by James Axler
Then, taking the time to ensure his men did the job properly, Esquivel sent them out along the narrow tracks that ran through the shantytown, pouring oil and tallow on the dirt and the wrecked shacks, distributing fused plas ex along the way and using some of the ville’s own grens to mine areas where there were still shacks standing after the wag invasion.
The sec men worked until the entire area was a maze of oil, plas ex and grens. The ranch house was mined and the fuses set.
“This needs a finishing touch—just to cleanse the earth,” Esquivel muttered. He ran over to the wag where J.B. and Olly were with the companions. Krysty and Jak were semiconscious but unaware of their surroundings. Ryan and Mildred were still out cold. Doc was conscious now, raving. The old man seemed to believe he was back in his youth, about to take a brougham ride with his beloved Emily.
Esquivel could read the concern on J.B.’s face, but still felt it necessary to pull him away. They exchanged a few words and the Armorer handed over two small canisters from his canvas bag.
Esquivel allowed himself a small grin. This would clean up the place more than a little. He bellowed orders for the sec force to withdraw to the ridge overlooking the shallow valley. Returning to their wags, they began to retreat.
They had five minutes to get clear, ample time if they moved on the double. Esquivel joined J.B. and Olly with the companions in the wag that took the dirt track leading in and out of the ville. The sec men who had traveled in it were allotted to other wags. It would mean an extra man per wag and an uncomfortable journey home, but the companions needed some space for their ride to Duma.
For the Duma sec team, it was a job well done. Which was just about to be finished. The wag retreated to the ridge and came to a halt. Esquivel studied his wrist chron, counting off the remaining minutes. When the five minutes elapsed, it would be half-past one. The mission would be initiated and completed in only an hour and a quarter. Hammick would be pleased at the efficiency—if he was still around when they got back. Esquivel knew he had overstepped the mark by taking charge, but there was nothing else that could have been done in the circumstances.
He wondered how Xander would feel about that. Then he looked at J.B. and Olly, tending to the five captives they had rescued, and figured that getting the legendary one-eyed man out of trouble would keep him out of jail.
The second hand ticked around again.
“If they ain’t out now, they never will be,” Esquivel murmured to himself as he dismounted from the wag. He walked to the edge of the ridge. The valley formed a shallow pan and the ville lay in the center. It was too far for him to throw the canisters, so he improvised a slingshot from the sleeve of his shirt, which he ripped off without a thought.
“Hope I still got the eye for it,” he murmured, remembering a childhood spent chilling small mammals for food.
He loaded up the first canister and let it fly. It took a high, looping trajectory into the air, landing on the edge of the ville. It landed with a thump, nothing happening.
“Nukeshit, this was supposed to be easy,” he muttered.
“Would be if you got it right,” the Armorer said laconically, appearing at Esquivel’s elbow. He was holding Olly’s Weatherby. The blaster was a good long-range hunting rifle, and Esquivel understood immediately what J.B. intended. With the briefest of nods he wound up for another throw, launching the canister high into the air, looping out over the ville.
J.B. sighted the Weatherby and fired once. The canister exploded into a ball of liquid fire that spread out over a vast distance, falling to earth and raining flame on the wreckage beneath.
The flames ignited the oil beneath, spreading trails of fire across the ville. The fuses on the plas ex and grens caught and chains of explosions gouged the earth where the ville of Nagasaki once stood. The canister on the edge of the ville exploded as the fires reached it, gouts of liquid fire flying up into the air and coming down to ignite scrub and brush around.
The fires and explosions leveled what was left of the ranch house and the barn, eradicating all trace of the shacks, a pall of thick, dark smoke marking the point where the corpses burned.
“Always knew that napalm would be useful,” J.B. remarked as he and Esquivel stood watching the destruction. They only realized how long they had been standing there when the other wags, moving from their positions around the ridge to form up a convoy for the trip back to Duma, hove into view.
“C’mon, man, let’s get home,” Esquivel said, clapping J.B. on the shoulder before stopping to shake his head. “Man, that’s first time I’ve ever called it that.”
IT TOOK SEVERAL DAYS for the companions to be restored to a reasonable state of health. The cuts inflicted by the Nagasaki dwellers had become infected and Doc was still suffering from shock and trauma from the blaster wounds that had been inflicted in the redoubt. Jak’s left shoulder had been badly dislocated and for the first two days they were in Duma it kept popping out again, much to his frustration.
But rest, a warm environment and food and water contributed much to their recovery. The main shock was in seeing J.B. again. They had all resigned themselves to his demise and it took Doc a while to trust his own senses. After his injuries and trauma, he feared that he was hallucinating when he saw his old friend.
For his part, J.B. saw them only briefly over the period. It put him in a difficult position. For most of the time he had been in Duma he had been a man without a past and his life as he knew it had been based around settling into this ville and becoming a part of it. There were a lot of things about Duma that he didn’t like, and despite the manner in which he had been greeted by the baron—because of his past, the one he knew nothing of—he found that he didn’t trust Xander at all. For all its wealth, Duma was a harsh place, where everyone walked a tightrope every day of their lives.
At the same time, the memories that had come flooding back to him when he saw Ryan didn’t, in some ways, seem real. They felt like stories that had been told to him. He felt that he had to accept them as his past, yet he didn’t really believe them. Being in the same room as the five people he had spent so long traveling with seemed bizarre: they were people who risked their lives for each other so many times, yet he didn’t feel he was one of them. But he was…
On the surface, J.B. went about his business in the armory, and fended off Xander’s questions. The baron still trusted Grant, albeit with qualification after the debacle of the ambush, and the healer advised that they be allowed to rest before the baron questioned them. J.B. had his own ideas on why that should be and knew that it may prove dangerous if Xander persuaded them to stay.
Meanwhile, Budd had accepted him and working in the armory was better than before. Olly was keen to learn and Esquivel was no longer his permanent shadow. But all that did was give him no one he could really talk to…except maybe for Ella-Mae.
The mechanic hadn’t forgiven him for laying her out before the raid on Nagasaki, and had been steering clear of him. But he tracked her down and tried to explain the position he now found himself in.
“And you trust me?” she queried, ordering another glass of Icepick’s potent spirit.
“Have to trust someone,” J.B. replied.
“That’ll have to do, I guess. I’m surprised it’s me, though. Why not Es?”
“I haven’t seen much of him since he was taken off my back.” J.B. shrugged.
Ella-Mae smiled. “Nah, he’s too busy right now. Word has it that he’s gonna replace Hammick.”
“He never said anything about it,” J.B. mused.
“He wouldn’t. Es knows when it’s time to keep his mouth shut. Word is that he did a good job cleaning out that shithole inbred ville. But he’s not Grant’s man and Hammick was. Grant and Xander have always been like this,” she elaborated, crossing her fingers for emphasis, “mostly because of Xander’s father trusting him. But now Es has made a reputation and your friend Ryan—who Xander’s been banging on about for quite a while—is in the frame, then li
fe could be hard for Grant. And he still has friends, if you know what I mean.”
She paused, then took J.B.’s hand and made him look directly at her. “Look, you know how I feel, but that’s not the reason I’m gonna say this. I reckon you should get the hell out of here. If it turns out Xander wants the one-eyed man to head up sec, then Es won’t be too bothered, but Grant will. And that could mean some kind of war you’ll end up in. Face it, you don’t like this place and the last thing you want is a stupe battle when there are real ones to face.”
“Anyone would think you want to get rid of me,” J.B. said quietly.
“You know that ain’t it, babe, but mebbe it would be best for everyone.”
J.B. shrugged. “Can’t say it hadn’t occurred to me. But how can we do it without Xander raising hell?”
“Leave that to me. I haven’t lived here all my life and kept living without learning something.”
XANDER FINALLY GOT TO SEE the companions on the fourth day after the attack. He pumped them for all they knew about Trader and all that had happened to Ryan and J.B. since their days in War Wag One. Ryan was puzzled by Xander’s curiosity and it was only after the baron explained why J.B. had been unable to tell him anything that the companions started to see why J.B. had seemed so strange when he had seen them.
Ryan fed the baron the stories he wanted to hear.
“I heard something a while back,” Xander said, “some people have claimed to have seen Trader. He doesn’t operate in the same way anymore—it’s like he’s on some kind of quest, I guess—but I wouldn’t be surprised if he was still around.”
Then, before Ryan had a chance to assimilate this information, Xander sprung something else on him.
“I’ve already got J.B. working in the armory and I’ve got a vacancy for a chief of sec. There’s a good man who could do it, but if I had you, Ryan Cawdor, the man who traveled shotgun with the legendary Trader…To have both you and J.B. on the team would make me invincible. In fact, it’s just what I need. Think about it.”
Xander rose to leave. There was something about the way he said it that suggested it was a nonnegotiable request. That could be a big problem—as could be other people in the ville. Ryan didn’t know who the other man in the running might be, but he sure as hell noticed the looks they all got from the limping healer as he left with the baron.
J.B. WAS WORKING IN THE BLASTER store at the armory, cleaning out the M-16/M-203 combos that been used in the raid, when Ella-Mae walked in.
“How did you just get past the sec like that—” J.B. began, but stopped when he noticed that Grant was limping behind her. With the shadowy presence of the ex-sec man, anything was possible.
“Grant’s got something to say,” Ella-Mae began, “about what we were talking about the other night.”
“It’s safe to talk,” J.B. told them. “Olly and Budd are going through the ordnance we pulled in from that shit hole a few days back. That’ll keep ’em busy.”
Grant nodded with satisfaction and walked over to J.B. “I won’t screw with you. You know I was never happy with you here and you must have realized I’d be less than happy with the rest of you hanging around.”
“Xander wants Ryan to replace Hammick, right?” When Grant assented, J.B. continued. “That doesn’t suit you. But what about Es? He’ll be the replacement.”
“Not perfect, but at least I know him…and he won’t have the baron’s ear,” Grant explained.
“So you’d like to see us go—” J.B. looked at Ella-Mae “—and you know we want to go, right?”
Grant agreed. “Be ready tonight. Best to move quickly, before whispers spread or people change their minds.”
Without another word, the healer turned and limped away, leaving Ella-Mae alone with the Armorer.
“It’s quick,” he said simply.
“Mebbe it’s better that way.” She shrugged, looking J.B. in the eye. “Be at the healing room at eleven. Duma’s never quiet, but if we move, then we can slip past the sec rota changeover.”
“I didn’t know you knew that much about it,” J.B. murmured.
“It’s Grant’s plan. I wouldn’t trust him at any other time, but he wants you gone without fuss. He wouldn’t dare fuck with you because of Xander. So I guess we can trust him now.”
She left the room without waiting for a reply, leaving him wondering about the word we.
J.B. SAID LITTLE DURING the evening meal, and made an excuse to go to his room. He packed quickly and let his bag out the window, allowing it to drop to the soft earth beneath. A noise in the doorway made him turn. Olly was standing in the doorway, watching.
“What’s going on?” he asked simply.
“I’m leaving tonight. We all are. It’s got to be this way.” His hand crept toward the sheathed Tekna. He didn’t want to use force, but if Olly got in the way, he’d have little option.
Olly noticed the move. “You really think that’s necessary? I’m gonna miss you, but I wouldn’t stop you going. You don’t belong here and you don’t want to. I won’t say anything.”
J.B. nodded. “I’m glad. For whatever it might matter, you’ll be as good an armorer here as I ever would have been. And although I think a lot of this ville is dangerous, there are a few good people—”
“I know who they are,” Olly interrupted. “Now go.”
He stood aside in the doorway. J.B. looked back when he was at the bottom of the stairs. Olly was watching him. J.B. touched the brim of his fedora, then left without looking back.
Retrieving his bag, he made his way to the healing room, where he found Ella-Mae and Grant waiting. The healer had sent the sec guard away and there were no other staff.
“Won’t Xander get suspicious that we escaped when you’d sent everyone away?” J.B. asked.
“I can handle him—I have been since he was a boy.” Grant shrugged. “Have I bought the farm yet?”
They went into the room where the companions were staying. Although they were glad to see J.B., they were wary of what was going on. Quickly, the Armorer explained the situation. Given Ryan’s reading of Grant’s reaction the day before, things made perfect sense.
“Heavens, a reunion would be emotional enough, without this added circumstance,” Doc mused.
“Talk later, move now,” Jak rapped at the old man.
“Pithy and succinct—and, as always, quite correct,” Doc countered.
Their ordnance restored by Grant, the companions—now including J.B.—followed Grant and Ella-Mae to the rear of the building, where a wag was waiting. Somehow, J.B. wasn’t surprised to see Esquivel at the wheel.
“Should you be risking your neck right now?” J.B. asked.
“Shit, dude, every day’s a risk of my neck.” Esquivel grinned at his friend. “Besides, if I do this, then Grant thinks he has something on me, which means he’ll be easy about me taking the sec chief post. You have to think everything around three thousand times to make sense here, right? Think I’m getting used to it.”
The companions mounted the wag and Ella-Mae went to follow.
“Where d’you think you’re going?” J.B. asked, bewildered.
“See you away safe. Don’t hit me again,” she answered.
J.B. caught Mildred’s quizzical eye, but said nothing.
Esquivel fired up the wag and left Grant standing, impassive, watching them go.
“Where are we actually headed?” Doc asked as they hit the blacktop that bisected the ville.
“Gonna ask you that myself, dude,” Esquivel replied. “Wherever you want, you got—within reason.”
J.B. knew the direction they needed to go in order to get back to the redoubt. With the secret of the lost base gone with the community of Nagasaki, all they had to do was make sure that they were left within a few hours’ walk and not followed. He instructed the sec man, who seemed bemused at driving off-road and seemingly into the middle of the desert, but trusted the man he had come to think of as a friend.
Getting past
the sec posts was easy. With Esquivel at the wheel and with the changeover in sec guard at the outlying post, it took just a few words to get them past and into the desert beyond.
They traveled for the most part in silence—the companions unwilling to give too much away in front of strangers; Esquivel concentrated on the road ahead; Ella-Mae didn’t know what to say. It was a relief when J.B. directed Esquivel to turn off the road and head across the wasteland.
They had been driving for three hours when J.B. halted the wag. He stepped out, looked at the clear sky and took his bearing by the stars.
It was the right place.
“Everyone out,” he said simply.
“Where the fuck are we?” Esquivel said as he and Ella-Mae joined the companions. “Dude, this is nowhere.”
J.B. smiled. “Yeah, but even nowhere leads somewhere. You’ll just have to trust me that we’re not wandering blind…not that you’re going to know. This is as far as you go.”
Esquivel grabbed J.B. before he had a chance to object and, despite the sec man’s wiry frame, he engaged J.B. in an embrace that the Armorer thought would pop his ribs. “Dude, you go and have a blast.”
“I will. You, too,” J.B. replied, knowing that he would probably never see this man again, and yet—despite the shared history he had with the others, but because of the memory loss—he was probably the closest friend he’d ever known.
Ella-Mae found it hard to say goodbye. She couldn’t look at the Armorer as she spoke. “You stay out of shit, yeah? ’Cause me and him won’t be there to bail you out,” she said, gesturing to Esquivel.
“But especially you,” J.B. said gently. “Now go.”
The companions watched while Esquivel and Ella-Mae got into the wag. The sec man turned it around and headed back toward the road. He didn’t wait to follow or see where they headed. He just drove.
The rear lights vanished into the dark, the black shape of the wag absorbed by the larger darkness of the wasteland.
