Remember Tomorrow (24 page)

“You’re on your own now,” Ryan said simply.

Gill stopped and looked at the one-eyed man. “I dunno why you bothered to do what you just did, but I’m glad.”

Without another word and without looking back, Gill limped off into the wasteland beyond the ville until he was swallowed up by the darkness. Even when he was no longer visible and the sound of his shuffling feet was lost in the all-encompassing night, Ryan still stood and watched. Why had he helped him? Because he’d learned something about Duma and the idiocy of Buckley’s plan? Perhaps, but he already knew enough to realize that the chief was a moron and the plan was tantamount to jumping into a firefight headfirst. All Gill had done was confirm that.

So why had Ryan helped him? Perhaps because, if he had been in Gill’s position, the one-eyed man would have wanted to take his chances in the wastelands rather than die ignominiously at the hands of the Nagasaki dwellers. There was no dignity in buying the farm. It was messy, painful and it meant that you kissed your ass—and this life—goodbye. But it was better to face it on your own terms.

Yeah, mebbe that’s all it was: having the choice of how to go.

Ryan turned and walked back through the ville, careful not to be seen by any stray passersby. He needn’t have worried; they were all too concerned with enjoying themselves, celebrating the great victory that they hadn’t even begun the fight for as of yet.

As unobtrusively as possible, Ryan slipped back into the circle around the fire. The fun was beginning to wind down as more of the ville dwellers were either sleeping or passed out in the dirt. A few still indulged in rutting and fighting, but even this was halfhearted as the alcohol and the chemicals and herbs claimed them.

Jak spirited his way between those left standing. He didn’t ask any questions, just fixed Ryan with an impassive stare.

“Tell you when we get some privacy,” he whispered. “But it doesn’t look good.”

“Didn’t figure it would.”

Following Jak, Ryan went over to where the others were waiting. There was no sign of Buckley or his two sec men.

“Interesting time, lover?” Krysty posed.

“Kinda—what about you?” Ryan countered.

“Great, just great.”

As Ryan looked out beyond the glow of the fire and the billowing smoke that still obscured a great tract of sky, he could see that beyond was beginning to lighten as dawn tried to break through the chem clouds over the wasteland.

“Better try and get some rest before these bastards revive and want to start for the convoy,” he murmured. “Figure we’ll be safe now—they’re all too tired to do anything.”

“Then perhaps this would be a good time to escape,” Doc pondered. “After all, you were able to slip away.”

“Yeah, but I was on my own, Doc,” Ryan countered. “Jak, what d’you reckon?”

The albino shook his head. “Buckley not that stupe. Back of the ville is okay, but if we want to take the wag then we got trouble. Five guards mounted on it and the road out.”

“Yeah, and if we go by foot then you aren’t gonna get far, Doc. Not yet, at any rate,” Ryan added.

“Mayhap you are correct, Ryan. But perhaps that means you should leave me here,” Doc said solemnly. “After all, if not for me, we would not have been taken.”

“We don’t do that and you know it,” Ryan said softly. “We stand and fall together. If at least three of us have the wag tomorrow, then at least we stand a chance of getting a ride out. See what happens.”

They walked through fallen bodies back to the ranch house and the relative safety of the room. Once secured in there, Ryan told them all he had seen in the barn and all he had gathered from Gill. And his reluctance to escape became a little more clear when he added, “Thing is, if we did just run away these sick fucks would still be around to do this to other people. I don’t like that idea too much. I’d like us to wait until we’re in a position to grind these fuckers into their own shit and mud.”

The others exchanged glances. Doc spoke for them all. “Put like that, sir, I can find no argument in my heart. We bide our time, then strike at the foulness and rip it out of the body of this land.”

There was nothing more to be said. Time now only to rest, to wait for the time when Buckley would load up the stolen wag and mount his attack. Time only to wait for the moment when they could turn the tables on the chief and his pesthole ville and wipe them out. Time now only for the chief to sleep in a deceptive peace, not knowing what they would attempt to make of his grand plans.

It was going to be a long day’s journey to the fall of night.

Gill walked all day. From the moment the sun appeared on the horizon, through its rise to the apex of the day, until it began to slowly descend, bringing—if not relief—a drop in the harsh temperature. Sweat prickled his skin and dried out, leaving salt trails that stung in his open wounds. He had nothing left to sweat out and was almost delirious. He felt sure he would buy the farm, but was glad. At least he would be alone, not ripped to pieces and used as meat by those inbred half-mutie, half-mad scum who had held him captive. He had no idea which direction he was headed. The heat and dust made it all seem the same and even looking at the sun didn’t help. Rather than give him a point for location, it merely blinded eyes used to the gloom of the barn.

Gill fell over. If it was once, it was a dozen times. At each fall, he stubbornly picked himself up and continued, determined to chill on his feet if he was going to…when he saw the blacktop extending in front of him, stretching as far as he could see in either direction. He thought it was an illusion—just as he thought the wags coming toward him and the motorbike rider with the M-4000 who sped toward him were also an illusion.

The biker skidded to a halt only a few feet from where he stood, swaying. Gill raised his hand, tried to speak to his hallucination. But no words escaped his parched throat and dry mouth; then collapsed on the asphalt.

“H
E’S WAKING UP
,” were the first words Gill heard. He opened his eyes, aware of a sickening lurch in his guts. Then, as he steadied, he realized that the lurch wasn’t inside him, but was caused by the movement of the wag in which he was now lying. Faces loomed over him in the gloom of the wag’s interior and he could smell that familiar odor of gasoline, sweat and old goods that every convoy member recognizes as home.

One of the faces was female: lined and old, but still with some kind of caring in it. She took a damp piece of cloth and cleaned his forehead.

“Where the fuck did you spring from, stranger?” she asked. He tried to answer, but his throat was almost closed with lack of water. She was able to interpret his strangled yelp as a plea for water and lifted a canteen to his lips. He drank heavily, his throat so sore that the cooling liquid actually hurt on the way down.

He began to speak. It was barely more than a whisper and at first his words tumbled over themselves in his haste, but eventually he managed to croak what had bought him to this point.

“What a shit stupe plan,” the woman breathed, then turned and relayed the story in a louder voice to everyone else in the wag.

“Better tell Malloy,” the driver said over his shoulder. “Riders haven’t raised any alarm, but mebbe he’ll want to do something about this ’afore times.”

“Can’t think how the fuckers think they’re not gonna get noticed,” another voice—one he couldn’t see—said from the gloom.

“Sounds of it, these inbreeds are completely fucked in the head.” The woman shrugged. “Figures that stupes like that think they can get away with anything. Are you trying to get Malloy’s attention, Leroy?”

“What d’you want me to do, wave my black ass out the window and stop him in shock?” the driver replied laconically. “You know how hard it can be.”

Using the wag’s horn, he tapped rapidly SOS in Morse, attracting the attention of one of the bikers who rode shotgun to the convoy. As the biker closed, the driver yelled out of the open window to tell the trader to pull over. The rider sped to the front of the convoy and delivered the message. Following the lead of the front wag, the entire convoy came over to the side of the blacktop, grinding to a halt.

The back of the wag opened and Gill watched as the woman slipped out the back. She ran forward to relay Gill’s tale to the trader, who then came back to question the man himself.

Gill was tired and could still barely speak, but he outlined what he knew once more. The trader left the wag and Gill could no longer tell what was going on.

Outside, Malloy ordered one of his bikers to go ahead to Duma and warn the sec guard what was going to happen. Malloy had no intention of risking his own men in a firefight with the rogue wagon. Let Xander’s men do that. They were much better equipped for such a circumstance.

“It’s a shit stupe plan they’ve got,” he told the biker, “But if it means all we’ve got to do to avoid a firefight is pretend not to notice them, then that’s fine with me. We’ll take them right into whatever kind of a trap Xander wants. Hell, the tight-assed bastard may even up the jack on this load if he feels grateful.” A wry smile cracked the trader’s lips. “Naw, nothing short of warning him about the next nukecaust would make him that grateful—even then it’d have to be a cold day in hell.”

With a short, barking laugh, the trader sent the biker on ahead. Pausing before returning to his own wag, Malloy quickly walked back to the wag where Gill lay asleep. Waking him roughly, the trader told him what he’d done. Gill grunted and fell back into sleep. Right at that moment, he truly didn’t give a shit. Malloy shrugged, called him an asshole and returned to his lead wag, indicating that the convoy should take off again.

But when, he wondered, would the idiot war party make an appearance?

T
HE COMPANIONS WAITED
until it was dark. No one came for them. Outside they could hear the wag being prepared and Buckley ordering his minions about their duties. Ryan hoped that with the amount of work that was being expended on the preparation for the raid, no one would want to go to the barn and the surviving captive would be ignored.

It seemed that luck would hold. By late afternoon, there had been no enraged Buckley, no furor surrounding a sudden discovery. The companions prepared by cleaning their blasters and checking their diminishing stocks of ammo. Without J.B., supplies were quickly running low.

At least, Ryan, Jak and Mildred prepared themselves. For Doc and Krysty there was only the knowledge that they would have to stay behind, the unspoken hostages to the success of the mission. And beyond that? Only time would tell.

Hours dragged until at last Buckley and his two-man guard came to fetch them. He threw the door open as usual, slamming it into the wall.

“Hey, hey, hey—y’all ready to get rolling?”

It was a rhetorical question and they followed him out into the center of Nagasaki. The wag was waiting, with a crew of five standing by. Two of them were recognizable as the woman Mags and the man she had fought a few nights before. The other three were indeterminate: one of the thin men, a fat man and a fat woman. They could have been any of the ville dwellers.

“Are you coming with us?” Ryan asked Buckley.

“Hell, yeah,” the chief cackled. “Me and the boys wouldn’t miss this one for anything—right, boys?” The two permanent guards to Buckley nodded eagerly.

At a gesture from Buckley, three ville dwellers moved forward and came between the companions, separating Doc and Krysty from the others.

“Subtle. Oh, but so very subtle,” Doc murmured, keeping his sarcasm as low as he could manage.

“Now then, I’s a thinking that y’all could make yourselves useful around here while we’s gone. Make way for all the good things we’s be bringing back for y’all.”

“In other words, you wish us to mop out storehouses and clean ordure from the surrounding area. To be skivvies to your glorious society,” Doc intoned, sure that this level of sarcasm would fly straight over Buckley’s head—and the heads of the assembled ville dwellers.

Buckley’s blank expression only confirmed this view. “Hell, yeah—whatever the fuck y’all just said,” he mumbled.

At his direction, the ville war party climbed into the wag, followed by Ryan, Mildred and Jak. As the door of the wag closed on those in the front, Ryan was aware of the stench emanating from the Nagasaki fighters. It was going to be a long, hard ride. Before they even got the chance to fight, he would have to work at keeping his stomach.

“C’mon, Ryan boy,” Buckley urged. “Fire her up.”

Ryan looked at the chief in amazement. “You mean you don’t know how to drive one of these?”

Buckley shook his head and leered good-humoredly. “Think that was one of the reasons we needed y’all, Ryan.”

Shaking his head in disbelief, the one-eyed man fired up the wag’s engine and steered the vehicle on the track that led out of Nagasaki. The wag’s suspension hadn’t fared well with the rough terrain leading to the ville, and as it bumped and groaned across the wastelands, Mildred and Jak—seated in the rear of the vehicle—wondered what the hell they were doing there, and if they’d survive the journey in one piece.

The ville dwellers were excited, chattering and fingering their weapons with impatience, spirits high.

“What’s the plan, then?” Ryan questioned. “Do we wait for the convoy or do we track them for some distance? And how the fuck do you propose that we tag on the end without them spotting we’re there?” he continued, failing to keep the frustration from his voice.

Buckley shrugged. “Hell, like I knows. We’s just see what happens, yeah?”

D
OC AND
K
RYSTY HAD BEEN
put to work cleaning out an area of the old ranch house to store the imagined riches that would be looted in the raid. Both worked carefully, keeping a close eye on each other in mutual defense. There was something about the way in which their appointed guardians were staring at them that suggested they would be in serious trouble if the rogue wag didn’t return home in good time.

As darkness began to fall—this being Buckley’s only weapon in avoiding detection as they attached themselves to the convoy—so both sets of the companions pondered their fate. Doc and Krysty wondered if they could keep their alleged protectors at bay until the others returned; Mildred, Jak and Ryan wondered if they could get out of this debacle in one piece and get back to Doc and Krysty.

Ryan’s reveries was broken as the old blacktop came into view, running across the expanse of wasteland ahead of them.

“Slow down there, Ryan boy,” Buckley said excitedly. “There they are.”

Ryan’s eye followed the line of Buckley’s pointing finger. Coming toward them, likely to cross their path in ten minutes, was the convoy. There were five wags and seven outriders on bikes.

If Ryan had stopped to think—hadn’t had Buckley breathing excitedly down his neck, urging him both to hurry and also to take care in virtually the same breath—he would have wondered at that. Why an uneven number of bikers?

The convoy passed. Although it was dark, the land was flat and without any camouflaging features, and Ryan was sure that the stationary wag stood out against the flat horizon. Nonetheless, the convoy proceeded without any indication that it had noticed the wag waiting to move smoothly into position at the rear of the procession.

Ryan slid the wag into gear, drove it onto the blacktop and slipped in at the rear of the convoy, marveling at the apparent stupidity of the trader in charge, trying to ignore the delighted whoops of the chief.

At the front of the convoy, Malloy rode next to his driver. He had stared at the wag standing on the shoulder of the road with barely concealed amusement as they passed, then followed its progress in his side mirror as his wag drew farther away. The darkness, broken only by the headlights of the wags and bikes behind, prevented him from seeing the point at which the rogue wag slipped into place. However, a series of signals from the headlights of the vehicles behind told him that it had taken up position.

Malloy shook his head in amazement and looked at the road ahead, the lights of Duma visible ahead, standing out like a beacon in the wastes.

“Shit crazy fuckers. Let Xander deal with them.”

T
HE BIKER SENT AHEAD
by Malloy had told his story three times before eventually getting to relay it directly to Baron Xander. He had endured ridicule and disdain from the sec guards on the first set of barriers, then more barracking from a second set of guards and a face-to-face with Sec Chief Hammick before being told to wait in the chief’s office.

Grant was in the med lab when Hammick walked in.

“Don’t see you around this way often,” Grant said with a raised eyebrow.

“Yeah, well, got a weird one, and I wanted to run it by you first,” Hammick replied, rubbing his chin. Grant had trained him when he first joined the sec guard, and although Grant had long since been seconded to med, Hammick still thought of him as the more experienced of the two. Besides which, Grant was close to Xander, and Hammick didn’t relish the idea of going to the baron with something as plain strange as this.

Grant listened while Hammick outlined the biker’s story, barely able to keep a smirk from his face. “Well,” he said finally, “I always thought those inbreeds would keep themselves to themselves. All these years they’ve been no bother. But I guess the insanity in their tiny gene pool has finally got to them.”

“Yeah, but it’s not them that I’m really worried about,” Hammick replied. “It’s who they’ve got with them.”

“What—a bunch of captives who have to fight or be chilled? What’s to worry about?”

Hammick stared at Grant. “Weren’t you listening? A one-eyed man? When we’ve got—”

“Xander doesn’t have to know every detail,” Grant interrupted. “Do we know this man?”

“Who?”

“The biker with the story,” Grant snapped, exasperated. “Is he known to us?”