by James Axler
She was on her bare feet with her S&W blaster out before he finished bouncing off the wall and landing on the dust-drifted floor. Then she was sitting astride him, holding his shoulders off the floor by the front of his coat with her left hand, pressing the snub barrel of her .38 beneath his ear into the juncture of neck and jaw with the other.
It was an abandoned farmhouse not a quarter mile from the track that they had fortuitously spotted when fatigue, and maybe emotional overload, had forced them to lay up for the night. He had offered to stand the first two-hour lookout and let her sleep. As utterly drained as she had ever been in her life, she had gratefully agreed, and been dead to the world before she had lain all the way down.
It was the same way it had worked since that very first night. Each had trusted the other enough to sleep in his or her presence. Forget about relying on each other to stand watch—being able to rely on waking up under those circumstances was rare. But Paul had never given her reason to doubt.
Until he tried to strangle her.
Even before she demanded “Why?”, he was begging her to shoot him.
“Just kill me. Just go ahead and ice me down. I don’t deserve to live.”
Of all the things he could conceivably have said, that was about the one thing that would have calmed her down. She let loose her pressure on the long, heavy trigger, but kept the blaster where it was.
“Why did you do it, Paul?” she asked.
He was shaking his head as much as he could with the blaster’s muzzle stuck up under his ear. “Don’t you know? I saw her! I never seen her from so close—near enough to touch, almost—only glimpsed her from afar. The most perfect thing that could ever be in my world. I watched her thunder by like a chariot of the gods and I was filled with love and wonder.”
“And I’m going to destroy her.”
“You’re gonna destroy her. You have that power, Krysty Wroth, as big and fearful as the train herself. And the thought of that maddened me. Of you destroying the thing I love.”
“But you knew all along that was what I meant to do.”
“But it never really hit me. Not till…not till I saw her. Not till I bathed in the air that flowed off her smooth steel sides. She’s what I told you, the greatest train that ever was and ever will be. And I’m a man who lives for trains.”
He drew in a shuddering breath. “And that made me, a man of peace, that made me try to kill you. Who never did me any harm, whose cause is just. Who I promised to help as best I could. I got myself caught in a cleft stick, missy. You’d be doin’ yourself, the world, and me a favor if you went ahead and took up all the slack in that there trigger!”
Instead she let go his coat and took the gun away from his head.
“I can’t,” she said. “I told myself when I set out on my vengeance trail that I would stop at nothing to put an end to the men who killed Ryan. That I’d chill anyone who got in my way, sacrifice anybody no matter how innocent if it would serve my goal.
“I’d sacrifice your life if it meant I could take down the General and, yes, his train. I would, Paul, just like I’m prepared to lay down my own.”
She stood up. “But I can’t do you like this. And besides—I still need your help.”
He lay there looking at her. “What if I try to kill you again?”
“Will you?”
He sat up rubbing the back of his head where he’d banged a hole in the plasterboard with it. “No. I’m a peaceful man. Or mebbe just a coward. But one way or another, there’s no way I could work myself up to it again.
“Besides, you got no call to believe this, and I surely don’t expect you to. But I couldn’t do it. I was all in a fever to put an end to you and save the train. But then when I got ready, when I was reaching out for your neck, I looked down and saw how helpless and pretty and…innocent you were. Like a little girl. And I couldn’t help remembering how nice you always treated me, how you let me run on and on and never complained, and how you was always kind and gentle, and how you…trusted me. And I knew I could never hurt you. No matter what.”
Krysty sat down heavily on the wooden bed frame that occupied the center of the room. There was no mattress, only a tangle of really nasty-looking rusted springs that were far more suitable for torture than rest. They had stretched their bedrolls to either side of it.
“Kind. Gentle. I’m a real ace in the line heartless avenger, aren’t I?”
“I meant it in a good way! Don’t go getting down on yourself, now.”
“Don’t worry. I’ve come this far—with your help. I’ll still do what I have to. I guess it’s just strike that it hasn’t cost me my humanity yet.”
He looked at her. “So what now?”
She stood up, tucked the gun away and stretched. “Would you mind taking watch again? I really need more sleep.”
Chapter Twenty-Three
When the wind backed a few degrees and a hint of rankness came to Ryan’s nostrils that lifted the hairs on his nape, he realized the armored bear was stalking him.
He wheeled. The beast stood atop a humpbacked sandstone boulder not twenty yards away. As advertised, his body was covered all over with broad triangular scales, glinting a dull ivory in the light filtering through the high, thin afternoon overcast sky. The head looked to be skull-like, skinless and hairless but extraordinarily thick; the muzzle was shielded with finer plates. To Ryan it looked as if he were being menaced by an angry bus, so the Far Walker’s estimate of size was probably pretty much dead in the crosshairs.
The only part of the bear Ryan could see that wasn’t armored was the eyes. He hadn’t taken for granted it would have eyes, but had checked with Far Walker, who confirmed it did. They were glaring at him right now with what he hoped was only an eerie semblance of intelligence.
He had the Steyr in his hands, and was bringing it to his shoulder even as he turned. He tried to sight on the left eye. But the beast knew a longblaster, or at least a threat. It was already wheeling itself, to jump off its perch down out of sight behind a tangle of orange rock and brown scrub.
Ryan fired anyway. He heard the copper-jacketed 180-grain boattailed bullet glance off the bony skull, then the bear was gone.
He didn’t waste time reproaching himself for the miss. It happened.
From his belt he snatched a torch he had prepared: a limb of brushwood with dry grass tied around its head and smeared with the flammable pine resin the Little Ones used for glue. The hope was the pitch would give a little staying power to the easily ignited but quick-burning grass. He jammed the torch’s butt into soft sand at his feet, whipped out a lighter and lit it, then snatched it up again, keeping the longblaster in his right hand the whole time.
If the bear gave him a shot, he could always drop the torch. On the cusp of the instant he had guessed the bear wouldn’t, and he was right. It was charging at him from a clump of brush ten feet to his left that a person wouldn’t think would hide a jackrabbit.
He swung the flaming torch right into the bear’s face. Force-fed air, it roared and flared enthusiastically. The bear put its haunches down and skidded to a stop. That was the edge Ryan had been counting on the torch to give him: an animal’s instinctive dread of fire.
The armored beast reared up and smacked the torch out of Ryan’s hand with a swipe of its saber-taloned paw.
It cartwheeled over a scrub oak to his right and vanished from sight. Ryan threw himself the other way, hit the ground and rolled.
On his back he saw the bear gather and leap at him, aiming to pin him. If it landed on him, that would likely end the fight right there. He rolled frantically back to his right. The bear’s ton of weight slammed the ground right next to him so hard he was bounced six inches in the air.
He reared up himself, got a boot under him. The bear came off the ground sweeping outward with its left arm. It actually encountered Ryan before it had gathered enough speed to be a bone-shattering blow. Instead it simply tossed him twenty feet through the air, over the same bush i
t had knocked the torch.
He kept presence of mind and body control enough to tuck and roll on impact, without breaking anything of consequence or even getting the air knocked out of him. He also managed to keep a grip on the rifle.
He got to his feet, a lot more deliberately than he was happy with. But the monster hadn’t followed his flight with another bull rush. It respected his longblaster. Maybe too much.
The torch lay nearby. It had gone out. That was a stroke of luck. As friendly as they were, the Little Ones would no doubt be able to restrain their gratitude if he burned off the land they depended upon for forage, to say nothing of how embarrassed he’d be if he burned himself up in his own accidental wildfire.
Instinctively he ran bent over toward the bush he had just flown above. The bear charged right through the spot where he’d landed. It had circled ninety degrees clockwise and attacked from the south.
A bear could outrun a man on the flat. The monster’s huge size and the weight of its armor might have rendered it slower. Ryan didn’t count on that. He was betting his life on his grasp of elementary physics: it wasn’t going to snap off many right-angled turns with its mass. He sprinted flat out, ran through a side of the bush, crossed an expanse of sand and scrambled onto another pile of boulders.
There he halted and turned, crouching with the Steyr ready. The rocks would at least break the monster’s charge. But it didn’t come. He could see well enough past the bush well enough to observe the bear had disappeared again.
A flash of yellowish-white to his left. He snapped a shot off. It was a good shot. He heard the whine of a ricochet as the bullet tumbled after bouncing off a scale. The monster was trying to get south of him again.
Then it hit him. The rad-blasted monster was trying to drive him into the Grand bastard Canyon.
That made him hotter than nuke red. That was his plan.
He had set out in daytime because the Little Ones reported the creature liked to hunt at night. They knew perfectly well where its burrow was. If his luck was better than he had frankly ever expected, he would have found it sound asleep, giving him ample scope to chill it without so much as interrupting its dreams of happy slaughter.
More realistically, he could recce the surrounding area, figure out the best way to either bushwhack it coming back to the den or wait, watch its return, give it time to fall asleep and then do the deed.
If things got seriously crosswise, he had planned to use flaming torches to drive it into the Big Ditch, not forty yards to the north.
Of course, the beast knew the ditch was there as well as he did. Better, since it had hunted right along its lip for years. Belatedly it occurred to him to wonder whether it might be able to tell where it was in relation to the lethal mile drop by the very smell of soil and vegetation.
Which was way more than he could do.
The thing could also use the slightest scrap of cover. He could hear grass rustling right at the southern end of the boulder clump he was perched on. Could the bastard belly-crawl around the rocks, get into range to nail him with a swipe before he could react?
He didn’t care to chance it. He grabbed a vaguely triangular plate of sandstone ten inches long and whirled it overhand toward where he’d heard the sound.
It couldn’t hurt the bear. But whether the stone hit or not it startled the monster. With a rumble like thunder it reared up.
Ryan fired. He saw blood spray away from the right eye socket. Triumph blasted through him.
Prematurely. The bullet hadn’t found the brain. The bear emitted a squeal and charged.
He sprang off the rock to his left, hoping to get into the bear’s blind spot. The bear landed, again with uncanny accuracy where he had just been. It lashed out at him as it did.
One claw hooked the Steyr’s sling. Like an attack dog who’d just hit the end of his chain, Ryan pivoted and slammed into the ground on his back. He let the rifle go. Otherwise the beast would troll him right up like a happy angler.
But the armored bear was momentarily disoriented by pain and fury. It stood on its hind legs, pawed the air and roared with hysterical fury, sending the Steyr flying unheeded.
Forcing air back into his lungs by sheer desire, Ryan jumped up and sprinted after the longblaster. Unfortunately the monster still had one good eye and two good ears. It ran to intercept him.
Ryan stopped, crouching, panting. His SIG-Sauer P-226 was in his hand. For what good it would do. But if he’d kept chasing after the longblaster, the bear would have climbed right up his back.
It was south of him again. Some days it was better to be lucky than good, even if you were a mutie armored bear.
But Ryan was very good. And he had already formed a new plan.
If the bastard outwitted him again, it deserved to win.
He turned and powered south for twenty-five yards, half the distance to where the edge of the world lay. Then he spun down into a crouch, holding the SIG-Sauer in a two-handed combat grip.
Hearing him start to run straight away from it, the bear had launched itself in full-throttle pursuit. It smashed through a scrub oak, charging right at him.
He made himself stay calm, lined up his front sight with that bloodshot left eye. Ignoring the fear that yammered in his belly, he gave the bear two full strides to time its up-and-down movement, then he squeezed off a compressed surprised break.
The blaster coughed and rose.
The bear’s left eye exploded.
The little 147-grain 9 mm bullet didn’t tunnel through to the bear’s brain. It screamed in agony but kept straight ahead. Expecting it, Ryan rolled right, escaped its rush.
He headed back toward the canyon. The bear was still tracking him, by smell and sound. And it was personal now—the monster wouldn’t stop pursuing Ryan short of death.
That was what he was counting on.
Even blinded and filled with pain and rage, the bear kept its cunning. It also seemed to stay aware of where the cliff was. It still kept trying to circle to Ryan’s left as he worked west and stampede him into the ditch with short savage charges. Or rend him with tooth and claw, if it got lucky.
Ahead, Ryan saw a place where a chunk of the rim had fallen in and the empty space it left widened by erosion, leaving a semicircle of comparatively gentle slope down to the sheer drop. He darted ahead, surprising the bear and reaching the head of the sloping depression. As he did, he tucked his blaster in his belt and took out his lighter.
The bear was loping after him, slower than he could run. It couldn’t charge or run full out and keep track of him now, it seemed. He found a big dry tumbleweed and picked it up.
The bear rushed him. Holding the weed by its stem, he lit it. It burned furiously, giving off a cloud of choking smoke.
He thrust the weed at the bear. It stopped and reared. Unable to see, it was far more fearful of the fire.
Ryan ran to his left. Tracking him by the crackle of fire and smell of smoke, the bear spun to keep its snarling jaws toward him.
The weed burned down and singed his fingers. He stood it as long as he could, then dropped it. A dead scrub-oak sapling stood up from the ground nearby. He dived on it, ripped it from the ground, lit it and thrust it into the armored bear’s face as the creature, slightly unsteady on its hind legs, lunged after him.
He began to circle again. Roaring, weeping tears of blood, the bear turned and turned with him, slashing savagely but ineffectually with its paws.
It began to wobble. It was dizzy.
Ryan shoved the burning scrub sapling right into its face. “Come on, you mutie bastard! Come get me now!”
He began to back down the incline toward the canyon. When the bear failed to follow instantly he stuck his firebrand in its face again.
It roared and charged.
He turned and ran straight away.
He had always been told a bear couldn’t run downhill well, because its rear legs were longer than its front ones and it tended to lose balance and roll. His plan didn’
t count on it. He was counting on basic physics again—and the hope the monster had been thoroughly disoriented by playing whirligig.
The bear was following, grunting as it ran. Ryan had gotten an early lead, but it was rapidly catching up. He made himself run as close to the edge as he dared. Then he hurled the torch out into space and wheeled left out of the bear’s path.
With horrible agility the vast creature spun its huge frame sideways in a spray of dirt and loose gravel. Its jaws opened toward Ryan.
And its incredible momentum carried it right over the edge.
Ryan sat down.
“This better have been bastard worth it,” he said out loud.
NIGHT AND DAY Krysty and Paul chased MAGOG west. Krysty had lost so much weight from exertion and skipping meals that her jumpsuit hung loosely on her frame. Paul got so worn down he hardly even talked.
Whenever she started to get overcome by dread that it was impossible to catch up to the fusion-powered train, she told herself it had been impossible to catch it the first time. Surely the odds were no worse now.
But she almost packed it in when they overtook another party of tech-nomads in what had been western Kansas.
It was Krysty’s turn to sleep. She roused herself when she felt the Yawl slowing. Twisting her head, she saw a red light, tiny but intense, blinking at them from some indefinable distance ahead.
She reached for her M-16, which lay on the platform beside her seat. “Easy,” Paul said softly. “They’re friends.”
With the pistol grip in her hand she started to ask him how he knew that. Then she set the blaster down.
Moonlight as orange as fire filtered down through the clouds. It gave enough illumination for her to make out three tall-masted rail craft parked on a siding as they approached. They were each much larger than the Paul Yawl. She didn’t bother asking how he knew he’d find them here.
The tech-nomads were friendlier than the ones they’d met in Tucumcari. They knew Paul, although under the name David this time. They seemed willing enough to accept Krysty as his companion, whatever name he traveled under.
