by James Axler
J.B. brought his map close to his face, squinting in the bright light. “Remember Chicago? It’s about four hundred miles away, if the roads hold up.” He held the map out to Ryan. “We cross the state, should be there in four or five days, depending on what lies between us and it.”
“What about mutie women there?” Jak piped up, his mane of hair restrained by a green army cap that shaded his sensitive eyes from the sun.
Ryan grinned at the mention of the underground tribe they’d encountered on their last trip through the nuked city. “I think we’ll have something to dissuade them if they make a play for anyone again. Come on. I want to show you all something.”
It took all of Ryan’s, Krysty’s and Mildred’s efforts to heave the large garage door up enough for them to be able to drive a vehicle out underneath.
Although J.B. had been improving rapidly, the sight of the military vehicles ignited a fire that Ryan was all too familiar with. Adjusting his spectacles, the smaller man wandered up and down the rows created by the parked troop carriers and off-road vehicles, his lips moving soundlessly as he studied olive-drab profiles, weapons systems and mysterious acronyms.
After ten minutes, he emerged, blinking owlishly in the sunlight. “Well, all these were stored pretty well, for what it’s worth. Like to get one of the bigger ones out, but I’m not sure it’ll run. Otherwise, there’s the four-wheel model there, a LAV 150 Commando, that would do the job, especially since it’s amphibious, so we can ford any smaller streams we might come across. It’s only supposed to hold a crew of three, plus two more, so it’ll be a bit cramped, but we’ll manage.”
The rest of the day was spent jockeying the other vehicles out of the cavernous storage area to get at the larger vehicle—a LAV 300, J.B. called it—and see if they could get it running. Unfortunately, the electrical system was shot. No matter what J.B. tried—charging the battery, replacing fuses—the large machine’s engine refused to turn over.
“Too bad. That would have been riding in style. Well, let’s try the Commando tomorrow.”
On that one they had better luck. J.B. spent the evening sipping broth and reading the thick manual, then Ryan and he took most of the morning to go over the engine, changing the oil, checking the spark plugs and making sure its fuel was good before trying to fire it up. The rumble of the gas engine split the hot silence outside, its exhaust belching white smoke that quickly dissipated in the still afternoon air.
“Let’s take her for a spin.” J.B. climbed into the driver’s seat while Ryan took the commander’s position. As he passed the gunner’s station, he noticed a joystick control and small monitor there. “Hey, haven’t we seen this before?”
J.B. glanced back, and his lips split in a rare smile. “Yeah, I was gonna show you that in a bit. Now buckle up.”
Ryan eased himself into the commander’s seat, then J.B. depressed the clutch, shifted into gear, eased the Gas down and got the Commando rolling. The steering was stiff at first, but as the amphibious ground car warmed up, J.B. was able to turn the wheel with less effort. The engine sounded surprisingly good, but he drove it in a large circle, then back to the front of the garage, where he let it idle for a minute before turning it off.
“Well, that should get us most of the way there, at least. It’s got a range of four hundred miles, and we’ll bring extra gas, but who knows what the terrain is like between here and there. Figure we’ll head out at first light tomorrow?”
“Yeah, use the rest of the day to load up and smoke the rest of that venison. Now, what’s this device you’re gonna show me?”
J.B. scrambled out of the driver’s seat and into the gunners, moving as spry as a kid with his first blaster. Ryan settled back, ready for a torrent of words to spill forth on the only subject that got J.B. excited—munitions.
“This little number’s called the XM101 Common Remotely Operated Weapons System, or CROWS for short. Basically, instead of a manually operated turret, where your shooter has to view their targets by eyeball, this system lets you acquire your target, rangefind and shoot from the comfort of your armored cockpit.”
J.B. grasped the joystick and moved it to the left, then the right. Above them, Ryan heard a mechanical whirring as something moved on the roof. J.B. turned on the small LCD screen, which flared to life and showed the desolate landscape outside. “The camera is independently mounted from the blaster, so you can be tracking someone, but it can be pointed in a different direction. Less chance of scaring whoever you’re looking at that way.”
Ryan snorted. “Yeah, that option comes up so often out here.”
“Well, at least you can watch your target before deciding to reduce them to a bloody smear. The gunner has full 360 viewing capability—eyes in the back of his head. It can also elevate to a sixty-degree angle, and decline to a twenty-degree angle, giving us a fantastic field of fire. But that isn’t even the best part.”
“Oh?”
J.B. flipped up a bright red switch cover, revealing a bright red switch underneath. He flipped it up, and a gunsight appeared on the screen, zeroing in on the leafless tree trunk. A number appeared in the upper right hand corner—43.71 yards—and the crosshairs flashed from red to green.
J.B. pressed the large trigger mounted on the front of the joystick, and a loud, rumbling burst erupted from the top of the vehicle. Ryan pressed his hands to his ears, but as soon as the cacophony had begun, it was over. Checking the screen, he found the tree had simply vanished. The waist-thick trunk had been blown into thousands of splinters, leaving only a jagged couple of feet of stump.
The Armorer’s grin stretched from ear to ear. “The main weapon is the GAU-4 gas-operated Vulcan 20 mm rotary cannon. With a fire rate of 4000 rounds per minute and a range of at least three thousand yards, it’s more than a match for any small to medium group we may encounter. It’s devastating at close range, as you just saw. I just have to refill the hundred or so rounds I just used in that two-second burst.”
Ryan still hadn’t taken his eyes off the screen, and what was left of the tree. One second it had been there, the next it had disintegrated into toothpicks. “Just the thing to keep us covered on our drive through the countryside, you think?”
“Exactly.”
Ryan made sure the rest of the group spent most of the day packing whatever they needed to head out at first light the next day. From Jak creating replacement throwing knives on a grinder in a small workshop to caching extra gas and water—and being careful not to mix the two up—to Mildred creating small packs of vitamin pills and practically ordering everyone to take them, everyone made sure they were ready to roll come morning.
After dinner, Ryan and Krysty took this last opportunity to get a little privacy by moving into one of the empty quarters. They had actually gotten the idea from J.B. and Mildred, who had slipped away earlier in the evening.
With full bellies and a pleasant, relaxed sense of security for once, their lovemaking had been slow and enjoyable. Krysty had taken the lead, straddling Ryan so that she rose above him like a glorious, nude Valkyrie, her dark red hair tumbling freely around her shoulders, just brushing the tops of her breasts. Ryan had filled his hands for several minutes, then moved on to other parts until they were both panting and satiated.
Afterward, he spooned with her on a pair of bunk beds they had pushed together for just this purpose.
“Haven’t felt this good in a while, lover,” she murmured sleepily.
“Mmm. Always best to enjoy the good times while you can. They’re usually over all too quick.” Ryan kissed her on the cheek, then allowed himself to drift off to sleep, for once unfettered by dark dreams or ominous thoughts of tomorrow.
Chapter Fifteen
The next morning dawned clear, bright and hot. The sky had turned a darker purple overnight, but the clouds had disappeared, leaving clear, violet emptiness stretching all the way to the horizon. No breeze stirred the grass, promising a hot afternoon inside the war wag.
While J.B. plo
tted their route, Ryan assigned positions. “Jak, take the front blaster. Krysty, you’re on the back. A two hour shift, then I’ll replace Jak, and, Mildred, you’ll spell Krysty. Doc, I want you to be ready to take over either position if necessary. The blasters are simple enough, we’re running with them loaded and ready, so just point and shoot. No air conditioning, but we got a wide enough field of vision and fire that we should be able to run with the hatches open, so it won’t get too hot.”
Jak turned his head and spit. “Bastard oven inside.”
“Better than walking in this heat.”
The albino nodded, his eyes straying to the black 20 mm cannon mounted in the squat turret.
“Not today, son, that’s J.B.’s post. Mebbe you’ll get a chance at it later.”
Jak crossed his arms. “Who drive?”
“For the first stretch, me. Then we’ll see.”
For a moment, Jak looked as if he was going to push the issue, but then he shrugged, feigning disinterest, and turned back to the armored vehicle.
“All right, everyone got everything?”
“I daresay, Ryan, you have the interior packed so tight a body can scarcely wedge himself inside,” Doc called from the entry hatch.
Ryan had crammed every kind of trade good he could think of, from clothing to ammunition to spices, into every storage space, nook, cranny he could find. “Yeah, it’s tight, but I figure we’ll be better off trading our way along than trying to intimidate our way through.”
The one-eyed man had checked the redoubt door one last time. “Yeah, she’s sealed tight. Time to ride.” He walked past the remains of the giant deer he’d shot a few days earlier, now just large, white bones covered with gnaw marks and dried scraps of meat, bleaching in the sun.
After everyone else had got themselves situated more-or-less comfortably, Ryan swung up and into the already warm, cramped crew compartment, twisting himself around to fit into the driver’s seat. As he did so, he dislodged a small container of pepper, which fell onto the floor and almost skittered under the seat before he stopped it with a boot.
“All this crap better be worth it,” J.B. commented from the gunner’s chair, surrounded by bundles of rolled-up fatigue pants and shirts.
Ryan didn’t bother to reply, but hit the ignition button, the engine’s roar splitting the early morning silence. “All right, where to?”
J.B. bent over a paper map of the region he’d found in one of the redoubt offices. He’d spent much of the previous night carefully laminating it with one of the several hundred rolls of vacuum-sealed clear plastic tape he’d uncovered in a storeroom. “The main gate is about a mile due south, just take something called W. Thirteenth Avenue, and keep bearing right. It leads to State Highway 21, which, if still intact, will take us to road I-90, which will take us southeast toward what’s left of what was the state capital—Madison—and then farther on to another large city, Mil-wauk-ee.”
“Milwaukee?” Mildred piped up. “Home of the Brewers and Miller Beer. Back in the seventies and eighties people called it the armpit of America—or was that Cincinnati?”
“I doubt we’ll be going there, since we’ll be heading more southeast, but let’s get off this base first before thinkin’ about sightseeing.” Putting the heavy vehicle in gear, Ryan let out the clutch and stepped on the Gas, slowly moving them out. The engine sounded as if it was in fairly good condition, but he proceeded forward slowly, keeping it at a steady thirty-five miles per hour.
As they approached where J.B. said the gate was, they saw more collapsed shells of buildings, picked over by time and scavengers until nothing but metal skeletons remained. Ryan drove down a wide thoroughfare, which could have held another two Commandos side-by-side, until they came to the remains of a large metal gate. Bare metal fence posts stretched into the distance on both sides. Except for the rumbling engine, nothing else nearby made a sound.
Ryan turned the wheel left and shifted, the large tires humming on the ancient pavement as they picked up speed. The wind stirred by their passage blew through the small ob ports, providing much-needed breeze. J.B. kept the turret moving, scanning the horizon ahead for any sign of trouble. Ryan didn’t need to check with Jak or Krysty. He knew they’d sing out at the first sign of anything strange.
“Place called Tomah comin’ up, where we join the highway,” J.B. called out to Ryan. “Couple miles ahead.”
Sure enough, less than ten minutes later the skyline of a small town appeared on the horizon. “Button up,” Ryan called out, hearing the clanks of hatches being closed. “Everyone look sharp.”
“Bridge crossing ahead—it’s manned.” J.B. said right afterward.
“We go in slow and easy, see what kind of reception we get.” Ryan downshifted to first, slowing the vehicle to about twenty miles an hour until he was within a half mile of the bridge, then he slowed to ten miles an hour and drove forward until he was sure they had all of the guards’ attention.
Bridges were a common toll point in the Deathlands, with villes often springing up on one side or the other of the natural barrier. An existing crossing was often the only one for dozens or even hundreds of miles in either direction, with hundreds of others having succumbed to the steady ravages of time or men. The communities near a bridge guarded and maintained it in exchange for a barter price, which Ryan and his companions were about to try to negotiate.
About one hundred yards away, Ryan brought the Commando to a stop and scanned their potential enemies. The guards in this case were patchwork militia, any able-bodied man and boy old enough to point a blaster pulling duty, about a dozen in all. They were armed with a bewildering variety of weapons, from battered hunting rifles, shotguns and homemade hand-blasters to melee weapons, including a pitchfork, with one even carrying a gleaming scythe. Everyone looked tense and ready for action—although Ryan knew they could have just mowed them down with the Commando without a shot, as nothing the guards carried could penetrate the war wag’s armor. That was probably the only reason bullets weren’t spanging off their ride just yet—they hadn’t moved to attack just yet, so the guards were waiting for a more diplomatic approach.
At least, Ryan hoped that’s what they were waiting for.
“J.B., where’s that cannon pointing?”
“I got it aimed off the left and pointing down. Hopefully they’ll think it’s out of order.”
“Good. Jak, you ready?”
“Good field fire. Take half down one burst.”
“Keep your finger near, but not on that trigger unless I say so, you hear?”
“Yeah.”
Ryan pushed up the top hatch and poked his head out, being careful to drop back down at a moment’s notice. “Hello the bridge!”
One man stepped forward, a scoped longblaster held at port arms. “Hello, outlanders!”
“Like to cross. What’s the toll?”
“Trade only, what kin y’offer?”
Ryan took a moment before answering, as if checking. “Got ammo, some tools, clothes, spices.”
The man in front didn’t react, but the line rippled in murmured wonder as the men whispered among themselves. The leader half turned and silenced them with a look. “We can barter. Ya mind comin’ out to talk, mebbe bring a bit o’ what yer carryin’?”
There was the crux of it. If these guards were cold-hearts looking to profit from any outlanders, then Ryan and anyone who came with him were targets to be taken hostage or killed for the wag, which was priceless. If they were decent men just looking to protect their ville, then there shouldn’t be a problem, but still…
“Yeah, we can talk, but know this—I got more people in here, and we’ll be covered by the wag’s blasters, including this one.”
At Ryan’s words, the 20 mm cannon came to life, the six barrels elevating and swiveling over to point directly at the line. He saw several men ready their weapons, and one teenager even raised his rifle to his shoulder before the leader barked a sharp command. As one, the group set their
weapons back to port arms, even those holding the close-combat ones.
“Fair enough, but y’all know this—if’n ya kill us, you’ll never cross the bridge.”
Ryan raised an eyebrow at that, but shrugged. “All right then, you and one other representative come out halfway, and me and one of mine’ll meet you there.” He dropped down through the hatch, locking it behind him. “Krysty, let’s go. Mildred, take the rear blaster. Everyone else, watch for my signals.”
The two women exchanged places without a word, and Ryan popped the side hatch and slid through it, then turned to see if Krysty needed a hand, which she didn’t, slipping outside with her usual limber grace.
Ryan grabbed a selection of goods from the wag and distributed them between himself and Krysty, then they headed out. Being outside was a pleasant change from the already stifling interior of the wag. A breeze had kicked up that ruffled through Ryan’s curly hair, cooling the sweat on the back of his neck as they approached the other pair.
As he came closer, Ryan saw the ville speaker appeared relatively clean-cut, with a neatly trimmed brown beard and hair, rather than the often-bushy growth many men favored. The man, who looked to be approaching the near side of middle age, carried the longblaster as if he knew how to use it, but although Ryan’s hands were full, he was pretty sure he could drop the stuff he was carrying, draw and shoot the guy before he could fire.
They met in the road, halfway between the two sides. The man nodded in greeting, neither hand leaving his weapon. The other man held a rusty revolver, but it was also out and readied, carried in front of his chest.
As he’d figured, both men’s eyes widened when they saw Krysty. With J.B. manning the cannon, and Jak’s unusual appearance, Doc’s shaky mental state, and Mildred’s often sharp tongue rendering each of them unsuitable for the task at hand, Krysty was the best partner he could ask for at the moment, especially when bargaining with men.
