Damnation Road Show

by James Axler

  Ryan was keeping an eye on the fuel gauge, as was J.B. Because of the angle of the road, the tank sensor was misreading the level. They both knew it had to be wrong. It showed more gas now than when they’d started.

  “Look up there,” Dean said, pointing out the side window. “We’re almost at the edge of the forest.”

  All that separated them from the wall of hundred-foot-tall trees were a few switchbacks.

  “What do you think, Ryan?” J.B. asked.

  From J.B.’s tight-lipped expression, Ryan knew the two of them were on the same wavelength. In a few minutes, the RV’s fuel tank was going to run dry and they’d end up stopping somewhere, but not by choice. And mebbe not in the right spot to permanently slow the pursuit.

  “I think the next hairpin is as far as we go in this wag,” he said. “I’m going to wedge it across the road. Make our friends down below come after us on foot. Everybody get ready to bail out.”

  He had to park the Winnebago so it couldn’t be budged, rammed or dragged out of the way. He knew the other wags couldn’t back up without going over the edge, so there was no way they could pull it free. The lead wag could only push it. And the road leading up to the hairpin was so steep, there was no traction to do this. “Everybody out!” Ryan shouted when he reached the spot he was looking for. “Head up the road for the tree line. Triple quick!”

  As the companions ran ahead, he turned the front wheels hard over, put it in reverse and goosed the gas pedal, backing up until he bashed the rear end into the facing slope. Then he shifted into Drive, cutting the wheels as far as they’d go the other way, and moved forward a half yard. He put it in reverse again and repeated the process. After shifting into forward gear, he very carefully edged the nose of the Winnebago off the road, dropping it hard onto its front axle, with its rear bumper brushing the sheer wall on the other side.

  Foot traffic could pass, if it hopped over the bumper.

  But nothing else.

  Below him, the sounds of the other wags’ engines were getting louder. Ryan climbed out the driver’s door, slung his Steyr longblaster and beat feet up the road, past the last switchback, up to the edge of the dense forest where the others were waiting.

  As he approached the wall of trees, he sensed something unnatural. Ryan had come across a few other forests like this during his wanderings, lifeless except for the tightly packed trees. In this case some kind of mutated evergreen. There were no other types of trees, or vegetation for that matter. There was no undergrowth. Just pale-gray dust that shaded the seemingly endless sprawl of trunks. Smothering heat and silence. No air. Little light. It was the kind of place that gave children wake-up-screaming nightmares, and that grown men and women avoided like the bloody flux.

  The rumble of engines coming up the grade suddenly stopped.

  “They’re at the barricade,” Ryan said. “Let’s go…we’ve got to hurry now.”

  He waved the others up the road that vanished into the immense stand of trees. J.B. went first, pulling Doc behind him on a tether. Mildred followed, then Dean and Leeloo and Krysty. Everyone but Doc and Leeloo had a weapon up and ready to fire. Jak stood beside the mountain lion, who hung back at the edge of the darkness, as if reluctant to set foot in the woods. Its huge nostrils flared, as if it had caught the scent of something filtering down through the trees.

  “What’s the matter with your pet?” Ryan asked Jak.

  “He’s afraid,” the albino said.

  Chapter Twenty-Three

  The Magnificent Crecca plowed the biggest of the carny wags through the quarter-mile-long dust cloud swirling in the wake of Ryan Cawdor’s RV. The red-haired, red-bearded man had lost virtually everything. Three-quarters of his convoy’s chillers and wags had been left behind at Bullard ville. As had all of the mutie menagerie collected by Gert Wolfram and him over the years, except for Jackson, the singing stickie, who sat on the floor at his hip.

  Not that Crecca had feelings for the collection of nukecaust-deformed critters—he didn’t even have them for Jackson, who followed him around like a dog. What irked him was the wasted effort and missing income. In the blind rush to escape the wrath of the ville folk, all of the carny gear had been abandoned; it represented the sum total of his working life. Crecca had gone from being somebody important, from carny master, to master of nothing, in the space of a couple of hours; from anticipating the biggest score of his life to the kind of devastation he had only in his worst, sweat-soaked nightmares dreamed possible.

  Much of the blame for his current predicament he laid at the feet of the creature who sat coiled across from him in the Winnebago’s duct-tape-patched shotgun chair. The Magus was arrogant, parasitical and evil beyond imagining. And it had been his hubris and lust for the pain of others that had allowed Cawdor to turn the tables and beat him.

  The steel-eyed monster’s calf muscle continued to spasm intermittently, despite their disconnecting the damaged leg sensor. The contortions of his half-mechanical face in response were gruesome indeed. A once-human spirit was trapped in layers of metal and plastic, layers that seemed suddenly fragile. Yet, even wounded, he couldn’t be disregarded.

  The Magus was still in control of the situation. Crecca knew he had the capacity to replace all that had been lost. The wags. Gear. Muties. Chillers. But the Magus could also just limp away, jump into the past, or wherever it was that he disappeared to, and leave the Magnificent Crecca to a less than magnificent fate. As much as Crecca wanted to, he couldn’t take his rage out on the Magus.

  He didn’t dare.

  His was not the only anger boiling over in the Winnebago’s driver’s compartment. The Magus didn’t like to be thwarted, in even the smallest, the least important of things. One-Eye Cawdor had been a thorn in his side for a long, long time. That Cawdor had outthought and outfought him, even though he and his friends had been trapped in the death tent, that Cawdor had perhaps managed to cause the Magus some permanent physical damage, wasn’t something that would ever be forgotten or forgiven.

  It was something that demanded retribution. ASAP.

  It had been the Magus who, after they had escaped Bullard ville’s perimeter, had ordered Crecca to turn and chase the hijacked wag toward Paradise ville. It had been the Magus who had ordered the rousties to begin firing on the RV ahead, even though he had known it was out of range.

  Old Steel-Eyes had wanted to let Cawdor know a pack of wolves was howling up his backside. Wanted to make him and his companions afraid. It was more of the same, Crecca realized. It was the same primitive urge. Answered in the same way. The carny master was no whitecoat, certainly. He had no education whatsoever. And he possessed only the most rudimentary understanding of human psychology. But having dealt with robbers and chillers, and having been one himself for most of his life, the Magnificent Crecca thought he knew what drove the creature to do what he did: the Magus had to instill fear in others in order to quiet his own. Crecca found himself wishing that Ryan Cawdor had nailed the monster in the head with that sideways rain of full-metal-jacketed slugs, turning the brains and gears inside to a pile of bloody metal shavings.

  “Rad blast!” the carny master said as a couple of hundred yards in front of him Cawdor nearly ran head-on into the concrete barricade across the highway. Crecca tapped his brakes, slowing in plenty of time to keep the wags behind from plowing into his rear end, and to make the hard right turn. As he did, he saw the white signal rock below the detour sign.

  So did the Magus.

  “Your scout’s been up the detour and back, and left his mark,” the monster said. “Which means there’s probably a way out for Cawdor. Go faster! You’ve got to catch him!”

  The big wag was a tight fit down the two-rut, dirt road. And things got even dicier as the track started to climb through a series of tight switchback turns. And as Winnebago gained altitude above the valley and the interstate, as the road grew ever steeper, Crecca’s hands began to sweat on the steering wheel. Beads of perspiration ran from his wiry red
hair, down the sides of his face and along the scar on his cheek. Wet marks appeared under the arms of his ringmaster’s coat.

  There was no going back. There wasn’t enough room on the track for even the smallest of the four wags to reverse course, let alone turn. The drop-off at the edges of the unpaved road was precipitous. And there was nothing to stop the big wag if it tumbled over and started to roll. The RV and its occupants would be turned to scrap by the time it stopped at the bottom of the slope.

  Jackson sensed its trainer’s terror, even if it didn’t understand the reason for it. Sitting between the driver’s and front-passenger throne chairs, it gazed up at Crecca with black, dead eyes and began to whimper softly. Clear snot bubbled and popped at its nose holes.

  “Shut that thing up, Crecca,” the Magus said, “or I’ll damn well strangle it.”

  Crecca had no doubt that his boss could and would do just that. “Jackson!” he snapped at the little mutie. “Get in your bed!”

  With a chastened, hangdog expression, the stickie retreated to the pile of stiff rags behind the driver’s seat.

  The trio of rousties sitting on Winnebago’s bench seat gave Jackson their full attention, hands on pistol butts. The needle-toothed critter was wearing its choke collar, but it wasn’t chained up.

  “Where is this blasted road going?” the Magus said. “We’re headed up over the bastard mountain! I swear I’ll cut out Azimuth’s heart if he foxed us on this.”

  You’ll have to stand in line for that privilege, Steel-Eyes, Crecca thought. He’d already started to wonder if his scout had even tried to tackle this road before setting down the all-clear marker. In the back of his mind, the carny master had begun to envision a further narrowing of the already too narrow track. And somewhere up ahead, mebbe just around the next turn, a collapse of the roadway, brought on by wash water from the chem rains and the weight of Cawdor’s RV. Mebbe Cawdor and company were already down at the bottom of a ravine? Mebbe the RV was lying on top of Azimuth’s crushed Baja Bug.

  That would end the chase, but leave them in a sorry fix. They’d have no way to retreat, except on foot.

  Which meant the stinking Magus would have to be carried.

  Crecca knew he’d have to do the nasty job himself. The Magus would demand it of him, because he knew how much touching him filled Crecca with fear and loathing.

  The carny master gave the creature in the shotgun seat a quick sidelong glance. He looked away before the Magus could catch the flat, murderous expression in his eyes. Before he’d touch that hideous contraption of metal and flesh again, he vowed he’d put a .223-caliber tumbler in the back of its skull and boot it off the side of the mountain.

  “Shit! Shit!” Crecca exclaimed as he negotiated a hairpin and suddenly came upon the stolen RV, turned sideways with its front wheels hanging off the road. He braked hard. “Could be an ambush!” he shouted over his shoulder to the rousties. After setting the parking brake, he reached up and deftly dropped the steel louvers that protected the Winnebago’s cab.

  There was no blasterfire.

  It wasn’t an ambush.

  It was a blockade of the road, and it was perfect.

  “What are you waiting for?” the Magus demanded of him. “Go on, clear the road. Push that damn wag over the edge.”

  Crecca released the emergency brake and crawled the huge RV up the grade. There was no question of his building any real speed to bump the other wag. There wasn’t enough distance between them, and he couldn’t back up any farther because of the turn and the wags stopped behind. On top of that, the grade was too steep, and the road surface too loose to get good traction. So Crecca merely crept up and nudged the smaller wag. His front bumper hit the middle of the cargo box. The back end of the wag tipped a bit, but not the front, which was sitting on its axle. He gunned the engine and the abandoned wag moved a little, its undercarriage scraping over the sandstone bedrock. Then it stopped. The back wheels of the big wag started to spin, and its rear end swerved toward the drop-off.

  Crecca let off on the gas.

  “What are you waiting for?” the Magus howled. “Ram it!”

  Much easier said than done.

  Crecca let the RV roll back fifteen feet, as far as he could go without hitting the wag behind, then he tromped the gas pedal. The Winnebago struggled up the slope, banged into the wag, deeply denting the sidewall, but didn’t budge it out of position even an inch. If anything, the blocking RV seemed to be wedged more firmly into the face of the uphill road.

  “Get out!” the Magus cried. “Get out and find a way to move the damn thing!”

  Crecca ordered the three rousties out first. They exited with their blasters ready. The carny master waited a minute or two, then followed with a chainclipped Jackson at his side and an M-16 in his hands.

  Crecca carefully watched his young stickie, who stretched out its neck and sniffed at the air. From Jackson’s lack of blood lust, he knew that Cawdor and his pals were nowhere around. He waved for the other drivers and rousties to exit their wags. All in all, just fifteen chillers had survived Bullard ville, not counting the Magus.

  A brief look-see told Crecca that they couldn’t use the other wag to push or pull the obstacle out of the way. He climbed into the abandoned wag’s driver’s compartment and tried to start the engine. It cranked over, but when he put it in gear and tried to power forward, all he managed to do was dig holes in the road with the back wheels. Then the engine died, and he couldn’t restart it. The gauges on both fuel tanks read empty.

  The Magus wasn’t happy when he got the news that pursuit of Ryan Cawdor would have to proceed on foot. With his bad leg, he couldn’t walk, let alone run to keep up with the others. And if they carried him it would only slow the chase.

  It meant he would miss the fun, unless the fun was brought to him.

  Standing in the RV’s open passenger doorway on his good leg, the Magus gave Crecca his marching orders. “I want three rousties to stay here with me. Take the rest and all the excess ammo, and track down Cawdor and the others. I don’t care what you do to his friends, but I want you to bring Cawdor back here alive, even if he’s barely breathing.” He paused for a pain spasm to pass, then added, “And his kid, too.”

  Crecca chose three men to stay behind. As twelve of his rousties hurried to gather up the surplus ammo, the carny master stared at the lucky ones who weren’t going ahead on foot. They were trying hard not to look too relieved. Though it had gone unsaid, he knew their job was going to be carrying the Magus to safety if he and the others didn’t make it back. If Ryan Cawdor chilled them all, the monster left himself an exit option.

  With Jackson securely leashed, the carny master led his men past the roadblock and up the road. He could see the wall of blue dark forest ahead, and above the tops of the nearest trees, the savage-looking ridge of the mountain.

  Tactically speaking, Crecca knew the situation had changed. In the terrain ahead, the rousties’ advantage in numbers was negated. Once inside the woods, they would be open to ambush. To hit-and-run strikes. To that scoped longblaster Cawdor carried.

  Crecca payed out the full length of Jackson’s chain, letting his mutie bird dog enter the forest first. Jackson strained hard at the leash, sniffing the air. Long strands of drool swayed from its chin as it made soft kissing sounds.

  The stickie had caught Cawdor’s scent.

  Chapter Twenty-Four

  From his vantage point, some six hundred feet above the ruined interstate, Baron Kerr watched and waited. The secondary fire road on which he hunkered ran over the top of the mountain and down its west-facing slope, intersecting the ancient freeway a quarter mile from the barricade, on the Paradise ville side. Parked in the shadows behind a large sandstone boulder a short distance uphill was the Baja Bug Kerr had commandeered from the carny scout. From the direction of Bullard, he could make out a series of dust devils, twisting high into the windless afternoon sky.

  The promised convoy approached the barricade.

/>   The baron looked over at his three helpers, men whose names he had never bothered to learn. He had long since given up such formalities. Their hair, their faces and their hands were black with encrusted grime. As were his.

  Their clothes hung in greasy tatters, showing peekaboo filthy knees and elbows. As did his.

  All three were grinning at the line of onrushing wags, but in the backs of their eyes was a terrible, hooded fear.

  Kerr didn’t ask himself if the terror he saw in their faces was real or whether he was just imagining it. He knew it was real because he felt it, too, the fluttering in the depths of his heart. It was the same paralyzing fear that kept him from taking the Baja Bug, which had more than enough gas to get him to the safety of Paradise ville, from just driving away and leaving the burning pool and all its horrors behind. The part of him that had been born James Kerr, the pre-burning pool James Kerr, wanted more than anything to make his break while he had the chance, or failing that, to simply die. But that part of him no longer had control over the body it inhabited. That James Kerr had shrunk in size and influence, until it had become like a lone passenger on a cruise ship commanded by someone else. By something else. The something else could steer the ship. Could make it run faster or slower. Could, on a whim, run it aground on some rocky shore, or scuttle it over bottomless seas. And it did all this by manipulating reality.

  Or to be more precise, by manipulating the glandular secretions that determined his reality.

  Kerr understood none of this, and not just because he was ignorant of the complex biological principles that were involved. His brain had been permanently rewired by its long-term exposure to the spores’ mutagenic chemicals. This rewiring had dug deep circular ruts in his already limited powers of thought.