Motherlode

by James Axler

  Her amber eyes stared at him. From the small dark spot above her right one he reckoned she didn’t see him. Mildred glanced at him and shook her head sadly.

  Another burst rocked the wag. Ryan clenched his jaw as a bullet cracked right over his head.

  When it cut off, he came back over the top and leveled his longblaster. He got a flash sight through the scope on the blaster wag, and fired. He missed, but as he brought the weapon back down he saw the gunner duck behind the tailgate.

  It wouldn’t stop one of Ryan’s 7.62 mm slugs. But he didn’t dare waste a shot on a target he couldn’t see. Instead, having bought himself a few heartbeats to aim with, he shifted the field of view to his left.

  The loader had also flinched from the bullet, wherever it hit. But he hadn’t hidden fully the way the gunner had. Ryan lined up a shot on the dark blur of his head as somewhere to his left Sinclair let loose a burst from his BAR.

  Even as he triggered the shot Ryan saw the gunner start to rise. With machine precision he jacked the action and brought the Scout back down onto line.

  The loader was falling, shooting a fan of dark spray from what had to be a blown-out carotid. But at the edge of his circle of vision Ryan also saw the gunner hunched behind the butt-stock of his M-60.

  There was no time to line up another shot. Even as he ducked behind the rear wheel of his sheltering wag, his glass lit with the garish yellow flame of the big blaster.

  The Crazy Dog kept spraying until Ryan reckoned he meant to just saw right in through to him. Fortunately what was weighting down the wag bed did stop the bullets. Most of them—at least the ones that would’ve hit Ryan, although he did wince a bit as one ripped out through wood about eight inches to the left of his head.

  “Keep it up, prick,” he muttered. “Burn out that barrel.” Even if the Dogs had a spare it would take several minutes to change. That was one of many flaws of the M-60 design; it lacked a true quick-change barrel.

  The bullet stream cut off.

  “Burned the barrel,” Ryan heard J.B. call in satisfaction. “Stupe.”

  Ryan moved to the end of the wag before poking his blaster back around. As he did, he swapped in a new 10-round mag. The old one still had two cartridges left, if he counted true. But experience had taught him even the coolest head didn’t always count straight when the bullets were flying—and never to pass up a chance to reload.

  He saw the gunner hammering in rage on his piece even before he got the scope to his eye. Unfortunately the bulk of the slowly advancing bulldozer promptly blocked his view.

  Ryan glanced around. A kid had just rolled up a wheelbarrow from somewhere. Defenders were wrestling the still-thrashing wounded man onto it. With nothing better to do, Mildred was overseeing.

  “Dark Lady,” Sinclair called as he swapped mags in his big automatic longblaster. “Are you sure you want to do this? Can’t we at least talk to them?”

  Behind the other wag Dark Lady stood looking grim. “No,” she said.

  She gestured toward the screaming man. “Bring him,” she said, turning to walk back up the street toward the center of the ville and the Lounge.

  “Wait,” Sinclair called. “Where the nuke do you think you’re going? You running out on us?”

  The half light streaming up the street silhouetted her slim shape. Ryan saw her shoulders twitch as if she’d taken a bullet. She stopped.

  “You won’t stop them,” Dark Lady said flatly, turning. A burly male entertainer from the Lounge continued wheeling the barrow, while a sturdy townswoman walked alongside trying to keep the still-thrashing and wailing occupant from turning it over. “Not even the highly resourceful Mr. Cawdor and friends. You won’t even hold them long. I’m going to go prepare the inner defenses.”

  “What good will that do, if we can’t slow them down?” Mildred demanded.

  Dark Lady showed the ghost of a smile.

  “I believe I have a few surprises for our enemies,” she said. “Perhaps Mr. Dix and young Mr. Morales might accompany me? I have some items they may find useful.”

  “She’s right,” J.B. said. He hefted his Uzi. “We might as well be waving our di— That is, might as well be chucking rocks at that big bastard.”

  He nodded toward the bulldozer, still several hundred yards off but inexorably advancing. The Crazy Dogs and their Joker Creek sec men allies were sheltering behind it.

  “Then go,” Ryan ordered.

  “Ryan,” Mildred said, “do you trust her?”

  “You got a better idea? No? Then shut it.”

  “Here they come!” screamed the boy who’d brought the wheelbarrow.

  Ryan looked back around the end of the wag.

  A dozen motorcycles and at least three wags had appeared to the left and right of the monster machine. Winging out to either side, they accelerated toward Amity Springs.

  Yellow flames danced in the mouths of coldheart blasters.

  Chapter Twenty-Eight

  “Take them down!” Ryan shouted. They had a chance to make these bastards eat it, until and unless the coldhearts got the machine gun blazing again.

  He saw Sinclair, his face red and streaming sweat behind his ginger mustache despite the morning chill, frown at him. He wasn’t taking kindly to some outlander mercie shouting orders to him, a big dog in the ville.

  Nuke him. There was no time for pissing matches. Ryan came up over the top of the wag looking for targets.

  He found a prize one right away: an old muscle car bristling coldhearts and blasters out the cut-off top, barreling right toward him. He let himself smile as he lined up on the driver’s shaved, goggled head.

  He saw blood and brains spray even before recoil kicked his longblaster up.

  When he had the Steyr leveled again, he saw the driver’s head lolled back and a snake-ball of confusion behind him. Apparently the slug had blown through his head and hit at least one of the coldhearts behind. As the vehicle, unsteered, slewed off to his right, he put another shot right into the middle of things. Just to keep them interesting.

  To his left he heard blasters cracking from the barricade. The BAR snarled and Ryan saw a brief yellow glare light the flats. He heard wild shrieking, smelled burning gas and barbecuing flesh. Apparently the auto-blaster had lit off the fuel tank of a second Crazy Dog wag.

  There were half a dozen Amity Springs residents still behind the wag barrier, along with Ryan, Krysty, Mildred and Jak. They were all shooting at the Crazy Dogs driving fast toward them across the open. He heard what had to be other locals open up from the buildings to either side, as well.

  He noticed a coldheart out front of the others and only thirty yards away, hunched over handlebars with a cloud of dark hair streaming out from behind a goggled face. Ryan couldn’t tell if it was a man or woman, especially with the light sporadically flashing in his eyes as the speeding motorcycle bounced over land that wasn’t as dead flat as it looked. He swung the Steyr onto the rider, lined up the ghost ring iron sights beneath the scope, and fired.

  Rider and bike went down sideways. Spinning wheels gouged up a mighty spray of dirt and grass.

  The other coldhearts had had enough. They turned and sped away from the barricade, leaving half their number chilled or wounded on the cold ground. As Ryan tried to line up another shot, he saw a last fleeing rider throw up his hands and fall backward out of the saddle. His bike continued on for twenty or thirty feet before falling over.

  The defenders raised a ragged cheer, but that was the last of the good news. The dozer was barely fifty yards off, and the sec men on foot and the riders alike were sheltering behind it.

  Off to Ryan’s right of the bulldozer—the north—and several hundred yards back, a huge yellow flame bloomed and pulsated. A spray of bullets smashed into the barricade. The Crazy Dogs did have a replacement barrel—
and had managed to swap it for the ruined one.

  Rendered cautious by the fates of the original gunner and loader, the Dogs had opted to hang well back from the ville to resume fire. And this gunner was smart enough to keep his bursts short.

  “Time to go!” Ryan shouted, mostly to his own people. “Pull back and snipe the bastards! Krysty and Mildred, go south. Jak, with me!”

  “That’s right,” Sinclair shouted, firing a burst from his Browning. “Run, mercies!”

  Ryan ignored him. If he wanted to stand his ground and get chewed up by the M-60, or ground into gore-oozing paste by the Komatsu, that was his look-out.

  With Jak right on his heels Ryan raced down the street toward the center of town. He quickly saw what he was looking for and cut left into a skinny space between two frame buildings. Jak followed.

  Just in time: a burst from the machine gun cracked down the street behind their backs.

  It was the first three-story building on this edge of the ville. Or the last, depending on which way you were going. It had a rickety-looking set of stairs leading to the door. Signaling for Jak to hang in the narrow yard between it and the single-story building just west, Ryan pounded rapidly up the steps.

  At the top was a landing and a locked door. The one-eyed man didn’t like being up here in the open where the blaster man in the wag could plainly see him—if he happened to look. But the dozer was getting close to the barricade, its blade shielding its colossal engine from the defenders’ bullets, its thick hydrocarbon windshield continuing to shed them like spit droplets.

  And the M-60’s ripping bursts were starting to smash holes in the barricading wooden wags. Ryan saw a young man in canvas pants and suspenders fall backward, the front and back of his white shirt showing fist-size red stains where jacketed rounds had punched right through the plank shielding him.

  There was no time to waste. Slipping his left forearm into the loop on the shooting sling, Ryan turned and knelt, presenting his carbine over the wood rail. He’d get one shot before the machine gunner spotted him and raked his perch with blasterfire. He had to make it count.

  With practiced skill he pointed the longblaster at the distant wag. When he put his eye to his scope, the pickup was almost centered in the reticule. He saw the loader, a burly shaved-headed guy in thick gauntlets, slap the gunner’s arm frantically and point. Dead at Ryan.

  The gunner, a youthful-looking man with goggles pushed up on a wild shock of hair, looked up.

  Just in time to see the flash of the shot that sent a bullet through his forehead, a finger’s width to the right of the centerline and two fingers above his wide, astonished eye. The bullet punched a wound channel through his brain and drilled a neat hole in the back of his skull. It was still going so fast it sucked about a quarter of his brain mass right out with it before smashing into the truck’s cab.

  The driver was hard-core, Ryan had to admit. He tossed the chill out of the way and grabbed for the pistol grip of the M-60.

  He had turned clockwise. Now he turned slightly counterclockwise to work the weapon himself. As he did, Ryan’s second shot, aimed for his temple, hit the side of his bearded lower jaw right below the hinge and tore it clean out of his face.

  He dropped, covering his ruined face with both big-gloved hands. Ryan saw blood fountain between the futile fingers as he vanished from view into the bed. If he was hard-core enough to come back from that to try to take another shot at Ryan, the Deathlands warrior reckoned he’d earned it. Most likely he’d bleed out in a couple minutes.

  Anyway he was out of sight, and Ryan had more targets to mind. The wag’s passenger door opened and a skinny guy in a leather jacket open over a pale T-shirt got out and turned to face the ville. Ryan didn’t know whether he was making a move to hop in the bed and take over the blaster or simply was looking to see what was going on. He didn’t care. He put a bullet through his sternum and saw him slump as if the bones had dissolved within him—the mark of an instant chill.

  The driver slammed the wag in gear and started to drive west. For a millisecond Ryan considered letting him go, clear back to Joker Creek, if running was on his mind. But he also didn’t want the guy finding his balls again once he was out of range and circling back with yet another set of Dogs to work that damned blaster. He and the ville folk were going to have their hands more than full without having to worry about that.

  He punched a hole through the rear of the cab at about the center of the driver’s broad back. The driver jerked and his head slumped. The wag, which had barely started, slowed to a stop.

  The driver’s head lolled to the right. Since it was clearly visible, Ryan put another bullet into it. He didn’t want the driver simply playing dead.

  Then he shot out the right rear tire, just to be safe.

  “Ryan!”

  It was Jak, calling from the street. Ryan didn’t look at him—he had too good an idea what the albino was warning him about.

  Instead he pulled his head back from the glass in time to see the bulldozer slam into the wag barricade. He saw Sinclair with his full-automatic longblaster shouldered, still shooting as one wag was pushed over right on top of him.

  The remaining defenders bolted. Or tried to. One thick middle-aged man got his heel trapped as the giant machine smashed over the right-hand wag. He shrieked horribly as a wide track rolled over him.

  Ryan saw blood squirt out from beneath the tread. There was enough light it showed red.

  The sec men, at least twenty of them, began fanning out on either side of the dozer as it rolled into the ville. Sure were a lot of those bastards, even for a ville as large and populous as Baron Sand’s, Ryan thought. It occurred to him that the baron had been augmenting her sec force to respond to the growing Crazy Dog threat.

  And also that it was triple likely that more than one or two of Trumbo’s recent hires were Crazy Dogs themselves. He doubted this was a partnership that sprang into being overnight. Although naturally such betrayals were anything but uncommon when it came to the twisted power structures of villes.

  He blasted a sec man using his ghost-ring iron sights. Realizing he was exposed if they or the Dogs beginning to roll into the ville noticed the roar and flash of his powerful blaster, he slipped his arm out of the shooting loop. Holding the weapon by the front stock, he started down the wood steps.

  He heard the Komatsu’s enormous diesel engine roar. Looking around, he saw the hundred-sixty-plus tons of yellow metal and malice making straight for him.

  Quickly slinging the Steyr over his back, he vaulted the rail and crouched on the landing below.

  The smell of diesel fuel and the earthquake growl of the house-size engine filled the air around him. Wood splintered. He looked again to see the dozer’s blade clip the building just west of the one he was on. The dull-steel machine was as wide as the rad-blasted building itself.

  He could clearly see the operator through the tinted Lexan windshield. It was another burly, shaved-headed Crazy Dog, with gigantic arms sticking out of a denim vest. He and Ryan briefly exchanged looks. The coldheart grinned through a massive beard and threw the monster into lower gear for more torque.

  Building-eating torque.

  Ryan turned away to the rear of the doomed three-story structure. The dozer’s path took it right over the spot where Jak had been guarding the base of the steps. Ryan spared his friend scarcely a thought. Of all the people on the scorched, scarred Earth the wiry little albino once known and feared under the name of the White Wolf was approximately the very last to let himself get squashed by a lumbering mass of metal the size of a nuking warehouse. Ryan’s own narrow ass was plenty enough for him to worry about.

  An empty wag was parked below and behind the building in a little yard behind. It wasn’t much, but it was better than dropping the full two stories. Slightly.

  It was also something of
a jump. Ryan had motivation. As the vast blade struck the corner of the building and the stairs began to splinter beneath him, he coiled himself on the railing and sprang for all he was worth.

  * * *

  “FIREBLAST AND FUCK!”

  Even over the unbelievable din of the monster engine, and the screams and blasterfire and general Hell breaking loose, Ryan’s cry was clearly audible across the street as he made his leap for life off the collapsing structure.

  “Ryan!” Krysty cried from the open window next to Mildred.

  Mildred took aim and shot. The Crazy Dog driving his big motorcycle barely twenty feet from the window let go of the tall ape-hanger handlebars and went down. Mildred had shot him through the chest with a .38 Special slug. Whether it was a mortal wound or not, he was conscious enough to howl when the several hundred pounds of his ride crushed his left leg.

  “He’ll be fine, Krysty,” Mildred told her.

  Of course she had no way of knowing for sure whether that was true. She knew perfectly well—too well—that he was every bit as mortal as any of them, that he could get dropped at any time by a mere meaningless accident—a stray round, or just a rock turning beneath his boot at the right moment to throw him down and break his neck. Much less something like the biggest machine Mildred had ever seen smashing the very building he was standing on to matchsticks and dust bombs.

  The dust rolled across the street like a tsunami. It hid an already crazy scene: the bikers and sec men invading; the locals blasting at them from windows and alleys; the chills lying and the wounded rolling on the street, screaming.

  “Time to go, Krysty,” Mildred said. She took a quick look around. They stood in a dim parlor, sparsely furnished with mostly late-twentieth-century scavvy, yet still managing to retain a Victorian sensibility somehow. The occupants seemed to be long gone when Mildred and her taller redheaded friend ducked inside for shelter.

  “Right,” Krysty said grimly. Her heart had to be breaking for Ryan, but her jaw was set firm when Mildred glanced her way.