by James Axler
“Why two?” Jak demanded, brushing back his snowy hair. “Only one flat.”
“Because the front tires are totally different from the rear,” J.B. explained patiently. “They’re for steering the cab, while the ones in the flatbed are for supporting the cargo. They don’t turn like the ones up front, and we need a match pair to make the cab steer smoothly. Dark night, the front suspension is banged up enough from our ride through that damn marsh! On top of which, the rear tires are bigger than the others, so we’ll have to trim the damn planks, too.”
“Fair enough,” Jak said in acceptance. “Radiator fixed.”
“Yeah.” J.B. shrugged. “That’s something at least.”
Just then, there came a high-pitched whistling from under the hood and white steam blasted onto the ground under the engine, quickly slowing to a bubbling dribble of hot water.
Casting an angry look at the teen, J.B. tugged his fedora on tighter and tramped toward the cab, muttering nuke-hot curses.
It was dawn before the companions got the Cyclops back under way again. Transferring the tires had been hard work, but the flatbed had built-in jacks for disengaging the locking mechanism of the cab, and the toolboxes had contained a wide assortment of wrenches, hammers and crowbars. This time, J.B. used a leather belt and some pieces of wood to reinforce the damage hose, with Mildred helping by treating the busted hose like a broken leg. Doing a recce, Doc had located the waterfalls and used the canteens to fill the radiator, plus make a pot of black coffee. The mil brew was strong and bitter, but it banished their exhaustion, at least for a little while. When the work was finally done, everybody had a meal and caught a couple of hours of sleep. Their clothing was filthy, stiff with dried blood, but the companions were awake and rested.
Starting the engine, Ryan listened to the machinery for several minutes before revving the diesel, trying to blow the repair. But the pressure stayed steady, the engine temp keeping well within the operational limits. Satisfied, he shifted into gear and the Mack moved smoothly forward, the replacement tires seeming to work just fine.
With an exhausted J.B. catching some additional sleep in the back, Krysty was riding in the cab. Resting an elbow out the window, the redhead was chewing a stick of hundred-year-old gum from an MRE pack, seemingly her old self again. A Kalashnikov rested across her lap, and a cannie throwing ax lay on the seat between her and Ryan, along with a canteen of lukewarm coffee.
After some discussion, the companions had decided to try for Two-Son ville in the Zone. There had been no trace of Delphi after the watery marsh, but since the friendly ville was roughly in this direction, it seemed the logical place to go. With the accursed cyborg on the move again, they’d need someplace to use as a base of operations, and they were sure of a friendly reception from Baron O’Connor, as well as Sec Chief Stirling. On the downside, there was no way they had enough juice to reach the ville, but the reserve barrels of diesel in the flatbed would take them most of the way. That was good enough. With luck they could find a ville and trade the war wag for some horses, or buy more juice. Aside from the dried human trophies, the cannies had kept a lot of the personal possessions of their victims. There were boxes of boots, pocket combs, harmonicas and such in the back. Along with several kegs of black powder, a bag of sharpened flints, a box of assorted knives, several axes and a dozen flintlock blasters. As long as nobody recognized the war wag of the cannies, they were in good shape. Jak had tried to use some shine to remove the painting on the front planks, but it was made of some predark stuff that stubbornly resisted being erased, so the teen had settled on hacking up the giant eye with an ax.
“Mayhap we should call the wag Justice,” Doc said, chuckling. “Because now we are blind.”
“Or the Stygian Witch,” Mildred shot back amiably.
“Singular? Most inappropriate.”
“How about Norad?” Jak suggested, trying to join the conversation. “They blind.”
Mildred dutifully considered that. She had been puzzled hearing that curse for the first time, but it made sense, too, seeing how the North American Air Defense had really dropped the ball in protecting the nation. Blind Norad was one of the most vulgar phrases that existed in the Deathlands. Yeah, it fit, all right, but just seemed too disrespectful to the military personnel who had died standing their posts in Cheyenne Mountain. Their regrettable sin of omission had been paid for a thousand times over in a thundering moment of nuclear fury.
“Okay, what about—” she began when there was a crackle of lightning, a low rumble of thunder, and it stared to rain.
Horrified, the companions darted for cover under tarpaulins and plastic sheets. But after a few minutes, there was no reek of sulfur, and they were delighted to discover it was merely water coming down instead of deadly acid rain. Taking advantage of the storm, they used the tiny bars of complimentary soap that came with the MRE food packs to scrub their clothes while still wearing them, and washed as much of the bloody mud out of their hair as possible. Feeling greatly refreshed, the companions continued the lumbering overland journey in the no-name wag, expertly catching the fresh rain to refill the canteens once more.
“I still like Justice.” Doc gamely tried once more, screwing the cap on a sloshing canteen.
Her sodden array of beaded locks hanging down like a drowned tarantula, Mildred irritably snorted. “Oh, shut up, ya old coot.”
Slowly the long miles rolled by and eventually the scrubland changed into a pine barrens, the stunted trees becoming larger and growing closer together until forming a thick forest that was impossible for the rig to traverse.
Braking to a halt, the companions waited for the rain to cease, then J.B. used his minisextant to pinpoint their location and check a map. They were very close to the Utah border, pretty much in the middle of nowhere, but he located a predark highway to the south only a couple of miles away. If it still existed, it should take them past the forest and more than halfway to Two-Son ville.
Heading to the south, Ryan soon found the remains of the highway. The gray asphalt was badly cracked, weeds growing out of every crevice, and there were a lot of potholes. But it was still passable and went in the correct direction.
Crossing a granite bridge, Ryan saw the sprawling ruin of a predark city at the bottom of the gorge. A partially melted skyscraper rose above the flattened stores and burned homes, and a lay on its side amid the neat rows of parked civilian cars at a shopping mall. Ryan gave the ruins only a glance. He had seen similar things. When the nuke war came, the titanic explosions annihilated anything near them, but everything else just a little farther away was sent tumbling. Once he’d found an intact iron bridge smack in the middle of a grassy field, the closest water a hundred miles away.
The rad counter on his lapel began to move into the red, and Ryan shifted to a higher gear to leave the vicinity fast, not slowing down until the bridge was far behind them.
Fragrant pine trees grew thick along the ancient highway, a brown carpet of dead nettles so thick on the ground that it sometimes hid the asphalt. There was a lot of wildlife in the area, and Ryan saw several wolves racing through the trees, but then they were gone.
Willow and birch trees began appearing among the stately pines, along with something that resembled oak, and then a new variety of tree came into view.
Climbing on a firing step, Doc grinned, showing his eerily perfect teeth. “Maple trees!” he cried, beaming in pleasure. “Those are maple trees! The same as we had back in Vermont.”
Viewing the trees made the man think of home, and Doc briefly considered asking Ryan to stop so that he could harvest some of the wonderful sap. They had axes and buckets, what else was really needed? But then he remembered it took hours to gather the sap, after which it had to be thoroughly boiled and then reduced. A full bucket of raw sap yielded only a cup of syrup.
Without a proper thermometer, he’d need some white vinegar to cut the froth in case of overboiling. Egad, I might as well wish for the moon on a string. And besides, it was th
e wrong time of year.
“Maple syrup.” Mildred sighed, smacking her lips. “It’s been a long time since I have even thought about pancakes.” Once in a redoubt, she had found an MRE pack claiming to contain pancakes and syrup, but the hard crunchy stuff inside had seemed more fitting to repair busted tank armor than as breakfast fare. Pancakes were no longer part of her life, any more than traffic jams and cable TV. Gone, and better forgotten.
“Pancakes?” Doc said as if he had never heard the word before. “Waffles, madam! Those are the only proper milieu for maple syrup!”
“Fair enough.” She chuckled. “Shall we stop off at a waffle house for the breakfast special?”
“If you find one that’s open, I’ll pay.”
“Deal!” She laughed.
Lying curled in a corner, J.B. grunted. “Will you two please shut up?” he demanded from under his fedora. “I’m trying to fragging sleep!”
“Of course, John, sorry,” Mildred apologized.
Reclaiming his seat, Doc sighed. “Waffles,” he whispered longingly.
“Pancakes,” Mildred replied softly with a grin.
“Gumbo,” Jak added, lost in his own thoughts of home.
In the cab, Krysty sharply jerked her head to the right as something flashed by in the distance. “Pass me your longeyes, will you, lover?” she asked, leaning out the window.
Keeping a firm grip on the steering wheel, Ryan did so and she extended the telescope to its full length, studying a woody hill on the right side of the highway. Looking in that direction, Ryan could only see the misty forest.
“Something wrong?” he demanded tersely, slowing slightly as the highway began to curve.
“There’s a ville up there,” she said, compacting the antique. “I wonder if…”
Snarling a curse, Ryan savagely slammed on the brakes and desperately downshifted. Bucking hard in response, the Mack tilted sharply and nearly flipped over as the wheels locked, then the tires began sliding freely across the thick layer of pine needles.
For a split second, Krysty saw a thick tree trunk lying across the highway, then they hit and there was only noise and chaos.
Chapter Fourteen
A cool night wind blew over the desert carrying the faint smell of the nearby Great Salt, which had been greatly altered since the nukecaust. The setting sun only a reddish blur behind the thick cloud cover in the sky, the muted light made the landscape appear as if it was bathed in blood. Suddenly sheet lightning crackled amid the billowing clouds of chems; a moment later strident thunder rumbled downward like the voice of God.
Rudely awakened, a screamwing stirred in its nest atop a tilting skyscraper, then launched itself out the window to glide into the thickening shadows, eyes hungrily sweeping the ground below for anything edible. Alive would be preferable, but there were young to feed, so anything organic would do.
Landing briefly on top of a sagging billboard, the winged mutie squawked in disappointment at the discovery that the hard, shiny, smooth frame was not organic. Anointing it with feces as a reminder to not check the dead thing again, the screamwing took off, wheeling through the air as it investigated rooftops, alleyways and schoolyards. But not even the lizards and rats seemed to be out this night. The screamwing was starting to think that she would have to slay one of her young and feed the body to the others to keep them alive, when she caught a movement near the edge of the tall stone things. Darting in that direction, the mutie caught the smell of living flesh on the wind and folded back her wings to streak down from the mottled sky, her deadly beak poised and ready to strike as she headed straight for the two-legs ambling across the hot sand.
STOPPING TO REMOVE the cap from his canteen, Edgar Franklin heard a soft beep from the proximity sensor under his loose clothing. Damn, a screamwing! Those were dangerous. Closing the canteen, the man drew his needler and looked up, his eyes filtering out the background light until spotting the deadly little mutie coming at him at over a hundred miles per hour. Most impressive! Locking on to the target, Franklin fired once from the hip and holstered the weapon. A few seconds later a handful of burned feathers and bones rained down upon the hard-packed sand covering the dusty street.
Stepping over the smoking corpse, Franklin took out the canteen again and sipped the water inside while continuing his journey through the predark ruins. He was dressed in loose rags and mismatched boots, his backpack made of more patches than original material. A long, jagged scar had been carefully pasted on his face, calluses on his hands, and his teeth stained a mottled brown to simulate rampant decay. The man could barely recognize himself, which was good. That might buy him a few seconds of indecision before Delphi attacked if they should meet. If? Make that when. And in a contest between cyborgs, a split second could make the difference between life and death.
The old corroded Colt .45 revolver at his hip was fully functional, but it was purely window dressing, to make him appear the part of an itinerant wanderer. His backpack held only a few meager possessions, plus the mandatory trade items, a glassine envelope containing a single AquaPur tab, spent brass suitable for reloading and a carefully ripped and then taped wall poster of a naked predark woman. She was most pleasing to view, and would buy him out of a lot of trouble in most villes.
Under his dirty clothing, Franklin carried a small arsenal of weaponry, several of which were surgically embedded into his body, including a self-destruct charge. If Franklin should die, anything near him—especially Delphi—was going to be obliterated by an HE charge of staggering power.
Shuffling along the barren streets, Franklin marveled at the excellent condition of the buildings: post office, bookstore, hair salon…A lot of them had intact roofs, many of the signs were still legible and there was even glass in some of the windows! Just incredible! Although every pane had been sandblasted to a milky white by the never-ending desert breeze. The same with the cars. Every inch of paint had been removed from the chassis; only the models made of fiberglass retained their original colors, the touches of metallic green and iridescent blue strangely incongruous amid the rest of the beige and gray landscape.
It was plain that World War Three had been very kind to the city of Tucson, not a single nuclear bomb detonating anywhere near the sprawling metropolis. All of this damage was clearly man-made, probably from the rioting mobs searching for food and killing scientists….
Damn it! Franklin raged. I must remember to speak in contemporary terms! The nuke war was called skydark, and nobody killed anymore, they aced, or chilled, and scientists were always referred to as whitecoats. If he had said those thoughts out loud to the wrong people some ville sec man would have fragged him on the spot and put his ass on the last train west.
Turning a corner, Franklin saw a gap in the row of buildings, cracked bricks and broken masonry strewn across the street, the foundation reduced to merely a blackened crater. The cyborg raised his hand to check the map on his PDA. Yes, this was the place where the local baron and his sec men had destroyed a nest of the modified stickies created by Delphi. What a gargantuan waste of time and effort that had been. Intelligent muties. The phrase was an oxymoron. The gene-blasted things were incapable of advanced learning. So what was the point of Delphi trying to make them smarter? Had he actually been trying to force them to evolve, or merely to hail him as their god? It was pitiful.
Walking through the penumbra of a movie theater, Franklin saw the dying light of the sunset glint off something shiny in the distance and stopped in his tracks. Ah, there it was at last! Two-Son ville had to be very close for him to see a reflection from the greenhouses surrounding the Citadel.
Easing closer, the man paused at the sight of a vast field of broken foundations and cracked asphalt. A dozen buildings had to have been brought down in the middle of the city to create this large empty field. But the pieces of the structures had not been wasted. In the middle of the clear zone was a walled city—a city within a city—the outer wall rising ten yards high, the top sparkling with broken
glass and barbed wire. In these dark days, it was a most formidable barrier. The front gate was colossal, composed of overlapping pieces of metal and wood: railroad ties, car doors, sheet iron, everything and anything the locals could find.
A ring of concrete K-rails formed an irregular pattern in the ragged field. Franklin knew those were positioned to break the rush of the muties or any human invaders in war wags. There was a term for it, a shatter zone, he dimly recalled. Obviously these humans had not fallen quite so far as those in Florida or Oregon. Rising high behind the massive wall was a truncated skyscraper, the roof cut at a sharp angle, clearly damage done from the nuclear wind of skydark. That was the so-called Citadel, home of the baron and his family.
Backing away slowly so he wouldn’t attract attention in case there was anybody watching the ruins, Franklin eased around the corner once more until the ville was out of sight. Looking around, he spotted an empty hardware store and went inside. The shelves were vacant, of course, but more important, there were the remains of an old campfire. Perfect. That would lend a lot of credence to his story.
Sliding off his backpack, the agent of TITAN started making camp. When night fell, the light of his campfire would attract any stickies in the crumbling city. One would do in a pinch, but twenty would be much better. A nice hooting mob of muties charging through the ruins and intent upon his blood murder.
Pulling out the Colt, the cyborg cracked open the cylinder to check the position of the four dead rounds. Yes, a dozen or so stickies would be perfect. Then he could start his real work.
IN A RESOUNDING CRASH, the planks across the front of the war wag smashed into kindling as the Mack rammed into the tree trunk like a runaway express train. Chunks of bark and a million nettles filled the air as the headlight shattered, the windshield cracked, both fenders buckled and the hood flipped up to expose the roaring diesel engine. The two companions inside the cab were thrown onto the dashboard, and the people in the rear were tossed around like rag dolls, pelted and hammered from every direction by flying boxes, barrels and crates.
