Vengeance Trail

by James Axler

  Since the latter description fit Krysty like a chamber fit a round, Mildred could only hope the redhaired woman had a good plan. There was a light in those green eyes Mildred didn’t like. Especially since it was exactly what she’d expect to see in Krysty’s eyes, once she came among Ryan’s murderers.

  “Okay, Marcy,” Mildred said. “I need you to strip down to your skivvies.”

  Without blinking, Krysty complied. It was the little things that still blindsided Mildred with occasional culture shock even after the time she’d been awake: lack of body modesty, in this instance. There were assistants moving in and out of the infirmary as well as the sergeant lounging in the doorway. And that would mean little to the average new recruit, and probably meant less to Krysty.

  Banner was professional enough not to leer, at least. Although he didn’t look away as Krysty shucked down to a pair of oft-washed cotton panties.

  Krysty rolled up her jumpsuit and placed it on the floor with what struck Mildred as unusual care. As if maybe she didn’t want anything heavy, metallic and concealed going thump.

  Straightening, Krysty firmly adjusted the ball cap on her wound-up hair. Mildred had to smile at that. The sergeant would undoubtedly take it as a last typical defiant gesture from a free-range loner who had decided to swap independence for whatever security the behemoth train could give.

  Her friend was, Mildred noted with an ever-so-slight pang of envy, one of those rare women who lost body fat from the breasts last. Otherwise, aside from being shockingly gaunt in comparison to the way Mildred had last seen her, Krysty’s milky-skinned body was utterly perfect. Only to be expected, since any wound that failed to kill her would heal in days without leaving a mark.

  She went through the ritual of examining her, and ached to say something to her long-lost friend. But not a breath nor a syllable of condolence for their shared loss or the fierce joy of reunion—tempered by stone dread for Krysty’s safety, here in the beast’s steel belly—did she dare utter in the presence of Banner, nor even the ubiquitous assistants.

  All she could manage was a reassuring squeeze of Krysty’s shoulder. The redhead responded with a slight nod and smile, as if incidental.

  “Everything’s in tiptop shape, as far as I can see,” she said brightly, as Krysty put her clothes back on. “Only wish more of the newbies we get through here were in half as good a shape as this one, Sergeant.”

  Banner grunted.

  Mildred stuck out her hand. Krysty’s grip was strong, and spoke volumes.

  “Welcome to MAGOG, recruit,” Mildred said. “I only hope you know what you’re doing.”

  BANNER STOOD in the armored gangway between cars, his square close-cropped head inclined toward the open door. The plating to her left seemed to have been patched. The burn marks left by the weld job were still visible on the plating. Beyond the sergeant, Krysty saw an oddly plush interior, more like a wealthy and pretentious baron’s sitting room than anything she’d expect to see on a giant mobile killing machine such as MAGOG.

  Inside thoughts and emotions whirled in a fierce maelstrom that threatened to overwhelm her self-control. She was within steps of confronting the General himself. From what Banner had said there was nothing unusual to that. The General interviewed all new recruits personally once they’d passed initial screening and med inspection, especially when there weren’t large numbers of them. She was only the second today. She got the impression that was more applicants than they usually saw in a day, even in a sizable ville.

  So a trip to see the big man didn’t automatically mean she’d been burned. The inner turmoil was engendered by the fact that she hadn’t really planned further than simply worming her way inside MAGOG’s impenetrable alloy shell. What would she do when at last face-to-face with the man behind the murder?

  She wasn’t unarmed. She had been relieved of the longblaster and had surrendered her lockback folding knife. She had been counting on the soldiers being bored and lazy and just plain not thinking she might be carrying a holdout. The gamble paid off. The quartermaster corporal even assured her the M-16 would be reissued to her once she was sworn in.

  But she couldn’t just walk in and blast the General. Because she didn’t want just him. She wanted the handsome, callous young officer who so blandly oversaw mass murder. She wanted the sergeant. She wanted the man who had actually pulled the trigger on Ryan.

  She wanted the train. Perhaps in part because of poor Paul’s worship of it, it had come to symbolize for her the evil that had destroyed Ryan and the travelers’ caravan. She knew it was just an inert mass of metal, ultimately, just a blaster. Probably the largest and most powerful blaster remaining in the Deathlands, and maybe anywhere on Earth. But just a thing—inanimate.

  And yet it wasn’t. As long as it existed, its very presence would summon men to it to put it to use as the General did—or even worse. It wasn’t just a tool of defense or survival like a hand- or longblaster, which might, like any other tool, be put to evil purpose by a bad man. It was an instrument of raw force, of coercion, of aggression.

  MAGOG was her enemy. As much as any being that rode within it.

  The thoughts spun through her head in dizzying succession. And then she stepped into the doorway, and found herself looking into the eyes of Doc Tanner.

  The sad pale eyes widened slightly. Then narrowed again, slumping at the corners, into an expression of weary befuddlement. Doc was as accomplished a survivor as any of them, and a masterful actor.

  The second thing she saw was a man sitting in, of all things, a plushly upholstered red chair, just in front of Doc. She didn’t need the stars on his collar nor the medals on his chest to know him for the General. He radiated force and presence, as if his sheer will had resurrected MAGOG and given the train new life, which, from what Paul had told her, wasn’t far from the truth.

  To his left stood a peculiar-looking man with a hairless head, dark glasses, a stiff white tunic and riding pants. At a glance Krysty knew him for a mutie. She wondered if the General, or his subordinates anyway, knew as well.

  To the right, wearing BDUs but not his steel breastplate, stood the young captain who had commanded the raiding party. Marc Helton, Paul said his name was. He was even more beautiful at close range than she had observed on that terrible day that seemed so long ago, and yet burned in her mind as if it had just been doused with gas and lit.

  “Here’s the new fish, General,” Banner said in that harsh ruined voice of his.

  “Thank you, Sergeant Banner,” the General said. His voice had many of the same qualities the sergeant’s did, although it didn’t sound as if he’d taken near as many punches to the throat. “That will be all. Come on in, recruit. Let’s have a look at you.”

  Krysty felt her fingers turning into claws as she stepped into the compartment. Three of the men she had sworn to kill stood within easy range of her handblaster. But the General and Helton both wore side arms, and neither seemed to be doing it just for show. As well, the sergeant was behind her, and she also sensed the presence of a pair of guards flanking the door on the inside.

  She wasn’t concerned about the impossibility of her own survival if she made her move now. She took it for granted that she would die exacting her vengeance. But she doubted she could get all three. Certainly not and stay in any condition to complete her revenge. And Doc was in the line of fire, and she couldn’t count on him for help….

  The door slid shut behind her. Banner was gone. One of her primary targets beyond reach, without shifting the odds anywhere near enough in her favor. She made herself breathe deep. Take it as it comes, she cautioned herself. You didn’t come this far to fail.

  “Theophilus,” the General said without looking back, “will you please excuse us? Duty calls.”

  Doc’s head snapped up as if he’d been dozing. “What? Oh, to be sure, ahh… General. General Grant? No, no, that can’t be right. Lee? Quarters?”

  He wandered from the compartment muttering to himself. The General
watched him go. Then he swung his own ice-blue eyes back to bear on the newcomer like a heavy-weapons turret.

  “Well, recruit. You certainly seem to possess all the qualities we’re looking for, and more. Much more,” he said in a fulsome tone.

  “Believe me when I tell you how bitterly I regret that we won’t be able to put those qualities to use, Krysty Wroth.”

  Chapter Twenty-Six

  The guards stepped forward and grabbed her by the arms. Young husky men they were. She could feel their warmth, sense their size and strength even before they clamped their hands on, smell their masculine avidity.

  Caught. The word tolled like a bell in her brain. Now was the time to make a play, the only one she was likely to get….

  But did she have one? She could take one guard, possibly both, since they almost certainly underestimated her own formidability. But there were the General, Helton and the General’s mutie shadow to factor in as well.

  The General seemed to read her thoughts. “Don’t take this one for granted, boys. She’s as deadly as any man you’re ever likely to meet.”

  She didn’t bother to deny it. “Everybody seems to know who I am. How did you know?”

  He smiled. “The boots.”

  Her gaze followed her heart: right down to the silver tips on the toes of her blue boots.

  “Combine that with the striking scarlet hair, and the green eyes, and the quite remarkable beauty. And with the fact that of the party of mysterious adventurers my intelligence service has been gathering reports of for years, now, only one member failed to be accounted for.”

  He smiled. “We presumed, quite reasonably, that you were dead. I am unsurprised to see that we were mistaken. And given that, it was inevitable that you would somehow, against all odds, find your way here.”

  “General,” the man in the tunic said in a pinched, nervous voice, “really, I—my people—did all that could be expected under really very trying circumstances—”

  “Shut up, Hubertus. Didn’t I just exonerate you again?” He didn’t glance at his intel chief. “Be thankful you provided me a comprehensive enough portrait that I was able to identify her right away. Otherwise we might just have clasped a redhaired viper to our collective bosom.”

  He stood up. He was shorter than Krysty, a fact she would never have known if she hadn’t actually found herself looking down on him. The animal force of his character made him seem much larger.

  He approached her, took off her cap and tossed it aside, reached behind her head and plucked out the pins that restrained her hair with surprising deftness. Her hair slid down over her shoulders like wary snakes.

  “So this is the famous hair.” He twined a strand around his blunt forefinger and lifted it. It flowed off.

  “Wonderful,” he said.

  He began to walk around her, studying his prize appreciatively from every angle. Behind him, Krysty saw the youthful captain looking anxious.

  “You can’t imagine how disappointed I was,” the General said, “to have to presume you dead. In this day and age where a few pitiful dregs of humanity live and die without leaving any more mark than a piss in a pond, you’re different. Your bravery and resourcefulness have come to me through my reports as something almost superhuman—surpassed only by your beauty.”

  He stood before her again. She smelled soap and sweat from his body. “The fact that you’re here before me attests amply that your abilities were not overrated. My eyes tell me the same of your beauty. Krysty Wroth, I salute you!”

  She felt as if she’d swallowed twenty pounds of Number 4 buckshot. To have come so far, to have overcome so much…only to be trapped by a simple stupe oversight.

  It can’t happen this way! her mind screamed in denial. But of course it could. It happened that way to hundreds or thousands of men and women and children every day. Even as he gloated over her she knew he was wrong: she wasn’t superhuman. She wasn’t immune to the common human destiny, which, like a dog’s, was to die in a ditch.

  “What do you want from me?” she asked.

  He raised his eyebrows. “Everything. You’ve haunted my sleep, Krysty. How I burned with frustration because I could not have the one thing I most wanted. The thing I most needed.”

  He started to pace in front of her. She kept her body awareness acute, alert for any sign of slackening in the grip the soldiers kept upon her. None came.

  “I’m about to win. I have the secret I’ve sought for decades now—the location of the Great Redoubt. I don’t expect you to know what that means, so hear this—it simply holds the key to rebuilding America.

  “But dreamer though I am, I’m also a realist. Even with the information and resources contained within the redoubt it will take years to restore America. More years than are left to me, I’m afraid.

  “And that’s what’s been stealing my sleep. Because what could be more perfect than to blend my genes, my intelligence and drive, with those of Krysty Wroth, the ultimate woman?”

  “I’m not that special. Nothing special at all. I’m just a woman who tried to avenge her mate and failed. And there’s got to be something wrong with me, because I keep bringing out these fantasies in tin-pot tyrants. Why do you dregs always seem to think that big boobs and sentient hair mean you can sire some kind of master race on me?”

  She thought he might hit her. She hoped he’d shoot her.

  Instead he laughed.

  “What makes me different from all those crazed shitheap barons who figured they’d possess you? I’ve got the goods. Even if they didn’t underestimate you—and believe me, my dear, that’s one trap I’m not going to fall into—they had to worry about Ryan Cawdor and your other friends coming along to spring you and destroy them. And I don’t.”

  She stiffened at the sound of Ryan’s name coming out of his mouth. “You bastard,” she said. “Don’t you ever speak that name again.”

  He stepped in close and pressed a finger to her lips to still her. “Enough. Don’t let your emotions diminish you by causing you to make promises you’ll never be able to keep. I don’t have to worry about your man because I have destroyed him. I claim you by right of conquest. And besides—”

  He put a hand behind her head and dropped his face to nuzzle her neck. “You’re a woman who goes for the alpha wolf, Krysty. How can you help falling in love with the man who killed Ryan Cawdor?”

  She kneed him in the balls.

  She was a woman who knew how to knee a man’s balls and make it count. And if she lacked some of the muscle mass she’d once possessed, she had built incredible wiry strength in her legs from pedaling the Paul Yawl back and forth across the mutie-haunted Plains. The impact lifted him clear up onto his toes and doubled him over with a long agonized whoof.

  The violence of her attack startled the men who held her arms enough to relax their grip. But not long enough. As she tried to twist free, one of the guards stabbed a fist into her kidneys. Bright lights exploded behind her eyes as agony filled her body. She dropped to her knees gasping for breath.

  The General wasn’t doing any too well, either. He was on his own knees a few feet away with puke slopping down his chin as he tried to hold it back. Instead a convulsion racked him and he yacked all over his fine plushy carpet.

  Marc Helton hovered over the General and got his boots barfed on. The covert mutie called Hubertus was dancing around with a little .25-caliber Beretta Minx blaster in hand, trying to get a clear shot at her without stepping in vomit.

  “Put that away, you nitwit,” the General gasped, and gagged. “She’s not to be hurt! That goes for your men, too.”

  Her arms were twisted cruelly up and back. One guard kept a hand pressing on her shoulder to keep her on her knees and also to keep her elbow hyperextended, so that it could be easily snapped if she struggled. The other held the hard muzzle of a handblaster to the back of her skull.

  The General got a boot planted on the floor and ratcheted himself to his feet, shaking off Helton’s attempts to aid h
im. Hubertus, his tiny blaster vanished, came up to dab gingerly at his baron’s lips with a napkin. The General snatched it away and wiped his mouth clean himself.

  His grin was like a skull’s. “You have spirit,” he wheezed. “It’ll be an enjoyable project to…break it.” He was still having trouble fitting air into his body.

  “General—” Helton said.

  The General ignored him. He leaned toward her, eyes glinting like a raptor’s. His breath stank of vomit.

  “You are going to bear my heir, woman. And we’re going to get started tonight, after I’ve…had a chance to recover. You don’t have any choice in the matter.”

  “General,” Helton said, “what you’re talking about is unacceptable. Think of what we’re working for. The ideals you stand for—”

  “Shut up, Marc. I love you like a son, but if I have to listen to one more word of your sanctimonious prattle—”

  The guard to Krysty’s left, in response to the General’s perceived command, moved to put his blaster away. His grip on Krysty’s arm slacked again.

  She wrenched it away with a counterclockwise heave of her hips, then spun back with an elbow that more by luck than by design nailed him in the nuts. As he folded around himself, her right hand freed, ducked into a pocket of her jumpsuit and came up with the snubnosed Smith, blasting.

  Her first shot shattered a lamp’s green plastic shade. The second hit Marc Helton in the shoulder as he lunged in front of the General. The third went into the low ceiling as the guard still upright let go of her left arm to wrestle up her blaster hand.

  After a moment’s wild struggle, his comrade came back to himself enough to punch Krysty in the kidneys again, more viciously than before. She stayed on her feet, but the first guard twisted the blaster from her hand. He started to slam it back into her face.

  “Halt!” The General’s shout froze him. He had his arm under Helton’s now, supporting the younger man. “Don’t damage the goods, damn you! Why haven’t you got restraints on her? Hubertus, don’t you teach your men anything?”