by James Axler
“Light this candle!” the Armorer wheezed, holding on to the saddle for dear life.
Dean didn’t bother to reply, just headed the horse into the darkness, kicking up the sand.
Creaking loudly, the front gate of Rockpoint raised and out stormed a dozen fresh riders, brandishing longblasters.
Now moving fast enough, J.B. hauled a C-4 block out of his bag, stabbed it with a timing pencil, broke off the detonator and tossed it behind.
“What was that?” Dean demanded, banking to the left, and left again to confuse the enemy marksmen.
“Protective cover!” J.B. said, reloading the Uzi.
The charge hit the ground and rolled a few yards before violently exploding, throwing out a hellstorm of sand. Unable to see anymore, the guards on the wall had to stop shooting out of the fear of chilling their fellow sec men.
Not hindered by that consideration, Ryan and the others filled the swirling sandstorm with lead, the screams of dying men and horses a testament to the accuracy of their shots.
Taking advantage of the distraction, Jak slipped off his horse, retrieved his blaster and crawled awkwardly back into the saddle. Ripping open his shirt, he stuffed the wounded arm into it as a crude sling, then crammed the reins into his mouth and started to fire the Winchester with one hand, throwing the longblaster forward by the lever, then pulling the trigger.
One of the horses coming their way was nicked in the shoulder and veered sharply away from the pain to collide into another. Mounts and riders mixed and went crashing to the ground in a wild jumble of limbs and blasters. The two sec men directly behind tried to jump the tangle of bodies but only landed directly on the fallen men, crushing them, hooves slamming into chest with pile-driver force, ribs shattering.
Half-blind from the swirling sand, the rest of the pack rode onward, unlimbering their weapons when the night was suddenly illuminated by a strident detonation within the ville. Seconds later a towering geyser of clear water rose like a fountain above Rockpoint.
“Somebody finally found the trip wire,” Ryan muttered, his horse pounding over the hilly desert.
THE MEN on the walls stopped firing at the incredible sight, then held out their palms as a light sprinkle rained upon them from the rumbling geyser. Slowing their horses, the outriders did the same, staring in wonder at the fantastic, impossible sight. Water, clean, clear water, was gushing upward from the temple in the heart of the ville in unlimited amounts.
“Nuking hell, it was a trick!” a sec man shouted furiously. “Gaza told us there was barely enough water to keep us alive, while he was sitting on a hidden ocean!”
“Son of a bitch lied to his own sec men!” another man ranted, switching from looking at the ville to the escaping outlanders.
“Blood for water, my ass!” a guard snarled, rubbing old scars on his chest.
Reining in his mount, a sergeant brought the horse to a ragged halt in the sand. “Forget the outies,” he commanded the rest of the troops. “Let’s go get that son of a bitch Gaza and string him up by the balls!”
Waving their blasters, the sec men shouted obscenities and reversed direction to charge back into the ville, hellbent for bloody revenge.
Epilogue
Drenched to the skin by the falling water, Baron Gaza slogged through the ankle-deep puddles in the streets of the ville, heading for the junkyard. Again and again, he was approached by furious people screaming for revenge, and he ruthlessly cut them down with a rapidfire.
How could things have gone so bad so nuking quickly? He was an outcast in his own ville! There was only one conceivable way that the outlanders could have possibly found the pump room. Hawk had to have been right; they were spies for Trader.
Fortunately, the dried mud walls were softening under the presence of the water and soon the buildings would start to sag and crumble. Chaos was spreading through Rockpoint, and that alone was what gave Gaza the chance to escape with his wives. The silent women had expressed no wish to leave the man, and privately he was glad for their company. The more blasters covering his ass the better. Their sodden clothing clung to every curve, exposing a wealth of flesh, but the blasters in their hands were expertly balanced and swept the ville in a steady pattern. Gaza approved.
Reaching the junkyard, Gaza cut down two sec men waiting in hiding near the fence, then took the handcannons from their twitching fingers, along with an oil lantern. Damn fools.
Lighting the wick, Gaza held the lantern high as he maneuvered through the jumbled collection of junk and rusty cars, leading the five women at his back into a metallic cave formed by predark cars tilting against one another. The baron paused at one point, listening to the growing sounds of battle, punctuated by the groan of a collapsing building, before directing the women around a deadfall trap—an engine block attached to chains that would have swung along the middle of the tunnel with deadly force, a cast-iron pendulum that would have crushed any intruder into a bag of broken bones with one shot.
After a few yards more, the baron guided them past a pitfall, the bottom of the deep hole studded with pool cues, the long sticks sharpened and charred with fire to make them strong. The rotting remains of a curious sec man rested halfway down the pit, his desiccated corpse still suspended in the air from the wooden shafts jammed into his torso and broken limbs.
Once past that, Gaza kept his wives close as he paused to dig in the loose sand to uncover a wooden box. Lifting the lid, he cut a few wires inside, disabling a predark land mine, then started forward into the flickering darkness.
From overhead came the steady patter of the falling water from the towering geyser, and soon the hissing lantern revealed a ramshackle school bus sitting in the center of the dim tunnel, its rusty sides covered with corrugated steel, the windows barred, jagged knife blades jutting from the rim of each tire.
His wives bobbed their heads at the sight, and Della eagerly started for the vehicle, but he roughly pulled her aside.
“Leave it alone,” Gaza directed impatiently. “That one’s a boobie. No engine or fuel, and if anybody tries the ignition the whole thing blows.”
The women smiled proudly in appreciation of the death trap and followed their glowering husband as he eased around the crumbling wreck to reach a large canvas-covered object just behind the bus.
Hanging the lantern on a pole sticking out of the hard-packed sand, Gaza ripped off the canvas to reveal the squat, angular box of a military wag. Eight huge tires supported the APC, the armor a mottle of tans and creams, perfect camou for the desert. The hull was covered with closed blaster ports and hatches, with a big bore .50-cal sitting on top, a glistening link of oiled brass dangling from the breech.
“That’s our ride out of here,” he said triumphantly.
Gaza looked upon the vehicle with pride. He had found the war wag in a cave stuffed full of supplies, obviously some trader’s secret cache. It had taken months of work to get it working again, and then after taking everything he could fit inside the vehicle, Gaza rigged the rest of the supplies to blow so that nobody could use the weaponry against him. He was miles away when the cave detonated, and upon reaching Rockpoint had proclaimed himself baron. The former baron had objected and got blown to hell for his troubles. What did bravery amount to against steel and blasters? Damn fool should have known better.
Going to the rear of the APC, Gaza checked a wax seal on the double doors to make sure nobody had entered the transport. When he was satisfied it hadn’t been disturbed, he smashed the seal and shoved aside the doors with the squeal of stubborn metal.
“Inside!” he snapped, clambering into the darkness. “I’m leaving whether you bitches come with me or not!”
Hurriedly, the women scrambled into the APC and figured out how to latch the double doors shut just as there came a roar of power from under the floor and the vehicle lurched forward. Suddenly the interior was filled with white electric lights and they grabbed seats along the metal walls. The blinking lights of electronic equipment winked fr
om racks above them, but the women ignored the display and fumbled to open some blaster ports, shoving through the barrels of their rapidfires.
Throwing the wag into gear, Gaza fed the big diesel engine’s fuel and worked the steering levers to angle around the school bus, the sides of the LAV-25 APC squealing as its armored chassis scraped along the rusted pile of wrecks forming the slanted walls. Once past the bus, he stayed in the middle of the tunnel, easily jouncing over the pit and hardly flinching when the engine block slammed into the side of the military war wag, the strident impact making the steel hull loudly ring and rattle the bins of linked ammo.
A curtain of water blocked the end of the tunnel, and Gaza hit the gas as the APC roared from its hidden garage and onto the flooded streets. Water sprayed high behind the LAV-25 from the spinning tires, as Gaza directed the war wag directly into the crowds of people, plowing through the bodies as if they were no more than weeds. Needing both hands to drive, the baron could only laugh as the terrified people tried to splash out of the way and were crushed beneath the thick military tires. Galloping around the side of the temple, a group of sec men on horses charged at the wag, and Gaza surged through the center of the group, fishtailing the APC to smack them aside with crushing force. The sec men still alive fought to control their animals, and that was when the women cut loose with their rapidfires through the blaster ports, the barrage of small-caliber rounds finishing the job.
Dripping blood and entrails, the APC rolled through the downpour as the awnings ripped free, cascading down their accumulation of water. For a moment, Gaza was blind, and that was when from out of nowhere a Molotov crashed on top of the APC in an explosion of fire. But the deluge from the geyser quickly quenched the flames, and his wives retaliated with bursts of blasterfire.
Heading for the front gate, Gaza careened off the corner of a building, running down several people, their screams continuing to come from below the war wag but only for a few brief moments. Another Molotov hit the vehicle’s front prow, and as the flames licked into the wag through the air vents, Gaza frantically drove into an alleyway to dodge any further firebombs. But unexpectedly, there was no end to the alley, a wide breach going all the way through the thick outer wall.
Suspicious as hell, the baron scowled at the sight. Could this be some sort of a trick? No, there had been no time for the sec men to arrange for such an elaborate trap. This had to be how the outlanders got out of the ville. Excellent.
Revving the big diesel engine, the baron charged down the alleyway and roared through the crumbling gap, the APC riding rough over the irregular chunks of masonry, dead horses and sec men. More blasterfire came from the top of the wall, and then Gaza was outside the ville on flat ground. Throwing the war wag into high gear, the baron raced across the desert sand into the night, and soon even the sporadic sniper fire died away into the distance.
Easing off the bolt on her rapidfire, Della rose from her chair and awkwardly walked to the front of the APC to touch her husband on the shoulder.
“Yes, I have a plan. There are some ruins to the north,” Gaza replied to the unspoken question, then paused for a moment as the badly stitched wound on his throat began to bleed slightly. He mopped away the blood and continued. “We’ll hide there for a while and then move on to New Mex. I know of some villes there could use a strong baron.”
Holding on to a ceiling stanchion, Della frowned and made a gesture with a fist.
“Yes, they have contact with the Trader,” Gaza answered angrily. “But that homemade war wag of his can’t possibly stand against us! Soon I’ll be the Trader, and then I’ll carve out an empire the likes of which nobody has ever seen before!”
The woman nodded in acceptance and carefully walked back to join the other wives. She had total faith in her husband.
Checking her blaster, Della stood guard at the rear blaster port, while Kathleen went to the front to ride shotgun, and the remaining women began checking over the hastily gathered supplies, each obviously content to do whatever was needed for the man they loved.
SLUGGISHLY, HAWK awoke into a world of searing pain. For a single chaotic moment, the sec chief thought he was still falling, then abruptly realized he was merely laying in a soft bed, his chest and left arm swaddled in bloody bandages.
“He’s alive!” a sec man shouted across the room, and others rushed closer to crowd around the wounded man.
Hawk grunted at their presence and tried to stand, but strong hands forced him back down onto the mattress.
“Easy, sir, don’t tear open that stitching,” a sergeant said. “We found the dead wrinklie who shot you, and his body has been thrown to the pigs.”
The events replayed themselves in Hawk’s mind, and he decided to accept the lie. “Where’s Gaza?” he croaked weakly.
The faces in the room took on dark expressions.
“The nuking bastard ran away when the temple exploded!” a sec man cursed, tightening a hand on his gun belt. “There was some sort of well underground. We have a flood in the ville!”
Another sec man added, “Most of the buildings are melting.”
Hawk understood. Yes, of course, sun-dried adobe mud bricks. He should have thought of that event.
“So how bad am I?” he asked with false calm. Death wounds often hurt less than minor scrapes.
The sec man serving as a healer snorted at that. “Merely flesh wounds, sir. The lead went clean through without hitting anything vital.”
So the slug had missed anything vital and he would live. Good. Gaza was going to die for that mistake.
“Get me a horse.” Hawk groaned as he swung his boots to the floor and painfully sat upright. The barracks spun for a minute, then settled into place once more.
“The ville is dead,” he continued. “Raid the armory and take every weapon. We ride tonight!”
“But your wounds…” a sec man said, frowning.
Baring his teeth, Hawk stood by a sheer effort of will. “Fuck them! I want both Gaza and those outlanders chilled by dawn!” he shot back angrily.
MILES AWAY in the desert, Ryan and the rest of the companions steadily rode on into the night. Ahead of them lay endless miles. At the end of their journey, hopefully, they’d encounter the mysterious person who just might be the Trader.
ISBN: 978-1-4603-7327-9
DEVIL RIDERS
Copyright © 2003 by Worldwide Library.
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