by James Axler
The crew in front and back of the wag yelped and cheered, agreeing with the chief. Only Mildred and Jak were dissenting voices, notable in their grim-faced silence. In front, eye glued to the wags ahead, Ryan could do little but concur with the silence of his fellows. This was too easy. The convoy had swept through without any routine checks. That couldn’t be right, not if Duma was anything like the way it was represented.
“Keep it frosty,” the one-eyed man advised Buckley. “We don’t want to get caught off guard.”
“The hell we will.” Buckley cackled, his face lit by the menacing leer that passed for a grin. “We’s home free, Ryan boy. All we have to do is come out blasting.”
In the chief’s insane world, the Duma sec were un-suspecting idiots who would fail to respond when the small war party came out firing, allowing them to take what they wanted and drive out unopposed.
Somehow, Ryan didn’t think it would go that way. It was too easy. The convoy had swept along the blacktop, past the sec checkpoints, and was now approaching a designated area, marked out by wire fencing and strong lights. There was one on each side of the road, which bisected the ville. The one on the right was full of wags. The one on the left was virtually empty and those few wags that were parked in there were around the edges.
Ryan felt a familiar tightening in the pit of his stomach, his guts knotting and telling him that something was wrong here. He glanced over his shoulder at Jak and Mildred. They couldn’t see the wag park from the rear, but both looked tense. As Ryan’s ice-blue orb met Jak’s glittering red eyes, an unspoken understanding passed between them.
It was a setup. Mebbe the sentries had known, recognizing the wag as not belonging to a convoy they knew well. Certainly, the convoy itself had to have realized it had an extra wag, but how could they…Of course, the outriders. One could have gone on ahead.
All this went through Ryan’s head in a moment, but ultimately, it didn’t matter. All that mattered was that they were being drawn into a trap and of the war party, there were only three of them that understood that. It was up to them to not only get themselves out of it, but also the Nagasaki dwellers. Otherwise there would be little chance of recovering Krysty and Doc.
The convoy rolled into the wag park, the vehicles peeling off to take up positions that were more redolent of attack than of simply stopping. Watching the wags stop, encircling the rogue vehicle, made even Buckley wake up to the fact that something was wrong.
“What the fuck—” he began, bewildered.
Ryan cut him short. “Shut up and listen. They’re on to us. If we’re going to get out with one piece, you listen to me and do what I say. Okay? Fireblast, man, answer me!”
But Buckley was lost, fear creeping over his face as he looked out of the windshield. The other Nagasaki dwellers had picked up on his uncertainty, and were either gibbering or lost in their own silent fears.
Ryan shifted in his seat to face Mildred and Jak. “They know we’re here. They’ve got us surrounded. We’re going to have to blast our way out.”
“Y’know, sometimes I think the rocking chair and the back porch aren’t bad things to aspire to,” Mildred said quietly, almost to herself. Ryan gave her a puzzled look. “Skip it,” she said shaking her head. “It doesn’t matter—mebbe I’ll explain some time—if we get out in one piece. Just tell us what the plan is, boss man.”
SILENCE. NOTHING HAPPENING. The sec forces had taken up position around the perimeter of the wag park, using strategically placed wags for cover. Keeping silent, they had waited for Malloy’s convoy to enter the park and circle before peeling off to take up its own defensive positions, leaving the rogue wag isolated.
Olly was waiting with J.B. and Esquivel, watching from behind one wag. The tension wrote lines into his young face, the corners of his eyes barely twitching as the waiting began to tell.
“Easy,” J.B. said softly. “Wait until they make the first move.”
“Why don’t we hit them straight away? We’ve got the firepower,” the young armorer replied.
“Yeah, and we don’t know how well protected that wag is. Better for them to give us the initiative by exposing themselves.”
“What worries me,” Esquivel said slowly, “is they might be thinking the same way.”
“They don’t sound like they’ve got the smarts,” J.B. mused.
Esquivel grinned, but without humor. “That depends who the hell they’ve got with them, doesn’t it?”
“WAY I SEE IT, they’ve got us surrounded. We’ve got two options. One, try to reverse the wag and hit the bastard road before they have a chance to open fire and hope the move shocks them enough to slow them up in responding. Or two, me, Jak and Mildred go out and lay down suppressing fire for your people to go and take one of their wags before we all hightail it out of here. Are you listening to me?”
Ryan shook the chief by the shoulder. Buckley looked at him, fear written in his face, obscuring all sense. The Nagasaki people—Buckley in particular—talked a good firefight, but obviously only when they had superior numbers and a territorial advantage.
Looking around, Ryan could see that virtually all the others in the wag were terrified. The only exception was the woman Mags; it seemed as though nothing could scare her. Her fat, flat face was expressionless, but she nodded as his eye caught hers.
“With you—want get out in one piece,” she said, barely intelligible through her palate deformity. But there was no doubting her courage, whether born of bravery or stupidity. With Jak and Mildred, that made four of them. As for the others…
“Looks like we’re on our own here,” Mildred said.
“Best way,” Jak affirmed, believing that only his friends could truly be trusted.
HAMMICK GAZED ACROSS the line of wags until his eyes came back to the wag where Olly, J.B. and Esquivel were waiting. A full circle, waiting. The tension stretched his nerves. He rose above the roof of the wag, looking for any sign of movement from the vehicle in the center of the park. Hammick knew that he could trust his men to hold the line, but Malloy’s men? The line of convoy wags had discharged a number of riders with blasters, all looking twitchy and ready to fire. They were potential loose cannons.
He wanted the rogue wag to make the first move. But could he trust Malloy’s ability to hold his men?
IT HAPPENED WITH a suddenness that made it almost anticlimactic.
The rogue wag’s doors sprung open and four figures emerged, firing as they dropped to the ground. Mags had an Uzi that she used to spray a blistering volley of rounds at the wags clustered on her side. The sec men at the rear were covered, but Malloy’s men were careless and some of them bought the farm, not quick enough to duck and cover. Likewise, Ryan snapped off shots from the Steyr as he dropped and rolled. At the rear, Mildred and Jak had their own blasters, as well as handblasters they had taken from the gibbering and scared Nagasaki war party. In addition to Jak’s .357 Magnum Colt Python and Mildred’s ZKR, they had between them a 9 mm Browning and a Walther PPK. Jak carried the latter, as the blaster jammed on him, he realized that the ville dwellers didn’t put much effort into blaster maintenance.
Malloy’s men went wild, seeing their own taken out, and fired wildly at the rogue wag, some leaving cover, whooping with excitement, driven by rage.
Hammick swore loudly. The convoy fighters were now in the way of his own men. Blasterfire could take them out. Only one thing to do.
“Blow that motherfucking wag off the face of the earth,” he yelled, gesturing to the sec men with the M-16/M-203 combos.
Rising above the tops of the wags, the sec men fired the grens from the racks beneath the blasters. The grens landed wide, the explosions shattering the air, clots of mud and earth thrown up in a cloud that mixed with the gren smoke to form an obstructive blanket over the area.
“Dark night, what the fuck is he doing?” J.B. groaned. “How the hell are we supposed to see what’s going on?”
“Attack! Move forward,” Hammick screamed over the chatter of blaste
rfire.
“This is a bastard mess, dude,” Esquivel murmured as he, J.B. and Olly moved out from behind their cover. J.B. racked the M-4000 to hit the center of the park with the load of barbed metal fléchettes.
“Watch your backs, keep calm and look out for any of these stupes firing wildly,” J.B. yelled, directing that mostly at Olly, who looked as though his nerves were about to snap.
UNDER THE CLOUD of smoke that covered them, Ryan sought out Jak and Mildred. The gren explosions had thrown them away from the cover of the wag, and now both were firing into the melee, hidden by the smoke and dust, hoping that they wouldn’t get hit.
“Get back in the wag,” Ryan yelled. “We’re gonna have to hit the gas and hope—”
But as he turned, he saw that wouldn’t be so simple. The explosions had galvanized the Nagasaki dwellers into action, and they had poured out of the wag, firing wildly. Two of them were immediately hit, falling to the ground. Buckley had a wild gleam about him as he turned to face Ryan.
“Y’all know how to have fun, Ryan boy. Let’s grab us a wag and get the hell out with some jack.”
Ryan felt an almost overwhelming desire to chill the chief on the spot. “You’re two men down, they’re using grens and we don’t have that kind of firepower. We need to use all we’ve got to get out.”
Buckley looked angry, like a child who had had a toy taken from him. “Shit, just as we’s starting to have fun.”
Ryan turned to locate his people again, despairing of ever getting out of this farcical situation. He gestured to Mildred and Jak to get back to the wag and tried to round up the Nagasaki raiders while providing covering fire with the Steyr. Fortunately, the cover from the gren smoke and debris was enough to make the sec force fire wild.
Mags had dragged one of the Nagasaki crew back to the wag and Ryan ran over to help her pull back the other. Both were still alive and the fat woman acknowledged his help with a grunt. Strange. He wouldn’t have expected any of the inbreds to act like she had, especially after what he had seen her do before.
But there wasn’t time for that train of thought. He ducked instinctively as a high-caliber rifle shell thwacked into the side of the wag, missing him by inches.
“Fireblast, we need to get out of here,” he breathed.
J.B. HAD BEEN UNABLE to use the M-4000. There was too much confusion, too much chance of those counted as being on his side getting injured. He flung the blaster over his shoulder and unslung the Uzi with practiced ease.
“Can’t even use these without risking our own,” Esquivel yelled. “Hammick’s really fucked this. Xander won’t be happy.”
But J.B. didn’t hear him. He was frozen as he caught sight of a figure by the enemy wag. Then another. A slight albino teen in a camo jacket, moving low and fast, almost obscured by the smoke and dust. And a black woman whose shape seemed so familiar he could almost taste memory coming back. But it was a third figure that took his attention.
“Looks like the smart one, and I’ve got him,” Olly muttered triumphantly, raising the Weatherby that he opted to bring with him, drawing a bead on the fighter as he moved.
A tall, muscular man with curly black hair, clutching a Steyr…Yelling, the man turned, and J.B. could see an eye patch, a scar puckering down the man’s cheek, visible even from that distance.
More than visible. The Armorer’s head spun as something clicked and he felt as though he stood on the lip of an abyss.
“No,” he yelled, thrusting out a hand and knocking the blaster aside as Olly squeezed on the trigger, sending the shot just wide.
The young man looked at J.B., astounded, waited for an explanation—one that the Armorer tried to frame, but found no words would come. Instead, he felt as though the ground slipped from under him and he was turned upside down.
With the nausea of falling came blessed darkness.
Chapter Thirteen
Ryan slammed the wag into gear and tried to reverse out of the enclosed compound that was now more of a battle zone than a wag park. He, Mags, Mildred and Jak had managed to gather all the Nagasaki raiders together, although the two who had been hit looked as though they might not make it back before buying the farm. Buckley was furious and kept up a tirade against the sec force of Duma as the one-eyed man tried to pilot the wag to relative safety.
The sides of the wag were pitted with the scars of blasterfire, and the glass had been shot out in the brief firefight. Ryan had punched through the shattered windshield to give him a better view of the area, regardless of the smoke and dust that made his eye water.
All around, the convoy crew was coming out from behind their cover to try to get a better shot at the wag. They were all poor fighters, and Ryan was thankful for that. The Duma sec force was unwilling to injure any of the trading crew and that meant that they were unable to deploy the heavy-duty grens and blasters that would otherwise have brought the wag to a halt.
Straining every muscle in his arms and shoulders as he wrestled with the wag’s steering, Ryan drove it backward and put it into a skid, bringing it around to face the still-open entrance to the park. Not that it mattered; he would have tried to drive straight through it in any case. At least the lack of resistance would gain them a few vital seconds more than they would otherwise have had.
Slamming the gears from reverse into first, Ryan hit the accelerator, ignoring the convoy crew members who stepped in front of the wag, raising their blasters to fire. He kept his foot down. They’d either dive out of the way or find a stupe way to get chilled. The screams of two were lost in the noise of blasterfire and the squealing engine as they were caught beneath the front wheels. He wrestled with the wheel, holding the wag as their bodies caused the steering to lurch. Another one yelled as the offside wing caught him on the hip and ribs, shattering the bone.
Mildred, Mags and Jak laid down covering fire as the wag left the yard, knowing that there was little chance of hitting anyone, but hoping to deflect incoming fire.
Ryan turned the wag and headed back toward the sec posts that marked the fenced perimeter of Duma. It wasn’t over yet, by a long way. They had to crash the sec post and hope that they weren’t followed.
“Anything behind?” he yelled over his shoulder, ignoring the continued rumblings of the chief at his side, the cries of the injured and the wailing of the frightened.
“No follow,” Jak yelled back simply, keeping an eye on the fast-receding wag park. Whatever was going on there, pursuit was the last thing on anyone’s mind.
“WHAT THE FUCK happened to him?” Hammick yelled, coming upon Esquivel and Olly, who were leaning over the unconscious J.B.
“I dunno, boss, I dunno. Just figure we should get him out of here,” Esquivel said, gesturing Olly to help lift him and leaving the sec chief with no time to object. Besides which, he had other, more pressing concerns. With the wag gone, the sec team was beginning to blame the convoy crew for the fiasco and fights were breaking out. The whole situation had deteriorated. Hammick knew that his first task was to quell this before any of the convoy crew were chilled; only then could he think about explaining what went wrong to Xander.
Esquivel and Olly took hold of J.B. and carried him back out of the wag park and through the streets to the armory. As they did, Ella-Mae appeared from the crowd.
“How bad is it?” she asked, trying to keep her voice neutral.
“You mean the whole shooting match?” Esquivel asked.
She shot him a look that could chill. “Don’t Es, I’m being serious.”
“Hell, he ain’t hit,” Olly said, confusion still large in his tones. “I was going to fire on one of the outlanders, then he yelled at me, hit me and passed out.”
Esquivel shrugged as Ella-Mae gave him a look both questioning and confused. “Don’t ask me, babe—there’s some really weird shit going down and I figure he’ll tell us when he comes around. Thing now is to get him out of harm’s way, ’cause that was one big fuckup and there’s gonna be a whole lot of shit flying around.
”
RYAN GUNNED THE ENGINE and stamped on the accelerator as the rogue wag sped toward the sec post. The blacktop was barred and the surrounding area was fenced in as far as he could see. The only forces at the post were the sec men manning it. The question was, what kind of ordnance did they have? He didn’t dare look behind, but knew from the lack of comment that they weren’t being followed—or if an attempt was being made, the chaos back in the wag park had delayed its start. So if they could get past the sec post, they could lose themselves in the dark night of the wastelands.
“Fire on these fuckers as we get near and pass—don’t let them get a clean shot,” Ryan yelled over the roar of the wag engine.
Jak, Mildred and Mags began to fire steadily at the sec post from the glassless windows of the wag, joined by a few of the Nagasaki dwellers who had begun to recover their nerve. Fire from the sec men at the post peppered the wag and the road around. Heavy SMG and rifle fire, but not enough to halt them unless it took out a tire and sent the wag into a skid.
The wag ate up the distance between the ville and the sec post at an ever increasing speed, the covering fire driving the sec men deep into the recessed post, making their fire less accurate.
“Grens,” Jak snapped, taking one and handing another to Mildred, who was covering the other side of the wag. They pulled the pins, held the spoons until the time was right and lobbed the grens from the shot-out windows so that they landed near the sec dugouts. Mildred’s throw bounced once and landed inside the post, leaving the sec guard scrambling to climb out when it detonated, the metal load spreading out with a razorlike intensity, slicing flesh and bone to ribbons. The sec guard didn’t even know what had hit him.
On the other side, Jak’s gren bounced and hit the earth wall of the post, rolling to one side. The blast and shrapnel load was deflected enough to prevent the sec guard being chilled, but he was still injured by flying metal and the concussion of the blast, dazed with bleeding ears as he slumped back to the dirt floor of the post.
The barrier between the posts was a long metal bar, spiked, at windshield height to the wag. Still keeping a firm hold on the wheel, Ryan ducked as they came into it, yelling for the others to do the same. The wag hit the barrier with a shuddering jolt, the wheels veering to the left as the hinged end of the barrier gave with more resistance than the free-standing side. There was a crunch of metal on metal, shards of glass still left in the frame of the windshield being dislodged and raining down on Ryan and Buckley as they hunched below the level of the open windshield.
