dunbar said, leaning for ward on the crate. “There’s something in this area that chills folks. It looks like rad poisoning, hair and teeth falling out, shitting blood and the likes, only there aren’t any glowing rad craters around here.”
Just then, the rad counter started to wildly click. Immediately, Mildred steered to the left and the clicking soon dropped back to normal levels, only a click or two every minute.
“Must have been an airblast,” J.B. said, reaching up to adjust his missing glasses for the hundredth time. Angrily, the man shoved his hand into a pocket. “There would be no crater that you could see… No, wait, look there!” Then he pointed at a heavily corroded pile of metal dominating the middle of the whe
at field. There were no plants of any kind growing near the rusting machinery, which made it that much easier to see the general outline of what had once been a sleek war machine.
“There’s your rad pit,” J.B. said confidently. “A submarine. A crashed predark sub.”
“In the middle of Utah?” Mildred asked, glancing sideways to arch an eyebrow.
The man shrugged. “Seen it before with a bridge, so why not a sub? It must have been thrown into the air by an underwater nuke, mebbe one of the big jobs that busted apart California. Eventually, the sub landed here, and the reactor core split open from the impact.”
“But it doesn’t glow,” Dunbar said accusingly, as if trying to trap them in a lie.
“The low-level stuff doesn’t, not enough for you to see, anyway,” J.B. said. “But the reactor slugs will still ace your ass if you stop there for a nap, or even to get out of the rain.”
“Just a few minutes, and you’re a corpse looking for a grave,” Mildred added grimly, steering around a tree stump that appeared out of the waving wheat as unexpectedly as an iceberg in the middle of the ocean.
“So, never touch metal that has no plants growing nearby,” the teenager said, watching the crumpled wad of machinery disappear behind. “Once again, I am in your debt. I wish my ville could offer something that you needed. New clothing, perhaps? Although, I freely admit we don’t have enough to even dent what I owe you.”
“Well, I’d love a hot bath.” Mildred sighed. Ever since their impromptu sojourn through the storm drain, there had been a noticeable reek coming from her ratty moccasins, and even stuffing in some fresh kudzu leaves hadn’t really helped kill the smell.
“A hot bath,” Dunbar said slowly, as if he had never heard the two words combined before. Then he smiled. “If that is your wish, consider it done!”
“Just tell us where to find Petrov and we’re even,” J.B. growled, hunching lower in the seat.
Slowly, the day progressed, and Dunbar sent the companions zigzagging across the landscape to avoid quicksand, an underground warren of muties or some oak trees supposedly infested with flapjacks.
“Aside from the wheat field, you really know this valley,” Mildred said, braking slightly to avoid a billboard sticking crazily out of the ground, its vaunted message long gone to the cruel winds of implacable time.
“Over the past three years, I have walked home many times in my dreams,” Dunbar replied wistfully. Then he pointed straight ahead. “There it is, the Whitewater River!”
Looking about, Mildred couldn’t find what the teen was talking about. Then there came a flash of blue among the trees, and suddenly she was driving along a wide river. Countless limestone boulders rose from the wild foaming currents, and both of the muddy banks were thick with reeds.
“I can see why you folks don’t use boats,” J.B. stated. “That river would smash anything into kindling.”
“Good fishing, though,” Dunbar said proudly. “Trout, catfish and hardly any muties.”
In a sputtering roar, Ryan drove up alongside the van. “There’s farmland just over the next rise,” he shouted through the window. “That belong to Delta?”
“Means we’re close!” Dunbar yelled back. “Better slow down or they’ll think we’re a raiding party and come out blasting!”
Sagely, Ryan nodded in agreement, then angled away on the bike to tell the other companions.
Reducing the speed of the van, Mildred breathed a sigh of relief as it became much easier to steer the rattling wag along the rough dirt road. There were so many potholes, rocks and rain-wash gullies that she had been worried about the center-support bearing for the drive shaft. It had clearly been repaired numerous times over the years, and if it broke, they would lose the drive shaft completely. With no possible way to fix the van, they would be forced to set it on fire and destroy the stockpile of blasters to keep them from falling into the hands of coldhearts, or worse, more slavers. The companions had chilled a lot of the bastards, but slavers were like cockroaches; there were always a few more of them hiding just out of sight in the dark.
In less than a mile, the companions were driving past waving fields of corn and barley, wooden stockades set among the rows of plants raised off the ground to protect the farmers from the night hunters. But as the farms dropped behind the convoy, the rich loam slowly thinned into bare ground, and small patches of salt could be seen scattered among the rocks.
“Dark night, we’re heading back into the nuking desert,” J.B. muttered, trying to see into the distance.
“Nope, there she is, Delta ville!” Dunbar cried out, his face flushed with excitement.
Located at the junction of two rivers, the ville stood on a slab of bedrock that extended slightly over the river, offering a natural dock. Dozens of fishing nets hung into the rushing water, and a cluster of wooden racks stood nearby, the day’s catch drying in the sun and salty breeze.
Reaching an easy eight feet high, the ville wall was made entirely of irregularly shaped fieldstones, the concrete fill sparking with jagged chunks of broken glass embedded to deter climbers. The front gate was made of heavy wooden beams banded together with heavy chains and studded with sharp iron spikes. The sandy ground around Delta had been leveled for nearly a thousand paces, every rock removed and pothole filled, so that there was no place for an enemy to hide. A score of sec men walked along the top of the wall, a few of them working the bolts on their longblasters, while others were running about shouting. One big man was beating a large circle of metal with a blacksmith hammer.
Heading directly for the front gate, Mildred eased to a stop about a hundred yards away, just out of crossbow range, then waited for the rest of the companions to gather around before turning off the engine. Softly, they could hear the alarm bell clanging and a lot of raised voices.
“I hope they still recognize you,” Ryan said, resting his arms on the handlebars of the motorcycle. “Three years is a long time.”
“They’ll know me,” Dunbar stated confidently. “But I better get out and walk from here. The sooner they see me, the less chance of some newbie getting nervous, putting a rocket into this wag and blowing us all to hell.”
Suddenly, a squad of sec men appeared on the wall armed with what appeared to be a homemade bazooka.
“That work?” Jak asked with a scowl, the reins to his horse tight in a fist. The other horses shifted their hoofs into the sandy earth, snorting their displeasure over the lack of green grass.
“Does it work? Sure. How else do you think we kept Big Joe away?” Dunbar replied, sliding off the crate.
Stepping from the van, Dunbar smiled at the ville like a starving man would a banquet. “Home,” he whispered softly, the word almost lost in the gentle murmur of the wind.
Just then, a wooden beam swung up from the top of the ville wall and a rope ladder was unfurled. A lone sec man climbed down the knotted length and strode over to the companions. The man was wearing a tan uniform and snakeskin boots, beautiful and tough. He wore a gun belt without a holster, the loops full of brass going all the way around, and a longblaster was strapped across his back, a double-barrel scattergun. It was perfect for chilling folks up close, but useless for attacking the wall.
Turning off the bike, Ryan almost smiled. This was clearly a seasoned sec man, tougher than a boiled boot and smoother than winter ice.
“Greetings,” the sec man said, stopping a few yards away. “That’s quite a little convoy you folks got.”
“It got us here,” Ryan said with a shrug. “This Delta?”
“The one and only…” His voice faded away as the sec man saw the teenager. He blinked a few times and grinned widely. “My lord!” the sec man cried in delight. “We never thought to see you again!”
“It is good to be home, Sergeant Fenton,” Dunbar said with a curt nod. “You seem well. How is the ville, any problems?”
The abrupt shift in the teenager’s demeanor didn’t go unnoticed by the companions. Dunbar was friendly enough
talking to them, but he addressed the sec man with the voice of authority.
“Nothing of importance, sir,” the sergeant said, rubbing the back of his neck, fingers less than an inch away from the scattergun. “And who are these good folks, sir? Fellow escaped prisoners?”
“Just some outlanders passing through,” Ryan said, crossing his arms, a hand touching the checkered grip of his handblaster. “We tangled with Big Joe and brought Dunbar here for a reward.”
“That so, my lord?” Fenton asked, looking hard at the teenager.
“The spring was too wet this year for a good crop of corn,” Dunbar said formally.
With that, the sergeant visibly relaxed and turned to wave at the other sec men on the wall. “Spring corn!” he yelled through cupped hands, and the guards lowered their weapons.
Surprised, the companions exchanged glances. Coded phrases? Triple-smart. Whoever ruled the ville clearly knew what they were doing.
Turning, Fenton started back to the ville. “So, how did you folks escape from the Boneyard?” he asked, slowing his pace to match that of the others. “The place burn down, or did you sneak a wad of that fragging moss into his shine?”
“We attack, ace everybody,” Jak said simply, his hands crossed on the pommel of the saddle.
“Right…you use a nuke, or just stare ’em to death?” Fenton chuckled.
In reply, Jak merely shrugged, feeling no great need to convince the other man of the truth.
“No, that’s what actually happened,” Dunbar stated forcibly. “They took out Big Joe and his whole crew.” He started to mention the cargo of blasters and brass, but at a glance from Doc, the teenager changed his mind. The weapons belonged to these folks now, fair and square, and thus were really not the business of his ville. If his mother wanted some, she would have to barter for them just like anybody else.
“Well, nuke me running! Big Joe is on the last train?” Fenton laughed. “Shitfire, what are you, part wendigo?”
“Are those creatures real, sir?” Doc rumbled. “Or just a local myth you use to scare Big Joe and the slavers?”
