Homeward Bound

by James Axler

  They hadn't got much farther before Ryan could also catch the scent of roasting meat, making him lick his lips in anticipation.

  "There," Jak said, pointing through the thinning trees, to where the amber glow of flames could be seen.

  "How many you say?" Ryan asked.

  "Saw five. Old man. Old woman. Younger man, girl and little boy, round eight or nine. The wag's just behind fire."

  "Anyone on watch?" J.B. asked.

  "Couldn't tell. Didn't want to wake 'em by going close. Saw blasters. Old scattergun and coupla hand pistols. Wag's armored."

  That was nothing new. It was difficult to find any kind of truck in the whole of Deathlands that hadn't been turned into a sec wag. When even the brightness of day brought winking death, it was madness not to take some care.

  As Ryan moved a few cautious steps closer, trying to make out if the camp was being patrolled, his boots crushed some small plants and the air was filled with the smell of wild garlic.

  "I'll go around with Krysty?" J.B. suggested. "Set chrons and go on a time count?"

  Ryan nodded. Far as he could make out, the strangers hadn't set a watch. That meant they must feel reasonably secure where they were. Which meant, in turn, that they should be easy meat for Ryan and the others to sneak up on and take.

  "Go to the wag. Check it out. Could be someone in there. Doc, Lori 'n me'll take out the five by the fire. No chances. Like Trader used to say. Blast first and weep later. Better we chill them than they chill us."

  The G-12 was still set on triple burst. Jak had his satin finish Magnum cocked and ready. Lori carried her little .22 PPK. The blaster wasn't any kind of a man-stopper, but the girl was good with it and it would slow folks down. Doc hefted the cavernous Le Mat. He'd got the hammer slotted for the single .63-caliber shotgun barrel.

  Ryan glanced around at them, checking his luminous chron. "J.B. goes in three minutes twenty from now. All ready?" He got nods from everyone. "Move in closer. Careful."

  The sweep second hand crept slowly around the white dial. Ryan watched it, also trying to make out what sort of a wag they were going after. It was difficult to judge, as the vehicle was behind the fire, and partly obscured by some bushes, but it looked good. Could be an old Mercedes camper, or maybe even a Volvo body. It was clear that a lot of work had been done on it. Blaster ports had been cut on all sides, and there was evidence that some crude armoring had been welded on.

  To Ryan's experienced eye, the wag looked good. The tires seemed solid, and he couldn't see much sign of rusting around the wheel hubs, which was always a giveaway of a wag in poor condition.

  "Ten seconds… five…let's go for it. Now!"

  Ryan burst through the undergrowth, gun at hip, followed closely by Doc Tanner whooping in a high, cracked voice, and Lori screaming loud and shrill. J.B. came whooping out of the far side of the clearing, followed by Jak Lauren, long white hair streaming behind him, looking like an avenging angel of death and destruction.

  Krysty was last, covering the boy as he sprinted to the wag, ripped open the driver's door and disappeared inside.

  There was no firefight. The five were jerked from sleep by the attackers and held at gunpoint before they were properly awake.

  Jak's recon had been accurate. Nobody was lurking inside the wag. There were just the five of them. The old man had a long straggling beard that reached to his belt. His gray-haired woman mumbled constantly and appeared to be slow-witted. The little boy was very frail, with a congenital birth defect—his hands sprouted like little paddles from the points of his narrow shoulders. His face was bright and alert, but they realized quickly the boy was also deaf.

  Two other people—the lad's parents—stood trembling together, eyes staring in shock at the strangers who'd come shrieking at them from the darkness. Meadsville stream had always been a safe site, away from any marauding muties or slaughtering stickies.

  The boy's father's name was Renz Boydson, and his wife was called Mixy. Their son had been birthed as Boyd, but most times he was just called Boy. Renz's father was

  Jorg, and his woman, who was no relation, answered to Valli.

  Renz was a traveling repairman. He was good with tired old machines that seemed past their best: old washers and rad-trans equipment, as well as generators and wag engines. The big trailer that was hidden among the trees held a primitive lathe and a mass of tools he'd been collecting for years.

  The Boydsons made a fair living, though they frequently had to run the gauntlet of hostiles or double-crazies around the eastern fringe of the heart of the Deathlands. It was the wag that gave them life, food and security. The chassis was off a Mercedes camper, with parts of a Volvo body grafted onto it. The engine was reliable and exceedingly powerful, but so heavy on gas that Renz had adapted the interior to hold five twenty-gallon cans.

  The wag had once belonged to a stupe preacher, who'd got it from a woman trader who'd seen the light through his hellfire sermons.

  Renz had got it from the preacher, whose corpse, cleaned of flesh, now rested at the bottom of an old quarry, eight miles from Flanders. A bullet from Renz's Luger had been drilled through the center of his forehead.

  Renz, hands in the air, glared at the strangers. His first waking thought had been muties, then he'd guessed that some other trader or traveler had followed them and run the ambush. But these six weren't like anyone he'd ever met. Valli was weeping quietly at his elbow, and he snarled at her to shut up with her sniveling.

  The leader was obviously the man with the patch over his left eye. He was tall and well built, wearing dark clothes and a long coat. He was hefting a blaster such as

  Renz had never seen. The second-in-command was the small man with the battered hat and the glinting glasses who carried a machine pistol.

  "Keep quiet and give us no trouble, and you get to live some more," the man with the eye patch said. "We want the wag. Nothing else."

  "Mebbe some stew," the young boy said. He didn't look much older than Boy, but he walked with a terrifying air of crazed menace. With hair like spun snow and eyes like the embers that glowed in the middle of the fire, the boy looked like something built by a mountain shaman for a midnight ritual.

  One of the attackers was a dotard who looked even older than Jorg, and he was holding a handgun that had two barrels.

  Renz looked at the two women. Despite the danger to them all, he felt himself stirring excitedly. The tall, slender blonde wore clothes that seemed designed to beg a man to take her. And the other, a few years older, had hair like living flames. Both women also had blasters, holding them with ease that only comes with experience and use.

  The wind soughed through the branches of a grove of fragrant sassafras trees to the west, brightening the ashes of the fire, stirring dancing spurs of orange and yellow from the smoldering ends of the branches.

  "Yer take wag and we'll all done get chilled," Renz said, addressing his words to the one-eyed man.

  "You get to live. The keys in it, Jak?"

  "Yeah. Juiced and ready't'go."

  "Start it up. No, I guess you're right 'bout that stew. Smells good. Krysty, you an' Doc serve us out a bowl each."

  The meat was rancid, with a ragged lace of rotting gristle around each piece, but the turnip greens and sweet potatoes were fresh and good. Renz and his family sat together, guarded, watching with sullen resentment. Jorg had begun to moan at his son for letting them be taken so easily.

  "Chillers come out the brush and take food and the wag. You sit there and don't do nothing to stop them."

  "Shut the flap, you old ass-lapper. They got the blasters, ain't they?"

  "You ain't worth doodlysquat, you little fucker!"

  "Our food! Our wag!" Mixy groaned. "We got no food or nothing. What's you going to do't'them? Tell me that."

  Renz didn't know. His philosophy of life was very simple. If someone was more powerful than you, then you crawled, belly down. If you were stronger, then you beat the shit out of them. These six strange
rs turned his guts to water.

  "Want us't'take the rest of the food?" Jak asked. "There's some dried stuff an' self-heats in the wag. Last us a coupla days."

  "No. Leave 'em be. Get aboard. Start her up. Krysty and Lori, go with him. Doc, you too. Me and J.B.'ll watch 'em here."

  "How about their blasters, Ryan? Better to take them with us?" Krysty pointed with the toe of her boot to the pile of pistols and shotguns by the fire, where Jak had left them.

  "Leave them. Once we're on the way an' the doors are closed, it'd take more than them flea-flickers to harm us. Get moving."

  The albino boy led the way, followed by the girls and Doc Tanner. Ryan watched Renz and the rest of the family. Behind him, there was the deep roar of the wag engine as it kicked into life.

  Jak clashed the gears, making the heavy vehicle lurch forward. It bumped into the stump of a tree with a rending crack. Both Ryan and J.B. glanced around to see what was happening.

  It was all the old man needed to make his move.

  He had a knife tied to the inside of his left forearm, and he pulled it out, launching himself at J.B. The old woman dropped to her knees with a piercing scream. Renz, reflexes honed Deathlands-sharp, dived for the scattergun with the sawed-off stock and barrel. His wife reached for the open razor she wore sheathed between her mottled breasts.

  The little boy stood still.

  Against double-poor stupes it might have worked. Against the Armorer and Ryan Cawdor it had about as much chance of success as trying to beat a prairie rattler for speed.

  "Hit 'em!" Ryan shouted, shooting from the hip at the white-haired old man. The burst of lead kicked him into a moaning heap and he rolled into the dying fire. Blood poured from the triple wound in the center of his chest, hissing onto the flames.

  J.B. dodged sideways, firing the mini-Uzi one-handed, spraying the group of men and women as he moved. Thirty-two rounds of 9 mm ammo ripped out at a muzzle velocity of just over eleven hundred feet per second.

  As the Armorer moved forward, his boots slipped on an empty can and he fell, finger still clamped on the trigger, more or less holding his aim.

  Renz and his family were huddled together, and the burst of fire was tight and controlled.

  Boy went dancing away, half the side of his head blown off, his paddling little hands groping at the empty air as he fell, dying.

  Mixy was hit through the knee and went down screaming in a welter of blood and splintered bone. As she fell, several rounds stitched across her stomach, spilling her guts into the dirt so that they tangled around her feet in crimson-streaked gray coils and loops.

  Valli caught five rounds, the lead lifting her clear off her bare feet and sending her seeping corpse smashing into the lower branches of a tumbled oak. A jagged branch went straight through her, piercing her rib cage, holding the woman's kicking, jerking body several inches from the blood-sodden earth.

  Amazingly, amid the carnage, Renz stood untouched. He had reached the pile of blasters, but Ryan's G-12 was tracking in his direction.

  "Feel lucky, stupe?" Ryan asked, his voice loud in the sudden quiet. To the side of the clearing the wag had stopped, stalling, engine ticking into silence. Krysty led the others out of the main door, guns ready.

  But it was over.

  "Don't shoot me, you bastard. You chilled everyone in m'family. Even Boy."

  "It's okay," Ryan called out. "All right, J.B.?"

  "Yeah. Didn't figure on chilling the whole brood, though. Caught my foot."

  Ryan shook his head dismissively. The family had been stupid enough to try against armed men, just holding blades. He didn't feel any sympathy for them. That's the way it always was in the Deathlands.

  The raggedy man stood and watched, face blank with shock. His whole family had been iced in the blinking of an eye, and it still hadn't really registered. And now his wag was going to disappear forever, A great flow of tears suddenly began to course down Renz's filthy cheeks.

  "Take me with you."

  Ryan ignored him. "Back in the wag, everyone. Let's move out."

  "Fuck you!"

  The engine rumbled, gouts of blue-gray smoke hanging in the air, pierced by shafts of silver moonlight. Ryan gestured to J.B. to join the others, backing away slowly himself and keeping the blaster trained on the solitary man. The corpse dangling from the jagged end of the branch finally ceased twitching and hung still.

  "Can't make it on my own!" Renz stooped and picked up the sawed-off shotgun, lifting it to his face.

  Ryan hesitated, considering chilling the man. But bullets were scarce.

  He stepped backward until he was in the open doorway of the wag, never taking his eyes off the solitary figure. Renz was holding the scattergun, staring down at the twin barrels as though he couldn't quite understand what they were.

  "Get in, Ryan. I got him covered," J.B. said from behind him.

  "Bastards!" Renz shouted, his torn voice ringing harsh through the forest, clearly audible even inside the racketing box of the big wag. Ryan began to close the sliding door.

  The clouds had drifted away from the moon, and the clearing was as brightly lit as a stage, Renz at its center. The gun was close to his open mouth, and his eyes were fixed on the door of the wag.

  The explosion was muffled.

  Even as the door slammed shut, the sec locks clicking into place, Ryan saw the top of the man's head disintegrate in a great spray that looked as black as beads of jet in the moonlight.

  "Did he… ?" Krysty began, seeing Ryan nod the answer.

  "Let's go, Jak," Ryan ordered, holding on as the vehicle began to grind its way westward.

  Chapter Fourteen

  THE WAG WAS BIG ENOUGH to carry all six comfortably, and each had a narrow bunk. The self-heats in the kitchen area of the wag lacked labels, which made meals an interesting lottery. Near the back, in its own partitioned closet, was a chem toilet. Generally the vehicle was scruffy and stank of old sweat, but during the first morning's driving they bowled along with the blaster ports and roof vents open, all working together to sweep and clean the interior.

  The half-breed truck seemed in good mechanical condition. They stopped about ten in the morning because the arrow in the temperature gauge was showing signs of veering into the red. But when Jak checked under the hood he found the reading was false. One of the pistons was worn, and the exhaust roared more loudly than it should have.

  "Going't'be heavy on gas," he said. "Good job's cans in back."

  None of them knew it, but there was another hundred gallons of precious gas hidden away in the undergrowth near the five corpses.

  IT WAS LATE in the afternoon when they reached the fast-flowing expanse of the Delaware River, looking to cross it near the ruined ville of Stockton. The dash of the wag held some fragile old maps, creased and crumpled, which were held together with brown bits of tape and frayed string.

  The parts of the maps that would have shown the trails to Front Royal were missing, ragged edges taking them tantalizingly close to their proposed destination. Ryan pored over them at a small table near the open port, the others peering over his shoulder.

  "North along the Delaware, toward Easton. Around Allentown and on to… Can't read that name. Doc? Can you make it?"

  "My eyes are not, frankly, as sharp as once they were, my dear Ryan. But I believe it must be the town of Har-risburg, and from thence to Gettysburg. By the three Kennedys and the one Lincoln, but there is a name to stir the cockles of memory. That we should be going there after—" He turned away quickly and went to sit down on his bunk, where Lori ran to comfort him.

  "Then Frederick…" Ryan continued. "I recall that. The ville's close to there."

  "We've got to cross the river first," Krysty said quietly. "Looks wide from that map."

  "Lotta toll bridges built in the Shens," Ryan said. "Trade or jack."

  "What're we gonna do?" Jak asked, climbing back into the driver's seat. "No jack. What trade?"

  Ryan held up the Heckler & Ko
ch. "I figure this is all the trade I need."

  Doc wiped his face with his swallow's eye kerchief. "Least we don't have ice to cross the Delaware like…like somebody or other did, but I disremember who."

  The highways weren't in bad condition. The surface was cracked and deteriorated, but most of the way it was drivable. Every so often the road disappeared under an earthslip, or was washed out of the world by a swollen river.

  Occasionally they'd pass by the tumbled ruins of a small hamlet. Most buildings were totally destroyed, though the central stone chimneys remained standing— fingers pointing upward like graveyard memorials. Now and again they'd come across one or two intact buildings, scorched clapboard rotting away. A doctor's shingle would still be legible, or a rectangular crimson soft drink machine would squat outside the tumbled relic of a general store.

  Grass and weeds had taken over most of the land, sometimes bursting through the tarmac of the highway. J.B. took over at the steering wheel from Jak as the day wore on. They stopped to refill the tank from one of the cans, standing in the soft afternoon heat under an azure sky.

  They saw more birds, dipping and swooping over a mud hollow, feasting on the lazy clouds of tiny insects. A little way off to the right they could see the remains of a gas station. The building itself had completely vanished under tangling vines, but the metal-and-glass pumps remained, white and maroon paint peeling off in patches.

  "Look," Krysty said, pointing farther down the blacktop, where a single human figure stood shimmering in the heat.

  "Trouble?" J.B. asked, hand dropping automatically to the butt of the mini-Uzi.

  Ryan shaded his eye with his hand. "Road's wide there. No brush close to it. Can't be an ambush. Not one alone."

  As a precaution they closed some of the blaster ports, keeping careful watch through the others, and Ryan slid the roof vent across and bolted it. Because of the menace of stickies it wasn't a good idea to give them any way to get at you. Ryan sat up front, riding shotgun with Jak.

  J.B. had left the driver's seat and taken up a position by the rear ob-slit.