Devil Riders

by James Axler

  “No charge,” Mildred said, probing the shoulder with her fingertips. There was no deep tissue damage; it had been a clean separation. “How about you can do me next time?”

  “Deal.”

  “Hot pipe, I can’t see anything out there,” Dean said, squinting through an air vent. “There’s a lot of smoke.”

  “That’ll take a while to clear with no ventilation system working anymore,” Krysty stated. “Unless something is on fire. Mother Gaia, what about the fuel dump!”

  “If it had caught fire, we’d be ashes already,” Ryan stated firmly. “But we better go see, just in case.”

  Forcing himself to walk to the rear doors, he released the handle and the hatch swung down to loudly slam against the hull. The noise painfully stabbed through his forehead, and this time Ryan touched the sore spot to find his hand coming away smeared with dried blood. Fireblast, just how long had they been unconscious?

  While J.B. and Dean had moved close beside the man, their blasters out and ready to give cover if needed, Ryan stepped through the hatchway and carefully stood.

  The garage was in ruins, the predark wags smashed against the walls, even the Hummers had been flipped over, one of them dribbling oil from a cracked engine block. Ryan relaxed a bit when he realized it was the puddle of oil that was burning and causing the dense smoke. A thick plume rose from the blaze, spreading across the ceiling in a roiling blanket of fumes. Thankfully, the fuel storage closet seemed undamaged from here.

  What little remained of the mutant bugs was scattered absolutely everywhere in a grisly display of pinkish organs and black legs. Several pieces of millipede were lying in the puddle of motor oil, spitting grease as they cooked from the heat. The horrendous stench hit them now, and the companions were forced to tie cloth over their faces to keep from retching.

  “An emperor worm by any other name,” Doc muttered from behind a handkerchief.

  “Stop mixing your Shakespeare,” Mildred replied haughtily, holding a sleeve across her face. “Even though I agree with the sentiment.”

  Standing near each other, Ryan and Krysty shared a private look and briefly touched hands. They had taken a hell of a gamble, but it worked and they were still alive.

  J.B. had cut the single stick of dynamite in his possession into four smaller charges and stuck them into coffee cans filled with office staples. When the dynamite exploded, the entire garage had been filled with a brief hellstorm of flying shrapnel. More than enough to kill every bug in the room.

  “Unfortunately, the blast also got the wags,” J.B. commented dryly, waving his crumpled hat to fan the air. “The ones that weren’t wrecks before, sure as hell are now.”

  “Better them than us,” Jak said, coughing slightly.

  Ryan started to reply, then cursed instead. There was a clear puddle of fluid in front of the supply closet. The source was trickling fuel from a score of punctured containers. The spill was only yards away from the oil fire and extending fast.

  “If that goes, we’re dead!” Dean cried, pulling off his jacket. Advancing to the fire, he started to beat the flames. “We’ve got to get this out!”

  “There was an extinguisher near the workbench,” Doc told him, heading that way through the maze of twisted military vehicles.

  “No time! Quick, give me a hand,” Krysty said, climbing onto the side of the APC. Standing on tiptoes, the woman lit a butane lighter and thrust it at the thick smoke, but was still too far away. Joining her on top of the transport, Ryan grabbed the woman around the waist and lifted her as high as he could until she was lost inside the layer of smoke, able to play the tiny flame against a sprinkler set into the ceiling. At first nothing happened, and Krysty started to cough from breathing the oily fumes, but refused to quit. But then after a few moments, every sprinkler in the garage released, gushing out volumes of an orange fluid that soon doused the fire and washed the floor clear of the potentially deadly fuel spill.

  “That’s not water,” Mildred said, tasting a drop by licking it off her palm. She made a face and quickly spit it back out. “Some sort of chemical composition. Must be designed for oil fire, since this is the garage.”

  “Makes sense,” Ryan stated, watching the excess flowing into hidden drains set along the walls.

  The stink was soon cut from the atmosphere, and the companions went back inside the APC to get out of the downpour. But after only a few more minutes, the sprinklers began to sputter, the rain of fire-retardant chem foam slowing to a mere dribble, and then stopping completely.

  “No electricity means no pumps to maintain pressure,” J.B. said, wiping his glasses clean. “Good thing this wasn’t a major blaze.”

  Just then, a millipede crawled into view from the cracked ventilation shaft in the closet, snapping its pinchers at the orange residue of the retardant covering the fuel containers. Pulling a knife with his right hand, Jak passed it to his left and threw. The blade hit the mutie in the mouth and it recoiled, snapping as blood gushed from the wound.

  “The blast didn’t get all of them,” Krysty said grimly, lowering her own knife and tucking it away. “Stay sharp. There may be others.”

  “However, the bugs really don’t like this stuff,” Ryan said, brushing back his hair to tie a handkerchief around his forehead. “And that gives us an edge again.” The chems were making the cut on his forehead throb with pain. Hopefully, the cloth would help. He knew that Mildred could stitch the gash shut, but there was no time right now. They had only a few candles and lots to do.

  “Okay, there’s lot of wreckage now to block both of those cracks, so let’s get moving,” Ryan ordered, kicking a foam-drenched mutie carcass out of his way. “We’ll start with the big crack, then do the closet.”

  “Haul out fuel cans, then push busted car against door,” Jak suggested, massaging his shoulder. “Not get past.”

  “And in case they do, we can use the flame retardant as bug repellent,” Mildred said, scooping a handful off the dented hood of a luxury car and smearing it over the legs of her Army fatigue pants. “That should keep them off us, for a while anyway.”

  “Going to need more light than these damn candles,” J.B. added, scrunching his face in thought. “Mebbe I can rig a nuke battery to some headlights. Worth a try.”

  “Some of these trunks don’t appear in too bad a shape,” Krysty commented. “With some luck we might get something running and drive out here, before another swarm of those damn things arrive.”

  “What if they’re outside, too?” Dean asked, sounding worried.

  Ryan glanced around the wreckage filling the level. “No sweat, son. Anything we get moving should easily outrun the bugs.”

  That was, Ryan added privately, as long as there was open ground outside. If they were on the side of a mountain or buried under the debris of a collapsed predark city, it was going to be the last train west for all of them.

  “Besides,” Doc said, flicking a dead millipede head out of the way with the pointed tip of his sword, “there is no place else for us to go, but out.”

  Chapter Six

  Working by the flickering glow of tallow candles, the companions emptied the closet of the fuel cans and then completely jammed it with wreckage, next pushing the corroded hulk of a Cadillac against the door to hold it closed. Then the wall crack received the same treatment. A millipede caught inside the crevice almost got Dean’s hand, but missed and only sank its pinchers into the sleeve of his jacket. Instantly, the boy ducked out of the way and his father cored the bug with a handball round from the SIG-Sauer.

  “Tough bastards,” Dean muttered, using his knife to hack up the face of the millipede until prying off the pinchers.

  Meanwhile, J.B. had extracted a couple of nuke batteries from the military vehicles and was trying to wire a headlight from a Hummer using a starter solenoid to control the current flow. Each time he flipped the switch, the bulb would burst from the surge of raw power. Yet the man was determined that he could fix the technical problem.


  As Ryan stepped away from the fortified crack to pound the solid barrier with fist, there was a dazzling wash of light, the huge makeshift flashlight filling the garage with brilliant illumination.

  “Well done, John.” Mildred smiled, clicking off her pocket flashlight. “Now we can…Shit, over there by the GMC!”

  Two millipedes hidden under a tipped over GMC 6×6 wag scurried for the darkness. But the bugs moved much too slow. The companions converged on the area and quickly dispatched the insects with makeshift clubs.

  “A messy job, indeed,” Doc muttered, snapping his sword to the side to whip off the blood of the millipedes. Briefly, the fluid filled the words etched along the length of Spanish steel and then was gone.

  Testing the balance on his tire iron, Jak flipped it into the air and caught it effortlessly. “Saves ammo,” he stated, prowling through the broken vehicles for more prey.

  A thorough search revealed that the garage level of the redoubt was clean of the deadly bugs. Checking their blasters while J.B. assembled two more of the nuke battery–headlights combinations, the companions proceeded into the redoubt and a full sweep of the dark interior. The air tasted bad, sour with dust, and the emergency lights set in wall niches were dead or dying everywhere, but the nukelamps more than made up for that. Checking in lockers and underneath desks, the friends did not find another sec hunter droid, and only a few millipedes. Disoriented by the searing beams, they were easily aced.

  The kitchen yielded only a few cans of self-heat soup, some rice and beans. Everything else in the fridge and freezer was inedible. Added to their jerky, the staples would last them for a good week.

  Yanking out some of the dried venison, Jak chewed on the tough stuff until his jaws ached. But it eased the pain in his belly for the moment. Breakfast had been a million years ago, or so it seemed, and he had no idea when dinner would be coming around. Best to eat anything and stay sharp. This was sure as hell not the place for a prolonged meal, and nobody knew what was waiting for them outside.

  “Trade ya,” Dean said, offering a stick of chewing gum from a MRE military ration pack.

  After a moment, Jak nodded and the items were exchanged. Chewing steadily, the two youths patrolled the darkness, their hands full of loaded steel.

  The supply room was empty, only a few yellow transfer papers in military code strewed about. However, in the armory the companions discovered an entire pallet of U.S. Army ammo boxes, filled with cardboard cartons of .22 cartridges still sealed in plastic. The ammo looked good, but unfortunately, none of the companions used that caliber in their blasters. But lead was lead, and gunpowder could be transferred, so they each took several cartons and stuffed them into their backpacks. The ammo would also make a good trade item. If they found a ville outside, between the cigars, fuel and these boxes of cartridges, the companions could barter for weeks of hot food and clean beds. It was quite a find.

  Going through the barracks, Ryan lead the way as they group checked the footlockers set before each bed. Often they found small luxury items the soldiers had left behind by accident, but such wasn’t the case this time. Every footlocker was empty; not even a scrap of paper had been left behind.

  “Mebbe no troops ever here?” Jak asked, nudging a neatly folded blanket with the tire iron. The material collapsed at the touch, raising a small cloud of dust to cover the yellow sheets.

  “Could be,” Ryan agreed. The barracks seemed to be more than merely empty, it felt totally deserted, as if no troops had ever been stationed there. But then, where had the tons of supplies gone? Or had they also never been delivered? Perhaps this was only a partially built redoubt, caught unfinished by the war. The idea made a lot of sense and explained everything they had seen so far.

  Making an inarticulate noise of displeasure, Krysty angrily pulled at the orange-soaked top of her jumpsuit. “This dried foam is becoming sticky,” she complained. “Our blasters are going to jam if we don’t get this crap off of us soon.”

  “Showers should be over here,” J.B. said, leading the way with his nukelamp.

  Bypassing the small private showers in the officers’ quarters, the companions instead chose one of the big shower rooms for the troops. Without working pumps, they knew that the water pressure would last only for a very brief time, so they would have to clean off quickly and all together.

  Leaving the nukelamps safely outside the shower, the group gathered in the middle of the tiled room and turned on the faucets full force. There was a hiss of escaping air for a moment from the ancient pipes, then they were hit by a stinging spray still pleasantly warm. Frantically, they scrubbed the orange residue of the foam off their clothes and out of their hair and barely finished in time before the warm water turned cool, then cold and finally sputtered to a halt.

  “Son of a bitch, that feels good.” Mildred sighed, shaking her beaded hair to dispel the excess water. With that action, there came a loud crack of glass and one of the nukelamps winked out.

  Rushing over to the doorway, J.B. inspected the destruction without touching anything with his wet hands. “The bulb shattered when the water hit it,” he said in annoyance.

  “Oh, John, I’m so sorry,” she stated.

  “My fault,” he replied, cutting her off. “I should have realized that was going to happen and set these farther back. Damn, what a waste.”

  “Still three,” Jak said, squeezing water from his long snowy hair. “Better than candles.”

  “Well, that’s for damn sure. But nobody goes near the lamps until they stop dripping.”

  “Wish we had some towels,” Dean added.

  “Help yourself,” Ryan said, gesturing at a stack of thick military towels on a shelf. The fabric was coated with cobwebs.

  The boy eyes the neatly folded pile of dust and mold dubiously. “You first,” he muttered.

  “That reminds me of something an old acquaintance used to say about wishing,” J.B. said, reclaiming his glasses from a steel ledge designed to hold soap. “Put a wish in one hand, take a crap in the other and see which gets filled first.”

  The dripping wet companions shared a laugh at that.

  “By gadfry, sir, pragmatic vulgarity,” Doc said, ringing his frock coat in both hands with surprising strength. “I think you may have created an entirely new form of philosophy there, my friend.”

  “Okay, enough jawing,” Ryan said, squishing his boots on the tiled floor as he headed for the doorway. “We’ll dry faster walking than standing in these bastard puddles.”

  Staying well clear of the hot lamps, the companions splashed from the shower and once in the locker room of the barracks took the opportunity to carefully check over their blasters. Washing off the foam had helped a great deal, but they disassembled the weapons on the hard benches to clean every part.

  Rummaging about in his backpack, Jak unearthed a small plastic squeeze bottle of homogenized gun oil he had looted from the armory of Nova ville so many months ago. The precious lubricant was passed around and used liberally until every blaster was in smooth working condition once more.

  Off by himself, Doc retrieved his LeMat from a shelf inside a locker where he had placed the blaster before entering the shower room. Although the weapon wouldn’t have been harmed from the water, the black-powder charges in the revolving chamber would have washed out, drastically reducing his precious reserve of ammo and shot. Removing a damp handkerchief from his sodden pocket, Doc vigorously rubbed the sticky residue off the huge handcannon until it seemed to be thoroughly clean. But he made a mental note to properly cleanse the weapon in a pot of boiling water at the first chance.

  “Good as ever,” Ryan stated, checking the play on his SIG-Sauer before returning the clip into the grip with a satisfying click. “Now let’s see about getting the hell out of this bastard tomb.”

  Rolling up their damp sleeves, Ryan, J.B. and Krysty each took a nukelamp and led the way back to the garage level. Setting down the lamps in a triangular pattern for maximum coverage, the com
panions got to work searching through the assorted vehicles for something that could be repaired.

  The civilian cars had been garbage to begin with and had been too close to the dynamite charges and were even worse now. Going to the military wags, the companions found another APC, but it was also stripped to the walls, the 25 mm cannon, machine guns, seats, radios, and even the engine gone. The war wag was just an armored box with a sagging door.

  Ryan had hoped for the Hummers, brute tough wags that could nearly go anywhere. But they had been left running and the engines were burned out, the bearings fused solid from the overheating when the oil ran out. Even the nuke batteries were dead after a century of being left turned on.

  “Starting to look like we’ll be walking this time,” Ryan said, going to the row of big GMC 6×6 M-35 wags marked with the logo of the U.S. Marine Corps. Odd that they often found different services from the predark days all mixed together in the redoubts. It was as if the government had simply grabbed hold of whatever they could and jammed the troops into the nearest redoubt to be sorted out later. Only that time never came.

  The first wag had its engine missing, the second lacked tires, but the third seemed in decent shape. The metal and wood framework arching over the rear section was still in good condition, solid and strong, although the canvas covering was lacking. Never installed, lost, or eaten by the bugs, there was no way of knowing. But the first wag had good canvas.

  “We do a mix and match here,” Mildred said, sliding off her backpack. “Use parts from one to fix another.”

  “I’ll find some wrenches,” Dean offered, rushing over to the musty workbenches to shift through the assortment of parts and greasy cans to locate a few tools. A sturdy toolkit yielded a wealth of socket wrenches and pliers.

  Checking under the front seat of the first GMC wag for a jack, Ryan unearthed a plastic box full of road flares. Two of the waxy cylinders crumbled at his touch, but the rest were still firm. He tucked one into a jacket pocket and passed the rest to J.B., who added them to the scant few materials in his munitions bag.