Perception Fault (26 page)

“I don’t give a flying fuck what Carrington wants. Now way would I let a rabid dog like you go free after what you did back there!” Ryan pressed the muzzle of his blaster into Tellen’s neck even harder. “Stop the wag right now, or you’ll be chilled no matter what!”

“No can do! Keeping this fucker moving is the only thing keeping me alive! I stop now, you put a bullet between my eyes. No thanks!”

“Fireblast, you just don’t know when to quit!” Ryan moved his blaster three inches to the left, aiming at the instrument panel to try to disable the wag. The moment the blaster was withdrawn from Tellen’s neck, he grabbed Ryan’s wrist and yanked down hard, trying to dislocate the other man’s elbow by smashing it into the windowsill. Ryan was forced to slide farther into the cab to keep his grip on the Sig Sauer. His finger tightened on the trigger, and a 9 mm round starred the windshield, sending spiderweb cracks all through it as the safety glass shattered, but didn’t break apart.

“Fuck! Now I can’t see where we’re going!” Tellen made no move to stop the wag or try to break out the glass, but kept driving, pushing the truck for all it was worth.

Rachel leaned down over Ryan as he struggled to regain control of his blaster. “Would you just kill him already!”

“Make yourself useful and break the bastard windshield!” Ryan grunted. When wrenching his blaster arm free failed, he grabbed Tellen by the throat with his free hand and pulled his head backward. The wag swerved back and forth wildly as Tellen tried to maintain speed while fending Ryan off. Although the one-eyed man
was taller and should have been stronger, the smaller man fought like a man possessed, his wiry body seeming to hold limitless reserves of stamina.

“Watch where you point that!” Rachel howled as the blaster’s muzzle drifted close to her head before Ryan turned it back in Tellen’s direction. She had managed to get her feet above the dashboard, and was pounding on the safety glass with her boots, which wasn’t doing much to dislodge the windshield.

“Now tell me—you didn’t do that—on purpose,” Tellen said as he tried to keep Ryan from pointing the blaster back at his head again.

“Fuck you!” Ryan snarled, just as he had the strangest feeling of weightlessness for a moment before crashing back to the seat as the wag slammed into the ground, bottoming out the suspension and making everyone hit the ceiling as they bounced around the cab. Ryan ended up upside down between Rachel and Tellen, his head wedged between the curved lump of the floor above the drive train and his shoulder on the seat. Somehow, Tellen still held on to his blaster arm, and was trying to strip the Sig Sauer from his fingers.

Ryan saw red. Swinging back his booted foot, he clobbered Tellen in the side of the face, then did it a second and third time, the last blow actually making the other man’s head ricochet off the frame of the cab. Stunned, Tellen slumped over the wheel just as Rachel gave the starred windshield one last good kick, popping out the entire piece and sending it tumbling off to the side. “Oh, shit! Ryan, get up here!”

Ryan managed to hook his fingers around the top of the seat back and pulled himself up to look out the window, the wind streaming in making his eye water. “What the hell are you— Son of a bitch!”

The truck was headed straight for the edge of a deep canyon, now only about a hundred yards away. “Time to go!” Shoving his blaster into his waistband, Ryan picked Rachel up by the waist and shoved her out the back window into the cargo bed.

“Hey, wait a minute… My hands! Ow!” Rachel shouted as she fell out of the cab.

Ryan was right behind her. “Go! Go! Go!” He tried to follow, but was held up by something snagging the collar of his jumpsuit. He looked back to see Tellen’s bloodied face staring at him, his hand grasping Ryan’s collar.

“You weren’t thinking of leaving just yet, were you?”

Ryan grabbed his hand and bent the fingers back, breaking two of them along with his grip. “Watch me!” Releasing Tellen, he ran for the back of the cargo bed, grabbing Rachel’s arm and pulling her with him. “Jump!”

They both stepped up onto the tailgate and leaped off, landing hard in the dirt. Ryan released her upon impact and rolled, coming up just in time to see the wag disappear over the canyon edge, clattering down the side in an avalanche of crumpling, crushed metal and a roaring engine, and ending with a thunderous crash at the bottom.

Exhausted, filthy and aching all over, Ryan walked slowly to the canyon edge and peered over. At least a hundred feet down, he saw the wreckage of the wag, mangled almost beyond recognition. The cab had been crushed to less than half its former size, and he saw no sign of Tellen, although a trickle of blood dripped steadily from a twisted corner of the passenger compartment.

“He dead?” Rachel had come up beside him, just as dusty and tired, looking over as well.

“Don’t know many people who can walk away from that kind of wreck. I’m pretty sure Tellen isn’t one of them.”

She spit into the canyon. “Good fuckin’ riddance. Now how about you cut me loose?”

Ryan turned and eyed her, a smile curving the corner of his mouth. “Don’t know about that. You might be easier to handle like this.”

“Oh, fuck you, Cawdor…” With an effort, Rachel reined herself in. “Look, thank you for saving my life—again—but please, untie me, cut me loose, whatever. I think my fingers are going numb.”

“All right, hold still.” Ryan examined her bonds, which consisted of a sturdy strip of plastic encircling both wrists, with one end going through a one-way fastener. “Have to find a rock or something. Don’t have a blade on me.”

Rachel stared at him in disbelief, her eyes wide. “You’re kidding, right? Tell me you’re kidding.”

“Nope. We better start walking. We should catch up to Caddeus and your father in a mile or two.” With that, Ryan took the first step of the long walk back to his friends, doing his best to shut out the constant stream of profanity spouting from Rachel’s mouth, aimed at him, the situation and the world at large—but mostly at him.

“Are you sure there isn’t anything else we can do for you?” Josiah Carrington asked as Ryan swung into the driver’s seat of the mil wag. “Anything at all?”

Ryan thought about replying, but Doc beat him to it. “By the three Kennedys, good sir, you and your people have already done more for all of us than we have seen since I don’t know when.” The old man swept his arm out in a low bow. “Unfortunately, we must be on our way. However, we look forward to revisiting your fair city the next time we come through this area.”

“Place’ll look a damn sight better then, as well, I can tell you that.” Over the past few days, Ryan and his group has rested and recovered at the Free City of Denver, with just about anything they desired at their beck and call. Josiah had also regained much of his strength and color during this time, and now extended a hand to Ryan, who gripped it back, both men shaking strongly. “We owe you damn near anything we can think of. With the Bunker on our side, I don’t think there’ll be any limit to what we can accomplish in the years to come.”

Despite the inauspiciousness of their first meeting, Josiah and the rest of the Bunker’s leaders had quickly come together in fast friendship. It had helped that J.B., Krysty and the others had smoothed the way by assisting in clearing what was left of the stickie and Indian
assault once and for all with the massive APC’s weapons. They had spent another day removing the remnants of Tellen’s army in Boulder, which had already begun disintegrating once news of their leader’s death had reached them. Even now the Armorer would occasionally look wistfully off to the east, mumbling under his breath about TOW missiles, or pressurized napalm flamethrowers or something even more esoteric and deadly. Watching him, Mildred would just roll her eyes and smile.

Ryan nodded. “A man I once knew—good friend of mine—said something about new ventures back when I ran with him—take it slow and steady, and you’ll come out just fine on the other side.”

“Sounds like a wise man,” Carrington replied.

“Yeah.” Ryan fired up the engine, Krysty sitting beside him, with Doc climbing into the backseat, still shaking hands with several of the townsfolk. The rear storage compartment was filled with supplies—food, tools, ammo. The second mil wag held J.B. at the wheel, Mildred beside him, and Jak manning the turret-mounted .30-caliber machine gun, with more supplies packed in and around them. The small caravan was ready to roll.

Rachel had also come out to see them off, with Caddeus right next to her—almost too close, Ryan thought. He stared at the pair, his eye widening in surprise as he saw their hands disengage from each other as they approached. He opened his mouth to say something, then closed it as he saw Caddeus shake his head almost imperceptibly. Ryan shook his head in amazement, grinning as he arched an eyebrow mouthed “good luck,” and receiving a dazzling smile from the black man in return.

Even Rachel seemed to have calmed down since their adventure on the Colorado plains. She walked more sedately, and also extended a hand to Ryan. “Thank you, Ryan—for everything.”

He nodded at her. “You’re welcome. Like Doc said, next time we’re in the area, we’ll be sure to stop by.”

“Our doors will always be open to you.” Josiah stepped back from the vehicles and signaled the men manning the main gates to open them. Ryan put the Hummer in gear and drove out under the warm summer sun, enjoying the wind in his hair.

“By Gaia, I’ll miss those clean sheets the most.” Krysty had turned in her seat to watch the ville fade into the distance as they traveled north. “So, where to, lover? Back to the redoubt?”

“Not just yet.” With a grin, Ryan pressed the accelerator down, letting the wag power down the cracked asphalt road, checking to make sure J.B. was following at an appropriate distance. “It’d be a shame to waste such a good day. Let’s just head down this road a few miles, and see what comes.”

With that, he revved the engine, and they took off down the highway.

Tellen limped into the shattered remains of his headquarters in Boulder, surveying the damage to what had once been an orderly command center for his army. Papers were scattered everywhere, furniture destroyed, the windows broken. Shoulders slumping, he sighed, the movement sending a flare of pain through the cracked ribs in his chest. His right arm was wrapped in a crude sling, and his brow was dappled in sweat, heralding the onset of a fever from an infection of some kind.

After waking up in the destroyed wag, curled up in a ball in the reduced passenger compartment, it had taken him half a day to extricate himself and another four days to get back to his base, living on whatever he could find and eat—mice, groundhogs, insects—and sucking the early-morning dew off the prairie grass. He’d wanted to lie down and die more during his journey back, but a small part of him still held out hope that his men would be here when he returned. Another part of his mind urged him onward, as well, insisting that he had to make his last report, otherwise his leader might reserve a fate worse than death if he didn’t.

Leaning down, every inch of the movement causing pain to grate through his chest, Tellen picked up a chair and set it upright on the floor, then collapsed into it with a weary wheeze.

“Comfortable, are you?” The voice behind him,
soft and deep, made him start, and he glanced around wildly, heedless of the ache it caused. His head was suddenly gripped by cold, steel fingers, holding it perfectly still and straight, tightening just enough to cause his skull to flex painfully.

“I came to report on what happened out there—” Tellen coughed, and a spray of blood misted out of his mouth into the air.

“It seems you have done yourself damage in returning. You had better make your report, then, before something more permanent happens to you.”

Squaring his shoulders, Tellen made his report as quickly and succinctly as he could, leaving nothing out, not even his failure to achieve even one of the goals he’d been assigned. When he’d finished, he took a breath as deep as his broken chest would allow and held it, waiting for his leader’s reaction.

Strange whirs and clicks could be heard behind him as the man processed the data he had been given. “So, if I were to ascribe one overall factor in your failure to secure the Bunker or the Free City of Denver, it would be the interference of Ryan Cawdor and his group, yes?”

“Y-yes sir, that would be correct.” Tellen tried to remain still, but couldn’t help hunching his shoulders slightly, waiting for the bullet or knife blade or laser to pierce through him and end his life. When nothing happened after several seconds, he dared to let out the breath he had been holding.

As quickly as they had appeared, the hands on the sides of his head were removed. “Very well, Tellen. We had better see to those injuries of yours.”

“You’re…you’re not angry?”

The man chuckled, a strange, sibilant sound that
resembled the hiss of air escaping a stoppered pipe at regular intervals that anything remotely resembling humor. “At you? No, you could not have foreseen how one man and his little group of friends could set in motion a chain of events that can destroy such well-laid plans as what you were tasked to carry out. And yet that is what Ryan Cawdor continues to do.”

“You know him, sir?”

“Know him—yes and no. He is a thorn in my side that resists my most determined attempts to excise him from what remains of my flesh. To be sure, it has been a good while since I have made a determined effort to do so. Perhaps that time has come once more. Do you know what became of the one-eyed man and his amazingly resilient companions? Perhaps it is time that I sought them out.”

“Heard they went north, don’t know how long ago.” A lightning bolt of pain shot through his chest, making Tellen double over in agony, spraying blood all over the floor. “I’m hurt bad, mebbe dying.”

The man behind him tsk-tsked, the sound lacking any demonstrable human warmth or compassion. “Yes, this too, too solid flesh is certainly melting, is it not?”

Tellen felt himself being lifted as easily as if he were a child, those metal fingers digging into the flesh under his arms, cruelly cutting into the nerve clusters there. He whimpered as his cracked ribs shifted and grated in his chest as he hung in the air, forced to look into a face that he couldn’t have imagined in a hundred years. A face made equally of flesh and metal, skin and steel, all assembled in a horrible mockery of life gone insane, melded to machines to become some crazed cybernetic clockwork monster.

Otherwise known as the Magus.

Tellen’s leader carried him out of the ruined headquarters and over to a large, dark gray APC. “Perhaps I have been unkind in not bestowing the secrets I have learned upon others. Perhaps it is time to share what I know with the world. And you, Tellen, will be the first to receive the gifts that I can give.” His stiff, plastic lips peeled back in a hideous mockery of a smile. “Does that not please you?”

Tellen couldn’t speak, couldn’t shake his head, couldn’t do anything but piss his filthy trousers as the cyborg carried him up the stairs of the APC and into the chamber of horrors inside, the door closing behind them, and the large vehicle moving off toward the horizon, swallowing the former rebel leader, as if he had never existed.