Thunder Road (19 page)

“Sid, what are they doing?”

“They appear to be doing nothing, sir. It looks like they are, well, waiting.”

Howard turned back to Krysty with a puzzled frown. “What are they doing?”

She shrugged, even though she had a good idea. Eyes wide as she could make them, she replied: “I just don’t know, Thunder Rider.”

J
AK FELT THE VIBRATIONS
of the airfoils as they were launched, even before the sound of their engines reached him, or their silver fuselages were caught by the moon. He kept moving, but spared a glance back. Ryan and J.B. flanked the armored wag, watching. Mildred and Doc were in front, by the fire. To a casual observer they may have just been tending the fire, but Jak could see from their body language that they were watching and were poised.

He turned back to face front as he ran. The silver bodies were closing in fast now, their engines sounding loud in the otherwise silent night, a roar underpinned by a high whine that split the frequencies, made them painful on his ears.

That didn’t matter. It was the payload that he could see suspended beneath the fuselage of each of the three machines that concerned him. It had to be a bomb of some kind, and he was running right into their path. He looked around him, reading the contours of the land. Okay, he was ready.

Each of the machines dropped its load simultaneously. The forward momentum and trajectory of both the loads and himself seemed destined to meet. Not if he could help it. Jak threw himself to his left, executing a somersault that took him over a line of mines so that he landed in a channel between them, his ankles protesting as they sank into the topsoil, wanting to stay still while his weight shifted. He gritted his teeth, cursing under his breath, and steadied himself, compensating so that the conflicting forces didn’t rip his tendons to shreds.

The first flight loads flew past him before hitting the ground. They detonated, but not with the explosive force he expected. Neither did they detonate any mines, as he had also been prepared for. Instantly, he realized that the mines had been disabled. He could use this to his advantage.

But what was in those bombs? Even as the question crossed his mind he realized that it was gas of some kind, as a vaporous white mist trailed across the land. It picked up what little light there was, and looked like spun silk in strands, entangling the very air around him. It seemed to enfold him even as he tried to move out of the way. He tried to hold his breath, even though he knew this was useless. Most of the gas could be absorbed through skin, anyway, but it was a reflex action.

He stumbled. Was it the paralysis, like before? No, the gas was a different color, and more than that, it made his eyes sting and water. He rubbed at them involuntarily, knowing even as he did that it would only make things worse. He took a breath, and his lungs were filled with a stinging, cloying grip. He coughed, but this made him have to take in even more air, and the grip tightened. He fell to his knees, tumbling forward.

He’d lost sense of direction. He could keep going forward, but he didn’t know what forward was anymore.

There was some cleaner air near to the sand, and he sucked it in as much as he dared, risking opening his eyes wide to try to see where he was, and even which way he was facing.

He could see the wag in the distance, so he’d turned around, somehow. The noise of the airfoils above filled the air, making it impossible to tell if Ryan or the others were shouting at him, making it pointless for him to call to them.

Jak began to run back toward the others. His legs were unsteady at first, his breath coming short. But after a few steps he regained his footing and started to move with assurance. Even the gas still in the air around him was less of a concern than before. His lungs and eyes were so full of the gas, every rasping breath like a razor, every blink like needles, that it couldn’t get worse. He could adjust easily once he knew this.

The sound of the airfoils was also on the wane, vanishing behind him into the distance. He didn’t look back to see them depart; he didn’t need to. The fact that the blanket of silence cast by the night descended around him, broken only by the alien sound of his own harsh breathing and his footfalls on the sand, was enough.

As he drew near to the area around the wag, he ran into a cloud that was still dissipating. Tendrils caught on the back of his throat, making him catch his breath, choke and nearly vomit. He could see through the stinging mist that Doc and Mildred were on all fours, both coughing heavily. J.B. was beginning to stagger to his feet, spectacles safely stowed on one of his many vest pockets for protection, useless when his eyes were already streaming. Ryan was on his knees, heaving for breath.

Without breaking stride, Jak helped the one-eyed man to his feet, then tapped J.B. on the shoulder, indicating with signs alone that they should grab Mildred and Doc, and get back behind the sandbank in which the wag had embedded itself.

Ryan and J.B., still unsteady on their feet but able to move with comparative ease, moved jerkily to where Doc and Mildred were prone. J.B. took Mildred and helped her up. She was stronger than Doc, less affected, and was able to respond to the stimulus. She scrambled up and allowed herself to be blindly led by the Armorer, who was himself no less blinded.

Doc was another matter. The old man had taken a lungful, and was choking and coughing with a force that seemed as though it would rattle the bones from beneath his skin. Taking him, one beneath each arm, Jak and Ryan lifted him bodily to his feet. His eyes rolled back in his head, tears streaking his cheeks, streaks formed in the dust from the sandy soil in which he had buried his face, seeking relief. His feet pawed uselessly at the ground for a moment before he found some kind of purchase and started to half run, half stumble as Jak and Ryan pulled him away from the worst of the lingering cloud. They clawed their way up the sandbank thrown up around the wag, following the trail made by J.B. and Mildred. They could only see in vague shape and form, pale light and deep shadow in the gray light.

They crested the bank, stepped into space and fell down the other side, tumbling over each other. They lay there for some time, in the silence of the night, trying to rid themselves of the pain, trying to get back the strength to stand without feeling as though they would immediately tumble back to the ground. To each of them except Doc—who was still too incapacitated by the gas to do anything except think about the next breath—it occurred that they had learned little from the exercise, and if anything were worse off than before.

The maneuver had done nothing to draw out any personnel from the redoubt. The only purpose it had served was to show them that the redoubt had aerial capabilities as well as land. And that it had more than one type of gas.

But Jak knew something else that he hadn’t been able, as of yet, to speak of. He knew that the mines had been deactivated before the nonlethal gas had been sent. The men in the redoubt wanted them alive. So how far could they push it, knowing this? He tried to speak, so that he could tell Ryan that crucial fact. But it was of little use. His larynx felt as though a herd of stickies had been tearing at it. Sore, his voice came out as nothing more than a harsh whisper that could shape no words at the moment.

But someone could speak. And it wasn’t a voice that he recognized.

“That was a real smart move, guys. Yeah, when in doubt make sure that the bastards can whomp the shit out of ya. Amazing to me that you’ve managed to survive this long.”

Jak lifted his head, could see that Ryan was doing the same. J.B. and Mildred were already on their knees, hands halfway to blasters but stilled as though frozen. When he followed the direction of their gaze, he could see why. A tall, slim black man, his eyes obscured by goggles with opaque lenses swimming with color, stood about fifty yards away. His Afro was contained by a polished steel headband that, even in the pale light of the moon, seemed to glow. Most importantly, he was holding a white blaster, made of some kind of plastic the like of which Jak had not seen before. It was pointed down at the ground, but the way in which he held himself suggested that it would take less than a blink of an eye for it to be raised and fired.

“Where the fireblasted hell did you come from?” Ryan spluttered and coughed between gulps of air, the gas gradually clearing from his lungs.

“Here and there,” the man replied. “Doesn’t do to let mundanes know too much about what you’re doing, where you’ve come from.”

“So you’ve come in response to our call?” Mildred asked, her voice harsh and choked.

“Give the sister a prize,” the man replied. “Yeah, I got the beacon. Won’t be the only one. Guess I’m just the first one here. Thing is, though, I’m wondering why you’ve triggered the rail ghost’s beacon when he’s long since become a ghost for real? ’Specially when the woman he gave it to isn’t here with you.”

“Could it possibly be that that is the reason why? If you think about it logically…assuming you can,” Doc gasped, sense finally returning to him. Sense, and a very deep anger. They had called to these people for help, and the first thing they seemed intent on doing was to hold them at blaster point. Unsteady, the world spinning around him, Doc pulled himself up to his feet and pointed an accusatory finger at the stranger.

“What, in the name of the Three Kennedys, gives you the right to answer a call for distress with such outright hostility?”

The black man paused for a moment. It was almost impossible to read what was going through his mind, the goggles disguising whatever he may be thinking or feeling. The white plastic blaster twitched in his hands, as though he thought about raising it and just eliminating the problem. As one, the four friends who were still prone, or semiprone, stiffened, poised to go for their own blasters. Chances were that he could maybe chill one of them, but even as he did the other three would send him into oblivion.

It wasn’t supposed to go this way.

“Well?” Doc demanded, his stance as unsteady as his voice, his accusatory finger waving in an erratic circle.

The man’s head moved almost imperceptibly. None could be sure, but it seemed that he was eyeing them all, considering his options.

“Okay, why don’t you run it by me?” he said finally.

Still fighting for breath, having to stop between sentences to fill his lungs with precious air, Ryan gasped out the story of how they had arrived at this point, emphasizing that the mystery rider and whoever was with him now had Krysty, and they had one hell of a lot of tech.

“Yeah, there have been stories lately about some guy on a killer bike. Word gets around, ’specially when it’s someone with something unusual that we haven’t heard of before.”

“So the rider isn’t known to you, then?” Mildred asked.

He shook his head. “Nope. Thing is, though, none of us knows everything about everyone else. That’s just the way we like it. But I don’t reckon that this guy does know any of us. With the word that’s been buzzing, if someone knew who he was, then it would have gotten around.”

“So what you’re saying is that you know even less than we do.” Mildred husked. “And yet you’ve got the balls to call us crap.”

He shrugged. “I didn’t get my lungs full of tear gas.”

“Yeah, but your mouth’s still full of shit.”

The black man whirled to where the new voice had originated. The friends had watched her approach on a bike that seemed to glide across the sands, and had figured that she was with the black man. His reaction gave lie to that notion.

“Shit, Rounda, you should have let me know you were here. No, scratch that, you haven’t got the manners.”

“Manners my ass,” she said as she dismounted the bike. It seemed to be of a light aluminum construction, with storage pods and a small, motorlike propulsion unit that was far too quiet to be a combustion engine. She seemed too heavy for the bike, but it bore her weight well. She was fat, but not in a flabby way. Her camou clothing hung loosely on her, but they could still see that she carried too much weight for her frame. Despite that, she was solid, and there was a hardness about her face as she fixed the black man with a stare that told him not to mess with her.

“I knew we should have taken that fuck-ass alarm from the bitch last time we saw her. Nice girl, but got trouble written all over her. I hate trouble, ’specially when it means I have to work with you and that hard bitch Bryanna. Bet she ain’t too far away if you’re here—” she paused to give him opportunity to answer, but took great delight in cutting him off as he opened his mouth “—and of course, I bet you haven’t thought to check if we’re out of range of any intel that laughing boy and crew may have trained on us?” She scanned his face, then grinned. “Thought not. Never mind these guys, how the fuck are you still alive, then?”

Howard hunched over the monitor board, his shoulders tight with tension, so much so that the strained muscles were visible to Krysty through the material of his uniform. His hands, as they rested on the console, were almost white, drained of blood as he gripped so hard, trying to control his temper. One thing was for sure—Krysty wanted to get as much space between them as possible before he next spoke.

And yet, as he whirled toward her, and she tensed for the explosion of anger, preparing to defend herself if necessary, it was not with the wild glare of fury that she had expected. Instead, for the first time since he had brought her to the bunker, his eyes registered some kind of emotion. But instead of the raging temper that she had expected, they were almost like those of a child: confused, hurt and not understanding.

“What’s happened?” he asked, his voice cracked and small.

“You launched a defensive move, and it seems to have worked,” she said as gently and evenly as she could, adding to herself that if the bastard had hurt any of her friends, his chilling would be slower than she had originally envisaged.

A small smile flickered across his face, quirking his mouth. It flittered with barely time to register before it was replaced once more by apprehension. “Yes…yes, that’s it,” he muttered, “that’s what I was doing. And it did work I think…Sid, Hammill, status reports.”

Hammill’s voice sounded first. “Visual contact still not possible. Thermal imaging suggests that the subjects have retreated out of range. Audio backs up this supposition. There is nothing that the long-distance mikes can pick up.”

“Systems back up initial reports.” Sid’s smooth voice cut in. “You’ve driven them back, Howard, but beyond the range of land reconnaissance. With the current wind speed and direction, it will be 5.3 minutes until the gas clouds clear sufficiently for visual contact to be resumed.”

“So what the hell am I supposed to do in the meantime?” Howard hissed in an exasperated tone.

“There isn’t anything,” Krysty said softly.

“But there should be.” His tone had traces of a peevish whine that made her want to hit him. He was being a petulant child, but then she knew that already, from the way he had looked when he had turned to her.

“Why?” she asked as mildly as she could. “You can’t control the weather conditions out there. You opted to use a nonoffensive gas, and it takes time to clear. All the sec systems tell you that they’ve retreated, and there are no signs of anyone having bought the farm, so that’s okay, isn’t it?” She stepped forward, tentatively put out a hand and stroked his arm.

Howard looked down at it, bafflement crossing his face, soon replaced by a happiness almost as childlike as the peevishness of a few moments earlier.

“I suppose so,” he said quietly, stroking her hand with fingers now returning to their natural flesh tone, the tension draining. “It’s just that, in the old videos, there’s never any problems like this. The gas would have cleared much more quickly. That’s what it’s always like, you see,” he added, looking her in the face, “it’s never like the old videos, and I sometimes wonder if this is a world where I can fit—if this is what my mission is all about, or if I’m a man who is out of time.”

“Times have changed, and this is a different world than before skydark. Mebbe that’s why things don’t behave as they used to. But people are different. People don’t change. Not fundamentally.”

He smiled. It almost reached the eyes. “No, you’re right.”

Over his shoulder, she could see that the monitors were clearing. The armored wag was still there, and the sand was mussed and disturbed. But there were no corpses. For that she was grateful. In fact, there was no one in sight.

“Look,” she said, turning him.

Howard moved to the monitors, studying them intently. His hand thumped down on the console.

“Damn! They must have gone on the far side of the dune. I’ll have to use the spycams.”

Krysty frowned. What the hell were they?

“Y
OU THINK YOU’RE BETTER
than us, and you always have. But we need to be together if we’re to stand a chance.”

Rounda kissed her teeth. “Same old bullshit. Only it’s not you speaking, is it? It’s that bitch Bryanna and her stupe ideas about a revolution.”

The black man shook his head. “We need to band together against any threat to our existence,” he said.

“Like you’ve ever had any threat to yours. Fuck’s sake, that’s why we live like we do. We go our own way, even from each other, and let the rest of the stupes fuck each other over. I mean, look at us—we can’t even agree, and that stupe bitch wants us to band together? Under whose flag? Whose ideas? Hers, I’d guess.”

Doc spoke softly, but his words carried over the still night air. “Madam,” he began, addressing Rounda, “I have nothing but the utmost respect for your views. Indeed, that is all we seek. Anything other than a temporary alliance under conditions of adversity would be less than advantageous to any of us. However, I fear that this situation may as such. So I would request that you put your differences to one side for the moment. After all, that was why we took the liberty—indeed, the risk from our point of view—of sending out a signal for you.”

Rounda smiled. “Say, you’re kinda cute, aren’t you?”

“Madam, this is hardly—”

“Don’t sweat it, sweetie, I could eat you for breakfast. But I won’t.”

Doc didn’t know whether to be relieved or insulted. He was about to speak when Ryan stepped in.

“Listen, you know about the rider? And you’ve seen what he’s done here tonight, and in other places. You know what he’s capable of. Well, he’s got Krysty. She left us the piece of tech we called you with. She needs help, and it’s more than we can give against his tech. So we figure that mebbe you’d like to help her.”

“She’s a redhead, right?” Rounda said. “Strong, got real balls?” She waited for Ryan’s nod. “Yeah, I remember her, and so does this asshole if he uses his brain for once instead of waiting for Bryanna to do his thinking for him. Come to that, she must have sent him in first. She ain’t far away. Call her in, fuckwit, and let’s get this sorted,” she added, turning to the black man.

Instead of the argument that Ryan had expected—and indeed, that the fat woman was spoiling for—the black man merely raised his hand and beckoned.

Seemingly from nowhere, three land yachts came out of the darkness. If they were powered by gas, then the engines were quiet. It was more likely that they worked on stored solar energy, as there were batteries and airfoils at the rear of each. Triangular and three-wheeled, they had sails that were angled to catch the slight breeze and assist the engine, draining less energy. Carrying pods for weapons and stores, they were of the same lightweight material as the bike used by Rounda, and the sails were almost transparently luminescent in the night air.

Two of the yachts were manned by two personnel. The third was occupied only by a woman in a khaki vest with almost as many pockets as J.B.’s, and tight white pants that shone almost as much as the sail above her. Her head was circled by a silver cord that was only marginally lighter than her almost platinum-blond hair, pulled back into a tight ponytail that seemed to stretch her face into the tight set with which she faced them. She was far from happy, and it wasn’t hard to guess from the way she glared at Rounda that this was the “bitch” Bryanna.

More immediately worrying for Ryan was that they were now outnumbered. The new arrivals made it seven to their five. Sure, his people were crack shots, and these people weren’t exactly on triple red—in fact, the black man had let his blaster drop completely during the argument, as though he had forgotten he even carried it—but they were open and exposed. In a firefight, if it came to that, some of his people were bound to buy it. And he didn’t like that idea.

Even less he liked the look of the guys on one of the yachts. One was a lean, dark man who was dressed in old denims and a T-shirt with the picture of a guy called Jerry Garcia on it—Ryan recalled the name from something Mildred had said once about being grateful when you’re dead—and although he seemed relaxed, there was an aura about him. Less subtle was the guy behind him. He was younger, smaller, but perhaps a bit stockier in build. He was bristling, the aggression showing visibly, and barely contained. He carried a crossbow, and it didn’t take much to see that it was already primed. As was he. It was obvious that he could explode to anger with the slightest provocation. Flicking a glance to J.B., he could see that Armorer had also noticed it. He had no doubt that the others were also aware.

The last of the yachts held a man who seemed older than the rest, with thinning gray hair, his frame almost emaciated. A woman almost as thin sat with him, her long chestnut hair flowing over her shoulders and framing sharp features. Both of them had blasters that were visible, but holstered. They seemed calmer, less on edge, but that could be illusory.

The truth was that these people were less allies right now than more potential enemies. And they seemed all too keen to fight among themselves, which was exactly what seemed about to happen as the guy with the crossbow got off the land yacht and strode toward Rounda and the black man. His every step seemed to be a threat, and Ryan noticed the fat woman go on the back foot, prepared for trouble.

“Robear, you need to calm down,” she said, holding up her hands.

He brandished the crossbow as though it were a club. That was something of a relief to Ryan, as at least he didn’t intend to start firing. The one-eyed man looked around at his people. He could see from their expressions that they shared his own sense of bewilderment at this turn of events. These people were supposed to come to their assistance; instead, it was starting to look as though they were getting caught in someone else’s battle, never mind their own.

Unaware, seemingly, of their presence, Robear had launched into a diatribe of his own.

“You! I should have known you’d show yourself here. I don’t know why you bother, you never do anything but snipe at us. Okay, so you don’t agree with what we’re trying to do, but that’s no reason to just—”

“Agree with you?” Rounda gasped. “Agree with Bryanna, don’t ya mean? When was the last time you had a thought of your own, Robear? Instead of letting little Miss Perfect over there do all your thinking for you,” she added, waving her fist toward Bryanna.

The ice queen in the white pants said nothing, but merely raised an eyebrow before speaking in tones far more calm and measured than any of those around her.

“Robear, leave her be. She’s entitled to her opinion, even if it is absurd. It’s not her fault she can’t understand why we need to band together. The old ways are passing, and she’ll pass with them. It’s more important we see why we’ve been gathered here. Well?” she added, turning to Ryan.

“Shit, lady, I wondered when you were going to get to us,” Mildred said. “Can’t you do your infighting later?”

“I wasn’t aware that I was talking to you,” she said offhandedly. “I was talking to your leader.”

“I might take the lead, but I like to listen to what my people have to say,” Ryan said in tones that were as icy as the way she looked. “I value the people I travel with, and trust their views.”

His eye locked with hers. She had heard of him, of course. She knew the others, noticed that the red-haired woman was absent, the one she knew best, but this was her first encounter with the one-eyed man whose reputation preceded him. She took in his curly hair, the scarred yet handsome visage, the tautly muscled body…but most importantly, she took in the aura that surrounded him. He was not a man to cross, of that she was sure. She had to admire the redhead’s taste, if nothing else.

“Very well,” she said finally to Mildred. “Perhaps you are right. This is not the time to be arguing among ourselves.”

She turned her attention back to Ryan. “Perhaps you should tell me why you called us.”

Ryan sighed. “I’ve already had to tell laughing boy, there,” he said, indicating the black man. “I don’t see why, with all your tech, you couldn’t have been monitoring what he said. Come to that, you must have heard of this bastard mystery rider who’s been blasting this area.”

“Perhaps I want to hear it again, to see if you’re consistent and telling the truth,” she murmured. “And perhaps I’m doubtful about how dangerous this man could be to us, rather than you mundanes,” she added.

“Reckon you need wait longer,” Jak interjected.

Ryan shot him a puzzled glance, Bryanna one of anger at the interruption. But both followed the direction of his hand. Drifting low across the desert surface, approaching at speed, came a small fleet of aircraft. As silent as the land yachts, they were like the parasail that the friends had seen in use before, except now there were four of them, each manned by two people. The flyweight open-steel tubular frames held the seating and the propelling fan, along with the small combustion engine that powered this fan, in a sling beneath a ribbed arch of a synthetic fabric that shimmered in the gray light. They seemed too flimsy to hold the engine, fan and two people, but the strength of the materials was obviously much greater than at first appeared.

It was only as the parasails were skillfully glided in formation to land a few yards apart, and a farther few yards from where the tech-nomads and the friends were already gathered, that the puttering of the small engines became audible, only to die out as the parasails gracefully hit the sand and the power was killed.