You brought us out here.
This is your fault.
I told myself I'd imagined it. I told myself they were all mercenaries who'd known the dangers, and it was a little late in the day to start complaining about the risk when two were already dead and one mangled to shit.
It didn't help.
So. Me and Nate. Warm and full of food (still chowing, in fact, on a second portion of everything to make-up for the stuff I puked first time round). And again the old bastard's jaw was lolling, cheeks pinned-back in a rictus-smile, pupils dilated big enough to turn his eyes inside-out.
"What's the plan what's the plan what's the plaaan?" He said, giggling, wobbling around like he was dancing to some silent beat. "Got any more burns? Need a burn? Needaburnneedaburn?"
I stopped chewing. Looked at him and shook my head.
I guessed… oh, sod it. I guessed now was as good a time as any.
I put down my bowl.
"Look at you," I said. "Nate. Seriously. Look at yourself."
"Eh?"
"You're bombed. You're off your face, mate."
It took him a while to react, and his smiling face crumpled like a hollow mountain.
"Am not!" He shouted, far too loud, standing and pointing. "Am fucking not!"
I just stared, getting bored. Eventually he sat down.
"We had a deal." I said quietly, slurping on more of the homebrewed beer. He reacted jerkily, like he couldn't control his own defence.
"Yeah? Yeah, so?"
"So I paid you good scav and I kept you alive. Right? You were in pigshit up to your neck after the airport."
"I know that! Did I say I didn't know it? Fuck you, m…"
"And all you had to do in return was play at being a doctor."
I picked up my bowl again and spooned some potatoes into my mouth. Tasted good. Ignored the old man's rolling eyes and hurt silence.
"And… and I haaaave!" He yelped, like a kicked puppy dog. "Didn't I? Didn't I? I've done good! Patched you up over and over. You know it, you know it, you know it!"
I glared.
"Yeah. And Nike's in a Winnebago over there with his legs shot to shit, and you haven't lifted a hand to help."
Nate's lips moved. Searching for words.
"But… H-hold it, he's… but…"
"But he's not part of the deal? Is that it?"
"No! No, I just… I thought your, your Injuns here would take care and…"
"Some doctor, Nate."
We sat in silence for a long time then; darkness spreading above us, fire drooling embers upwards.
"The Secretariat." I said, eventually.
"Wh… What?"
I sighed, shaking my head. "Oh, nothing. Just thinking. Our little deal. Never seemed quite right to me."
"But… I don't understand. What's…?"
"You didn't seem to get much out of it, I mean. I was wondering why you were sticking with me, to be honest. Now I know."
He looked suddenly angry, thick sarcasm souring his voice. "Oh, you know. You know, do you? The fuck do you know? You gonna make shit up and say you know, then you can kiss m…"
"The Secretariat. I sent you downstairs. Told you to go help the others find the kids."
His eyes went narrow. Chin jutting. "S-so?"
"So that's the only time you could've found that shit." I pointed at the pack next to his knees, unsurprised to see his fingers coiled securely through its handle. "Stole it from the Choirboys, didn't you?"
He almost exploded, hugging the bag to himself as he stood and shrieked, irrational and embarrassing. "The fuck's wrong with that?" He snarled. "The fuck's wrong with thaaaat? You saying, you saying I shouldn't steal from them assholes?"
"Course not. I'm saying don't steal shit that'll turn you into a prick. Sit down."
"Fuck y…"
"Or, don't steal shit that'll bring an army of motherfuckers chasing after you. Sit down, Nate."
"That's not why they're comi…"
"Or even better, don't steal shit when you're an ex-junkie."
Quiet.
He sat.
"Tell you what I think," I said, feeling sharp things moving in my words but not caring. Bella's face was swimming behind my eyelids, and for some reason it made me angry. "I think you never quit."
"What?"
"Back in London. You used to live there, you said. You said you quit, remember?"
He didn't say a word.
"I think maybe you were telling half a truth there, mate. I think what actually happened is, the supply ran out. Tough call, getting smack right after The Cull." His white eyes dipped, firelight reflecting. "But then along comes the Clergy and tells you they can fix you up, sort you out. All you got to do is clear off stateside and look after some kiddies on the way through…"
"That's… wasn't like that…"
"And for a couple of years it's all gravy. Probably wasn't even smack they gave you, right? Some weird new military shit. Am I right? Even better. Double the high.
"Then some dumb English fuck arrives and screws the whole gig, and before you know it you're out on your ear. Right? Am I right?"
He was just staring at the fire, face closed-down. Nothing to say. Nothing to deny.
I noticed a stain on his trousers and wondered if he'd even noticed he'd pissed himself.
He swallowed and looked up at me. "I… I just…"
"Why should you stay with me? Oh, fuck, there was all that shit about me protecting your life, blah blah. Didn't buy it for a second, mate. But then we get to the Secretariat and bang, you've got right what you wanted. That big case right there. And I'm thinking… That's a big place. How did he find it? Unless maybe he knew where to look…"
"J-Jesus…"
"And that makes me wonder how you knew we'd be going to the Secretariat at all."
His eyes gave it away. In the end.
Flicked away from my face. A split second, no more, to the green sack hanging on my shoulder.
The penny dropped.
"The map…" I said, kicking myself. "Fuck. Of course. Of course."
I always knew he looked through my bag, back at the start, as I lay dying on the tarmac. I assumed he'd lusted after the booze, the Bliss…
But no. He went straight to the map. The New York City map, marked with a bloody-red ring around the UN Headquarters.
"So you saw where I was heading… Right? And you thought… Well now… Maybe I'll just… tag along?"
I glanced up.
He stared.
"You didn't even have the guts to tell me the truth, Nate."
I wouldn't have cared, if he'd been honest.
I don't care, even now. Don't give a shit what he does to himself.
I just don't like being wrong.
He opened and closed his mouth like a fish.
"Parasite," I said.
I stood up and walked away.
I went for a walk.
Took a look around. Found Malice and sat down to talk and draw maps in the sand. Scheming. If she was pissed about the Inferno and the others, she didn't show it.
Around midnight I went and fetched Robert Slowbear, and he took me to the Tadodaho. I politely declined anything to eat or drink.
Around four o'clock the camp moved, all at once, across the great concrete bridge spanning the sinuous lake, and by six I was up to my armpits in cold water.
By seven we were ready.
They didn't keep us waiting.
The Meander Reservoir was a twisting strip of spilled water, dividing Youngstown from the green ocean of fields surrounding it. On the Tadodaho's map – an ancient and laminated thing, long-faded and well-worn – the lake was an obvious part of a chain, connected by creeks and ditches, that ran south all the way from Lake Eerie. It wasn't a huge watercourse, I suppose. Maybe five or six miles, tip-to-tip. It wouldn't have taken too long to go around either, if someone'd had to, but what was perfect about it was this:
The I-80, straight from New York, spanned t
he lake dead across its centre on a single, exposed, vulnerable and oh-so-deliciously-narrow bridge.
If ever there was a better place for an ambush, I would've liked to have seen it.
For the record, somewhere – deep down at the rotten core of my mind – I shouted and cussed at myself, waggling a subconscious finger at this daft display of time wasting.
Not my problem, it kept shouting. Focus on the mission!
And my response, my considered reply to this seemingly watertight argument, went something like this:
Fuck off.
The Clergymen came out of the QuickSmog on the horizon at dawn, and the sound of engines reached us long before we saw them. The air went electric.
There were three other bridges too – two smaller roads, a mile on either side, that forded the water at its narrowest points, and a larger bridge far to the south where the Ohio turnpike turned northwards, with no easy access or turn-ons. We could ignore that, at least.
At about the same time we heard the engines, the Haudenosaunee vanished. All of them, dipping out of sight without so much as a word. It was incredible to watch.
Vehicles bundled off rapidly to the west, to be parked behind knots of trees and dips in the road. Bikes were laid-down on their sides and covered with grass and leaves. Men and women lugging improbably huge weapons squatted on the banks to either side of the central bridge, and simply – disappeared.
One moment there was an army, hundreds strong, arranged silently along the banks of the lake, staring off into the fog. The next: nothing.
Well.
Almost nothing.
The Inferno had been dragged to the centre of the road on our side of the bridge. It was a sad sight, mangled and unsteady, lolling to one side with its cockpit torn open and its sides dented to hell. But the guns still worked, oh yes, and wedged-up on either side of it there stood a pair of Iroquois caravans, untidily blocking the road, holding it upright.
It looked like the world's crappiest blockade.
Rick – Hiawatha, whoever he was – had volunteered to man the Inferno. He'd done so with the chin-jutting defiance of someone too young to know better, trying to prove something; to himself, I guess. If it'd been down to me I would have told him to stop being a macho prick and leave it to someone more capable.
"Good." The Tadodaho had said. "Good."
The youngster opened-fire right on time.
Down in the shade cast by the bridge, covered in a loose mesh of twigs and brambles, I had a perfect view. Malice grinned openly to my left, and even Nike – sprawled in a mess of splints and crutches behind, with Moto mothering him wordlessly – chuckled to himself. Could've just been the painkillers, I suppose.
The bikes came first.
And went down like dominoes.
Outriders; scouting ahead of a far larger convoy that could barely be seen amidst the far fringes of the QuickSmog; Clergy corsairs with white helmets and dark robes, some on military bikes with sidecars containing Uzi-waving idiots, others sprinting ahead on powerbikes re-sprayed grey and white.
Rick exploded them one by one.
The shape of the road funnelled them naturally, drawing them together, bunching them like skittles. As they ripped onto the far span it was to be greeted by a wave – a wall – of lead and fire and shrapnel. They should have been more cautious. They should have looked ahead at the obstruction and taken their time, but no. Straight in. Still accelerating when the ordnance closed on them and the world shook.
Thunder and smoke and muzzle-flare, and two bikes skidding in hot rubber and screaming chrome, and torn leather and blood on the road, and the next idiots flipping head-over-saddle as they smashed into their fallen comrades, and then – only then – did the brakes slam on and the situation slow.
By which time it was far too late.
The kid aimed with only the vaguest accuracy. He simply poked a cautious head through the Inferno's turret, steered the great mass of oiled death mounted there towards the far edge of the bridge, and held down as many triggers as he could.
It was like…
Bonfire Night. Or the Fourth of July, depending.
Or maybe just a war zone. Maybe just a field-spotter's guide to hasty death.
The Mk19 lobbing its tumbling shells, spit-crack-flare-smoke; a brace of machineguns vomiting spent cases and angry tracers; dust and tarmac rising-up; splinters of air and rock tumbling; bikes shivering in haloes of sparks then dissolving – just going away – behind great balls of incandescence. The whole bridge shook with each grenade-flare, and underneath it all came the sharp ring of Rick's voice, shouting and laughing.
On the edge of the bridge, through curtains of hot smoke and fire clinging to shattered bodies and disassembled bikes, the blunt shadows of blockier shapes nudged at the edge of the QuickSmog. Beside me, Malice's face dropped. The rest of the convoy, perhaps.
If Rick had noticed, he didn't care. The Mk19 spat its last grenade then whirred on, empty chambers cycling uselessly, but the rest of the arsenal kept going. Throwing curtains of dust and sparks at the far shore, as if daring the knot of bikes that had turned aside and backed away to come get some…
Nobody seemed keen to oblige.
The blocky shape began to solidify; angular panels and reinforced glass, painted sky-blue in defiance of camouflage. I recognised the boxy nose of an armoured vehicle – some ex-military ground car or other, heavy with ablative plates and sensor-gear – and let my eye wander quickly to the gun in its rear. Autocannon. 25mm, maybe 30. Against a crippled fire truck with armour made of corrugated iron, frankly, it wouldn't make much difference.
The bikes zipped off in either direction, clearing a corridor. Rick's petulant salvo rattled uselessly off the AFV's hull, and after a second or two he allowed the guns to fall silent, uncertain, letting smoke waft across the bridge.
Everyone held their breath.
The autocannon opened fire.
A lot of fire.
Somewhere deep in the tedious equip-details drummed over the years into my mind, I recognised the sound. The angry rattle, the hollow retorts of heavy calibre shells thumping – stamping – against the Inferno.
M242 Bushmaster. 25mm chain cannon, 200 rounds a minute. Probably ripped from some heavy-arsed Bradley tank and installed messily, incongruously, in the rear of that stupid little AFV. The whole thing shuddered and shifted backwards with the recoil, brakes clawing at the earth, but it didn't matter. Didn't make a fucking spot of difference.
The Inferno simply tattered. The shells didn't dent the sides, they ripped them. Metal shredded like cheap fabric, panels peeling back in lacerated strips, exit-wounds worthy of cranial trauma that blasted an organic gore of shrapnel and slag through the blockade's rear quarters.
Only a matter of time before the fuel tanks went up.
And then Rick was running, hopping between geysers of fire and dust, leather trousers ripped and bloody where shards of concrete had jumped up to slash his ankles, and the gunner swept the cannon to find him – thunderous blasts picking apart macadam, drawing close to his heels – and he was gone, diving with a shriek over the edge of the bridge, lost to the waters below. The gunner turned back to his first target with a dogged sort of well-I'll-be-blowed-if-I-don't-get-to-have-some-fun determination, and finally – throbbing at the air like a stuttering bass – found the fuel tanks.
The Inferno tried to fly. A heavy jet of black flame glommed from its belly, blew out its arse, lifted it up in a halo of flapping damage and slammed it down, keening on its side, to creak and vent fire.
"That's coming out of your deposit." Malice whispered. I smirked.
From across the lake came an uproarious cheer, broken and muffled by the fog, but loud. Wide. Spread-out. Hidden there in the fog, waiting to emerge, were a lot of people.
And onwards they came. The AFV jinking to one side, making way for a lumbering colossus that might once have been a truck-cab but now – via the careful application of welds, armour plates and a fucking
enormous dozer-scoop – looked a little more like a medieval dragon, lower jaw hanging open.
The Iroquois remained hidden.
Behind the hulking machine came others like it. HGV cabs bristling with guns, AFVs plugging gaps, converted civilian vehicles painted in the Clergy's colours and distorted by weaponry, spikes, ramming-noses. It poured from the QuickSmog like a tide of filth, like an armada emerging from sea fog; robed figures standing at arms on every surface. Behind it came the carriers. Vast lorries, armoured but unarmed. Buses and coaches riding low on their suspension, figures crammed behind mesh windows. Plated limousines and SUVs, blue-and-scarlet flags fluttering like a presidential cavalcade.
I realised, then, why the resistance had been so lacklustre at the Secretariat building. Why so few Clergymen were left to guard the gates, and why so many ran, as we swarmed inside, towards the other parts of the compound.
They'd known we were coming. Cy's timely warning, spies on every street. They'd known we could wash across them despite their sternest defences, and so they'd loaded themselves aboard a long-prepared convoy, and taken the only course open to them:
Exodus.
And now here they were. All of them.
I understood, abruptly, why the Tadodaho had brought me here. Why this moment was so important to him, and Rick, and the rest of the tribe. And more than that: to the scavs in the cities, to the people back home in London, to Bella – if she'd been here to see it…
To me.
A chance to cut the heads off the bloody Hydra, if you like. Not my business, nothing to do with me, not my problem, but still. Something I had to do.
The Iroquois remained hidden.
The dozer-scoop behemoth inched towards the flaming wreck of the Inferno, preparing to shunt it, and the caravans beside it, to one side. I wondered how big a threat the Clergy had estimated this curious little blockade to be, and sincerely hoped the answer was:
Not big enough.
The radio in my pocket hissed.
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