15 Years Later: Wasteland (14 page)

“Some of them, yes.”

Zed smiled. He knew what he had to do.

Rave swung a punch wildly. Her opponent ducked under and pushed her over with a heavy shove. He leapt towards her as she tried to recover. All she could see was a ginger madman coming at her with his bare hands. It was Miles. She rolled out but didn’t quite make it in time as his foot connected with her stomach and rolled her over onto her back. All the while they could hear the rumble of engines growing nearer.

His foot was high over her head ready to stomp when she rolled out as quickly as she could and got to her feet to take up a fighting stance. Instinct made her reach for the hatchet, but it was nowhere to be found. Neither of them had a single weapon to defend themselves with except for their own bodies.

The engine roar was drawing nearer now. They both turned in fear to see a sand rail buggy storming towards them. There were three occupants, a driver and passenger beside him, and another psychotic looking character waving a fire axe over his head, as he hung on from a platform at the rear of the vehicle. He was stripped to the waist and covered in tattoos with a brightly collared Mohawk hair cut. He looked like some kind of fanatic, and Rave knew exactly how true that was.

They both turned and ran as fast as they could. There was nothing like the fear of death to motivate speed. The buggy was catching up quickly. A ram on its front had been fashioned from corrugated highway barriers, and it was hot on their heels. They took a turn in between some rocks, and that gained them some distance as the vehicle slid on the sands. The over steer was a little too much, and the rear engine pulled the vehicle around into a spin.

But that only seemed to spur them on as they screamed and whistled while the dust engulfed the vehicle. The engine roared, and the rear wheels spun as they were once again whirled around and propelled forward into the opening where their prey had gone. They had entered a canyon that was drawing tighter, just fifty feet wide now.

“They’ve got nowhere to run!” yelled the Mohawk, as he laughed to a sickly and murderous tune.

“Run little rabbits!” he screamed and cackled.

The vehicle had got back up to pace now, and they were soon on the heels of the two runners once again. They matched their speed now rather than running them down as they could. They were savouring every moment.

“Jay’s gonna have fun with you!” one of them yelled.

They all recognised her, and that set her pulse racing even more than the running had.

“He ain’t gonna kill you quick!” another screamed.

There was another turn in the canyon, and the buggy’s rear end swung out once again. It was too heavy on the back, and the psycho on the platform over the engine bay wasn’t helping. Their reduced speed allowed the driver to snap the back end in line just before it hit the rocks, spoiling any hope the runners had of them crashing out. They got another hundred feet when they hit a dead end and were forced to stop.

Rave and Miles turned to face their fate with a look of dread on their faces. The buggy’s brakes were slammed on, and it slid to a halt ten feet in front of them. The Mohawk leapt off and approached with nothing in his hands but a thick steel chain. He looked a sadistic type that would enjoy making them suffer, but he stopped halfway between them and the vehicle, to relish the moment and see the fear in their faces.

“Jay wants you alive, but that don’t mean we can’t have a little fun before he gets you.”

A rock that seemingly came out of nowhere struck the Mohawk on the side of the head. It was enough for him to keel over slightly before recovering and reaching up to find the side of his head was cut and bleeding.

“What the fuck!” he screamed out.

He looked up for some sign of where it might have come from and found Zed standing on a rock edge twenty feet up with his rifle aimed at him. The Mohawk looked around the canyon top. Another two men and two women; all armed with firearms that were pointing at him.

“Bullshit, you ain’t got no ammo!”

Zed pulled the trigger, and a bullet struck the ground in front of the man’s feet. The arrogant look on his face was removed instantly.

The engine roared as the driver put the vehicle into reverse and spun the buggy around, but before he could put the power down, another two men rushed out from hiding places amongst the rocks. They were dragging thick chains with heavy-duty hooks attached to the end. They locked them onto the bars of the vehicle as the wheels spun, and it began to race away. It rocked to a halt as the chains reached their full length to the boulders they had been lashed to.

The driver was snapped forward and hit the wheel. He was knocked out while the passenger was launched out through the front of the vehicle and tumbled to a halt twenty feet in front. Only the Mohawk remained standing. He had a smile on his face still.

“Dangerous games you are playing, little girl,” he said to Rave.

She paced up slowly towards him as if confident and cautious at the same time. He grinned broadly to bare his filthy teeth. She stopped in front of him. He didn’t appear threatened at all. But without him seeing, a club hammer slipped down from her sleeve, and she swung it for his head.

The impact felled him in one, and he was out cold on the floor. She didn’t even bother checking if he was still alive.

“We weren’t trying to kill them!” Zed yelled.

She turned and looked at him with a smile as she shrugged.

“Neither was I.”

He was still shaking his head at her, but he appreciated why she needed to do it.

* * *

As morning light broke, the bells of Jaytown rang out loudly and violently as screams accompanied them. The battlements of the well-fortified town were filling with the brutal inhabitants. They all came to look at the same thing. Out there on the sands before the main gate was the sand rail buggy. Tied to the front ram was the Mohawk. He was bleeding badly, but still breathing and conscious now.

That wasn’t what interested them most. Nobody sat behind the wheel of the solitary vehicle on the plain. Just one man was sitting casually on one of the front tyres. He was calm and relaxed, as if he had been waiting there for a while. He was well over a hundred feet from the gates, and yet nobody had heard or seen him arrive in the night.

Zed carried no weapons at all and simply waited as if he was expecting someone to invite him in or come out to him. He could see the hulking figure of Jay appear on the walls and look out at him.

“That’s right, you son of a bitch, take a good look,” Zed said to himself.

A few minutes passed as he heard a hive of activity and conversation on the wall. Eventually, the doors were drawn open, and two motorcycles raced out, followed by the old cruiser he had seen before. Zed didn’t move an inch as he waited for them. The bikes raced past either side, circling him a few times until the car got close and drew to a halt twenty feet before him.

None of them were Jay, but he hadn’t expected them to be. The man on the back of the cruiser was one of his Captains that he had seen before.

“You!” he growled.

“Yup.”

“Why did you come back? Do you want to die?” he asked.

Zed slowly got up and walked a few paces. He stopped so that he could address the Captain. He was calm and showed no fear at all.

“I didn’t come here to fight,” he stated.

“Then what do you want?”

“Yesterday you went to a town called Calico. A town you used to stay away from. You took three people and plenty more. I want them back.”

He began to laugh.

“You want to bargain? Jay takes what Jay wants.”

“Yeah? Well, I guess I’ll start doing the same. This vehicle is now mine, and the three assholes who were in it when I found it.”

“Found?”

“Yes, found,” he replied with a smile, “Now, I want our people and our supplies back, and I don’t want to see you around Calico ever again. In return, you get back what I have taken. I think that is a fair deal, don’t you?”

“No deals, kill him!” the Captain yelled.

The two bikers reached for weapons, but as they did so, two figures arose from the sand thirty feet either side of the buggy. They were hidden under blankets in the sand, and each fired at the bikers who were struck down instantly. The driver of the Captain’s vehicle slammed his foot on the gas and began to race backwards, realising the threat they were facing.

“Tell Jay the deal!” Zed shouted after him.

He leapt onto the buggy along with the other two and stormed off into the distance. He turned back and looked several times, but nobody seemed to follow. He wasn’t sure if that was because they weren’t ready to do so, or just shocked by what they had seen. He looked to his side. Rave was one of the shooters that had leapt into the seat behind him, and Miles was on the back. She was smiling at him.

“I think that shook things up. When was the last time anyone stood up to Jay?”

“I’ve never seen it.”

“Then he just got quite a shock,” he replied as they raced away.

“So what now?” she asked.

“It’s Jay’s move. We ain’t got much gas left, enough to get us back, and that’s it. So he can come to us. He knows where to find us.”

“That’s what worries me.”

They rolled back into Calico with the fuel gauge on empty. Zed felt good to finally be doing something beyond searching for what he wasn’t sure even existed.

Maybe this is real life, and now it’s time to live it.

As he got out of the vehicle, Johnnie rushed towards him. That same furious look was in his eye.

“What the hell do you think you are doing bringing that and those people here?” he demanded.

“Jay has taken what’s ours, so I took something from him.”

“And you think he will just buckle to your demands and give in? You think you will get what you want? All you will get is pain and suffering. Not just for you, but for everyone here. You have no right to do this to us!”

Zed remained cool and calm.

“Look around. These people need more than to just get by. Maybe a fight is coming. I don’t want it. I doubt any of them do. But it’s better than just lying down and taking this shit.”

“You know what, you always were the same. Always had to have things your way. When you were out there you did it, and now you come back and are still the same.”

“What do you mean out there? You knew he was still alive?” Lannie asked.

They could both tell that Johnnie had let slip something he hadn’t meant to.

“You knew he was alive, and you didn’t tell me! You lied to me!” she screamed.

He mumbled and tried to find the words to respond, but he couldn’t. She rushed up to him and began beating on him. As Zed had taken it from Johnnie, now he took it from her. Zed couldn’t bear to see it anymore. She was crying as she hit him repeatedly.

“Why would you do this to me?”

Zed rushed forward, pulled her away from him, and held them apart. They stood and glared at one another.

“Why?” she asked faintly.

“The man you knew was dead. I was saving you from seeing what he had become.”

That wasn’t a good enough answer for her. She still looked furious as she turned to Zed.

“I am sorry. If I had known you were still out there, I would never have stopped looking.”

She continued to weep more.

“I did it for you, Lannie. You have to believe me!”

She clearly didn’t want to hear anything he had to say. He hung his head in shame and walked away. They could all see that Lannie wanted blood for what he had done. There were so many questions Zed needed to ask his brother, and yet he didn’t have the first idea of how to go about it.

Like drawing blood from a stone
.

Lannie could barely find the words to explain how she felt, and that made him feel even sadder.

“I am so sorry,” she said.

He shook his head. “Whatever has happened, it doesn’t matter. It’s in the past now. You have a life with Johnnie and your son.”

Those words were like music to her ears, but it wasn’t entirely true. He couldn’t stop pursuing the past. No matter how strange or difficult it was to understand, he had to know who he really was.

“So what do we do with ‘em?” Rave asked, pointing to the Mohawk and the other two men tied up to a building beside them.

“We wait. One way or the other, Jay will come. You all heard me! Jay is coming to this town. The question is, does he come to deal, or to fight? We have to be ready for either. You all know what you have to do, so do it!”

The gates were sealed shut behind them, and he looked around. The defences had substantially improved from when he left. His brother was now hammering away at foundations for another wall. He may not agree with what he was doing, but he was doing everything he could to protect the town and its people.

Lannie noticed Zed looking at him, and he looked back at her. She looked disgusted.

“I don’t know why any of this happened the way it did, but he is still my brother. Sounds like he has gotten you all through hell these past years. Don’t turn on him now.”