Gaia's Demise

by James Axler

  "Clear," Jak said from the turret.

  "Clear," Doc agreed.

  Waiting another minute, Ryan finally turned off the engines and silence filled the transport. Rising from the chair, the one-eyed warrior took his Steyer longblaster from the wall and worked the bolt, chambering a round for immediate use. "Jak, stay where you are and cover us in case of trouble. When we move out, I'll be on point. Dean, stay with Mildred, Krysty, then Doc. J.B., take rearguard."

  Leaning the rifle against a stack of crates, Ryan worked the slide on his SIG-Sauer 9 mm pistol and holstered the deadly blaster. "Stay sharp," he ordered, reclaiming his rifle. "This is just a recce, not a stand-up fight like at the caves. Keep a two-yard spread, and no noise. Overton's blue shirts could be close, and we want to take them by surprise."

  "Ready?" J.B. asked, jerking back the bolt of his Uzi. "Go," Ryan said.

  J.B. unlocked the aft double doors and kicked them open. The armored slabs swung aside on squealing hinges, and a wealth of fresh air poured into the vehicle. Hopping to the ground, J.B. gratefully stretched his legs as he listened to the sounds of life. Crickets were chirping, and a bird sang softly. Good—their presence meant there were no big predators.

  The rest of the companions watched from the blaster ports, the barrels of their weapons sticking out of the APC like porcupine quills. Satisfied there was no immediate danger, J.B. slung the Uzi over a shoulder and pulled the minisextant from under his shirt. Centering the mirror on the dim sun, he cut the horizon in two, adjusting the focus with tiny movements until satisfied. "This is Shiloh, North Carolina," he stated, tucking the device away.

  "Good." Ryan stepped to the ground and the men moved away to clear the way for the rest of the companions. The last person exiting, Dean closed the double doors and heard Jak bolt them from the inside.

  Sweeping across the field in a standard search pattern, the companions found nothing of interest, which annoyed and disappointed them at the same time.

  "Any signs of military traffic?" Ryan asked, feeling the tension of expected battle flow from his body. "Campfires, spent shells in the grass, a used latrine?"

  "No signs of anything," J.B. answered, tugging his fedora down tight as protection from the wind.

  Going to the edge of the field, Mildred found herself looking down at the ruins of a predark city partially covered with sand dunes. The beaches were festooned with driftwood and seaweed, and the ragged stumps of concrete pillions—the decaying remains of a once mighty seaport—jutted from the waves like the broken teeth of a sunken corpse. A telephone pole without wires rose from a sand dune, its crossbars filled with bird nests. Off by itself, a rusty stop sign waggled in the gusting wind.

  Overhead, the purple sky was slashed with streaks of fiery orange, black clouds racing by as if moved by private hurricanes. Sheet lightning flashed, and distant thunder rumbled in natural majesty above the rattling stop sign.

  The other companions joined Krysty at the edge of the cliff, and scowled at the ruins below.

  "Son of a bitch. You sure this is the right place?" Ryan demanded gruffly.

  Behind the companions, the main engine of the predark wag ticked softly as the metal slowly cooled. Then the top hatch of their armored vehicle squealed open on stubborn hinges, and Jak rose into view. Even with the armor and weapons of the Bradley APC surrounding him, Jak was clearly uneasy amid this desolation.

  The youth said nothing, but his expression was one of intense scorn.

  "This isn't their base," Krysty stated, lowering her blaster. "This isn't the home ville of anybody."

  "Obviously, madam," Doc announced lugubriously, easing down the hammer of his gigantic LeMat pistol. "Nobody resides at this location but ghosts, and mayhap a few sand crabs. It is a simple village returned to its primordial state, with nary a humble cottage remaining to be balanced by a river's brim."

  "Walt Whitman?" Mildred asked, squinting, thumbs hooked into her gun belt.

  "No. Me," the man said, smiling broadly. "Just me this time."

  Removing his hat, J.B. grimaced as he smoothed the brim. "Crap," he announced. "There's not a blaster or a war wag in sight, and the blues were lousy with pre-dark military supplies. Seemed like Overton had more weapons than Wizard Island and the Anthill combined!"

  Dean scratched his head. "Mebbe this is the wrong Shiloh," the boy suggested. "We knew it wasn't the one in Virginia because that town got nuked in skydark."

  "Could be the Civil War battleground we once visited in The Smokies," Mildred offered. "There's even a redoubt nearby, the one with all the tunnels. That could be where they're getting the weapons and wags from."

  "Makes sense," Ryan said, nosily sucking on a hollow tooth. "But Tennessee is a mighty long way from Front Royal. If their home base is there, why choose a ville in Virginia as their capital city?"

  "A diversion," J.B. stated, as if it were obvious. "Or mebbe Overton lied."

  Mildred fiercely shook her head. "No way. He was in too much pain to be inventive. The home base of the people who attacked Front Royal is someplace named Shiloh. That we can count on as a fact."

  The salty breeze from the Lantic felt good on his skin as Ryan stepped closer to the cliff for a better view. He heard a stick snap under his boots. Only the noise sounded more metallic than wooden.

  "Everybody freeze," he ordered softly.

  The companions went motionless, straining to detect any possible dangers. The field was empty, and nothing could be heard but the waves on the beach below.

  "Now listen to me very carefully. Back away from the cliff and only step in the exact same spots you did getting here," Ryan continued in a deceptively calm voice. His heart was pounding in his chest, and suddenly his palms were damp with sweat.

  "What's wrong?" Dean asked, worried. His father looked so strange, every muscle was straining, yet he was poised as if in the middle of walking.

  Not daring to even turn his head, Ryan spoke to the ocean. "I just stepped on a land mine."

  Chapter Two

  Dropping the Uzi, J.B. lay flat on his belly and crawled closer to the motionless man. Gently parting the autumn grass, he saw a low swell in the soil under Ryan's boot.

  "Dark night, you're right!" J.B. whispered. "Now stay calm, and don't move. If it hasn't gone off yet, it's not a TD or fire-string."

  "Explain that to me later." Ryan felt the ground give slightly under his weight. "Hurry. The cliff is giving way."

  Sliding his knife from its sheath, J.B. started quickly trimming away the grass and soon had a clear view of the mechanism. It was a fat disk with handles and a low cylinder rising from the middle topped with a simple pressure switch.

  "Everybody get behind the LAV," J.B. ordered. "It's a Bouncing Betty."

  Watching where they stepped, the others retreated to a safe distance and climbed back into the LAV.

  "Hope the hull will stop a Betty," Krysty said, as she flipped up the driver's hatch and stood on the seat to see outside.

  Doc climbed into the turret and did the same with the auxiliary hatch. Dean wiggled up there with him and squinted into the distance at the men on the cliff.

  "What's a Betty?" the boy asked nervously.

  Bent over, watching through a blaster port, Mildred said, "The worst type of land mine," she replied. "If any of the damn things can be called good. This type will blow off your father's leg with the first explosion, then a secondary charge will heave the mine a yard into the air and a third charge will spray out a ring of steel bearings. Cut a dozen men in two at fifty yards. It's designed not to kill, but to maim."

  "Gotta be Overton," the boy growled, his hand going white on the rim of the hatch. "Who else has predark weapons like that?"

  Krysty glanced at the turret. "Agreed. We walked straight into a trap. This was the perfect location to recce the ruins of Shiloh, and they knew it. Those blue shirts of his must have gambled we would go check the place and planted some mines here just in case."

  "Bastards!" Jak spit.
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  "Clever bastards," Mildred corrected, licking dry lips.

  Minutes passed with only the steady ocean wind blowing over the field, and J.B. cursing as he worked on the mine.

  "Well?" Ryan asked, his heart pounding in his chest. The Deathlands warrior had faced death a hundred times, but this was unclean somehow, cowardly. They sometimes used booby traps, but they were always designed to kill enemies, not mutilate. Was this revenge for what he had done to Overton? No, that made no sense. It was impossible for them to know who would step on the mine. Just the luck of the draw it was him, nothing more.

  "Don't rush me," J.B. whispered, probing the mechanism with homemade tools—a coiled spring from a pen and a piece of stiff wire from a coat hanger.

  Sweat trickling down his face, Ryan thought of how he sometimes teased J.B. about the oddball bits of junk the Armorer gathered in their journeys. He would never do that again.

  Wiping off his face with the back of a hand, J.B. grunted something to himself and finally stood alongside the trapped man.

  "Well, old buddy, I've got good news and bad news," J.B. said while drawing his scattergun and working the pump action, ejecting live shells until it was empty. "I can get you free, and the primary charge won't go off."

  Ryan knew what that meant. "But the other two will."

  The man nodded as he slid in fresh shells, simple buckshot instead of the usual flesh-shredding alloy flechettes. "So when you move, hit the ground to get under the spray."

  "And the scattergun is going to buy us some yardage." It wasn't a question.

  J.B. lay on his belly and aimed the S&W M-4000 at Ryan's partially raised combat boot. "Best idea I got. You ready?"

  An insane laugh bubbled up from inside and Ryan couldn't stop himself from chuckling. "I have a choice?"

  "Nope."

  "Then I'm ready. Now." Moving like lightning, Ryan dived to the left.

  He was still airborne when the ground burst apart with a soft thump and the deadly mine leaped skyward. Instantly, J.B. triggered the scattergun, the blast slamming the land mine far over the edge of the cliff. Half a heartbeat later, the device violently detonated, and a hissing sound filled the air from the passage of the bearings. The half ring of trees along the clearing shook madly, leaves and branches tumbling to the ground in a cascade of destruction, along with the occasional bird and squirrel. Bloody feathers and bits fur were all that remained of the minced bodies.

  The reverberations of the blast echoed for a few moments, then silence returned—dead silence without a bird singing or a cricket chirping.

  "Thanks," Ryan said as he rose from the ground.

  "Easy as pie," J.B. said, standing and dusting off his clothes. The Armorer kicked a clump of earth with his boot and watched it disappear over the edge of the cliff. "However, if that had been a PMR-2, or a Valamora…" He left the thought unfinished.

  Ryan grunted in acknowledgment. "Let's go."

  With extreme care, the two men retraced their steps to the APC, watching the ground closely, placing the toe of each boot into the heel mark of the footprint they made walking to the cliff. As they neared the wag, Krysty stuck her head out of the top hatch and whistled sharply. The men jerked their heads upward, and watched as she raised an open hand with the fingers splayed, then closed it into a fist. She then tapped her wrist twice with one finger.

  "Company coming," J.B. whispered, working the bolt on his Uzi as quietly as he could.

  Ryan nodded, leveling his longblaster. "And fast. We better chance running the last yards. Go!"

  Sprinting forward, the men raced around the LAV. In the open doorway, Mildred and Doc waited with weapons poised and stepped out of the way as the two men scrambled inside just as they all heard the soft noise of a gasoline engine from the trees.

  "There were voices on the radio," Krysty announced from the driver's seat as Ryan closed the aft doors and J.B. slammed home the locking bolt. "Somebody must have heard the land mine go off and sent out sec men on a recce."

  "Kill the engines and play dead," Ryan directed, sliding the barrel of his Steyr out a blaster port. "Let's see who it is before we do anything. Jak, man the cannon. Dean, the chain gun."

  Everybody moved quickly, and the rumblings of the diesel engines died away just as a Hummer packed with armed men rolled into view through the bushes. All of them were wearing blue shirts and carrying AK-47 assault rifles. At the sight of the APC sitting in the field, the driver slammed on the brakes, nearly losing several of the sec men.

  "Hey, Sarge, is that one of our wags?" a blue shirt asked, puzzled.

  "Shit, no! It's a bunch of ours put back together!" answered the driver in horror.

  "Ryan," a burly sec man cursed. Ammo belts for a machine gun were draped across his chest like bandoliers, and he was cradling a massive M-60 machine rifle. "It must be that bastard Ryan."

  "Cawdor? Black dust, let's get the fuck out of here before he returns!"

  "Yeah, sure," the driver said, lifting a rocket launcher into view from the empty front seat. "Let's blow it to hell first."

  As the sec man leveled the rocket launcher, a sharp crack came from the APC and he toppled over with most of his head gone, blood everywhere. The LAW hit the dirt and rolled away into the weeds.

  The big sergeant pushed the dead man from the Hummer and, loudly grinding gears, he slammed the Hummer into reverse. The blue shirts behind him wildly fired their assault rifles, the 7.62 mm rounds ricocheting harmlessly off the hull of the APC.

  "Alive?" Jak asked, jerking back the arming bolt on the belt-fed cannon.

  "Fuck them," Ryan snarled, firing his longblaster out the aft blaster port again.

  Jak ripped loose with a string of shells just as the Hummer charged backward out of the clearing, the barrage of rounds tearing apart the spot where it had just been.

  "Can't let them get away!" J.B. growled, burping the Uzi. "We could have an army after us next time!"

  "Hold on!" Krysty cried, and the LAV rolled after the fleeing Hummer in full reverse.

  Once past the bushes, the woman jammed on the brakes and jerked the steering levers hard. The heavy APC wheeled around in a sharp turn and paused. There was some dust hanging in the air from the passage of the Hummer, but no sign of the vehicle itself.

  "Where are they?" Krysty asked, squinting through the tiny ob port in the armored hull. The overgrown roadway stretched to the south and north, directly ahead of the copse of trees.

  Ryan and the others pressed their faces to the ob ports and blaster ports. The billowing dust obscured the fields and trees in every direction.

  "Three o'clock!" Mildred shouted. "They just went around that bend in the road."

  Krysty pressed the gas pedal to the floor. The big Detroit engines purred for a moment, building power, then awoke with a roar. Their eight wheels spun crazily in the loose dirt, then the five-ton wag leaped after the enemy. Grabbing stanchions, Ryan climbed forward to a position near Krysty. He braced one hand against the low ceiling, while the other gripped the back of her chair for support. He swayed with every bounce, but remained standing. Ryan watched the speedometer steadily climb to fifty-five, then inch toward sixty mph, nearly the top speed for the predark wag. He also saw the fuel gauge drop just as fast. They were burning fuel at an unprecedented rate. There had been no chance to fill the tanks before the chase, and soon the LAV would run out of juice, becoming a perfect target for the rockets of the blue shirts.

  For the hundredth time, the man wondered where the blues were getting their predark weapons.

  In triumph, J.B. cried out, "There they are again!"

  The Hummer barreled along at its top speed, often going airborne for a moment as it hit fallen logs and other hidden objects. With twice the number of tires, the massive LAV plowed over such minor obstructions with only minor jarring. On the flat surfaces, the Hummer started to pull away, but when the road got rough again, the LAV caught up quickly.

  Jak fired single rounds from the 25 mm cannon a
t the zigzagging Hummer. He was tempted to go full-auto, but the linked belt of shells was already half consumed and there was no spare. He wasn't going to waste the precious ammo on a fast-moving target unless absolutely necessary.

  Crouched in the small space for the gunner, Dean drilled a spray of rounds toward the fleeing blues, sparks off the Hummer registering several hits. The enemy fired back with AK-47 machine guns, a hail of rounds peppering the armored hull of the APC with no effect. Then the big M-60 spoke, chugging out a slow stream of 7.62 mm rounds. Random dents appeared in sections of the weakened hull, and the Plexiglas shield in a ob port shattered into pieces.

  "Those are armor-piercing rounds!" Ryan cursed, glancing about the interior of the wag to access the damage. There were no new spots of sunlight to indicate a penetration. "Anybody hurt?"

  Hugging her med kit, Mildred looked over the crew. "No blood showing," she reported in relief.

  "Not yet, anyway," J.B. growled, slapping a fresh clip into his Uzi. "But we better chill these bastards quick!"

  Hesitating to use the deafening LeMat inside the wag, Doc grabbed a spare AK-47 and started shooting through the starboard blaster port, spent brass spitting from the ejector in short golden bursts. But after only a dozen rounds, the weapon stopped with the bolt thrown back, showing the clip was empty.

  Raking the Hummer with sporadic bursts, Dean concentrated the whining chain gun on the sec man with the M-60. Sparks flew off the armored body of the military transport, but nothing more. The 7.62 mm rounds were unable to achieve penetration.

  "Aim for the tires!" Mildred suggested, placing her shots with care. Clutching his chest, the big man in the Hummer cried out and dropped the M-60 over the side.

  "Already did," the boy replied hotly. "Must be puncture proof like our own."

  Rummaging in the pile of supplies, Doc was unable to locate any more ammo clips for the Kalashnikov, so he dropped the useless blaster and drew the LeMat, waiting for a suitable target to present itself.

  Just then, the Hummer deliberately slowed, and a lone man jumped out, carrying a short plastic tube. As the APC bore down on the man, he extended the tube to a full yard in length and pointed it toward them.