by James Axler
Bullets whining overhead, Ryan lined up his shot on the closer rower. Holding the center post low, he tightened down on the trigger, taking up the slack. After a last second adjustment of his lead, he applied an ounce more pressure and the trigger crisply broke. The Steyr roared and bucked.
Downrange the rower was struck center body mass as he leaned into a backstroke. He kept on going backward, losing his grip on the oar.
Ryan cycled the action, chambering a fresh round. They were closing fast on the rowboat. Peering through the scope, he saw the other rower frozen on the thwart, staring down at his dying comrade.
The one-eyed man held the sight post lower still and fired again.
Struck high in the belly, the second rower twisted sideways and was thrown half over the far gunwale.
Two men in the stern stood stunned, net in hands, as their boat rapidly lost momentum.
Ryan glanced back when he felt the ship veer to the right. He saw Tom’s head poking over the ship’s wheel. The captain had altered course, intending to ram.
The men in the skiff dropped the net. Pushing their wounded comrades out of the way, they grabbed for the oars and tried to row back the way they’d come. By then the bow of the vessel was bearing down hard. Realizing that they couldn’t get away, they dumped the oars and reached for their AKs.
The much larger, much taller vessel was so close the rowers couldn’t do anything but fire straight through the hull. Before they could get in position to do that, Ryan abandoned his longblaster and rolled to the starboard rail. Drawing his SIG, he leaned over the side, aimed down and rapid-fired, shooting them to hell right where they sat.
As the stern scraped past the dead boat and dying crew, and the end of the net, Ryan gathered up his treasured rifle and hopped down into the cockpit, which was lined with steel plate.
Bullets were still coming at them, but the ship was back end first to the enemy blasters, and therefore a much smaller target. When Ryan raised up his head and looked back toward the dock, he saw a flash of ignition. He recognized at once what it was from the madly spiraling a smoke trail.
A rocket-propelled grenade.
He managed to yell out a warning to Tom, but before the captain could cut the wheel hard over, the grenade whooshed past them, wide to the right. The rocket skipped on the surface of the water once like a flat rock, crow-hopped another 150 feet in the air, then nosed in and blew up, spraying shrap in all directions.
Ryan climbed out of the rear of the cockpit and shouldered the Steyr, using the top of the stern rail as a shooting brace. Through the eyepiece, he saw the fat man in the middle of the dock, his tree trunk legs wide apart for balance, still holding the RPG launcher, waving and shouting for his men to keep firing.
“What in radblazes are you doing?” Tom said, turning toward him. “They can’t touch us. We’re home free.”
Ryan didn’t answer. He held his sights steady and tightened down, doing his best to time the trigger break with the rise and fall of the distant dock. The Steyr barked and its butt punched back hard.
Three seconds later, through the scope he saw BoomT’s head suddenly snap back, chins pointing skyward, arms flung wide. The gargantuan entrepreneur toppled over backward, spread-eagled, off the dock and into the water with a tremendous splash.
“Nukin’ hell!” Tom exclaimed, clapping the one-eyed warrior on the shoulder. “Now that’s what I call a shot!”
“Dumb luck,” Ryan said.
“Call it whatever you want, but I’d like to see the fat cheating bastard get up from that one.”
The big ship was rigged for solo sailing. In a matter of minutes, without any help from Ryan, Tom had the sheets up and full of wind, and they were skimming due south, away from Port A ville. When the captain ducked down to shut off the diesel, he called for the others to come up top.
“You’ve got a few bullet holes through the hull,” Mildred told him as she took a seat on the cockpit’s builtin bench. “They’re all above the waterline.”
“Then there’s nothing to worry about,” Tom said. “I’ll check them after we get some distance from here.”
“Isn’t BoomT going to send ships to chase us?” Krysty asked.
“Mebbe in another life,” Tom said.
“You took him out?”
“Not me,” Tom said, then he nodded toward Ryan, who shrugged.
“It was either that or keep looking over our shoulders for the rest of our days. BoomT wasn’t the forgiving kind, and we did pretty much wipe out his livelihood.”
“‘Pretty much’?” Mildred repeated. “All we left him with was his bedspread!”
“Yeah, and they can fish it out of the bay and bury him in it,” Ryan said.
“All things considered, we didn’t come out of this too bad,” J.B. said, cradling his sore ribs with a forearm.
Ryan took a moment and introduced each of the companions to the captain. And when they were done shaking hands, he said, “What’s your last name, Tom?”
“Wolf.”
“And your ship’s called Tempest?” Ryan asked.
“Wait a radblasted minute!” J.B. said, grimacing as he sat up straight on the bench. “You’re the Harmonica Tom?”
Mildred said, “The who? The what?”
“Half the stuff you’ve heard is bull,” Tom assured J.B.
“Well, I heard you singlehandedly repelled a boarding party off the Linas,” the Armorer went on. “Then you trolled a wounded coldheart in your boat wake. Robber’s crew regrouped and tried to rescue him in their own ship. You kept their man just out of their reach for better than a mile. Until something triple big and triple nasty swam up from below and cut him clean in two. You played a jig on your mouth organ the whole time, that’s how you got the nickname.”
“Well, that one’s true,” Tom admitted.
Then he turned to Ryan and said, “I knew who you were the minute I set eyes on you. No mistaking that missing peeper and scar. Know some of what you’ve done, too. Funny how quick word gets around who’s chilled who. You took down Baron Willie Elijah and Baron Tourment. And you nailed that oversexed pile of pus, Captain Pyra Quadde, with a spear.”
“Harpoon,” Ryan said.
“If it was long and pointy,” Tom said, “ol’ Pyra probably died happy.”
“Not particularly.”
“You can bet the news about today’s little shindig will spread along the coast like wildfire,” the captain continued, clearly enthused at the prospect. “BoomT was widely known, but not widely admired. Trader might have set the benchmark for fucking with people’s shit at Virtue Lake, but what you just did to Port A ville runs a close second.”
“BoomT did it to himself,” Krysty said.
“And that’s what folks are going to be talking about for years to come,” Tom said, shooting a grin at Ryan. “How you all set him up for a royal hosing, and how deep he swallowed the stink bait.”
Ryan changed the subject. “How long is this trip to offload the C-4 gonna take?”
“The distance is 240 miles, plus or minus,” Tom said. “How long it actually takes us is up to the wind and the tide. We could do it in less than a day, if we’re lucky. That means sailing all night, of course. Which means round-the-clock watches. Got plenty of hands for that so we can all get some shut-eye. Round-the-clock watch is something we have to do anyway because of the competition.”
“Who’s the competition?” Cawdor asked.
“Pickings aren’t what they used to be,” the captain said. “Scroungers are having to dig deeper and deeper into the nuked-out places for spoils. The prime, top-quality goods are a hell of a lot harder to come by than they were even five years ago. But hey, you know all that. You saw the godawful garbage BoomT was selling. Got to figure that the decline in merchandise is something that’s only going to get worse as time goes on. After all, they aren’t making any new stockpiles. How many were there to start with, anyway? Who the fuck knows? How many haven’t been looted? Who the fuck kno
ws? Long and short of it, some of my seafaring brothers and sisters are gathering their cargoes offshore, by bushwhacking and raiding other traders. Seems like there’s always a boat or two patrolling, looking for an easy highjack. The unlucky traders and crews just disappear, and their ships sail into port with fresh faces. Goes without saying that nobody asks where the goods came from, or where the previous owners went.”
“Robbers robbing robbers,” Krysty said.
“You mean, they’ve turned pirates?” Mildred said.
“Traders, pirates, it’s always been hard to tell the two apart,” Ryan said.
“And it’s gotten even harder of late,” Tom said. “Believe me, it’s not like it used to be in these parts when there was plenty of the good stuff to go around. I don’t suppose you’ve heard any tales about what’s happening well to the south of here? Down the Lantic coast?”
“What tales?” Ryan said.
“Yeah, I didn’t think you had,” the captain said. “The stories have filtered up as far as Padre Island, but the traders working out of there have kept a lid on them. Nobody wants to start a stampede of newcomers. There’s too many in the business as it is.”
“Are you going to tell us, or what?” Krysty said impatiently.
“The details are sketchy, as you would expect,” Tom went on, “but it sounds like the folks to the south came out of the Apocalypse better than we did up here. They didn’t get any direct missile hits. Nuke winter wasn’t near as hard for them as it was for us. They caught some badass tidal waves, though. I’ve heard rumors they’re still making diesel in the predark plants. Other shit, too, you know, manufacturing stuff like before skydark. I was thinking seriously about sailing down there myself, just to see what’s what. If things are opening up half that good, I wouldn’t mind getting in on the ground floor.”
“How far?” Ryan asked.
“Mex, and points south.”
“We’ve been to Mex City,” Cawdor told him.
“And?”
“It was just another shitheap. Not a nuked shitheap, though. It was shaken apart by earthquakes and volcanos blowing off their tops. Natives weren’t all that friendly, either. Triple-crazy chillers if you want to know the truth. If you want to know the truth, it wasn’t much different than here, except for the funny hats.”
“How’d you manage to get all the way to Mex City?” the skipper asked.
“On foot,” Ryan replied, lying without hesitation. The predark mat-trans system that allowed companions to jump between redoubts in seconds was too valuable a secret to give away.
“Sailing is a hell of a lot easier than walking,” Tom said. “And there’s more to the world than what any of us has seen. There’s got to be.”
“In terms of total landmass and population before skydark, that’s a no-brainer,” Mildred said. “What’s left, of course, is anybody’s guess.”
“It has been said that travel broadens one,” Doc added. “Of course, it can also get you beheaded.”
“So, travel makes shorter?” Jak asked.
Ryan cracked a smile. Mildred and Krysty giggled.
“Two jokes in one day,” J.B. said, shaking his head. “What’s the nukin’ world coming to?”
“We’ve all got to die some way,” Tom asserted. “How I look at it, might as well be some way interesting. And a person has got to look farther ahead than just the next meal, or the next safe hole to crawl into at night. Got to look past what’s here and now, to set a course, a proper course…”
Tom paused and gazed off to starboard, frowning as he seemed to consider something important, then he said, “I’ve got a business proposition for you folks. I’ve been thinking about it for a good long time. I don’t make the proposition lightly, and this is the first I’ve mentioned it to anyone. We know each other by reputation. And I’ve seen what you can do, the kind of fight you put up, with my own eyes. My business proposition requires a sec crew. A heavy-duty sec crew I can trust to sail down the Lantic coast with me, mebbe all the way to Tierra del Fuego if need be. I figure you’re just what I’ve been looking for. Got no back-down in you. We can supply Tempest from the Padre Island stockpiles, then head on south. We’ll share the spoils of the trip equal shares. No telling the wonders and riches we might find.”
“A journey of discovery?” Doc said, his interest piqued. “A reprise of the Lewis and Clark expedition, three hundred years after the fact?”
“I don’t have a clue what you’re rattling on about,” Krysty told Doc.
Then to Tom she said, “You, either. You’re talking about making an open-ended sea voyage through unknown waters based on gaudy-house gossip?”
“No risk, no gain,” the captain replied.
“We’re not shy about taking risks, and big ones at that,” Ryan said. “But the gain at the far end has to be more than a pipe dream.”
The captain shot Ryan an incredulous look. “Hey, correct me if I’m wrong,” he said, “but when you sashayed into Port A ville, your butts were dragging mighty low. Tongues half hanging out. For adventurers you ain’t exactly living high on the hog, are you? You’re barely scraping by. My guess is, more often than not, you’re hungry, thirsty, cold and low on ammo. At a point not too far down the line all the hellscape’s prime booty will be gone and there’ll be no more scraping by the way you’ve done. No survival except for those who don’t mind stump clearing, rock chucking and shit shoveling. I’m talking dirt farmers. I’m talking goat milkers. I’m talking fighting off muties with wooden clubs and with blasters made out of iron pipe and bailing wire. And you all know I’m right. You can read the signs as well as I can. The awful day when the predark spoils run out is coming, sure as hell smells like sulfur. Nothing can stop it.”
The captain’s word were met with silence.
“Don’t say no to my idea right off,” he told them. “Think on it awhile. That’s all I’m asking.”
“We’ll think on it,” Ryan said.
“There’s plenty of food and drink in the galley,” the captain said. “Go down and help yourselves.”
Ryan was the last to descend the steep companionway. He could stand in the rear cabin without bumping the top of his head, but barely. On the port side was an aft bunk; in the middle of the cabin stood a chart table. An open, locked back bulkhead door led into the main salon. On the right was the galley: propane cooktop, sink, counter. Hanging above the sink in a net were pots, pans and cooking utensils. On the left was a dinette table surrounded on three sides by a settee. Above the back cushions were two rows of densely packed bookshelves. The table was set with miscellaneous bowls, jars, jugs and bags of food. Forward, through another locked-open bulkhead door, Ryan could see another set of steps, and beyond them, V-berths at the bow of the ship. He assumed Tempest’s cargo holds were hidden belowdecks. The cabin was scuffed, chipped, but spanking clean. There was a faint smell of bleach.
The companions slid in around the small table and without fanfare plowed directly into the eats and drinks. There was salted hard tack for bread, shelled walnuts, ripe tomatoes bigger than Ryan’s fist, melons, oranges, a variety of dried fruits and plenty of fresh water. The jars held pickled hard-boiled eggs and filets of small fish.
Except for the sounds of chewing and swallowing there was silence as they ate. They packed it in like there was no tomorrow, filling the voids.
“Not bad grub,” Jak said at last, licking the tomato juice dripping down his snow-white wrist.
“This is just nasty,” Krysty said holding up a piece of pickled fish on a knifepoint for Mildred to sniff.
“Gak,” the doctor said, spraying hard tack crumbs over the tabletop.
Krysty plopped the tidbit back into the jar and screwed the lid down tight.
Their hunger finally sated, the companions pushed back against the settee’s cushions and breathed deeply.
“Do we have to think twice about this offer?” Mildred asked the others. “It’s our first real chance to see what the rest of the world is
like.”
“We saw Mex and we saw Baja,” J.B. countered. “We saw other foreign lands. They were shitpits. Barely got out of some places in one piece, if you’ll remember.”
“My dear John Barrymore,” Doc said, “you know other nations have survived. Entire predark nations, perhaps. Even cultures.”
“Ever wonder why these advanced civilizations haven’t paid Deathlands a visit in the last hundred years?” Krysty asked. “Sent rescue missions?”
“Maybe because they think we’re all chilled,” Mildred offered. “Perhaps they think there’s nothing left to visit or save. Nothing but poisoned earth, air and water, and crazy-chiller muties. Maybe they’ve turned their backs on us for bringing on the end of the world. Any or all of those reasons could be valid.”
“Or they could be bullshit,” J.B. replied with venom. The pain of his injury seemed to have put him in a particularly foul temper. “Deep down you and Doc still want everything to be back the way you remember it, before you got frozen and time trawled, before the nukecaust, and that’s not gonna happen. The both of you are living in a dreamworld. You don’t want to admit that what we have here is all there is. Mebbe even better than what’s left of the world. We’ve seen some downright evil shit in parts of the world we visited.”
“We know what we’re up against in Deathlands,” Krysty said, picking up the thread of J.B.’s argument. “The four of us were born and bred here. We’ve come up fighting muties, coldhearts and barons. We know how to survive whatever the hellscape throws at us. And we’ve got the mat-trans as our ace-in-the-hole. We can always get out of a hotspot in a hurry if we have to. Where this tub is headed there aren’t going to be any redoubts, no mat-trans, no quick escapes, no telling what’s going to be thrown at us. On this tub, if something goes wrong we’re dead meat.”
“Sailing south could be a suicide mission,” J.B. summed up.
Arms folded across his chest, Jak grunted in assent.
“In case you haven’t noticed by now,” Mildred countered with heat, “life is a suicide mission.”
“Wait a minute,” Ryan said, raising his hands for calm. “Let’s just look at the facts in front of us. Harmonica Tom’s the real deal. We know that. If he’s done a quarter of the stuff people say he’s done, there’s no better skipper.”
