Tales of Downfall and Rebirth (23 page)

“Son of a bitch,” she said quietly as she opened the saddlebags and saw they were empty.

Someone had stolen her stolen food and water. The thought outraged her. She didn't even want to contemplate the fate of her maps in this toilet-paper-less world. She stared back down the long and unwinding road and shook her fist in the general direction of the biker horde.

“Crap,” she said as she saw two figures traveling in her direction. “The Dalton brothers.”

The only gringos in the gang, they were lean as whippets and twice as fast on their custom-built racing bikes. No doubt Manuelito had sent them after her, either to drag her back or immediately dispense the Guerreros brand of brutal retaliation against those who'd broken the brotherhood's rules.

They were a couple of miles away and clearly moving fast, though it was hard to judge speed and distance. One of them was waving at her, damn it. She climbed back on her bike and began to pedal as fast as she could, trying to think of something.

As the chase began her sense of time vanished. She forced down an irrational urge to pull out her pocket watch and try to time how quickly they were catching up to her. Her leanly muscled thighs soon began to burn. She doggedly pushed on. It wasn't too long before her throat, already dry, had turned to parchment and she could feel her precious bodily fluids leaking out of every pore.
Damn,
she thought,
it's hot.
She glanced over her shoulder and saw that the gap between her and the Daltons had already narrowed by a disappointingly large margin. She could see where this was heading, and she didn't like it.

Suddenly it became clear what she had to do.

She slowed down. The last thing she needed now was to cramp up. Another glance over her shoulder showed that her pursuers had put on more speed and were catching up even more quickly, probably thinking they'd broken her.

“Manuelito is real pissed!” she heard one of them yell.

“We're gonna be real pissed too if you don't slow down right quick,” the other added.

She admired his lung capacity. He wasn't even panting.

Doc's mind was surprisingly calm and clear.
Dad loved those old cowboy movies,
she thought, and she'd loved sitting on the sofa watching them with him.
He's maybe gone now. Those movies certainly are. What the hell was the name of that one with John Wayne?

“I'm talking to you, bitch,” the cry came from not very far behind her. “Slow the fuck down right now or we'll take it out on your ass before we hand you back to Manuelito.”

True Grit?
Doc thought.

She yanked the bike's handlebars, scattering gravel over the steaming road, popping the tar bubbles that were rising to meet the afternoon heat. She stood on the pedals for six or seven strokes of her long, lean legs, then plopped down on the seat. She was maybe thirty yards from the brothers and riding straight toward them in the deadliest game of chicken she'd ever played.

One was still laughing at what the other had said. She probably imagined it, but she thought she could see expressions of eager anticipation on their faces quickly turn to looks of shocked surprise.

Anticipate this,
assholes,
she thought.

She let go of the handlebar and flipped up the crossbow dangling from its cord around her shoulder. She slammed a bolt into place, shifted one hand to the bar as the bike threatened to veer off course and held up the bow with the other. Her arm shook but she was almost at point-blank range. The crossbow was just window dressing anyway, intended to scare the crap out of them. She popped the trigger, dropped the bow, gripped the handlebar with both hands, and pulled with all her strength sending her bike swooping across their path, and unconsciously ducked at the anticipated collision.

Doc felt her heartbeat clang loud as a gong in her chest, almost drowning out the noises of rubber raking asphalt and a surprised scream cut short. Her heart gonged again and there came the sound of metal scraping road and metal clashing with metal, and at the third gong some great, invisible hand grabbed her and yanked her off her bike. She felt herself flying through the air. She tried to relax, but she didn't have the time and she hit hard, skimming across the macadam like a stone skipping on water.

Pain shot through her knee and thigh and hip and she bounced a couple of times, shredding denim and skin, then rolled some and finally came to a rest lying faceup, half on the asphalt, half on the road's pebbly verge.

Ow,
she thought, closing her eyes as the rays of sun speared down on her. She lay there thinking,
That's it. I've had enough. I'm going home now.

When nothing happened for a long enough time, she sat up dazedly, wincing as she put a scraped palm on the ground to lever herself up. It took her three tries, but she finally made it. She stood shakily, then turned to face the other way as she realized that someone was cursing up a storm behind her.

Her eyes widened as she observed the wreckage. It was worse than anything they'd ever seen in Driver's Ed in high school. There was, literally, blood on the highway. She dragged herself closer. One of the Daltons, the mouthy one, she thought, was entangled in the combined wreckage of his and her bikes, draped like some insane parody of the
Pietà
among bent wheels with broken spokes and twisted frames. His left leg was as twisted as their bikes.

“You crazy stupid
puta
!” He tried to work up enough energy to shout, but couldn't quite make it. “You broke my leg, you fucking bitch! Eric! Eric, help me! Get this bitch!”

Doc shuffled slowly around the whining Dalton and approached the other. “Son of a . . .”

Her lips clenched simultaneously with her stomach and she would have thrown up if there had been anything in it. As it was, she swallowed bile. She'd seen a lot of death after the Change, but had never killed anyone herself.

Before.

Not that he was dead yet, but the bolt had drilled him right through the throat and had obviously hit something important. There was blood all over him, a lot of blood, and it was slowly pulsing out of his mouth and out of the wound the barbed shaft of the head had torn in his neck. He looked at her, but couldn't speak. She knew that he knew that he was dying. She fought down an irrational urge to apologize. The least she could do, she thought, was maintain eye contact while he still had something left, so she did. It didn't take long.

She turned to the other. “Eric's not here anymore,” she said.

The remaining Dalton blinked. “You . . . you killed him?”

Doc licked her lips. “Seemingly so.” She could hardly believe it herself.

“You bitch—”

“Come up with a different insult already,” she said tiredly, stretching cautiously.

She didn't think any of her own bones were broken, which was a minor miracle, but her ass was sore as hell, her right thigh and knee were scraped, raw meat, bleeding more than she'd like, and her hip wasn't doing too great, either. She'd landed on her right side, and she kept her pocket watch in her left front pocket, so it was probably all right. That was something, at least. She put her hand to her face, but it came away bloodless.

All right then,
she thought.

In the meantime, the remaining Dalton was spewing an obscenity-laden invective in great and, Doc felt, somewhat repetitious detail as to what he would do to her when he got his hands on her.

To be fair,
she thought,
he is in great pain and I just did kill his brother and he's also making a difficult decision easier for me.

She glanced at Eric's bike, which was the only one that held out a shred of hope, but it too had been damaged beyond her limited possibility of repair. It did have saddlebags, though.

“Hey—” Her tormentor interrupted his rant. “What are you doing?”

“Looting the dead,” Doc said. “Now shut up.”

The pickings were slim, but he did have a canteen. She raised it to her lips and chugged half of it. The water was hot and metallic tasting, but it went down great.

“You! You—”

“Yeah, I know. Bitch.”

She went halfway across the road, bent down and picked up the crossbow she'd dropped. She pointed it at the remaining Dalton, who flinched. It wasn't loaded, but he was too shaken to realize it.

“Shut. The. Fuck. Up.”

He complied. She turned her back on him and started to walk up the road.

“Hey! You can't just leave me.” His voice shook with agonized fear. “You can't!”

She turned and looked at him. “Why not?”

“That'd be cruel, just cruel, man.”

Doc bit back a laugh. “What are you, stupid?”

He stared at her silently. She looked back at him a long time, finally sighed, and walked back toward him. He watched her, beseechingly.

“I can't do a thing for you,” she finally said. “And even if I could . . .”

She paused, cutting herself off.
I'm not like him,
she thought.
Not like the rest of them.
She tossed him the canteen. Surprised, he caught it.

“Say hi to Manuelito for me when you see him.”

She turned away and headed back up the road, thinking to herself,
I should have my head examined.
It was a hot day and only going to get hotter.

*   *   *

Bernie paddled back to the mooring, disembarked, and coaxed the story out of the messenger. He was young, frightened, and excited, a combination that didn't allow for a coherent recitation of events. By the time Bernie learned that the sparsely settled area to the southeast had awoken to the smell of smoke on the air with wispy tendrils still reaching out to the sky, almost all the Jungleland staff had been attracted by the ruckus and were gathered around listening with intent concern.

Scouts, the messenger continued, had stumbled upon what the kid called a horde of well-armed bikers camped out on the road—hundreds of them, with shackled prisoners. They were breaking camp and preparing to go on.

Bernie looked around at his people. He could see the fear in their eyes, hear it on their voices. Panic was threatening to rise. He wet his lips. Don Carlos wasn't here to stop it. Someone had to.

“All right,” he heard his voice say, though he thought it didn't really sound like him. “Stay calm. No need to get too excited.”

He stopped to think for a moment, surprised to see that all eyes had turned to him. “I'm going to go check things out. We have plenty of time before they can get here. I'll probably be gone all afternoon, so don't worry if I'm not back right away. Jose—give me your clipboard and pen.”

Wordlessly, he handed them over. Bernie scribbled quickly on a blank piece of paper, folded it, gave it to the man. “Take this to Johnny Tiger down at the
chikit
—we're having a Coalition meeting today, so the word can get out quickly from there.”

Jose threw up a hand in a quick salute and hurried away, grabbed a canoe, and headed off down the canal.

“Emily—you're in charge until I get back. Get the place on lockdown, just in case.”

“You got it, boss.”

Bernie nodded. “Look—we've been through this before. This won't be our first rodeo and if we stick together, watch out for each, it won't be our last, either.”

To Bernie his words seemed inadequate, but it was the best he could do on the spur of the moment and there were murmurs of agreement from his troops. What, he wondered, would Don Carlos have said? What would he do? Bernie kept up a stoic front, but he wondered if his people could see through the facade.

*   *   *

Doc was pissed, hot, hungry, thirsty, and worried. She'd loved her bike and now it was gone. It had been a fine piece of machinery and its loss diminished the world. When she'd left it behind she felt as if she'd had to shoot her broken-legged horse. Her concern for the remaining Dalton brother was somewhat less and she'd tried for the last several hours not to think about the other one with her crossbow bolt in his throat, but had failed miserably.

The afternoon had progressed considerably and with only a floppy hat, half-shredded long-sleeved shirt, and a bloody, torn to hell pair of jeans to shield her, it was baking the hell out of her. The road was no picturesque avenue. The heat had liquefied the tar in the asphalt and it was bubbling up like bizarre mushrooms. The bubbles popped when she stepped on them, stinking and sticking to the soles of her beat-up Keds. Now that her bike was gone, she wasn't limited to the road, but naked and ugly as it was, Doc felt no inclination to wander off into the countryside. The road was the only trace of civilization in this entire godforsaken area. She had to stick to it. She'd seen the maps and she knew that it led somewhere. Undoubtedly somewhere backward and insignificant, but maybe with people willing to help her. That, or willing to club her over the head and add her to their collection of slaves. She sighed deeply, grimly limping on.

Her stomach rumbled and she had dreams of a nice club sandwich and—

She paused, blinking. Up ahead a couple of hundred yards on her left was a clump of actual by-God shade trees, nodding leafily over the canal that still paralleled the road. The grass on the bank was tall, thick, lush, and comfortable-looking. She was also thirsty as hell. The sun hit like a hammer and sweat soaked her ripped jeans, wife-beater tee, and her long-sleeved cotton work shirt. She could feel it trickle down her face, neck, and arms, and runnel down her legs. At least, she hoped it was sweat and not blood. She was quite suspicious about the quality of water in the canal. It was full of slimy things and dangerous microbes and fish fucked in it. But what choice did she have?

She limped toward the blotch of welcoming shade, when to her surprise she realized that a canoe was tied by a rope to a stick protruding from the canal's bank. She smiled, momentarily not believing her incredible good fortune.