by James Axler
With the tires smoking in protest, the flatbed swung sideways to also crash against the barrier blocking the highway, the colossal pine tree rolling back a few yards along the cracked asphalt.
Locked into position, the brakes squealed in protest as the big rig shuddered to a rough halt, the transmission banging and bucking loudly, clouds of white steam flooding from the ruptured radiator hose.
Minutes passed and nothing moved inside the crippled war wag. There was only the sound of the gentle breeze blowing through the pines trees edging the highway and the slow drip of hydraulic fluid onto the pine needles from a cracked pump. Then with a low groan, the hood came back down with a ringing crash.
Scrambling up the hill, a gang of grinning people quickly headed for the busted vehicle. They were dressed in forest camou, with leafy branches lashed to their squirrel-fur jackets. Their boots were merely thick layers of cloth held in place with strips of green rawhide. The garments were crude, the hide badly cured. But bare steel knives were thrust into knotted rope belts, and everybody sported a club and a homemade blaster. The primitive blaster was composed of only a thin tube attached with strong twine to a block of wood. A precious .22 round was stuffed into the tube and nailed to the back was a spring-driven mousetrap with a nail attached to the killing bar as a firing pin. The weapons looked haphazard, almost comical, as if they were about to come apart at any second, but each deadly blaster was adorned with a neat row of notches, indicating the owner’s number of successful chills.
“Shitfire, we got a big one this time!” Dexter cackled in delight, the leader of the coldhearts waving the homemade weapon and checking for any movement from the passengers or driver. The wag was enormous, the biggest he’d ever seen.
“Dulle, Inga, watch for any sign of Levine and his sec men!” Dexter barked, almost dancing with excitement. “Martin, Betty, Spencer, check the cab!”
As the others spread out, Martin went to the passenger door and yanked it open. “We got a slut!” he called, then spun as his teeth went flying across the highway.
Yanking back the wooden stock of the Kalashnikov, Krysty flipped it over and pulled the trigger, but the rapid-fire did nothing. Gaia, the slam it got against the dashboard must have broken something inside.
Casting it aside, the redhead pulled her S&W .38 and shot the coldheart in the chest. The dumdum round made a small hole in the squirrel-skin jacket, but came out his back the size of a fist, pieces of flesh and bones spraying onto the pine needles.
“What the…Holy nukes, she aced Marty!” Dexter gasped in disbelief, bringing up his blaster. “Chill the slut!”
Taking aim, the coldheart thumbed the pressure plate of the mousetrap, the killing bar snapped forward and the nail struck the predark .22 brass. The blaster gave a bang, and a soft lead slug smacked into her wheel gun, sending it spinning away.
Flexing her stinging fingers, the woman cursed at the lucky shot and turned to race after her wheel gun. She could see it plainly lying on a patch of asphalt, the burnished steel reflecting the dappled sunlight. But before she could reach it, Betty threw her club in a sideways motion. Spinning through the chill air, it slammed into the woman just as she was going for the weapon. Stunned, she fell to the ground fighting for breath.
“No need to chill the slut,” Betty boasted proudly, walking over to the supine companion. “Alive, you feebs can ride her for weeks before we sell her to the slavers for muskets and flints!”
The stocky blonde grabbed Krysty by the collar and hauled her up, and the snarling redhead buried her knife into the belt of the coldheart, twisting the blade to widen the chilling wound before yanking it out. Groaning into death, Betty stumbled aside and Krysty dived for the wheel gun, coming up with it held in a two-handed grip. But the coldhearts had already taken refuge behind the fallen tree spanning the highway. The woman knew a round into the tree would force the rest of them into sight, but there were four shots left in the gun, and four coldhearts. She had several speedloaders on her, but positioned out in the open, those might as well be empty for all the good they’d do her right here and now.
Just then, the cracked windshield of the Mack was blown into pieces, the tiny cubes of green safety glass showering across the hood as Ryan fired his Kalashnikov on full-auto. The 7.62 mm rounds hammered along the top of the fallen tree, throwing off bark and splinters.
Clutching his bleeding face, Dulle stood and turned to run, but Krysty shot him in the back. The coldheart flopped down out of sight.
Instantly, Krysty broke for the flatbed, snapping off a couple of shots just to keep the coldhearts from getting a good bead. As the woman darted behind the trailer, there was a bang and a chunk of the wood armor cracked loose to strike her on the shoulder. Slamming against the rear hatch, Krysty panted for breath and frantically reloaded. Damn, those sons of bitchs were good shots!
More bangs came from the coldhearts and Ryan replied with several short bursts from the AK-47. Then something launched into the air from inside the fortified flatbed. The glass bottle arched across the highway and crashed behind the tree trunk to erupt into a whoosh of flames.
Screaming madly, a coldheart stood, beating at the fire with her hands and blaster. The weapon was triggered and a gout of red blood blew out of her thigh, but the burning woman never seemed to notice as her piteous wails became louder, her long hair igniting to completely engulf her face.
From out of nowhere, a horn sounded a single loud note and the remaining coldhearts broke from cover to race down the slope toward the pine trees. Taking careful aim, Ryan waited until they were all in plain sight, then executed each of the runners with a neat round in the back of the head.
Incredibly, the leader of the coldhearts still kept moving, although no longer for the treeline. Weaving drunkenly, he turned, his face slack and mouth drooling slightly.
Getting a bead on the coldheart, Ryan could see that while the body was still breathing, there was nobody inside the riddled head anymore. But before he could shoot, Krysty fired her .38 and the mindless man jerked to fall over like a puppet with its strings cut.
“Everybody okay?” Mildred asked from the rear of the flatbed, her face smeared with red from a bloody nose.
“Been better,” Ryan replied gruffly, rubbing his aching stomach. When the Mack hit the tree, he had slammed into the steering wheel, completely knocking the air out of his lungs. He felt like he’d been kicked by a mule.
“Better than them, anyway,” Krysty retorted, dropping the spent brass into an open palm and tucking it away into a pocket for later reloading. Then she used a speedloader and dropped five live brass into the cylinder of her wheel gun.
That was when a group of armed men and women charged out of the pine trees from the other side of the highway. Running in formation, every person was carrying a longblaster of some kind, everything from a BAR to a flintlock, the only identical feature of their mixed clothing being a rawhide fringe hanging from their gunbelts. Stopping near the splintery end of the tree, the armed newcomers glanced at the dead bodies on the asphalt.
“Nuking hell, the outlanders aced Dexter’s gang!” a sec man cried out. “Hip, hip, hurrah!” The rest of the party raggedly joined the cheer.
That caught the companions by surprise, and they exchanged puzzled looks when a big man on a horse galloped out of the woods. Reining in the stallion, the rider was broad and tall, with black hair and a full beard with sideburns hanging down in oily ringlets. The man wore a uniform of some kind with the insignia removed, and there was a blaster on each hip. His dark clothing was clean and his leather boots shone with polish. Nobody had to tell the companions that this was the local baron.
“So what the hell happened here?” the baron demanded. “Looks like Dexter and his mutie-loving feebs tried another jacking, and this time got jacked themselves.”
Krysty walked over to stand by her lover. “That’s about right,” Ryan drawled, resting the stock of the Kalashnikov on a hip. “You the baron here?”
&
nbsp; “Mind your tongue, outlander!” a sec man snarled, advancing a step. “He’s the lord baron to the likes of you!”
“At ease, Sergeant O’Malley,” the baron commanded, not even looking at the fellow. “Yeah, I’m in charge of Pine ville. The name is Levine, Avarm Levine.”
“Ryan Cawdor.”
“And I’m guessing you’re the leader of this group?”
“Close enough,” Ryan said with a shrug, then introduced Krysty and the other companions standing behind the wooden planks of the flatbed. Their blasters were in plain sight, but not pointed directly at the newcomers.
“So, Lord Baron, I gather that we did you folks a favor by taking out these bastards,” J.B. said, resting an arm along the top plank of the wall, his Uzi held in a casual grip. Just because folks smiled nicely, didn’t mean shit to him. Mildred and Doc liked to quote some old poem about outlanders who smiled but were still coldhearts. Although they called them smiling villains. Yeah, the Armorer had met more than a fair share of those over the years, that’s for sure.
“Did us a favor? Hellfire, we’re gonna throw a party tonight over this chilling!” Levine barked in laughter, looking in frank pleasure at the sprawled bodies. Already the corpses were covered with insects industrially hauling away the fresh food. “These mountain men have been jacking most of the wags that come this way for years. Not every one, but enough. Raping, taking slaves, stealing everything they could. We’ve been hunting them for a dozen winters and this is the closest we ever got. Only folks that ever chase ’em away was John Rogan.”
The sec men nodded in agreement at that, but the companions went stiff.
“Come again?” Ryan asked softly, the wind blowing across the highway and stirring the bed of pine needles. “What was that name?”
“Trader Rogan,” the baron repeated. “John Rogan. He runs a convoy through the Great Salt and around Bad Water Lake. Sells blasters, ammo, panes of glass, crop seed, some tools. Just about anything useful. Even books, sometimes.”
“Does he indeed, sir?” Doc muttered, frowning deeply. Some time ago, Delphi had hired a group of four brothers to try to track down the companions to murder Ryan and capture Doc. The cyborg had equipped them with electric motorcycles, working radios, M-16 assault rifles, grens and a host of military gear. They had been John, Edward, Alan and Robert, the Rogan brothers.
The companions had chilled the coldhearts, but now Delphi was using one of their names. In an attempt to disguise his real identity? Who was the cyborg hiding from? Doc wondered. There was a moment of dizziness. What had he just been thinking about? Oh yes, Delphi was pretending to be the aced coldheart John Rogan. Most curious.
“Sure, we’ve heard of the guy,” Ryan hedged. “Dresses all in white?”
“Yeah, that’s him.” Levine nodded, leaning forward to rest an arm on the pommel of his saddle. “Hell of a trader. His convoys help keep this ville alive. Sold us meds once that stopped a dose of the Black Cough that nearly wiped us out.”
“Did he?” Mildred asked, puzzled.
“Bet your ass,” O’Malley retorted belligerently. “Saved my wife and babe, and never asked for jack.”
“Some folks say he’s the Trader,” another sec man added proudly, putting a lot of emphasis on the last word. “You know, the one that fought in the Mutie Wars? But Rogan says that was somebody else.” He shrugged as if unable to figure out the truth of the matter.
“Does he? Interesting,” the physician muttered, pinching her cheek thoughtfully. What in the world was going on here? Could Delphi have changed that much after fighting Doc? Had some of the damage altered his brain patterns, maybe even changed his thinking? Or was this some complex trap to ace the lot of them again? That seemed a lot more likely. Well, whatever the damn cyborg was doing, Mildred felt absolutely sure that it would only be beneficial to Delphi and nobody else. Certainly not these people.
“Be a great honor to meet him,” Ryan said with a straight face. “When is he due here again?”
“Couple of weeks.”
The one-eyed man tried not to grimace. Damn. They had to be at the end of his route, which logically meant if they hurried, the companions could hit him from the rear. A nuking good idea with one big flaw. Annoyed, he glanced at the battered war wag. It had stopped dripping fluids from underneath, but looked as if a hard fart would make it fall apart.
“Well, we aced them, but they got us first,” Ryan stated, slinging the Kalashnikov across his back. That was an old trick of the Trader, the real one. Holster your blaster in the middle of cutting a deal and the other fellow would be more interested in doing business. “Any chance you got a mech or a blacksmith in your ville?”
The baron’s horse snorted loudly and shifted its hooves on the cracked pavement. “Got both,” Levine said, stroking the muscular neck of the animal. “Be glad to have you stay here for a while. Till first snowfall, if you like. I offered a month of food and shine for anybody who got one of the coldhearts, so I owe you that much at least.”
“Besides, everybody would like to meet the people who sent Dexter on the last train west,” a tall sec man added. “Shitfire, there, One-eye, I’ll buy the first round of shine myself!”
“Shut up, fool,” O’Malley growled, watching the outlanders as if they were about to start spitting poison.
“Think we need to drag it up the hill with some horses, or will it roll?” the baron asked, frowning at the war wag. “I’d say no, but I’ve been wrong before.”
“Let you know in a tick.” Getting into the cab, Ryan tried the ignition switch and there was only a fast series of clicks. Changing the setting on the choke, he pumped the gas pedal hard and tried again. There were more hard clicks, then the engine caught with a throaty sputter, banging and clanging until settling into a fitful chugging.
Quickly, Krysty got back into the passenger seat. “Lead the way!” she shouted out the broken window, holding the door closed by draping an arm outside.
“Sergeant O’Malley, stay here with two others to clear the damn highway!” Levine shouted, wheeling his horse around. “Everybody else with me. Double-time, boys, unless you want to drag it home!”
Walking sullenly, the sergeant stepped out of the group with two other sec men, and the rest of the armed norms broke into a fast trot, heading back toward the dense woods.
Grinding through the gears, Ryan followed close behind. Once off the highway, he saw a crude dirt road snaking through the sloping pine trees, going to a large ville standing prominently on the crest. Not surprisingly, the outer wall appeared to be made entirely of logs. Although there was something odd about them that the man couldn’t quite see from this distance.
“What do you think, lover?” Krysty asked out of the corner of her mouth. “Should we wait here for Delphi, or go after him once we’re back on the road?” The war wag jerked hard, almost throwing open the side door. “That is, if we can fix this rolling pile of shit.”
“First I want to know more about why Delphi is treating these folks like they were blood kin,” Ryan muttered, fighting to keep the sputtering engine turning over. “Then we’ll decide on where, and how, we chill his ass.”
“Fair enough,” Krysty muttered, hugging the rapid-fire. “Think they might actually be kin?”
“There’s no way to tell for sure. Could be. But more important, we need to know how many sec men he has, what kind of blasters, how many wags and such. I’d prefer a stand-up chilling, but I’ll settle for drilling the bastard the way I did Silas if that’s what it takes.”
“A hell of a shot.” The woman smiled.
Ryan shrugged in dismissal. “The wind was with me.”
She laughed at the false modesty. “I just hope the bastard cyborg hasn’t made any more smart stickies.”
“I hear you.” Ryan snorted in agreement. Already, the engine temp was creeping upward so he turned on the heater. Brutal heat gushed from the air vents, banishing the slight chill in the air until the two people felt as if they were sittin
g inside a glowing rad pit.
The long trek up the hill was noisy and arduous, the diesel constantly stalling and flooding. But eventually Ryan got the shuddering machine onto level ground and the struggling engine smoothed out a little. Not much, but enough so that the temp gauge lowered a hair.
“This is a joyous day, boys!” Baron Levine shouted from his horse. “Let me hear you tell the ville!”
Obediently, a corporal pulled out a battered old harmonica and started blowing a snappy tune. Keeping in time, the marching sec men and women began to sing loose harmony.
“Sec men stand upon the wall,
when coldhearts come, we’ll ace ’em all!
Blaster boom at first alarm,
outlanders fall to buy the farm!”
“A battle hymn?” Doc asked in amazement. “My word, I have not heard one of those since the War Between the States!”
“Never heard.” Jak snorted. “Good song. Like.”
“Many Jewish families sang after the Sabbath dinner on Friday.” Mildred smiled. “After a couple of thousand years, they got pretty damn good.”
“Guess so.”
“I was always puzzled why it was called benching.”
“’Cause sing on bench?” Jak asked, brushing back his snowy hair.
“Honestly, I have no idea.”
“Dinner over. Sing on bench. Occam,” the teen said with the certainty of youth. Occam was something Doc used to talk about, some predark whitecoat who said the simplest answer was usually the correct one. A person could load that into a blaster.
Surreptitiously, Doc and Mildred exchanged amused looks over the albino teen’s casual reference to the philosophical axiom of Occam’s Razor.
“Guess we’re rubbing off on him,” the physician whispered.
The song went on for several stanzas, boasting of bravery and nightcreeps, cannies and muties.
“Very nice.” Doc beamed, restraining from applauding.
