Desert Kings (14 page)

Suddenly a hatch swung open in the planks and there was Krysty holding her Kalashnikov and a gory knife. On the bloody floor, a muscular cannie groaned softly and went still.

“Change of plans,” she snapped, wiping the knife on her sleeve before sheathing the blade. “There’s no room for the bikes!”

“Then hasten thy chariot, Hermes!” Doc replied, hastily getting inside and closing the hatch.

Krysty didn’t know the quote, but understood the tone. Going to the front of the wag, she thumped a fist twice on the metal roof. Promptly, the war wag lurched forward, rattling and clanging across the rocky ground.

Starting to turn toward Ryan and the others on the hill, J.B. cursed as a group of cannies looked up at the noise of the approaching vehicle.

Realizing that they were being jacked while they were in the middle of a fight, the cannies raced toward the companions.

A bald woman whose arms were covered with tattoos almost reached the big wag when the bike toppled over, juice gurgling from a new hole in the fuel tank. Stunned at the sight, the woman stood still for a moment, then the war wag plowed directly into her.

The limp body went flying to land ahead of the wag, and J.B. drove over the cannie, the heavy tires smashing her flat.

Heading around the battle, the Armorer saw that more of the cannies were running toward the war wag as it rumbled past, their faces darkly grim. One cannie pulled back his arm to throw an ax, then spun, his throat pumping out blood like a broken fountain. As the sound of the Steyr arrived, the cannies and slavers both dived for cover.

Sticking an arm out the broken window, J.B. fired a couple of bursts from the Uzi at the group, then ducked behind the door. A heartbeat later, incoming rounds hammered the side of the Mack, shattering the sideview mirror, punching clean through the wood shutter covering the door and scoring a bloody path across his left calf. Nuking hell! Snarling at the pain, J.B. switched legs and started working the gas pedal with his other foot.

In the rear of the wag, Doc and Krysty looked around frantically for a blasterport, but apparently that particular invention was unknown to the cannies. But there were boxes nailed to the floorboards to make steps so that you could get higher than the protective planks and fire at folks outside.

“Have to do this the hard way,” Krysty said, dropping a nearly spent clip to insert a full one.

Going to a firing step, Doc did the same. “On your mark, dear lady.”

She nodded. “One, two…” But the wag jerked hard to the side, throwing them to the filthy floor, and there came the dull explosion of a gren.

Scrambling to their feet, the man and woman raced to the rear wall and climbed on the boxes to peek over the top. Several cannies had reclaimed their bikes and were racing in hot pursuit. Then a flight of arrows sailed overhead from the side of the war wag, closely followed by scattergun boom, lead shot peppering the wooden armor with a rattling sound.

“It seems that the last of the slavers has expired and now the cannies have turned their full attention on us!” Doc muttered, crouching to flick the selector switch on the AK-47 to full-auto.

“Too bad for them,” Krysty retorted, doing the same. “One, two, three!”

Standing up together, they fanned the rapid-fires at the scurrying people until the clips ran empty, then they ducked again. Incoming lead pounded the wooden planks, throwing splinters with stinging force. Then something hit the side of the war wag with a clunk. A moment later there was a huge explosion behind the wag, a hail of something very hard hammering the planks.

Pulling the pin on a gren, Krysty tossed it over the wall. As the charge detonated, she rose and began shooting at the nearest biker. The stuttering rounds chewed a path across a wooden shield, then sent up puffs of dust from the ground. A tall cannie lost his hat and another fired back with a crossbow. The barbed quarrel hit the top plank only an inch below Doc’s face. The scholar recoiled, then fired back in grim resolve.

As the rapid-fire cycled empty, Krysty dropped the blaster and drew her S&W wheel gun. It didn’t have the range of the longblaster, but it was much more accurate. Squeezing off careful rounds, Krysty saw the lead smack into the wooden shields on the lead bike, but fail to get through. Fair enough. Taking a stance, she fired again, slower, more deliberately. A tire blew on a bike, sending the rider flying, then another rider dropped his crossbow as blood gushed from a minor shoulder wound. The bike wobbled, almost toppling over, but the cannie managed to right the two-wheeler and come on even faster.

Deciding to follow the success of the redhead, Doc slung the rapid-fire over a shoulder, set the selector pin on the LeMat to the 16-gauge shotgun, stood and fired. The front tire of a second Harley disintegrated into rubbery shards, the nose dropping to stab into the sand. As the bike flipped over, the howling cannie went flying as if launched by a catapult, and impacted onto the rear of the war wag with a grisly sound. After a moment Doc checked, and the corpse was dangling from the wooden armor, held in place by the rows of sharp nails.

Holstering her blaster, Krysty checked her pants’ pockets, then her shirt. “Lighter!” she demanded, holding out a hand.

Searching his frock coat, Doc tossed over a butane lighter, one of several the companions had found in a New Mex redoubt. She made the catch, just as the war wag jogged to the right, then the left. There was another loud explosion, this time so close that loose sand rained down into the rattling eighteen-wheeler. Going to a box of Molotovs, she lit the oily rag fuses on several, tucked away the lighter, grabbed the box and heaved the entire thing over the back wall of the flatbed. Tumbling away freely, the box crashed on the ground behind the Mack war wag and the twelve firebombs exploded, combining into a towering inferno.

Arching wide around the fiery obstacle, one of the bikers jerked his head back as a 7.62 mm round from Ryan’s Steyr took him squarely in the face. Almost casually, the cannie slid off the bike, the two-wheeler continuing onward for several yards before the front wheel twisted and it flipped, tumbling along the ground, throwing off broken machine parts.

Finding himself alone, the last cannie biker shouted something unintelligible over the sputtering diesel engine of the Mack war wag, then veered sharply away, zigzagging across the rough terrain. Twice the sandy ground kicked up along the escaping bike, then the cannie swung behind a stand of cacti and was gone from sight.

Angling out of the valley, J.B. drove the wag onto the desert and around a couple of sand dunes to finally find Mildred. He braked to a halt near her, the backpacks and extra supplies piled around her boots.

“Anybody hurt?” Mildred asked, looking closely at the dirty people. Their clothing was matted with fresh blood, but none of it seemed to be from them.

“Nothing serious,” Krysty replied coolly, reloading her S&W blaster and tucking it back into the holster. Then she did the same for the AK-47 and slung it over a shoulder.

“I caught one in the leg,” J.B. said, hanging an arm out of the window. “But it’s just a scratch.”

“You sure?” Mildred demanded.

“Yeah.” He grunted. “No biggie.”

But seeing the man’s obvious discomfort, Mildred yanked open the door to inspect the wound. Thankfully he had been right; it was only a flesh wound. Yanking a clean cloth from her med kit, the physician tied it around the bloody pant leg as a temporary bandage. Later on she would clean the scratch and give it a couple of stitches if necessary. But for now, that would do.

A sharp whistle announced Ryan’s arrival, the big man sliding down the slope on the seat of his pants, the Steyr held tightly in a raised hand.

“Five of them are still sucking air,” he stated, working the bolt on the Steyr to remove the spent ammo clip from inside the longblaster. “Couldn’t get a clear shot once they figured out where I was hiding.”

“Damn!” J.B. snarled, closing the door again. He flexed his injured leg and it did feel a little better. Millie could handle a bandage the way he did plas.

“However, I did spot more tire tracks,” Ryan added.

“Delphi?” Krysty asked from over the planks.

He nodded. “Could be.”

“Great!” J.B. said. “Then get your ass in the Cyclops and let’s roll!”

Ryan smiled. Cyclops was a pretty good name for a war wag.

Just then, a hail of blasterfire sounded, dust kicking up from the top of the dune.

“Good shots,” Jak admitted grudgingly. “They got bikes?”

“Nothing that looked in working condition,” Ryan answered, dropping in a fresh rotary clip; the clear plastic was slightly cloudy with scratches, having been used a hundred times before over the years. But the five live rounds inside were still visible. The Kalashnikovs and the Steyr took the same size ammo, but it had been a trip-long time since the man had found any replacement clips. When these were gone, the longblaster would have to be individually loaded before every shot.

“Horses?” Jak asked pointedly.

“Chilled, or on fire and running for their lives.”

“On fire?”

“Yep.”

“Damn.” The teenager snorted, throwing his bedroll up and over the wall of planks.

But Doc caught it and dropped the roll inside. “No need for that. There’s a hatch in the back,” he said, jerking his chin in toward the rear.

Heading that way, the albino nodded, and the companions quickly relayed their supplies and spare blasters inside the Cyclops, along with the precious toolbox, and a couple of the nuke batteries. When he had the chance, J.B. planned to wire them to the wag headlights to make a nukelamp. It was a hundred times brighter than a flare, and would last until the halogen bulb died. The downside was they weighed more than a wheelbarrow and exploded if dropped into water. But the nukelamps were still much better than tallow candles.

Dragging out the corpses, Ryan took the gunner seat, with J.B. staying at the wheel. Going to the rear, Jak and Mildred climbed through the hatch and into the fortified eighteen-wheeler. The physician could see that the wag had started out as a flatbed, designed for hauling concrete abutments, steel girders and other heavy cargo. The truck probably had an industrial transmission and reinforced frame, which made it damn near perfect for a war wag.

“Head for the dry riverbed,” Ryan directed, hefting the rapid-fire to a more comfortable position. “That’s the direction the tire tracks go.”

“Sure they’re not from this wag?” J.B. asked, starting the engine.

Brushing back his hair, Ryan frowned. “No way. This heap has worn tires. The ones from the redoubt were brand-new.”

“Fair enough,” J.B. said, shifting into gear. “Let’s haul ass!” With a shudder, the Cyclops lurched forward a couple of feet, then settled into a steady chugging as it began to build speed rolling across the hard sand.

Charging into view, Dragon and the rest of his crew reached the top of the sand dune, their longblasters sweeping for the hidden sniper. But nobody was there anymore, only some empty brass glinting in the sunlight along with a lot of footprints.

“Son of a bitch got away!” Dragon snarled.

“And there they go,” Pig growled, pointing to the north.

Holding a hand to his forehead to shade his eyes, Dragon stared hatefully at the moving dust cloud kicked up by the heavy war wag. The bastards seemed to be heading for the dried riverbed, which was both good news and bad, he thought. If the outlanders went south, the banks were much too steep for the wag to get out again until reaching the Great Salt, and if they went north…

“Gone,” Big Suzy muttered, lowering her handcannon and ax. The nicked blade was smeared with blood, with tufts of hair sticking out. “The fragging Cyclops is gone! Black dust, we spent years putting the thing together, jacking tires, learning how to make shine, fixing the radiator…”

With a sputtering roar, the fat blonde raised both fists and shook them at the sky. “Shitfire!” Savagely, she turned on Dragon. “You! You said this was gonna be a peach! Easy pickings! Now we’re stuck on foot in the middle of mutie country!”

“Shut up,” Dragon muttered in a dangerous voice. “Shut up right now, bitch.”

Defiantly, Big Suzy snarled at the cannie and took a step forward, her hand raising the ax slightly, then she met his cold gaze and went pale. “Hey, ya know,” she muttered, lowering the blade, “I was just talking….”

The man turned away from her and looked again at the vanishing dust cloud. Yep, he thought, they were heading north. Shit.

“Hey, what’re those?” Hammer asked suspiciously, his big hands twisting on a longblaster.

Walking over the crest of the dune, the cannies looked down the other side. Parked at the bottom of the dune were half a dozen strange wags. The stripped-down speedsters had a metal cage around them for some reason, and seemed to be completely undamaged.

“Why the frag would they leave those behind?” Ratter asked, sucking thoughtfully between his prominent front teeth.

“Let’s find out,” Dragon said cautiously, starting down the sandy slope. “And watch for boobies! These mutie lovers are tricky!”

Reaching the ground, the cannies spread out so that any mines or pit wouldn’t catch all of them. Circling around the speedsters, they found nothing that seemed dangerous, and finally Dragon walked up to one and gave it a kick. Nothing happened.

Through the gridwork cage, he closely inspected the workings of the speedster, from the raised engine to the collection of nuke batteries. There were splotches of dried blood on the floor and dashboard, along with tufts of charred hair and some leafy vines. These had recently been in a fight with something large and hairy.

“Nuke me, they came from the north,” Dragon muttered in surprise.

“Green Hell?” Hammer squeaked. “But that’s full of those four-arm muties!”

“Which explains the cage,” Pig added, rubbing the back of his neck. “They drove through the jungle in these things?”

“Seems like,” Dragon said, easing open a hatch. The cannie froze at the sight of the wiring going to the nuke batteries, then relaxed with the realization that if the bars were live, he’d be a pile of smoking ash by now.

Sliding behind the wheel, the cannie looked over the controls, and soon found a newly installed button on the dashboard. That had to trigger the batteries. Smart. A sizzle cage. Trip smart.

Experimentally, Dragon checked the gears, then turned the ignition switch. The engine started immediately, then died with a sputter. He tried a few more times, but there was no response.

“These things are simply out of juice!” Dragon cried in delight. “Shitfire and honeycakes, boys, we’re back in biz!”

Stepping from the speedster, the man grinned at his crew. “Pig, Suzy, check over the stiffs and scav every weapon you can, especially any grens or firebombs!”

“What about the meat?” Ratter asked, running blunt fingers through his greasy, unkempt hair.

“That’s your job,” Dragon ordered. “Take only arms and legs, and stack ’em in the rear. Lots of room back there with the batteries.”

The man shrugged. “Sure, no prob.”

“What about me?” Hammer asked timidly, shifting his boots in the loose sand.

Placing a hand on the shoulder of the tall man, Dragon beamed a smile. “You get to dig up those extra cans of juice we buried in the blast crater. Haul ’em over and fill the tanks.”

“Sure, I can do that,” Hammer said eagerly. He really didn’t mind doing most of the heavy lifting, because he was the biggest and the strongest. That was only fair.

“As for me…” Dragon looked upward. “I’ll stay on top of the dune and watch for muties.”

Nervously, the other cannies glanced toward the sky. Already vultures were circling high above the valley, attracted by the smell of blood. Soon the screamwings would arrive, and then the stickies.

“After we get these rolling, what should we do next?” Suzy asked, scratching under a fat breast. “Head back to the caves to start smoking the meat, or haul ass to Waterton and sell the flints?”

Head back to the cave…What was she, an idjit? Dragon thought. “Frag that noise!” he snarled, casting a hard look to the north again. “We’re going after the coldhearts that jacked our damn war wag and get it back!”

Just then, the faint sound of hooting was carried to them on the desert wind. As it faded away, the cannies rushed to their assigned tasks, Dragon clicking back the hammer on his stolen musket as he started up the dune once more. He knew a trick or two with nuke batteries that would make the thieves wish they had never been nuking born. He could almost hear their pleadings for death already.

T
HE DESERT GOT ROUGHER
as Cyclops approached the bank of the riverbed, the land rising and falling in low curves like waves at sea. Nukescaping, Ryan realized, and checked the rad counter on his lapel, but the device registered only the usual background level.

“Okay, hold on to your ass!” J.B. shouted out the broken window.

As the war wag reached the irregular bank, the Armorer twisted the steering wheel sharply, trying to angle in for an easier descent. But the sun-baked mud crumbled under their weight and the lumbering eighteen-wheeler tilted dangerously, almost tipping over.

Shifting gears, J.B. alternated between the gas and the brakes, trying to get the Cyclops under control. The wheels spun freely in the air, the engine roaring with power. Then the other tires got purchase and the war wag lurched forward to go over the bank and fall a couple of feet on the dried mud with the force of a meteor. Everything loose went flying, the windshield cracked, the shutters hanging over the tires flipping up to smack against the splintery planks with a deafening crash. Then the war wag went lolling from side to side, rapidly building speed as it raced along the smooth riverbed.

“So that’s what skydark felt like,” Ryan said out of the corner of his mouth. “No wonder so few of us survived.”

“We’ve gone through worse,” J.B. muttered, ignoring the pain in his leg to shift gears. The dried mud was smooth and even, perfect for high-speed driving.

In the rear section of the fortified Mack, the rest of the companions dragged themselves off the floor and started putting everything back into place. Backpacks and bedrolls were scattered around, one of them missing entirely, and the nuke batteries had slid straight to the rear of the wag, hitting the wood so hard they made impressions into the planks. A headlight was also smashed and a couple of small kegs had broken open, covering the floor with loose black powder and lead balls that rolled dangerously underfoot. Plus, several crates had flipped over, disgorging mounds of broken flints, musket parts, spare motorcycle parts and a staggering collection of dried human remains, mostly fingers and sexual organs.

“Cannies,” Mildred muttered in disgust.

“Aced now,” Jak replied, taking a box of body parts and emptying it over the side of the war wag. Then he changed his mind and also tossed away the box.

“Most of them, anyway.” The physician sighed, rolling up a sleeve. “Come on, let’s clean this rolling abattoir before we catch the plague.”

Finding some old clothing in a plastic box, the companions used the rags as brooms and swept the floor clean of powder and shot, shoving it out the rear hatch. Once they could safely walk again, the companions did a thorough search of every box, barrel and crate, finding a fair assortment of empty brass, a dozen Molotovs, a hammer and spikes for repairing the wooden armor and more trophies. In short order the companions cleared away all of the grisly items, including a rope of what seemed to be horsehair, but nobody could tell for sure, so over the side it went.

“Ashes to ashes, dust to dust,” Doc stated, throwing away the last box of horrible dried things.

“Amen,” Mildred added solemnly.

Opening the Molotovs, the companions checked to make sure the bottles were full of shine, not fuel, then used it to liberally clean their hands and to wash the badly stained floor. Some of the cannies had been aced hard, and left behind more than their fair share of bodily fluids, not all of it blood.

Settling down to let the thick fumes evaporate, the companions dutifully checked over their blasters, then started carving small blasterports into the thick planks. By the time that was accomplished, the air was refreshingly clean and the companions literally breathed a deep sigh of relief.

“At least we have a lot of spare arrows,” Mildred said with a touch of satisfaction. “That’s something, after losing all of that black powder.”

“Those are not arrows, madam, but quarrels,” Doc corrected, raising a finger as if about to point to the blackboard. “A crossbow uses quarrels, not arrows.”

“What dif?” Jak asked, arching a snowy eyebrow.

“An arrow has a smooth shaft, but a quarrel is notched to fit the guide of a crossbow and stay in place.”

Mildred snorted a laugh. “Well, thank you, Fred T. Janes.”

“Who, madam?” Doc asked, puzzled.

That brought the physician up short, and she tried to think of some way to explain about the creator of various military guides, but finally decided that the concept was just too complex. “Never mind,” Mildred said, hiding a little smile. “Not important.”

Slowly, the long hours passed, and the sun was dipping toward the horizon when Jak proposed making dinner, the suggestion greeted with a resounding lack of interest. The memory of the trophies was still sharp in their minds, and that ruthlessly killed the others’ appetites. With a shrug, the unflappable albino teen went to a corner of the flatbed, opened an MRE envelope and dug into the hundred-year-old spaghetti with gusto.

Twilight was beginning to claim the world when the end of the riverbed came into view. Gingerly using his throbbing leg, J.B. slowed the wag as they came to a marshy field filled with what appeared to be wheat or some other kind of cultivated grain. Easing the Cyclops into the flooded cropland, J.B. was relieved to find the water only a couple of inches deep. However, the plants grew so close together, his view was reduced to less than a few feet ahead. If they were still following the riverbed, it was impossible to say.

“Fireblast, we’re driving blind,” Ryan muttered, glaring at the waving wild abundance around them. “There could be stickies, or a bastard cliff, only a couple of yards away and we’d never know about it until too late.”

“At this rate we’ll be in here until we run out of juice,” J.B. replied with a scowl, his hands tight on the wheel. “How big was the size of the average predark farm? Couple of miles?”

“More like ten or twenty. Sometimes a lot more.”

Scowling, the Armorer’s muttered reply consisted entirely of vulgarity.

Standing in the rear of the war wag, the rest of the companions were resting their arms on top of the spiked wood and using their vantage point to scan the rustling vista of waving plants. None of them could see any order to the plants, let alone predark ruins, abandoned grain silos, bridges, homes, barns or any other sign of the prior owners. Just endless acres of the gently waving plants. There were some mountains on the western horizon, but where the cropland ended and the rocks began, nobody could say for sure.

“Reach to foothills?” Jak asked uneasily, clearly hoping that somebody would disagree.

“Mayhap it does, my young friend,” Doc rumbled in consternation, the LeMat gripped tightly in one hand as if he was drawing comfort from the Civil War blaster. “We should be thankful this is not Australia. I have read where some of their larger farms extend for hundreds of miles without a break.”

“What is anyway, wheat?” Jak asked curiously, reaching out to grab a plant, but staying his hand at the last moment.

“Millet,” Krysty replied, resting her arms on top of the wooden planks. “Makes good bread once it’s been cracked.” Then she frowned. “Funny, I didn’t think it could grow in wetlands like a marsh.”

“Must be a mutie strain,” Mildred guessed. “So I wouldn’t try eating any until I have run some tests. There are grains that get an ersatz kind of mold that contains a natural form of LSD, a powerful hallucinogenic, ten times worse than wolfweed.”

“Worse?” Jak repeated. “Nasty.”