Homeward Bound

by James Axler

  "We don't have the room," Ryan said.

  "We can make room for the poor folk, lover," Krysty said behind him.

  "It would only be the merest Christian charity, Mr. Cawdor," Doc added.

  Ryan turned in the swivel seat. "You say 'Christian,' Doc? That's not a word you hear an awful lot around Deathlands these days."

  "Indubitably so, my dear Ryan. But that is a sorry comment on how we live. Oh tempora and oh mores, indeed. If I may be forgiven the classical tag."

  Ryan ignored the ramblings. Looking back at the woman who seemed much the stronger of the pair, he said, "We can't take you." He didn't apologize. Like Trader used to say, it was a sign of weakness.

  "Please, mister. You can fuck me. Or fuck Jem here. Any of you can. Make you feel—"

  "You want food and clothes?" Ryan said. "We don't have the time."

  "No, mister. Just take us with you. Take us for a day, that's all." She was babbling, the words stumbling and jostling each other in her terror. If she was acting, she was very good.

  "I told you. Drive on, Jak. So long, lady."

  The boy engaged one of the ten forward gears, and the truck began to creep ahead. The woman looked hopelessly at Ryan. He began to wind the window up once more.

  "You going't'the Susqua? We can save you."

  Ryan didn't answer her, though Jak glanced sideways at him.

  "Be a trap there. They get strangers at the toll crossing."

  "Hold it," Ryan said to Jak. "Best hear this."

  "We can save you. Me an' Jem. Take us on and we can save you all from the chillers." Ryan reached back and triggered the lever that opened the side door of the wag.

  Chapter Sixteen

  HER NAME WAS CHRISSY. Jem was her man. They'd been traveling west because they'd heard from some traders that there was a good life in the clean lands toward California. Then the muties had come and ended the dream.

  Jem rested, falling instantly asleep under a gray blanket in a rear bunk. She told Ryan all about the squatters who controlled the crossing of the Susquehanna, how they tricked travelers and slaughtered them.

  "They're cannies, mister," she whispered.

  "What're cannies?" Lori asked.

  "Eat meat," J.B. replied.

  "We eat meat," she replied.

  The Armorer shook his head. "Not human meat, we don't. But cannies do."

  "By the three Kennedys!" the girl exclaimed. "Double-nasty!"

  "Yeah," J.B. agreed.

  "How do they work the trap?"

  Chrissy looked at Ryan warily. "I tell you an' you put us off?"

  "No. Tell me. The truth." There it was again, like a scab that couldn't be picked. Something about the ambush didn't sit right with him. But what was it?

  "They got a lotta blasters. And the road's blocked so you gotta stop. No way around. An' they talk sweet and tell you to get down. Seem okay, but it ain't. That's how they does it."

  "When do they hit you?"

  "Some kinda word they got. Like one'll say casual that it's bastard cold. That might be the word. You gotta watch 'em. Only way is to step down and talk a whiles. Put 'em off guard. Then you can hit 'em."

  J.B. leaned forward. "What if they hit you first?"

  The woman seemed caught off-balance. "They…they won't. Not the way they do the chilling. Always same way."

  "How far's the river?" Ryan asked.

  "Coupla miles."

  "We'll be ready."

  "RYAN," JAK WARNED.

  "I see 'em."

  The road came winding down the side of a bluff. The original highway had vanished a couple of miles behind them, slipping away and leaving a jagged edge of concrete and tarmac. Jak had carefully steered the big wag down to the left, where deep ruts showed how other drivers had taken the same course. There'd been a shower of rain, earlier, and it had laid the dust.

  Everyone took up their positions inside, blasters ready. They'd all been in on the firefight planning, all finally agreeing that Chrissy should lead them out and then try to let them know when it was best to make their play against the would-be chillers.

  The woman and Jem, now recovered, waited immediately behind Jak and Ryan. They'd been offered fresh clothes, but both of them had insisted they'd wait until after the ambush.

  "There's around twenty," Jak said, "and I can see a spiked pole 'cross the track. Just this side of the bridge."

  At this point, just beyond the southern suburbs of what had once been Harrisburg, the Susquehanna was about a third of a mile wide, and looked like a glittering silver cobra winding through the gray-green land.

  Ryan felt the familiar buildup of tension. When he'd been a very young and callow boy, he'd told a stone-faced shootist that he wished he didn't get nervous. The man had looked at him for a moment without speaking, then he said, "You feel that way, means you got nerves. Means you care 'bout getting chilled. Time comes you don't feel that no more is the time you start to die. Might take days or weeks. But you're deader'n a coonskin coat."

  Ryan Cawdor had never forgotten those words. Now his stomach was beginning to knot with the anticipation of shooting. Adrenaline was flowing fast, his mouth was dry, and the palms of his hands were slick with sweat. He wiped them on his pant legs.

  If the two survivors of the massacre were telling the truth, the ground was going to get larded with several corpses in the next quarter hour.

  "Take it slow and steady and pull her up when they tell you," Ryan said.

  Jak nodded, concentrating on steering the heavy wag through the bumps and wheel tracks that came together near the bridge.

  "What they got?" J.B. asked from the back of the vehicle.

  "Looks like a bunch of M-16s. Smith & Wesson handguns in belts. Can't see any gren-launchers or heavy blasters," Ryan told him.

  "Best set your G-12 on continuous. Going't'be sharp down there," the Armorer advised.

  Ryan nodded. If the girl was telling the truth, then they should have a chance to start shooting and take the squatters by surprise. But if she was lying and they were being set up…

  They were about a quarter mile off, Jak keeping the wag moving steadily in low gear. Jem was right behind him. Ryan thought he caught the faint sound of metal on metal, and he swung around and saw both Jem and Chrissy fiddling with their leather belts. Both of them grinned as he turned, keeping their fingers hooked inside, out of sight.

  "Nice wag, this," the man said, speaking quickly. "Volvo-Benz, ain't it?"

  "Yeah," Jak said. "What was your truck…before the muties got at it?"

  Ryan noticed a slight hesitation on Jem's part, but he was concentrating on the bridge and the men ahead of them, who stood in a loose half ring, waving them to a halt. As he listened, Ryan was already reaching for the main door control lever.

  "It was an old Nissan. Kind of beat-up, but it ran well."

  "Fucking right, Jem," the woman agreed, leaning against the back of Ryan's chair. She was so close to him that her breath stirred the long hairs at his nape. "Jem kept that better'n he kept me. Painted and polished it everyday."

  That was it!

  The wag was easing to a stop, everyone ready to move to the exit to jump down. Ryan's hand was on the door lever.

  Without even looking around, he jabbed back and up with his left elbow, feeling it crack home on the side of Chrissy's jaw. A stab of pain shot up his arm, but he ignored it. Dropping the Heckler & Koch from his lap, he drew the panga with his right hand. He turned in a fluid movement and sliced at Jem's exposed throat.

  "Trap!" Ryan yelled. "Chill 'em all, outside!"

  He was facing the back of the dimly lit sec wag and saw the expressions of shock and horror on his companions' faces.

  Jem was on the metal-ribbed floor, his left hand grabbing at the screaming lips of a gaping wound that opened up his neck. The carotid artery had been severed by the keen edge of the panga, and blood was flooding out in great pumping jets. His mouth was open, and he was trying to cry out.

  Chrissy
was also down, half on her side, struggling to get up. There was a purpling bruise on her left cheek, and a thread of crimson was worming from her nose and swollen lips. "You fucking…" she began.

  What caught everyone's eye was what the man and the woman wore on their right hands. Glinting in the poor light with a lethal sheen, the contraptions were made of smooth, dark leather, tight fitting. Each fingertip carried a sliver of curved steel, like a miniature razor, no more than three inches long and a half inch wide. Used together, they were a terrifying weapon. The open sections of their belts made it immediately obvious where the bizarre blades had come from.

  From the moment that Ryan Cawdor lashed out at the woman with his elbow to the realization of how close he and Jak had come to losing their lives took no more than five beats of the heart.

  J.B. broke the moment of stillness and shock. "Pour it on them," he snapped. "Chill 'em all. Every one of 'em."

  Jak tugged the hand brake on, leaped from his seat and started to blast out of the side window with the Magnum.

  Both girls eased back the blaster slits and began to fire into the waiting group of men. Then there was the cavernous boom of the Le Mat as Doc Tanner triggered the scattergun, vomiting lead into the faces of the nearest of the squatters.

  Chrissy was scrabbling at the metal floor with the steel fingers, striking sparks in her insensate rage. Her eyes were wide open with the crazed lust to kill Ryan, who stood by his seat, staring down at her.

  "Fuck you!" she grated. "How did you know? Heard us putting on the snickers?"

  "No."

  "Then, how the…?"

  "Goodbye," Ryan said, drawing the SIG-Sauer P-226 and squeezing off a single round. The bullet hit Chrissy between the eyes, kicking her skull back against the floor of the wag with an echoing thud. Her head bounced once, then rolled to one side as she died.

  It wasn't much of a firefight—not from the point of view of the twenty or so squatters waiting outside for Jem and Chrissy to betray the strangers and deliver them into their tender hands. The ob-slits opened and the muzzles of blasters came peeking out, spitting fire and lead.

  J.B.'s mini-Uzi and Ryan's G-12 decided the battle almost before it had started. Thirty-two rounds of nine-millimeter stingers flew from the Armorer's machine pistol. The Gewehr fired a burst that sounded like tearing silk.

  The gang of assassins was ripped to pieces by the awesome firepower of the two blasters.

  Ryan didn't very often like firing the caseless automatic rifle on continuous burst, but he couldn't take a chance that the squatters might be able to take out their tires and then burn the wag. It wasn't fully protected like a proper war wag and was vulnerable to a concerted attack by determined men.

  "Hold fire! Gimme a chill count. J.B.?"

  "Seven certain, three or four more down."

  "Krysty?"

  "Agreed with J.B., plus two close in by the wheels. Both head shot."

  "Lori?"

  Immediately Ryan grimaced, knowing from previous experience what the girl's reply would be. "A lot chilled. Serve the cannies right." Lori couldn't count all that well.

  "Doc? How many your side?"

  "Pistoled four or five with a single shotgun round, Ryan. Two dead, maybe three."

  The running total made it sound like at least a dozen of the squatters had been perma-chilled, allowing for the couple on Jak's side of the big wag's cab.

  There was a burst of firing from Doc and Lori's side, bullets pinging like heavy hail off the rough arma-plate. The defenders immediately started to reply, both blasters making light, flat sounds.

  "Some running!" Jak yelled, frantically winding down his window to get a clear shot at the fleeing men.

  "Leave 'em!" Ryan ordered. "Save ammo. Let 'em go."

  Ryan was ramming the twenty-five-round loaders into the magazine clip, feeding the nitrocellulose caseless rounds. J.B. had dropped the empty cartridge mag to the wag's floor, plucking another from one of his infinitely capacious pockets and slotting it home with a satisfying click.

  "One crawling away this side," Krysty said. "Looks like a broken thigh. Shall I waste him or let him go, Ryan?"

  "Let him be. Jak, get ready to move. Doc, you and Lori go and shift that spiked rail from 'cross the road. Krysty, stay here and keep watch. Me and J.B.'ll get down first and check out the body count. Chill any that are still moving."

  "Check," the Armorer said, drawing the small Tekna knife from its sheath on his belt.

  "Ryan? "Krysty said.

  "Yeah?"

  "One thing?"

  "What is it? Best get moving and over the river. Might be more of the squatters."

  "Sure. But how d'you know?"

  "You hear them putting on finger knives?" Jak asked.

  Ryan grinned, moving a half step toward Krysty, then wincing as his boots slithered in the sticky pool of the dead couple's blood. "Better get this dreck cleared out 'fore we cross the Susquehanna," he said. "How did I know? It kept nibbling at me that there was something wrong 'bout that burning truck. Then, just as we was coming to the bridge, the woman said something that brought it clear.''

  "She was talking about how he looked after the wag," Krysty remembered.

  "Yeah. You saw it, burned out. Settled in the dirt up to the hubs and raw red rust everywhere, the fire still smoldering."

  Krysty looked puzzled. It was Jak who made the connection first. "Sure. Bastards! If'n fire only just burned, it'd be clean metal."

  Doc Tanner had been listening with great interest. "I see it now. The oxidation of the exposed metal was old. Days old. Weeks old."

  "Mebbe months old," J.B, added. "Could have been pulling that butcher's scam for fucking months. Survi-vors from the ambush. Get a lift. Then open the throats of the driver and shotgun and let in their mates. Easy as catching a legless mutie.''

  "And the way it was sitting there," Krysty said. "Now that you say it… Gaia! What a stupe I was. I can see it in my mind's eye now, and it's obvious it was a real old wreck, set by the track and fired with some brush. Drop of gas and oil and it smokes like a fresh killing ground."

  "And they'd have been eaten us!" Lori exclaimed, kicking out at the slumped corpse of the woman. "Can-nies!"

  "Right," Ryan agreed. "Now you all know what you gotta do. Clean this wag and tidy up out there. Then we can move on again."

  It took only a half hour to finish off the wounded men and wash out the bloodied interior of the big wag. Then Jak cranked up the engine, and they rolled south toward the old Maryland state line.

  Chapter Seventeen

  "I wish, I wish, I wish in vain,

  I wish I were a maid again.

  A maid again, I ne'er can be,

  'Til…

  "Can't you hold this fireblasted wag steady on the road, Jak?"

  "Sorry, Krysty. Tree felled and blocked us. Had to go around."

  It had taken them three days to get from the Susque-hanna, across the northern angle of Maryland and into the edges of Virginia. The road had been appalling and the weather worse.

  Twice they'd been hit by ferocious chem storms, as severe as anything Ryan or J.B. had ever encountered. The gales had come shrieking from the east, bringing a biting salt rain and hail that battered at the metal roof of the wag. Lightning lanced to earth all around them, filling the air with the dry taste of bitter ozone. The thunder was so loud that any conversation within the vehicle had to be shouted.

  At the height of the storms Jak had stopped driving, unable to see more than a couple of feet ahead. Mud fell from the skies and streaked the armored glass, coating it with a thick layer of gray-orange slime.

  In the evening of the third day, the wind shifted and ravened from the west. Ryan climbed down from the wag on the leeward side, finding to his dismay that his rad counter began to cheep a warning, the needle sliding into the red.

  "Must have picked up some hot shit from beyond the Miss," J.B. said when Ryan told him about it. "Some real glow spots that way. Better keep
in and move on when we can."

  In one of the places where they lost the highway, they plowed through an old burial ground.

  "Where the fuck's this?" Jak shouted, his sweaty hair tangled around his face. It was early in the morning, and a thin slice of sullen sun glowered balefully over a low range of hills to the east of them.

  As far as the eye could see, there were great rows of pale stones, most with carving on them and words that had been virtually obliterated by long years of wind, rain and chem storms. Doc Tanner offered to get down and take a look.

  The door slid open, and the old man vanished into the hazy dawn. They watched him from the ob-slits, seeing his gaunt figure, stooped like a crow, picking his way among the headstones. He hesitated now and again, hunkering down to peer at the lettering. Once he looked back toward the wag.

  "I'm getting out't'join him," Ryan said. "Anyone coming?"

  He was underwhelmed by the response. Suddenly everyone had something to do.

  "Sorry, lover," Krysty said. "This country's too full of graves for me to want to go look at any more. You go."

  The wind was cold and fresh, biting at the skin across his cheeks. On all sides Ryan could see rolling hills, mem-ories bringing back so much of his brief and long-gone childhood: round-topped mountains sprayed thick with pine forest, torn rags of fog lingering in some of the gentle valleys.

  Doc was standing with his back turned to Ryan, his hand gently stroking the top of a gravestone. He glanced around at the sound of Ryan's boots crunching on the gravel.

  "Welcome to the place of old dying, my friend."

  Tears flowed down Doc's furrowed cheeks, washing away the dust in rosy streaks over the silver stubble on his chin.

  "Private Joshua Clement. First Minnesota. Fell on the second day of July in the year of 1863. Aged twenty and two years."

  "This from the old Civil War, Doc?"

  "In my childhood this was possibly the best-known of all cemeteries. Here rest so many good fellows and young. There's another stone there, tumbled in the long grass by time and nuking. Look at it, Ryan, and see how little has truly altered in two hundred and thirty years."