by James Axler
As the rest of the companions hit the gas, gray smoke poured from under the spinning rear tires until they caught, and then the machines shot forward. But the spider was only fifty yards behind, and closing fast. The Harleys were slowly building speed, but so was the spider.
Shifting to the highest gear, J.B. pulled the gren and used his teeth to peel off the safety tape. Grabbing the pin with his other hand, the Armorer yanked it loose and tossed the HE charge at the oncoming creature.
“Shotgun them,” he ordered, wheeling to the other side of the bypass and dropping another. “No groupings!
A rain of grens arched over the companions to hit the concrete road, and bounce toward the spider. Moving with incredible agility, the mutie dodged the pattern of spheres and was past the first gren when it detonated. Zigzagging, the spider nimbly maneuvered past the grens, the rest exploding in ragged order, throwing out great clouds of black smoke to mix with the green fumes of the burning silk.
The friends fired a flurry of rounds at the mutie as it snapped its mandibles at the rear bike carrying Jak and Doc. The LeMat boomed twice, but the .44 mini-balls did no visible damage to the creature.
Spitting curses, Ryan pulled out a gren and started to slow, attempting to reach a position where he could drop the gren and ace the mutie, but not Jak and Doc.
As it tried again, Doc fired the LeMat steadily until realizing that the creature was dropping farther behind with each passing second. In triumph, the old man gave a shout in Latin as the beast began to fall behind the motorcycles, and then receded into the distance.
SLIDING BACK into formation, the companions reduced their speed and put a couple more miles under their tires before they stopped watching for the mutie.
“Need an armored tank to chill that thing,” J.B. stated grimly. “Something that size would toss an APC around like a kitten.”
“If it caught the APC,” Doc offered.
“Armored personnel carriers are not famous for their speed or durability,” Mildred said, allowing herself to breathe once more. “The best would be an Apache gunship with heat-seeking Sidewinder missiles.”
“Any chance we might find one of those at the armory?” Dean asked.
“Could be a lot of choppers there,” his father said, watching the temperature gauge. “But that’s not a wag you can operate by guessing, like a tank or PT boat.”
On the horizon, the southerly volcano belched forth a tremendous black cloud of ash, laced with geysers of white steam. A minute later, the roadway trembled, and the companions fought to control their shaking bikes.
“By gadfrey, I think an eruption is imminent!” Doc said, slowing his bike. “Mayhap we should take the next exit ramp and abandon this expedition.”
“Relax, that was just a pressure quake,” Mildred shouted as the vibrations began to lessen. “The volcano is balancing itself.”
“No danger?” Dean asked, trying to watch the bypass and the volcano at the same time.
“Not until the lava arrives,” Ryan replied. “And then it’s too bastard late.”
The bypass continued for a couple more miles, then started to bank inland toward a wide highway. Only the pillars that supported the ancient skyway still stood, topped with wild twists of iron rods, and the broken ends of steel girders. The beltway that once encircled the metropolis was gone, reduced to piles of rubble on the ground.
Slowing, Ryan gave a sharp whistle as he rolled along the side of the roadway, craning his neck to look at the buildings and stores below. There were plenty of signs along the berm, but the wind and weather had reduced them to blank steel rectangles carrying no more information than a dead man’s eyes.
“Military wags over there,” Krysty announced, pointing.
Set in a small park, near a dried lake, was a stout granite building with a curved roof and a massive concrete wall. A garage stood with its doors swung up, a collection of assorted civilian vehicles in the parking lot. An iron-spike fence topped the massive wall, and the only entrance in sight was closed with a steel gate and a large guard kiosk. But only half of the enclosed area was present. The edge of the mesa cut the rest of the location in two, the leafy tops of trees visible over the rim of the cliff. The thick jungle stretched for miles to the base of the live volcano.
“That’s got to be it,” Ryan said over the purring engines.
“Half of it’s gone,” Dean complained. “All this way for nothing.”
“Might as well see what we can salvage,” J.B. said, removing his hat and straightening the brim. “Even an old 60 mm recoilless rifle would give us enough punch to remove the spider and the droids.”
Taking the ramp, the companions braked to a halt and were forced to walk their bikes onto the sloped grass to get past a bad crash. Several cars had plowed into a military half-track embedded into a bus full of tourists. The grinning skeletons in swimsuits had been brutally crushed under the tonnage of the military wag.
“Tourists heading for the beach,” Mildred muttered, an unexpected lump in her throat. “Poor bastards.”
“Hell of a crash,” Ryan agreed, stepping onto his bike. “Good thing they were chilled already.”
Mildred blinked. “What was that? Well, yes, they would have to be, from the neutron wave,” she reasoned aloud. “First they died, then they crashed.”
“Unless they knew the war was coming before anybody else,” Krysty said, steering her motorcycle through a clump of weeds to reach the street.
“Not possible,” J.B. agreed, pausing to clean a few tiny bugs off his wire-rimmed glasses, squashed trophies garnished from the lengthy bike trip.
“Verily, not a soul knew the sword of Damocles was falling,” Doc whispered, so softly that nobody else could hear the words. “Except for the fools who cut the string themselves.”
Chapter Fifteen
That section of the mesa had been hit hard by the concussion from the aerial blast of the neutron bomb. Most of the structures were smashed flat, the overpass lying on the ground in jumbled piles of broken concrete and rust-eaten steel girders.
Squeaking loudly, a battered sign for a gas station swung over a blackened pit that reached for half a block. At the bottom, rats splashed in a rain pool, eating something vaguely cat shaped. Wrecked vehicles were scattered everywhere: crashed into trees, through store windows and piled into mounds of corroding metal.
“They set off the neutron bomb down here,” Ryan said, “to chill everybody on the island, but to not damage anything downtown.”
“Mebbe there’s a gateway there,” Krysty said, running stiff fingers through her flowing hair. “Not exactly good news.”
“Why not?” Jak asked bluntly.
“If there’s a gateway downtown, then why did the whitecoats travel a hundred miles to a different island to build another gateway and jump from there? Why not use the device here?”
“Because they couldn’t,” Ryan stated. “That’s the only possible answer. We just have to figure out why they couldn’t, and then fix the problem.”
“If we don’t?” Dean asked, pulling the bike over a curb and onto the sidewalk.
“Have to,” his father answered grimly.
Broken glass sparkled on top of the twisted car wrecks, and nobody spoke as the companions carefully walked the motorcycles down the debris-filled ramp. Ryan, Krysty and Doc each caught their long coats on sharp metal, and finally removed the garments to stuff them inside saddlebags. The day was warm, and there seemed little chance of acid rain. They would take the chance.
Reaching the ground, they uneasily surveyed the area. Potholes dominated the paved streets, weeds lined the cracked sidewalks and not a window was intact, windblown leaves piled high inside the stores and homes. In ancient days, this had been a nice section of town, but the residual rads from the nuked Navy base and the concussion of the neutron bomb had changed that. Clusters of tiny red eyes watched them pass by from the sewer drains, and fat crows sitting on a sagging roof shared something bloody and stretchy
.
Suddenly, a humanoid figure moved past a broken window. Ryan caught only a glimpse of prehensile fangs and clawed hands before it was gone.
“We got company,” he said gruffly, drawing the SIG-Sauer. “In the ruins, one o’clock.”
“Droids,” J.B. said with certainty, squeezing off the pistol-grip safety of the Uzi so it was ready to fire. “The damn things followed us!”
“That was no machine,” Krysty answered, thumbing back the hammer of the Webley. “Something else.”
“Stickies?” Mildred asked, dumping the spent rounds from her ZKR revolver and quickly thumbing in fresh ones. This was the first chance she’d had to reload since the spider. The physician had tried doing it on the moving bike, and stopped after dropping a live round.
“Not unless this breed has a mouth and fangs,” the redhead said, listening to the sounds of the desolation around them. “It more resembled one of the People.”
“Shitfire.” Mildred frowned, closing the ZKR. Those blasted blood drinkers had been tough to chill. Of all the humanoid mutations encountered in the Deathlands, the New England vampires had been the most vicious, and the most devious.
“‘Iron bars and stone walls do not a prison make,”’ Doc rumbled, checking the load in the LeMat. “But suffice, they shall, for a repository of destruction.”
“Let’s get our butts in the armory,” J.B. suggested.
“Jak, Dean, you’re on point,” Ryan ordered, and started across the street for the predark fortification. As the only companions without bikes to push, the teenager and the boy were the best choices for the job.
Showing barely a trace of a limp, Jak moved to the left with both of his blasters drawn. Dean went to the right, the Weatherby rifle appearing huge in his young hands.
As the group moved along the bumpy sidewalk, shadowy figures shifted positions in the decaying house, but none rushed the norms. Ryan hoped the muties knew what blasters could do, and were too afraid to risk an attack. Dangerously low on ammo, the companions couldn’t afford even a brief firefight. If the National Guard armory was empty, he had no idea what they could do next. Returning to the pirate ville to steal weapons would be madness. This was their best, perhaps their only chance.
There were too many potholes to safely ride the bikes, so the companions turned the machines off to save fuel, and walked the vehicles through the maze of depressions, always keeping one hand on the handlebars and the other filled with a blaster.
Reaching the front gate, the companions stood guard while J.B. checked the lock. A plump rat scurried along the top of the wall, but they withheld chilling the rodent. Dean threw a stone and missed, but the animal ran away in fright.
“Well, we’re not getting in this way,” J.B. finally announced, stepping from the gate and tilting his fedora. “This kind of lock can’t be forced. We’ve got to blow it.”
“Thought so,” Ryan growled. “But it was worth a try.”
“I could climb over,” Dean offered, studying the bars of the gate, “and pull the lever in the kiosk. Easy.”
“Gate’s electric, not mechanical,” his father stated, pointing to the exposed power cables. “Without power, it still wouldn’t open.”
“We could all climb over,” the boy insisted.
Ryan thought about the suggestion. “Too risky,” he decided. “We’re going to need the bikes to carry ammo.”
“Then blow the lock,” Krysty said, almost firing as something large dashed from one crumbling house to another.
“Plas make lot noise,” Jak pointed out succinctly, his hands crossed at the wrists to support the heavy Magnum blasters. “Gonna attract stuff.”
“We could recce the ruins,” Mildred suggested hesitantly, shifting her hold on the Thompson. “Find some mattress to muffle the sound of the explosion.”
“Nobody goes in those houses,” Ryan stated grimly. “I’d rather ask a baron for mercy.
“Besides,” he added softly, feeling things watch their every move, “the muties already know that we’re here.”
J.B. rummaged in his munitions bag. He extracted a piece of C-4 and molded the claylike charge into a small wad the size of a walnut.
“Ten seconds,” he called, stabbing a timing pencil into the plastique and breaking it off in the middle.
Quickly, the companions retreated. There was a muffled bang from the lock and the gate flew open, leaving a contrail of smoke in its wake as it loudly crashed against the brick wall.
The companions waited to see if there was any response to the noise, but only the faint noises from the jungle below could be heard, along with the ever present sheet lightning and thunder from the tortured sky.
Leaning against the wall, Jak stayed on guard while the others rolled the bikes through the gate. Dean went to the kiosk and raised the striped wooden beam blocking the entrance. As the motorcycles rolled by, he noticed that inside the kiosk skeletons were sprawled on a table covered with playing cards and matchsticks. Lucky bastards never knew what hit them.
Then a shot rang out, and the companions spun with weapons raised.
“They attacking?” Krysty demanded, taking a step.
“Not anymore,” the teenager stated, walking backward into the compound.
On the street, something hidden in the weeds made a guttural noise and went still. Inside the ruins, skulking creatures retreated to the safety of the darkness, one of them consuming a squealing rat that was not long from dead.
“Mayhap I should stay here and sound a ballyhoo if there is trouble,” Doc offered, pulling the spare Webley from his belt and thumbing back the hammer, only to ease it down again. Unlike the LeMat, the Webley was double action and didn’t require setting the hammer as a prerequisite to firing. The scholar suddenly realized that differences between the two weapons might be confusing in a fight and cost lives, so he decided to dispose of the Webley at the first chance.
“We stay together,” Ryan stated with the SIG-Sauer drawn, climbing on the Harley and pressing the ignition button. The bike purred into life.
“Dean, close the gate. Bind it with some rope, a belt, whatever you got.”
“Done,” the boy said, shouldering the longblaster.
Under the watchful blasters of the others, Dean pulled out his bowie knife and cut away the power cable leading to the defunct motors for the gate, then used the insulated wiring to bind the entrance shut.
“That’ll hold,” he said, dusting off his hands.
As the boy climbed onto the saddle with his father, Jak slid behind Doc and the companions rolled along the wide expanse of the cracked tarmac for a hundred feet before reaching the warehouse. The asphalt of the parking lot was badly cracked, stunted weeds growing in the cracks.
Braking to a halt for a brief consultation, Mildred served as the anchor with her rapidfire, while Ryan and Krysty drove a recce around the building. When they were gone from sight, J.B. went to the front door of the warehouse and studied the complex locking mechanism.
“Nobody about,” Krysty reported, returning from around a corner of the warehouse and braking next to the other bikes.
A few moments later, Ryan appeared from the opposite side. “Loading dock in the rear,” he added, spreading his legs to support the purring machine. “But the doors are bigger and look even stronger than the front.”
“Which are also locked,” J.B. reported. “Electronic keypad, palm reader and ID card necessary. Going to take a lot more C-4 than I have to open that slab of steel.”
“And the rear doors are stronger?” Doc asked incredulously.
Ryan nodded. “Like a bank vault.”
“Any windows?”
“None.”
“So let’s try Occam’s razor,” Mildred said, glancing at the small building with the flagpole in front. “Maybe the keys are in the main office.”
“Worth a shot,” Krysty agreed, turning off the engine.
Leaving Doc to guard the bikes, the others took the pressurized lanterns and walk
ed over to the small building. On point, Ryan found the screen door locked, but the inside door was held open with a rubber wedge. Rain blown in through the screen had destroyed the front room, the chairs and carpeting reduced to rags, the legs of a dark wooden table bleached gray.
The lanterns were lit, and, cutting a slit in the screen, Ryan released the latch holding the outer door in place and entered the dim building. Immediately, he was assailed by the stink of dust and mildew, the smells as familiar to him as blood and cordite.
Spreading out, the companions found nothing of interest in the waiting room, and started along a short hallway. Side doors led to a file room, a bathroom and finally to a large office with tarnished gold lettering stamped on the mahogany door. The name shown was Major Eric K. Thomas, Commanding Officer.
Kicking the door open, Ryan immediately fired and the sheet of paper fluttering off the desk jerked as the 9 mm round punched through to slap into the wall. Entering the room, the Deathlands warrior picked up the spent brass from the floor and cursed at himself for wasting a round.
Gray sunlight filtered through the grimy windows to poorly illuminate the CO’s office. In the corner was a water cooler streaked by mineral deposits on the inside. Next came a line of red leather chairs that had been badly nibbled by mice, the foamy cushions tufting out randomly. The walls were heavily decorated with framed diplomas and commendations, pictures of family and friends, each so badly tilted that a few were hanging sideways. Near a green metal file cabinet was a sofa blanketed in cobwebs, and a vid camera hung at the distant corner of the ceiling where it could cover both the door and the windows.
The door to a private bathroom was ajar, and dominating the room was a tremendous oak desk, topped with a sheet of greenish glass. A skeleton was slumped over the desktop. Tiny bits of blue fiber and tarnished metal sticking to the collar bones seemed to imply that this was an officer of some kind, possibly the CO himself. As the companions started searching the office, puffs of dust were raised from every step on the crunchy carpet.
