by James Axler
"So speaks Ben, my new lieutenant," Tant shouted. "For I am the leader now."
The collectors roared their approval, and Tant threw his crossbow at the man. The weapon landed at his feet, which were swaddled in plastic and rags in place of boots. Passing his spear to a man with a club, Ben knelt before his new leader and lifted the gore-smeared weapon with a grim reverence.
"Death to the outlanders," Ben said, bowing his head.
"Death to all!" Tant shouted, staring hatefully at the wag coming straight toward them. The vehicle hadn't attempted to swerve into the trees or stop and turn. More fools they, for this was where they would die, and that machine become his to command.
"Positions!" Tant ordered, cocking both hammers on his warm blasters.
The collectors scrambled to their pits and dropped out of sight as Ben raced into the bushes to kick at a block of wood half-hidden amid the greenery. With the block gone, a weight dropped out of sight into the ground and from the trees a barrier swung into the sky on squealing hinges and slammed down hard across the roadway. The heavy beam was a chiseled tree trunk, bristling with rusty nails and bearing the eight-sided metal disk of the tribe painted the magic colors of red and white. All travelers stopped at the sight of the sign of power.
"Hold for a toll!" Tant shouted with an amiable smile, tucking one blaster into his belt.
The wag didn't slow.
"There be muties ahead!" he added in warning, his smile dropping into a sneer. "Much danger! Death everywhere."
As if in reply, brilliant headlights flashed into operation, the beams temporarily blinding the collectors. Cursing in rage, most dropped their blasters to cover their eyes. Only a few managed to wildly fire their weapons at the invader. Fletched arrows struck the side of the vehicle, the wooden shafts shattering on the armor. A spear smashed on the turret, the glass tip exploding into glittering sparkles. Homemade bullets musically ricocheted off the chassis, leaving gray smears, and the one round that hit a tire simply sank into the resilient material and disappeared, doing no visible damage.
Then the powerful engines of the war wag revved louder, and it surged forward with renewed speed, covering the last fifty yards to the gate in only seconds. The wag smashed into the stout barrier headfirst, and the wood exploded into splinters, a rain of nails spraying from the impact.
Baring his teeth in rage, Tant stood firm and steadily fired his revolvers at the looming wag until they clicked on empty chambers. For the briefest flicker of time, Tant saw a single eye looking at him through a tiny slit in the metal hull of the incredible machine, an eye of icy blue. That was when his resolve broke, and the killer dashed for the safety of the berm, but it was already too late.
The great machine leaped forward in a surge of speed, and the prow slammed into him with the force of an avalanche. Pain filling his world, Tant dropped to the roadway and went directly underneath the juggernaut.
For an electric moment of time, he waited to be crushed flat, when Tant realized in a rush of clarity that there was space below the wag. The bottom was almost a yard off the ground! He started to laugh in relief, when the machine sharply turned and the last two wheels went straight for his head, missing his face by an inch but rolling over his left arm, mashing it flat, every bone pulverized from the colossal weight. Shrieking at the pain, Tant tried to pull away and the bottom of the wag slammed against his head, sending him into blackness. Seconds later, the sprawled body of Tant appeared behind the transport, with a small cut on his forehead and his entire right arm bloody pulp. Tears streaming from his aching eyes, Ben rushed over and shot Tant in the heart with a crossbow quarrel, making himself the new leader.
"TRIPLE STUPE BASTARDS," Ryan Cawdor muttered, easing his foot off the gas of the LAV-25 armored personnel carrier. "Guess they never saw an APC before and didn't know what it could do."
"Well, they sure know now," J. B. Dix said, tilting back his fedora as he watched the tiny outpost vanish into the distance behind them through an aft blaster port. When satisfied the danger was over, J.B. removed his finger from the trigger of his Uzi submachine gun and slung the deadly weapon over a shoulder. Lying on the deck between his boots was a bulging satchel of explosives, with a Smith & Wesson M-4000 scattergun tucked between the straps. Even in the tight confines of the APC, the Armorer never let his weapons get far away from a ready hand.
Ryan nodded in agreement as he steered the wag around a fallen tree and some large potholes. The driver's seat of the predark machine was designed for soldiers from that time period, large men loaded with lots of equipment. Ryan was barely comfortable in the chair, and his wild mane of black hair brushed against the control panel set in the ceiling directly above the Plexiglas ob port used to see outside. The man's face was seamed by a long scar, courtesy of his brother Harvey, and a crude leather patch covered his left eye. A SIG-Sauer blaster, with a built-in baffle sound suppressor, was tucked into the leather holster at his right hip, the curved handle of a panga knife jutting from its customary sheath, within easy access. Hanging nearby from hooks set into the rough metal walls were a bolt-action longblaster and a sleek AK-47 machine gun.
Sitting against the aft doors, Jak Lauren merely grunted in reply as he continued to strop a knife on a whetstone with steady strokes. The pale teenager was dressed in camou-colored military fatigues and a battered vest decorated with feathers and bits of mirror and metal sewn into the seams and collar. But that was a trick; razor blades were sewn inside the collar and any enemy grabbing him soon discovered that the hard way when they lost fingers. The youth was a true albino. His skin was dead white, and ruby-red eyes peered from a cascade of snowy hair. A massive Colt Python .357 jutted from his belt, and at least a dozen leaf-bladed throwing knives were hidden on his person.
"Fools die," Jak stated coldly, tucking away the leaf-bladed throwing knife and, like magic, another appeared in his hand. "What else new?"
"I saw wags on the side of the road," Dean Cawdor said, a Browning Hi-Power blaster held casually as he watched the horizon for any signs of pursuit. "Think they might try and come after us?"
"Those wrecks? Even if the wags worked, they'll be busy squabbling over who's in charge now that we killed their leader," J.B. stated, adjusting his wire-rimmed glasses to a more comfortable position.
"Good," Dean said, clicking the safety on his blaster with a flick of his thumb. The boy tucked the blaster into his belt. Although only eleven years old, going on twelve, Dean already carried himself with the deadly assurance of a seasoned warrior and seemed to look more like his father with every passing day.
"I just thank Gaia they thought a wooden beam would stop us," Krysty Wroth said gruffly. "Could have been a lot worse."
The shapely redhead squatted comfortably on the steps leading to the overhead turret, checking the loads in her Smith & Wesson .38. Krysty had lost the blaster in that hellish garage at Front Royal when she'd gotten caught by Overton's sec men. But J.B. had found the blaster under a bench when he'd done some work on the LAV, the weapon discarded there, apparently, by one of the blue shirts. The neat .38 handled better than the powerful .357, and she was happy to have it once again in hand.
Krysty was a beautiful woman, her complexion flawless, her abundance of fiery hair gently moving as if stirred by secret winds only she could feel.
"Those coldhearts could have smashed a hornet's nest against the side of the LAV," she continued. "And then we would have been in real trouble."
"Hornets?" Jak asked, pausing in his work.
A tall man with silver-gray hair was resting against the ammo locker and raised his head at the conversation, arching an eyebrow. "Indeed, madam, I do understand," Doc Tanner rumbled in a deep stentorian bass. "Once the nest hit us, the hornets would target our wag as an enemy and come swarming in through every blaster port and vent. Their painful stings would soon drive us outside where the others could easily slay us in the confusion."
Wearing a frilly shirt and an outlandish frock coat, the old man wo
uld have been a strange sight even in his own time period, and his resplendent crop of hair made Doc appear much older than he really was. A slim ebony swordstick was laid casually across his lap, and a massive double-barreled blaster jutted from the cavalry gun belt around his waist. The Civil War museum piece seeming incongruous with the rest of his dapper attire.
Krysty gestured with an open palm. "Old trick," she said. "My mother used it often against the big muties."
The old man pulled a few inches of shiny steel blade from within the ebony stick, then slammed the sword back into its sheath. "Deuced clever, I must admit."
Ryan glanced over his shoulder at Krysty. "Hornets," he said after a while. "Glad you're on our side, lover. That would work even better on folks in an open cart, or on horseback."
"Pretty good," Jak agreed, tucking away his whetstone.
Biting off a piece of beef jerky, Dr. Mildred Wyeth chewed and swallowed the mouthful before speaking. A stocky black woman with bright, intelligent eyes, her lightweight denim jacket was unbuttoned, showing a heavy flannel shirt and a gun belt supporting a sleek target pistol, the ammo loops on the side of the belt filled with oily brass cartridges. A rare predark field-surgery kit holding medical supplies lay protectively between her boots, the canvas lovingly patched here and there.
"For some reason, that reminds me of a war story I once heard," the physician said. "Way back before skydark, some nation, I forget which, sent a battalion of their best tanks into northern Africa to establish a supply base for their troops. They expected little resistance from the locals as the farmers had almost no technology. They carried stone knives and went hunting with blowguns. It was supposed to be a slaughter, and it was. But for the other side."
Both hands steady on the steering levers, Ryan barked one of his rare laughs. "So the tanks got destroyed, eh? Good for the Africans."
"How?" Dean asked curiously, resting both elbows on his knees and leaning forward. Mildred and Doc came from before skydark and knew all sorts of things. Some of the information was useful for staying alive, but some was just fun to hear about—wild stories about things like airplanes and supermarkets.
Wrapping the remaining piece of jerky in a clean handkerchief, Mildred tucked the dried meat into a pocket for later. For once, they had plenty of supplies. Front Royal had given them all the food, fuel and ammo they could carry for this trip. Their mission was too important to chance failure over a can of beans or a handful of bullets. But as her Baptist minister father drilled into her as child, waste not, want not. Life in the radioactive hell of Deathlands was bitterly harsh, and every morsel of food saved could mean another day of life.
"How did they stop the invasion of armored tanks? Simple, really," she answered. "The locals would run away from the tanks, carefully luring them near the edge of a high cliff. Then when the tank was in the right position, hunters hidden in the bushes would use blowguns to shoot a poisoned dart into the tiny slots in the armor that the drivers used to see through. Blind and paralyzed, the soldiers couldn't change course, and the massive machines would roll off the cliff and smash to pieces when they hit the bottom."
"A veritable David-versus-Goliath story," Doc rumbled in wry amusement. "Good for the hunters."
Dean stole a glance at his father. "So the fancier the tech, the easier it is to smash," the boy concluded.
"Usually," Ryan answered, busy driving. "But not always, son."
"Everything has a weak point, but sometimes Goliath still wins," J.B. added, pulling a fat cigar from the breast pocket of his jacket and placing it in the corner of his mouth. "Sad but true."
"Ahem," Mildred said, leaning forward in her seat until almost touching noses with the man. "It smells quite bad enough in here with seven sweaty people packed like sardines. We don't need you adding to the pollution by smoking a hundred-year-old cigar."
"This is a brand-new one," J.B. retorted, pulling the stogie free and gesturing. "Hand rolled on the thighs of expert virgins exclusively for the baron of Front Royal himself!"
Everybody in the APC burst into laughter.
"My dear John Barrymore," Doc chuckled. "Expert virgins?"
"Nice work if you can get it," Krysty said, smiling.
As the military transport easily rolled over a low hill, Ryan merely snorted as he shifted gears.
"Didn't mean it that way," J.B. said with a frown.
"Horseshit," Jak scoffed.
Quizzically, J.B. took a sniff. "Seems to be mostly tobacco," he said slowly. "But yeah, I think there's a little horse in here, too."
"Also makes your breath taste awful," Mildred added softly.
J.B. winked at the physician and tucked the cigar away. "Don't want that, do we?"
Blushing slightly, Mildred started to add something, but was cut off when the wag jounced over some rough ground and the companions were nearly thrown from their seats. Desperately, the friends grabbed for anything welded solidly to the frame of the APC. The interior of the LAV-25 had been badly damaged by fire when its prior owners died, and the seat belts were only ashen smudges on the bare metal skeletons of the wall seats. Layers of blankets cushioned the seat struts enough for them to sit on for long periods, but every serious pothole threatened to throw them to the floor.
"Need rope," Jak muttered, releasing his grip on the belt of linked 25 mm rounds going into the electric cannon in the turret. "Make belts."
"Good idea," Dean said, massaging a bruised elbow. "But we already used it all tying our extra supplies to the outside."
"Hold on to your ass harder," J.B. suggested with a grin.
Extracting herself from a jumble of fallen supplies, Krysty ducked around the ammo belt feeding the machine gun and walked to the front of the wag. "Have we lost the road?" she asked, resting a slim hand on the back of the chair in an effort to stay upright.
"Ten miles ago," Ryan answered brusquely, concentrating on the task of driving. A strange rustling noise came from the outside as the LAV plowed through some bushes. "We're crossing a field at present, heading straight for a blast crater. J.B., give me a rad count!"
Quickly, the man checked the predark device pinned to his collar. "No rads," he reported. "Must have been a clean bomb."
"Clean?" Doc asked in surprise.
Reclaiming her seat, Mildred answered, "The isotopes used have a short half-life. There would be no residual radiation remaining after only a few years."
"Clean," Jak snorted. "Right."
Dean pressed his face to a defensive blaster port and saw only a rippled expanse of glass stretching in every direction. "Must have been a big nuke."
"No such thing as a small nuclear blast," Ryan stated.
Curiously, the boy studied the unearthly landscape surrounding the APC and tried to imagine what the area was like before everything was vaporized in a microsecond flash. Had there been a thriving city here, or a military complex? Or was this a lost strike, a bomb that missed its target and destroyed only woods and fields? There was no way to ever know. Nothing remained but the solid slab of slightly bluish glass, the soil fused crystalline from the extreme heat of the hellish detonation. Distorted objects were almost visible within the translucent material, broken buildings forever trapped in the middle of toppling over, and some charred human figures who would spend eternity desperately trying to swim to the surface of the solidified pool.
The boy turned away from the blaster port, lost in thought. None of the other companions spoke, the sterile vista outside affecting even these hardened warriors. Hours passed with a low hum filling the wag from the tires under the vehicle as the APC raced across the wide expanse of the cracked glass lake. Only the soft crackle of static from the radio marred the near silence. The electronic device had been salvaged from the ruins of another APC, and since it was tuned to the command channel of the blue shirts—the invading force at Front Royal—Ryan brought the radio along just in case. But with the heavy blanket of decaying isotopes in the planetary atmosphere, even the most powerful radio t
ransmitters had a range of only a mile. Nearly useless, but it took up little space.
Shifting gears, Ryan guided the APC up a sharp incline and off the fused soil onto dead earth, not even weeds growing from the gray, sterilized soil. Slowly, over the miles, streaks of dark earth reached into the dead zone, and soon tufts of grass dotted the land. Trundling through a shallow river, the LAV broached some gentle rolling hills, and soon the black ribbon of an ancient road was visible in spots through the dense covering of weeds.
"Get hard, people!" Ryan ordered, downshifting so their speed was more manageable. "We're past the crater, so Shiloh must be close."
With trained ease, the companions prepared their weapons, sliding off safeties and making sure spare ammo was available. Jak climbed into the turret of the APC and checked the action of the 25 mm cannon, while Doc took the gunner's spot and readied the 7.62 mm ultrafast chain gun.
"Gaia, I hate crossing nuke craters," Krysty muttered, unwrapping some tape from the handle of a gren and placing the live charge in the pocket of her shaggy coat.
"Bad vibrations from all the death?" Mildred asked, closing the cylinder of her Czech ZKR Olympic target pistol. The physician knew that Krysty could sometimes perceive things beyond the usual five senses of other people. Her early warnings of unseen danger had saved their lives more than once.
"Just the opposite," Krysty said. "I can't feel anything in those cursed areas. Absolutely and completely nothing."
"Sort of like going blind," Mildred suggested.
Krysty nodded and gave a shiver. "Very much so, yes."
Glancing at a map taped to the wall, Ryan followed the ancient road to a lush forest of trees. Turning eastward, he started a long sweep around the obstruction until reaching a wide field. He braked to a halt, but didn't turn off the engines, and for a few minutes, the companions studied the area carefully with weapons in hand. A few hundred yards ahead of them, the ground seemed to stop abruptly, and beyond was the limitless vista of the open sea. The sound of distant waves breaking on a rocky shore could be faintly heard over the rumble of the engines.
