Homeward Bound

by James Axler

  "Take it slow, Jak," Ryan warned. "Get ready to push the pedal through the metal."

  The young albino boy looked up at him, shaking his head. "Wanna tell me how't'wipe my ass, Grandad Ryan?"

  "Cheeky bastard. Trouble with young kids now. Too much gall and not enough sand. Let's go, Jak."

  The wall lurched forward as the teenager crashed it into gear, making everything in the sweating box of the main compartment rattle and fall.

  "He moving?" Krysty asked.

  "No. Still where he was. Can't see any danger. Nobody else is there."

  "Could be a trap," Doc Tanner suggested from the right side of the wag.

  "Could be. One man isn't about to take an armed wag."

  Ryan stared through the slit in the wired and armored glass of the windshield. As they moved steadily along the track, he was able to see the motionless stranger a little better.

  It was a male, around average height, tending toward skinny. In the Deathlands you didn't very often get to see anyone fat.

  He was wearing a light gray coat that hung below his knees, the breeze tugging at its hem. His pants were also gray, tucked into brown laced-up work boots. His hair was cropped to a mousy stubble over prominent ears. His skull was long and narrow.

  "Slow it down," Ryan ordered. "Keep your eyes double-wide."

  He kept the automatic rifle trained on the man as the wag eased to a crawl. The face of the stranger was turned up, incurious, the eyes locking on Ryan's eye. The expression didn't alter. Ryan spotted the heavy old horse pistol that was jammed into the man's wide belt. It looked as if it'd been used for everything from stirring stew to hammering in fence posts.

  Lori was the only one who spoke, staring through her ob-slit at the stranger.

  "He got a face like a sheep-killing dog," she said.

  J.B. watched through the back of the wag, calling to Ryan. "The crazy isn't moving. Just stands there, looking at our dust."

  They kept moving and reached the river near evening as the sun was sinking behind the rolling hills that stretched as far west as the eye could see. After the chance encounter with the mysterious young man, Ryan had ordered them to keep the ob-slits half-shut and made sure the roof vent remained bolted.

  There had been discontented muttering about the heat, mainly from Doc Tanner, but Ryan had been concerned that the low bushes seemed to be getting closer to the edge of the highway, making a sneak attack that much easier to mount.

  The wag rolled over the top of a low rise, and Jak jammed on the brakes, bringing the vehicle to a shuddering halt.

  "What's…? Ah, I see it. Best get ready, friends. Looks like we might have us some trouble here."

  There was a battered pair of old Zeiss binoculars hanging from a hook at the side of the front passenger seat, and Ryan took them down. The focusing screw was stiff, the lenses not properly balanced, but he got enough visual information through one eyepiece to make out that the bridge across the Delaware was well guarded. At least a half-dozen figures were standing near it, looking up at the wag, which was poised on the crest of the hill. They were all carrying blasters, which looked to be long-barreled, single-action pieces.

  "They seen us," Ryan said calmly. "Shouldn't worry us more'n a mosq-bite. We'll play it this way."

  Josiah Shubert held up his hand, the thumb and seven fingers spread in a warning to the lumbering sec wag to slow down. The blaster ports were all closed, and the driver was hidden by the setting sun glaring off the reinforced glass.

  "Whoa down, Renz!" he shouted.

  Jak went carefully through the gears, foot holding the brake. His other foot hovered over the gas pedal, waiting for the order from Ryan Cawdor to move out.

  Ryan had his visor down on the passenger side. J.B. was covering the rear. Krysty and Lori were on the right of the wag, Doc on the left. All waited, crouched, behind the ob-slits.

  "Back early, Renz. Forget something, did ya?"

  The wag was inching forward, Jak struggling to keep the powerful engine from stalling on him. As well as the leader of the group, there were six men, mostly on the driver's side. One was by Ryan's side window, picking his nose and carefully examining what he'd excavated. The last of the men lounged against a painted pole that rested on a pair of old barrels on either side of the rickety bridge.

  "Roll it down and hand the jack," Shubert ordered, his voice suddenly holding an edge of suspicion, an edge Ryan instantly recognized.

  "Go."

  Jak stomped down, and the wag jerked forward, slowly starting to gather momentum. The albino had his Magnum resting in his lap, and he snatched it up. Shubert jumped for the running board and hauled himself up. He had a taped .32 in his hand, and jammed it in the narrow slit of the sec window.

  "You ain't Renz, ya mutie bastard! We'll chill ya right-"

  "Shut it," Jak yelled, shooting the man through his open mouth. The bullet smashed a great chunk of bone out of the back of his head and kicked him into the dirt on the side of the road.

  It was the only shot that anyone aboard the wag needed to fire. Ryan had been right in his summing-up of the blaster threat from the men. With their leader rolling, screaming and dying, none of them wanted to be dead heroes.

  The armored radiator of the wag tore through the pole barrier, splitting it in two, one half wheeling high in the air and eventually splashing down near the edge of the muddied waters of the Delaware.

  Ryan heard the thin sound of a ragged volley from the muskets, but as far as he could tell none of them struck the retreating wag.

  "All okay?" he shouted, getting a chorus of positive replies.

  The heavy tires thrummed on the planks of the bridge. Jak was still accelerating when Ryan leaned over and tapped him on the arm. "Slow down some, or we'll be in the river."

  "Don't worry," the boy said, then grinned, eyes burning with crazed delight.

  But he did slow down.

  THE NEXT DAY they cut southward across the Blue Mountains, eventually picking up what remained of the old Interstate 78 and following it for fifteen or twenty miles as they came closer to Harrisburg and the Susque-hanna River. The road was mainly in good shape, and they barreled along at a reasonable speed. They ran through a couple of heavy storms, rain streaming off the side of the highway, and gathering in deep rutted pools where the top surface had been eroded by a hundred winters and summers.

  They saw very little evidence of any settlements near the road, though Krysty smelled smoke several times during the day.

  It wasn't until later the next morning that they encountered any people.

  Chapter Fifteen

  "SOME LOVED NIGRAS and some wanted to chill all the nigras?"

  Doc shook his head in exasperation at Lori's question. "No, no, no. And I only used the word 'nigra' because that was the epithet that was current coinage back then. It is not a good word, my sweet little child. Not a good word at all."

  "Sorry, Doc. But I didn't…"

  "Gentlemen in the South kept blacks as slaves. Those north of the Mason-Dixon line, as it was known, believed that all men were created equal and should all be free."

  "Sounds right," Ryan said.

  "Man with the biggest blaster has the biggest hunk of the freedom," J.B. commented, as cynical as ever.

  Doc Tanner smiled sadly. "I fear your jaded view of life is too often correct. Certainly the Civil War ended that way."

  A young deer had appeared unexpectedly out of the brush in front of the wag at a point where the road was so rough that Jak had to crawl along in the lowest gear. The ports and ob-slits were open, and J.B. felled the beast with a single shot from his Steyr AUG handblaster.

  By mutual agreement they stopped at the next safe site and built a fire. The deer was skinned, jointed and roasted.

  It was a beautiful spot for a camp. A scattering of aspens, their tops shimmering silver, swayed in the northerly breeze. A stream bubbled nearby in a series of little falls and pools. The whole place was rich with a profusion of wildflower
s: hedge nettle, sage and fringed pha-celia in a mix of delicate colors and shapes. Lori had woven herself a necklet of white and lavender blossoms, letting them dangle between her breasts as she sat and licked smears of blood from the roasted haunch of the fawn.

  Krysty had brought up the subject of the Civil War, knowing from her teachings as a child that they were coming into an area where some of the most intense fighting had occurred.

  Doc had been delighted to share his reminiscences with her.

  "Those names," he said. "Shiloh and First Bull Run. Some called it Manassas. Stones River and Chicka-mauga. Chancellorsville and Antietam. The Wilderness and Spotsylvania. The sepia prints by Brady of untidy corpses along a picket fence. Even in Vermont, as a child, I saw men still dying of their wounds from those battles. And the generals. Names that tripped off the tongue like a litany of the gods of Olympus."

  "Tell us," Krysty said. "Better than using a gateway as a time machine."

  Doc leaned back, picking at his strong teeth with a long thorn plucked from a dog brier.

  "There was Grant, above all. Ulysses Grant. And Lee and Sherman and Hood and Nathan… I don't recall his other name. But—"

  "You ever meet any of 'em, Doc?" J.B. asked. "What kind of blasters they favor?"

  "I was only a child. Many died during the conflict and shortly after. But I did meet General Grant. And a sorry meeting it was."

  "Why?"

  "You ask me why, Ryan, and I shall tell you. Indeed it will give me pleasure to tell you."

  Ryan spotted the beginning of the rambling repetition that indicated Doc's memory wasn't yet completely healed. And probably never would be.

  "An uncle of mine, whose name escapes me, was one of the physicians attending General Grant during his terminal illness. I visited him on the very day that the great man finally lost his hold on the tenuous thread that bound him to his corporeal self. Once severed, he would be free to roam with the immortals in the fields of Elysium."

  "Who chilled him?" Jak asked, picking at the ends of a frayed length of meadow grass.

  "A cancer that ravaged his mighty frame. His passing was truly a relief and a mercy after many long days of agony and anguish for all who loved him. It was a dullish sort of day, I recall. I was a lad of seventeen or so. He tried to sit and was staring out at the casement. I kept mouse-quiet in the corner of his chamber. He called out once and then fell back dead."

  "What did he say, Doc?" Ryan asked.

  "He had a female companion. He said, very clearly to her, 'It is raining, Anita Huffington,' and then he passed away."

  Nobody spoke, and Doc stood, stretching his angular frame. Taking Lori by the hand, he said, "Now I think this innocent child and I will walk among the trees and flowers and commune with nature. We shall return within the hour."

  "Take care," Ryan said, watching the old, old man go off, still holding the hand of the tall blond teenager.

  "J.B. SAID THERE was another river and bridge coming?" Jak asked.

  "Not far off. Cross it when we come to it, kid," Ryan replied. "That's a joke, Jak. Cross the bridge, when we come to it. It's a joke."

  "Very nearly, lover." Krysty smiled.

  Krysty stood—balanced against the rocking of the vehicle—and proceeded to climb onto the support platform beneath the main roof vent. Then she lifted head and shoulders into the open air.

  "Beautiful up here," she called out. "You can see ahead for miles. Looks like the main highway's been wasted 'bout a mile on. But there's an older, narrow road to the left."

  Jak acknowledged her warning, and four or five minutes later the wag swung off down a bumpy, dusty slope, swaying along the ancient track.

  Krysty stayed up on top, her long hair streaming out behind her like a great veil of fire. The land was growing more hilly as they moved farther southwest, and swathes of conifers covered the rolling land.

  About fifteen minutes later she shouted down to Jak to pull up. "And switch off the engine a while. I need quiet."

  Krysty jumped out through the sliding door at the side of the sec wag and stood in the furrowed dirt of the trail. The others, one by one, climbed out after her. Jak was last, wiping sweat from his forehead with the back of his hand. Ryan joined Krysty, who stood staring intently down the road. Behind them the cooling engine clicked metallically in the stillness of the day.

  Ryan was proud of his own keen sight and hearing, and he often tried to match Krysty's mutie-enhanced skills. "What is it, lover?"

  "Not sure."

  "Far off?"

  She nodded, face rapt with concentration. "Yeah. Three, mebbe four miles on. Wind's carrying it toward us."

  "What is it, Krysty?" J.B. asked.

  "Couple of things. Quarter of an hour ago I'm certain I saw someone using binoculars. Caught the flash off glass. Then I saw nothing else, so I figured it could easy have been the sun off a fragment of broken glass in the undergrowth."

  It was a reasonable assumption. The whole of Death-lands was riddled with twisted metal, fallen stone and broken glass.

  "But?" Ryan prompted.

  "But now I smell oil and fire. Hot iron. Thought I heard shots. If you look a little to the left of where the road crosses the next ridge, near in line with that broken water tower leg…"

  "Smoke," said Jak, whose sight was nearly as keen as Krysty's—when the light wasn't too bright to affect his sensitive eyes.

  Then Ryan could see it as well—a thin column, its top tinted crimson by the brazen ball of the sun. It was two or three hundred feet high, gradually dissipating near its peak as the wind tore it apart. It was difficult to be sure, but it looked to Ryan as if the smoke had that dark, oily quality that spoke of serious trouble.

  "Back in the wag," he ordered. "Close up the roof vent and drop the ob-slits. Don't bolt them shut, but keep ready by them. Any of the blaster ports not covered by someone had best be locked."

  "THAT'S CLOSE ENOUGH, Jak. Hold her here, but keep her running."

  They were about a hundred paces away, and Ryan squinted through the narrow gap in the wired glass at what looked to be a battered truck. The tires were gone, burned to sticky black tar, and all the windows were broken. The piles of charred wood heaped at the bottom of the vehicle still smoked, sending gray coils skyward.

  The metal of the wag was rusted deep orange, even around the wheel hubs, and it had settled into the earth.

  "Been ambushed?" J.B. asked as the others crowded forward for a look at the wreck.

  "Looks that way. Still a lot of smoke. Best wait a while before we go past it. Anyone could be waiting for us."

  They sat and watched, the smoke slowly clearing. There were no bodies visible, which could mean the attackers had taken them prisoner. Or it might mean the wreck held roasted corpses.

  "Want me to move on?" Jak asked, sounding bored to the teeth with hanging around.

  "Whoever did that can't be far off. Don't forget Krysty said she saw someone spy-watching us. So they know we're here."

  There was something about the wrecked truck that somehow didn't sit right with Ryan, something out of place that nagged away at the back of his mind. But he couldn't quite grab hold of the doubt and examine it.

  "Okay," he said. "Slow and easy. Double-care, friends."

  Ryan saw the two figures first, torn and ragged, stumbling on the broken surface of the road. Their clothes were strips of blackened material and hung off their bodies. Their faces were smudged with dirt, oil and smoke, hair flattened against their heads. Their hands were empty.

  "Stop, Ryan?" Jak asked, tongue flicking to lick his dry lips.

  "Everyone looking? See anyone?"

  The answers rattled in like machine-gun fire. Nobody could see anything threatening from their ob-slits.

  "Stop," he said. "Keep double-red alert. Nobody move or open anything."

  It was impossible to tell the sex of either of the people who had staggered to a halt in the center of the highway. They were both of average height and lightly bui
lt. As far as Ryan could see, neither had any obvious mutie defect.

  As the wag stopped, both of them held up a hand, palm outward. Suddenly the one on the left collapsed like a doll, lying sprawled in the dirt.

  "Survivors from an ambush?" Krysty said. "You going't'help 'em, lover?"

  "Pull alongside them," Ryan ordered. "On my side." He wound down the window a couple of inches. He realized that the person still standing was a woman. The other was a male.

  "Help us, mister. Got 'bushed by muties. Came out and blocked road. Set us alight 'fore we could do anything."

  The eyes were deep cornflower blue, the voice hoarse and ragged. Beneath all the dirt and oil Ryan guessed she might have been a good-looking woman. Her body was lean and muscular. One firm breast protruded through a tear in her jerkin.

  "Help, mister!" moaned the man on the ground, head half-turned to stare up at Ryan. "We'll die if'n you don't."

  "How d'you get out?" Ryan asked, still conscious of some incongruity about the wrecked wag nibbling at his gut.

  "Luck, mister," the woman replied. "There was a dozen of us. Tried to fight the dead-eyes in th'open. Too many of 'em. Chilled most of us and took a coupla kids with 'em. Me an' Jem runned in the brush. They let us go."

  It made sense.

  Ryan had lived long enough in the Deathlands to know that the one predictable thing about muties was that they were utterly unpredictable. And he'd seen enough ambushes to know the way death came grinning out of a clear sky. They could be telling the truth about what happened.

  "You got blasters?"

  The woman held her arms wide, spreading her legs in a parody of the classic sec-search position. The rags were so tattered and thin that he could clearly see she was naked underneath them—naked except for a wide leather belt.

  "What d'you think, mister?" the woman said, seeing Ryan eye the man. Other than a similar wide belt, the man was visibly naked under the scorched shreds of clothing.

  "What d'you want from us?" Ryan asked. "We can give you a coupla cans of self-heats. Some water. Mebbe old clothes. That do?"

  "Take us with you." The man clawed his way to his feet, helped by the woman. He stared wildly in both directions up and down the road. "The muties'll get us if'n you leave us here."