Baptism of Rage (8 page)

“Can I help you?” Ryan called as the wag trudged closer.

With a defiant splutter, the wag belched another cloud of smoke and slowed, shaking as it pulled up beside Ryan. The man peered down from his high seat, an
ingratiating smile on his lips. He was thin and scrawny, with the beginnings of a beard on his chin and the patchy sprouts of hair of the rad-affected. He looked perhaps thirty or forty, but it was hard to tell in the dwindling light. “I was about to ask you the same question,” the man said, his voice warm and friendly.

Ryan watched in silence, keeping pace with the vehicle as it slowed.

“Thought you might be needing a ride or a place to stay,” the man continued. “Or mebbe you want to negotiate a towing.” He chuckled, his teeth glinting with the glow of the hearth beside him as he reached for something that rested at his side.

Ryan’s arm snapped out then, grabbing the man by his lower leg and yanking him down from his seat. The driver fell, yelping as he crashed to the hard tarmac of the ground, a rebuilt Colt Anaconda six-shooter tumbling from his grip. “Hey, what th—?” he began, but his words were cut off abruptly as Ryan rammed the heel of his boot against the man’s throat.

His foot held against the base of the man’s throat, Ryan leaned forward, pointing the muzzle of his blaster at the man’s forehead. “Yeah, let’s negotiate,” he snarled.

“Black fire!” the scrawny excuse for a man gasped as Ryan pressed his booted foot against his throat. “What the devil has gotten into you?”

Ryan looked at the man beneath him, his expression tense. “Did you set this up?” he demanded, the muzzle of the SIG-Sauer never wavering from the man’s forehead.

The man screwed up his eyes as Ryan’s foot pressed harder onto his windpipe, sputtering out a rasping cough. “No, sir,” he said, his voice straining to be heard.

Suddenly, over the sound of the steam-powered truck’s engine, Ryan heard a shotgun being cocked in readiness. He turned his head, ducking a little and training his blaster on the other rider of the truck. He saw now that it was a woman, and she had climbed out of her seat to stand on the metal bridge beside the belching, ovenlike engine. As thin as her companion, with straggly long hair, she held a sawed-off Mossberg M9200A1 shotgun pointed at Ryan. The 12-gauge weapon was over a foot in length, and could blow a hole clean through a man. “You want to get the fuck off my husband, sweetheart?” she demanded.

“You think you can shoot me before I break his windpipe?” Ryan countered, pushing his toe deeper into the man’s throat until the fallen driver groaned in pain.

As the woman considered that, a whistle sounded up ahead. She looked up and saw J.B. holding his M-4000 scattergun on her from the head of the wag convoy, with Jak and Krysty standing to either side of him, leveling their own blasters at her. J.B. strode forward, the hefty scattergun trained on the woman, never wavering, his expression grim.

Slowly, shaking her head in disbelief, the woman lowered her weapon.

As she did so, Ryan raised his foot from the driver’s throat, allowing him to breathe. The man spoke, his voice sounding strained. “Black fire, you’re wound tighter than a new gaudy on deflowerin’ day,” he muttered, reaching up to rub at his aching throat. “I mean, what the crap are you trying to do?”

Blaster still held on the driver, Ryan stepped back, warily assessing the scrawny man. “Our wag here got stuck in some shitty excuse for a road,” he explained. “Seems mighty convenient you coming along like this with a tow truck.”

The driver sat up and rubbed at his neck and shoulders. “Just coincidence, friend,” he stated. “Happened to be heading along this way to our home is all. Don’t go aiming your blaster at good luck.”

“I don’t get much good luck,” Ryan rasped, still holding his blaster on the man.

The man began to laugh and, after a moment, his wife joined him. “See how hard we’re laughing?” he said. “It’s just coincidence, man. Just a flaming coincidence.” After a few seconds, the man dusted himself off and began to get up. “You, um, you mind?” he asked Ryan, casting a significant look at the blaster in the one-eyed man’s hand.

“Go ahead,” Ryan said, the SIG-Sauer still poised at the man as he struggled up from the blacktop.

Standing, the man held his hands loosely at his side, making it clear that he meant no harm. “Name’s Mitch,” he said, “and that there is Annie. Didn’t meant to frighten you or whatnot.”

“It’ll take more than your junk heap to frighten me,” Ryan assured him.

“So,” Mitch began, “you want us to give you a towing or you want us to just piss off on our way like we never saw you? I’m easy, friend. Ain’t worth it to me to get shot over your predicament.” The man had made no attempt to recover his blaster.

Gradually—warily—Ryan lowered his blaster, clicking the safety back on. “You think you can pull us out? That’s a heavy wag,” he said.

Mitch stepped forward, walking a few paces to get a better look at the truck that was sinking into the spongy tarmac. “Oh, I can get it out,” he said with certainty. “It may take some doing, but there ain’t nothing my old ‘junk heap’ won’t tow.” He emphasized the words that Ryan had used to describe his vehicle, saying them as though they were a curse.

Billows of smoke belched from the smokestack atop the man’s strange wag, filling the air with a sickly stench. Ryan looked past the smoke and gazed up at the darkening sky. Up there, stars were beginning to twinkle—full night would be upon them before long.

“How long will it take?” Ryan asked, conscious of the approaching night.

Mitch shrugged. “A half hour, mebbe a little more,” he admitted. “I got some chains back at my garage, ’bout five minutes away is all. Hook them up and you’ll be good to go in no time.”

“We’ve got tow ropes,” Ryan told him.

Mitch shook his head. “Nah,” he said, “your wag there looks like—what?—five tons?” Ryan shrugged.

“You need proper chains,” Mitch explained. “Won’t break, see?”

Years before, after he had escaped Front Royal and the insanity of his brother’s reign of terror, Ryan had traveled across the Deathlands with a man known as the Trader. The Trader had taught Ryan a lot about vehicles, as well as other things, including survival. What this man, Mitch, was telling him about using chains sounded sensible. Inconvenient, perhaps, but sensible just the same.

“Five minutes, you say?” Ryan confirmed.

The scrawny driver smiled. “Ten,” he said. “Five there, five back. You don’t trust me, do ya?”

A ghost of a lopsided grin crossed Ryan’s scarred features. “I don’t trust anyone, Mitch,” he said.

“Yeah, good way to be,” Mitch agreed. “Look, you come back with me and Annie, see we’re all straight and aboveboard. No funny business. Then we’re all square, right?”

Ryan looked at the scrawny woman atop the steam-powered wag, the one who had pulled the shotgun on him. That was understandable, he acknowledged, only natural that she’d try to defend someone who attacked her husband, whatever the reason, and there was nothing unusual about Mitch wanting to be armed when he met
with strangers, either, not out here in the middle of a ruined world full of predators. Still, it didn’t sit well with him that they had happened along—with a tow truck no less—at nearly the exact time that Croxton’s wag had been caught in the quicksandlike tarmac. Perhaps the tarmac was freshly laid, perhaps it was poorly mixed or had been damaged by the toxic rain that had hit the day before. The bottom line was, it was a problem and a convenient solution had presented itself too easily for Ryan’s comfort.

“Do you expect payment for this?” Ryan asked, holstering his SIG-Sauer back at his hip, pulling his dark, heavy winter coat over to disguise it.

Mitch and Annie laughed in unison. “We won’t take your jack,” Annie explained. “Good deeds is their own rewards.”

Ryan nodded, before walking toward J.B. and his other companions. Doc and Mildred had remained hidden inside Charles Torino’s horse-drawn wag, while Krysty was crouched in the shadows beside the second wag. As Ryan joined them, Krysty rolled out, Smith & Wesson in hand, allowing herself to be seen again.

“What do you think?” Ryan asked, addressing J.B. and the others.

“Nothing good,” J.B. said, shaking his head.

Ryan indicated their lead wag, the one driven by Jeremiah Croxton. “The road’s not holding the wag,” he pointed out. “Our man there is sinking deeper every minute. We’ll have a hell of a job pulling him out now.”

“We could just leave the wag, Ryan,” Krysty suggested.

“Be a better idea,” J.B. agreed.

Ryan was thinking about Mitch and Annie and their steam-converted harvester. “The newcomers’ wag could get it out,” he stated. “It’s certainly got pulling power.”

Reluctantly, J.B. nodded. “It has at that,” he agreed. “Leave Doc and Mildred to guard the wags,” he suggested. “Your new friends haven’t seen them, so they won’t be any the wiser.”

Ryan thought about it. “Me and Jak will go,” he decided. “If they see us leave the place without sec men, they’ll get suspicious.”

J.B. nodded, deferring to Ryan’s judgment.

Turning, Ryan walked back to where Mitch and his wife had parked their strange makeshift wag, Jak keeping pace at his side. Mitch had placed his Colt Anaconda back in its holster, strapped low to his right leg.

“I’m Ryan and this is my friend Jak,” Ryan explained to Mitch. “We’ll be coming with you, unless you plan on having any objections.”

Mitch hacked up a gob of phlegm and spat it at the blacktop over the side of his wag. “You’ll have to hang on,” he told them. “She’s a boneshaker.”

M
ITCH WASN’T KIDDING
. The wag had no suspension to speak of, and it leaped over every bump in the road like a horse vaulting fences. Ryan and Jak had taken up positions at the rear of the vehicle, hooking their hands through the ribs that made up its skeletal structure as it trudged past Croxton’s group. After a few moments, Mitch turned back to them and shouted over the chugging engine, “Gonna go off road now.” With that, he turned off the nominally smooth blacktop and onto a dirt track.

The wag continued bumping along the track for a few minutes, traveling at a top speed of perhaps fifteen miles per hour, until a large farmhouse with a wide outbuilding came into view. From her position in the passenger seat, Annie pointed to the buildings and shouted something over the noise of the engine. “That’s where we live,” she explained.

The buildings were dilapidated. As they got closer, Ryan saw that one wall had caved in and there were numerous holes in the roof of the main house, while the outbuilding was a large barn or shed with a set of double doors that looked as if they were rotting where they stood. In the fields to the right of the house, Ryan could see the wrecked remains of other wags, salvage that had been left to rot. “Nice place,” he commented as Mitch pulled the wag up beside the open doors of the outbuilding.

Ryan peered at the house as they passed it, noting that, despite its general decrepitude, it had been patched with sturdy sheets of metal that acted as cladding for the whole of the first floor. The surrounding trees had been cut down, leaving large trunks along one side of the building, enough to protect them from attack without providing much cover for the attackers. Beyond that, however, the wilderness threatened to overwhelm the area.

Mitch pulled one of the long levers before him and the wag shook as the brakes were engaged and the engine powered down. It remained there, ticking over, as Mitch got out of his seat and climbed down from the wag.

“You strong boys going to give me a hand with these chains or what?” he asked, peering up at Ryan.

Ryan nodded, and he and Jak leaped down and followed Mitch into the shed while Annie remained in the passenger seat. Jak glanced back, making sure that the woman wasn’t reaching for her shotgun that was nestled in a leather rig beside her. She smiled at him, a nasty, spiteful thing on her bony face, keeping her hands on show.

“It’s just through here,” Mitch was saying as Ryan followed him into the shadows of the outbuilding.

Ryan flexed the muscles in his hand, reaching beneath his coat for the holstered SIG-Sauer. He didn’t trust Mitch or the woman, and he cursed himself for getting into this situation. If Mitch could help them, that was fine. But this felt increasingly wrong.

Jak was walking a few paces behind Ryan, his ruby eyes shifting back and forth, his nose wrinkling as he sniffed at the air. There was something here, he was sure of that. The whole place held the smell of meat, like a butcher’s. It was ingrained in the wood of the walls. Jak’s fierce eyes peered into the shadows, trying to discern something in the pitch-blackness at the far side of the barn.

“Much farther?” Ryan asked. “I can’t see shit in here, Mitch.”

A few steps ahead of him, Ryan heard Mitch pulling something from his pocket, and his hand automatically clutched the butt of the holstered SIG-Sauer. A series of brushing noises, flint against flint, and the tiny flame of a lighter came to sputtering life.

“Here you go,” Mitch answered, holding the flame out before him. “Don’t get much in the way of visitors out here,” he explained with a charmless smile. “No cause to rig up pretty lights.”

“No problem,” Ryan assured him, his hand still clenching the butt of the blaster at his hip.

The flame of the lighter cast a minuscule amount of light in the barnlike building. Ryan saw over a dozen lengths of chain hanging from one wall, attached by a series of hooks that had been pushed into the wooden wall. There was farm machinery in here, too, he saw—rusty, old plows and tillers with churning blades, the kind of things you tied to a horse or mule so that they could work the fields for you. A crossbeam ran along the side of the barn, about eight feet above them, and the whole structure was almost two full stories in height, with a single, simple light fixture—really just a naked lightbulb—attached to one wall, though it had been left switched off. A deep blue sky and twinkling stars could be seen through several gaps in the dilapidated roof.

“You do a lot of farming?” Ryan asked, trying to be conversational as he peered into the shadows beyond the little pool of light.

Mitch reached up and detached one of the longer lengths of rusted chain from a hook. “Some,” he admitted. “Been tryin’ to grow us some… Ah, I don’t know what it’s called. Leafy things, taste like water.”

Ryan watched the man wrap the first length of chain in on itself. “You have seeds then?” Ryan asked.

Mitch bundled the length of chain in his hands and offered it to Jak. “You think you can make yourself useful, whitey?” he asked.

Jak looked at Mitch and shook his head. “You carry,” he said.

Mitch looked at the strange-looking albino teen quizzically, then to Ryan. “I can’t carry everything back to the wag without making three trips. And there’s three of us right here,” he whined.

“Point out which chains you need us to take,” Ryan instructed, “and give me the light. We’ll follow you.”

Mitch nodded and handed Ryan his little lighter, its flame popping and wavering in the breeze from the open door. “One in from the right,” he explained, indicating the wall of hanging chains.

Ryan reached for it, looping the chain around itself in a spiral.

“Last one is over the far side,” Mitch explained, “on the floor. Nice, sturdy length. Be just right for you fellas and your predicament.”

Ryan inclined his head, indicating that Jak was to collect the other length of chain as Mitch made his way to the double doors. Ryan waited while Jak crouched and pulled at the chain on the grimy floor of the barn.