Desolation Crossing (19 page)

He turned to LaGuerre. “Get that boy to up the speed,” he barked, indicating the still impassive and motionless Zarir.

The trader shook his head. “Can’t do that. We go faster, we leave the big rigs behind. Ain’t gonna do that.”

J.B. turned back to the approaching animals. He knew it was only his imagination, but it seemed to him that he could smell their hot breath down his neck, could smell the reek of their hide. The former was his fear; the latter was a genuine sensory impression. It hit him that the pack was now so near, and so large in numbers, that the heat produced by their collective stampede was enough to drive the smell of their fury across the blacktop, sucked in by the air con and relayed to those who may have thought themselves safe in wags, but were now inclined to reconsider their position.

“Machine-gun fire. It’s our only option, and we’ve got to make every shell count,” he barked over the open comm mic. “Too close to risk the rockets.”

“Figure you’re right,” Cody’s voice returned. “Switching to that right now.”

J.B. was glad of the backup from the convoy man. In the lead wag, Eula had watched in silence, as though waiting for the Armorer to slip up, to show a chink in his armour. For what reason he could only guess. One thing for sure, she was not helping anyone else in the convoy, and why LaGuerre was letting her do this was something he could only put on hold, to puzzle over if they got out of this in one piece.

So it was that he glad to hear Ryan’s voice follow hot on the trail of Cody’s.

“J.B., Doc let me take over the machine guns. Let’s chill those bastards before they get the chance to do it to us.”

DOC HAD BEEN DISSATISFIED as soon as he had seen the rockets hit home, even though Ramona had whooped with joy to see the pack hit by the three-pronged attack.

“Go get ’em, Docky-babe,” she yelled, hugging him. “Those fuckers are nothing more than tomorrow’s barbecue.”

Doc had disentangled himself with some alacrity. “Madam, unhand me, I implore you. The task is barely begun, and this is no time to be wasted in premature celebration.”

“Doc’s right,” Ryan breathed. “Look.”

Ramona stopped, and followed the line of Ryan’s finger as it pointed out beyond the ob port.

“Aw shit,” she whispered, all joy drained from her as the smoke cleared and she could see the size of the pack that was gaining on them.

“They’ll be too close to fire on with this before too long,” Doc mused. “Why don’t we increase speed?”

“Bet your ass J.B.’s already thought of that,” Ryan murmured.

“Yeah, and he would have gotten a no for his trouble,” Ramona said. “Listen, hon, these wags can go a whole lot faster than this, but those refrigerated trailers are shit heavy, and even though the cabs are powerful, they can’t go much above this. Never mind the bullshit about wanting to go nonstop for the time. Fact is that if he’s gonna deliver before the generators on those rigs give out and the trade is ruined, then he’s got to push it nonstop.”

Ryan nodded. It made sense, now. This insane desire to run nonstop had a concrete cause that lay beyond just extra jack for quick delivery. If only the slippery bastard had been more honest with them. J.B. would be counting on a speed increase, and only finding out now, when it was the worst time for the fact to be revealed…

Ryan knew how his old friend would react. Speed and efficiency was now of the essence. The one-eyed man tapped Doc on the shoulder. The old man looked up from his perch behind the ordnance mount, and instantly read the expression in Ryan’s eye.

“Of course, of course,” he muttered, sliding out from his seat and allowing Ryan to replace him.

Catching Ramona’s questioning glance, he smiled and addressed her. “My dear lady, strange as it may seem to relate, but even with just the one eye, friend Ryan is a far better shot than I could ever hope to be. Indeed, when one comes to consider the question, does one need more than the single orb in order to effect the chilling shot?”

“Uh, I’ll just have to take your word for that,” Ramona stammered in a tone of voice suggesting that she wouldn’t need such an explanation, given Doc’s mode of expression, to believe such a thing.

It was then that Ryan, cutting everything behind him out of his focus, heard J.B.’s imprecation, and made his reply.

As the pack closed, Ryan sited on the nearest cattle and dogs to the rear wag. He’d seen Cody shoot, and trusted that the man was as good as himself or J.B., at least in a situation such as this. He’d have to be: the speed at which they were closing gave them next to no time in which to make every squeeze of the trigger count.

The smell of the pack permeated the wag, the stench making the metal shell of the wag seem to close in on them. Ryan tried to shut this out of his mind as he sighted and squeezed.

The chatter of machine-gun fire, overlapping into an echoing and overlapping rhythmic pattern, cut through the sound of the wag engines and the baying of the pack. Up
so close now that he could see the dark heart of their eyes, expressionless except for the blank lust to chill, the pack stood little chance of avoiding being hit. Cattle and dogs stumbled and fell as shells ripped into their flesh, tearing at the scaly hides and biting into the lank, matted fur. Bones splintered, organs ruptured and the sudden halt or erratic change to their impetus dictated by the impact caused them to career into their fellows. The carefully orchestrated pack progress, the group mind, was broken for the briefest of moments, and it seemed as though the group would tumble into disarray as their momentum was interrupted. For that moment, it seemed as though the convoy had been victorious, and the danger was averted.

It was a false dawn. The line of cattle and dogs nearest to the convoy—those decimated by the first rounds of machine-gun fire—went down and hit the ground. The very front runners hit the hard shoulder at the side of the blacktop, bringing home how close they now were to their target. It should have been the turning of the tide.

Just as Ryan was prepared to take a deep breath before picking off the fading stragglers, the dream was shattered by the breaking through of a second rank of pack animals, trampling over the fallen, paying them no heed except to use this as a spur for a further challenge.

“Fireblast and fuck,” he whispered softly. If they were this determined, then there was going to be little or no way of stopping them. And where would that lead them all?

Meantime, he had to keep firing into the onrushing pack, just as J.B. and Cody had to keep up their barrage. Even if they were unable to halt them completely, they could at least thin out their numbers so that they were
fewer when they reached the convoy, and could wreak less havoc.

A steady stream of fire rained into the pack from each of the three armed wags, but seemed to make little difference to the onrushing numbers. As cattle and dogs stumbled and fell under the hail of shells, their blood making the dust beneath them churn into red mud, splattered with flying blood on the flanks of those that came in their train, so it seemed that those very creatures replacing them were part of an endless and unstoppable onslaught.

Looking down from the cabs of the refrigerated wags, armed only with small arms that were of use only in close combat, both Mildred and Krysty were appalled and yet awed by the size of the pack, and the relentless group mind with which it kept coming forward. They felt helpless, as though they were watching some old vid in which they could not take part, and in which they had no real interest. And yet, as the pack spilled off the dustbowl and the hard shoulder, and began to run parallel to the convoy on the blacktop, it became apparent that this would soon involve them in a very direct way. The thought was made real by the shuddering shock of some of the cattle hitting the wheels of the container. The screech of pain showed that those in contact had paid, possibly with their lives, for the attack. Yet it had enough force to make the container swerve and buck at the rear of the cab. Both Reese and Ray had to wrestle with the steering wheels of their wags, the old man surprising Krysty by actually ceasing to speak. The veins on his forehead stood out as he sought to keep his rig straight. More impacts at the rear made the degree of swerve in
crease, the swinging of the containers making the wags seem that they could jackknife at any moment.

Ryan, still grimly firing into the mass of scaled hide and matted fur that came closer with every second, wondered in some part of his mind how the pack could survive out here and grow so large. He had the suspicion that the answer was in some way significant. But not for now. It was all he could do to keep blasting into the mass as the cattle repeated their attack on the containers, spreading their attention to the wags between, using the same simple tactic.

Except that the wags in which the rest of the crew rode were closer to the ground, and lighter.

Ryan was thrown off his seat as the wag was hit by a phalanx of cattle, a staggered impact that caused the wag to veer with a bone-jarring shudder on the road. Raven swore loudly as she wrestled with the steering column, the wag zigzagging wildly as she tried to right its path, only to be met with another collision that twisted the wheel in her hand. Her wrists felt as though they’d been dislocated by the violent pull against her instigated by the wag moving contrary to the direction of the wheel.

As the one-eyed man tried to rise to his feet, Ramona leaned over to help him. Another shuddering hit threatened to knock the wag onto its side, and Ramona tumbled over the prone warrior as his own balance was thrown once more.

Doc slid into the seat behind the mounted blaster. His face set in grim determination, he angled the blaster so that it was pointed downward as far as the mount and the slit in the side of the wag would allow. Forcing it as far as he could, he rose off the seat as he commenced firing, the shells from the blaster raking almost along the side of the
wag. It was a ridiculous and stupid angle. The chances of hitting anything under normal combat circumstances would be next to zero, and there was always the danger that one of the shells would actually cause damage to the wag itself. But these were far from normal circumstances, and called for desperate measures.

In this instance, Doc’s gamble proved correct. The shells ate away at the wall of scaled hide that pushed against the wag, chopping some of it to the blacktop, driving the rest of it back far enough for Raven to right the steering without further impairment.

Ryan and Ramona were both back on their feet, staring out of the ob port at the trail of devastation Doc had left in their wake, and at the bodies of chilled cattle and dogs left by the other wags.

“Shit, man, how many of those nasty fuckers are there?” Ramona whispered, looking to the mass of flesh that still tracked them.

“Too many for my liking,” Ryan murmured. “How come there’s so many? How do they live? Unless…”

He didn’t get a chance to finish. Doc’s urgent cry cut short his musing.

“Ryan, they don’t want to wipe us out. That’s too easy. They’re moving us, directing us where they want us to go.”

Ryan frowned, then cast his attention to an ob port on the other side of the wag. Here, with no obstructive wall of flesh, it was easier to see exactly what Doc meant. They were moving from the middle of the road over to the hard shoulder. He could see the snaking line of the convoy ahead of them, moving inexorably to the right. LaGuerre’s wag was already off the hard shoulder and into the hardpacked ground that lay beyond. It was heading into the
night, clumps of cacti black against the starlight darkness. Where it was heading was a guess that Ryan did not want to make. He only knew that the pack had some purpose in sacrificing themselves in this way.

“DARK NIGHT, where are we headed?” J.B. asked, almost to himself as he looked past the still-impassive Zarir and out of the front of the wag at the dustbowl night as it engulfed them.

“You tell me,” Eula replied in a neutral tone.

“And how the fuck am I supposed to know that?” he snapped.

She shrugged. “You asked first.”

J.B. looked at her, and then at LaGuerre, who was still seated in the same position, his eyes unreadable behind the shades.

“You don’t seem too worried,” J.B. said slowly. “Could be you were expecting something like this?”

“It was always a possibility,” LaGuerre replied with a shrug. “But that’s why we wanted your people. It’s your job to get us out of any trouble this is leading to.”

J.B. shook his head. “You’re one stupe fucker…or just plain crazy.”

LaGuerre’s face split into a grin. “You have to be, to do this,” he said simply.

J.B. looked out into the night.

One way or another, it was going to be a long one.

IT SOON BECAME obvious that the pack’s group mind had a simple and immovable objective: to herd the convoy as their ancestors had once been herded themselves. In the interests of preserving ammo for whatever may lay ahead,
J.B. had ordered that the pack should now only be fired on if it encroached far enough into the convoy to present a threat. Which was not something it showed any inclination to do. It would appear that the pack was content with having changed the direction of the convoy, and was gently prodding them in exactly the direction it wished.

And so it was a bizarre sight that wound across the dustbowl night, drawing farther and farther away at an acute angle from the ribbon of the blacktop. The convoy drove straight, unimpeded by the pack, which ran beside it. Although heavily depleted, there were still more than enough cattle and dogs to stretch out in an unbroken line several bodies deep, discouraging the thought of trying to break through and double back toward the road.