Thunder Road (9 page)

The mystery rider obviously knew enough about the tech to work it, and there were others where he came from. She wondered if he was in some way allied to the tech-nomads, the elusive and loosely knit bunch of travelers she had encountered after meeting the rail ghost, Paul Yawl. They liked to keep themselves separate from what passed for civilization out in the Deathlands, so it would be unlikely that they would have wanted anything to do with the rider. The last thing he could be accused of was keeping himself apart from the rest of society.

She was guessing that he wasn’t military. He wore no uniform as such, and remnants of old military had a way about them that he didn’t. Whitecoat survivors like those freak mutie crazies they had once encountered at Crater Lake? Perhaps, but he seemed a little too proactive for those types: they liked to keep themselves apart, like the tech-nomads. So was he, perhaps, part of a group that had stumbled on old tech, much as they had soon after she had first met Ryan and J.B.? Sure, they had used it mostly just to move on from place to place, but what if some bunch of mercies or coldhearts had decided to use it to gain power and jack?

No, that didn’t make sense. Despite all the damage he had done, the rider hadn’t taken anything. And the way he talked was odd, old-fashioned. He didn’t speak like a mercie, although he did act like a coldheart. But even then, it was like there was some kind of twisted logic at work. He was a coldheart who wanted to do good things. That crazy talk about justice and crime, concepts that she, like Ryan, had heard of only in things that survived from before the nukecaust.

No, whatever was going on here, it was unlike anything they had ever come across before, which made it even more dangerous for her. There would be no second-guessing and no second chances. If she was to get out alive, then she would have to get it right first time.

In the time it had taken her to think this through, they had crested the small rise that ringed the valley holding the ruined ranch house, and were now descending toward the building itself. Every part of it looked derelict, and the outbuildings were little more than matchwood and rubble. No one would ever think of looking twice at this place. It looked as if it had been empty since skydark.

But it wasn’t. She knew this was their destination, and she figured she’d find a few answers before too long.

Whether she wanted them or not.

T
HE FIVE COMPANIONS HAD BEEN
traveling in silence for some time. There was nothing to say, and idle talk would only have cost them energy that they needed to conserve. So they traveled, wrapped in their own thoughts.

The horses had been affected by the nerve gas, but had recovered before their human masters. They had been at a greater distance from the point of impact, and by the time the gas had reached the point where they were tethered, its worst effects had been dissipated in the air.

While the friends were still weakened by the time they had gathered the horses, the wag and set off, the horses showed no signs of wear, and proceeded at their usual dogged pace.

All within could have wished for greater speed, but it was the same old trade-off they had lived with since coming back to this region—they had no real idea of the kind of distances involved in their chase, and they had only limited supplies of food and water. Food could be overcome to a degree. There was enough game emerging at night for Jak to make them a meal, although keeping the horses fed would be a problem with the lack of grass.

But water: this was both friend and enemy. Friend because it was all that kept them alive. Enemy because they only had the supplies they carried. A trap to catch the cold air deposits of the night, the dew of morning, would not give them enough should they run low. The cacti would not yield enough, in a similar manner, although this carried with it the additional problem of not knowing if the mutated cacti carried water without taint.

So it was important that they keep their expenditure of energy to a minimum, to make the most of their meager rations. The horses could not be driven too fast, because they might use more than could be allocated to them. Here, in the wastelands of dustbowl soil and desert sand that comprised the territory, the worst thing that could happen would be the demise of the horses. Without them, a draining trek carrying supplies that would be eaten up all the faster by the energy used to carry them was a certain way to buying the farm.

So it had to be slow and steady, slow and sure. Slow, with nothing to do except dwell on what had happened to them.

It could take days to catch up, even if the tire tracks remained visible. Perhaps they never would.

Would they find the mystery rider? Would the trail just end? If it didn’t, then would they find Krysty alive at the end of it? Would she have been hurt, damaged, harmed in some way? Not just physically?

Every dark imagining that could lurk in the recesses of the mind kept welling up to the forefront of Ryan’s imagination as he sat in the back of the wag. The bond that existed between himself and Krysty went deeper than the bond between himself and any of the others. Even though he would buy the farm to fight for them, and they for him as he knew, there was something deeper and more intimate between himself and the flame-haired woman. If such a concept as love could find a home in the stony soil of the postdark world, then it existed in what he felt for Krysty, just as he knew it existed between his oldest friend, J.B., and Mildred.

His mind went back to the last time they had been in this part of the Deathlands. The time when he had been shot, presumed chilled, and the others had been captured. All except Krysty, who had evaded capture and had then single-mindedly pursued the coldheart responsible until her actions had resulted not just in his demise, but in the collapse of the plans that had powered the man’s existence. Her vengeance had been total.

She had done that for him, even when she had assumed that he was no longer alive. It was no more than he would have expected of her, in truth, knowing her character.

Just as she would expect that he would do the same for her. They had never talked of it. There had been no reason, and to even broach the subject implied the threat of it occurring, which is something that neither of them would wish to contemplate.

Well, he was doing it now. Except that it didn’t feel like that. At this plodding pace, with her how many miles ahead of them now? If that coldheart bastard had harmed her, she would be avenged. But that wasn’t enough. He wanted to get to her before she was harmed. The question was, would he be able to?

His brow furrowed as he remembered something. Reaching into a pocket in his combat pants, his fingers searched until they found a delicate chain. He extracted it and looked at the locket that dangled from between his fingers, so small and delicate at the end of the chain that it seemed absurd between his scarred and calloused knuckle joints.

Krysty had given him this locket when she had found that he was alive. It had been given to her, in turn, by a man who had helped her in her quest.

He fervently hoped that he would be able to give it back to her, yet again in turn, when they found her alive. She would know they would come looking for her if they could. That he would. But could she assume that they would be able to do this?

He just hoped to hell that she wasn’t going to rely solely on them.

T
HE RUINED RANCH HOUSE
showed no indication of being anything other than that. The rider circled it, almost as if giving her the chance to scout the territory. Parts of the walls had collapsed, the interior floors and ceilings were patchwork constructions, sometimes held together by only one surviving beam. And original decoration and furnishing had long since been stripped bare or reduced to wormwood. A couple of metal objects, corroded and covered by debris until they bore no resemblance to anything she could name, stood out from the sea of trash that littered the ground floor. A staircase stood, half demolished, leading to nowhere. The bottom section seemed to have suffered little damage, suggesting reinforcement. There was a door set into the staircase. Stripped of its wooden facade by time, she could see that this bottom section had survived as it had a concrete surround, the inset door being of steel, showing signs of wear but no corrosion. No ordinary household metal.

It was the briefest of glimpses through a tumbledown wall, but it was enough for her to realize that her suspicions had been correct. There was more to this site than just a ruined predark dwelling like so many that had housed farms and ranches before skydark.

So they had arrived at the place the mystery rider called home. She had been aware, over the roar of the engine and the rush of the wind, that he had been intermittently speaking to someone on a headset. The extraneous noise had precluded her making out the nature of these brief communications, but now that he had eased the throttle, and their decreased speed cut out the roar of onrushing air, she was able to half grasp what he said.

“…approach…research file. The gas…prepare for entry…”

She knew that she was about to find out the extent of the rider’s resources. Part of her was glad. Now she could start planning for her escape. Part of her was terrified. What if the odds were overwhelming, especially as she still felt weak?

Determined to note every detail, she kept herself focused as the man guided his vehicle around the rear of the ranch house and toward what had to have been a barn. It was little more than a few sticks of wood marking out an area of dust slightly different in hue to the land around.

She was impressed, but not perhaps as surprised as he would have liked, if he but knew, when a section of soil and sand raised up slowly on hydraulics. It rose at an angle until it was standing about six feet off the surface of the ground. The topsoil remained, only some dust falling from the edges, running backward. Perhaps sheer weight kept it in place, as the ascent had been measured. Perhaps it was secured in some way. Whatever, she could see that something kept it in place so that the hydraulic platform would descend with no indication that this piece of land had ever been moved.

Beneath the platform, a concrete slope led down into the earth. Lights were inset in the walls, providing an illumination that was less than the sun, but still more than enough by which to see your way.

The rider guided the bike down the slope and into a tunnel. She immediately felt the coolness of an air conditioner hit her, something she had not felt outside the redoubts they had visited. There was something about the quality of the air in these places: a kind of dryness, a lack of any scent or musk that was natural, that maybe the regular inhabitants had never noticed but was startlingly different and alien to her. She felt it every time they had landed in a redoubt, and this place was exactly the same.

The motorcycle slowed to a glide, taking the curve of the tunnel with ease. It was a shallow incline, but the curve told her that they were circling to go deep without a steep gradient. So the rider’s base was far below the surface. That figured. How else could it have survived so long? She tried to work out the circumference of the spiraling circle they were circumscribing, but she was still too weak and disoriented to get a real impression. She did know that the deeper they went, the stronger the lighting. She didn’t notice it at first, but she realized as she was forced to squint that the wall-mounted lights gained in power as they descended.

The bike suddenly came out of the mouth of the tunnel and into a long, wide, concrete-lined bunker lit by fluorescent tube lighting that made her momentarily squint her eyes, preventing her from getting a good look at the surroundings. Her eyes were still screwed shut when the motorcycle slowed to a halt, and she felt the rider flick down the stand. Carefully, he untied her arms from around him and dismounted. She felt as though she might fall without his help, as she was so weak. It was only when she didn’t that she realized how well he had secured her to the vehicle.

Gradually, the light through her lids became less painful and she carefully opened her eyes. The rider was standing in front of her, his hands behind his back, observing her…impassively? It was hard to tell, as his goggles were still in place, and so his eyes gave nothing away. His body language and posture were unthreatening, but she was still wary.

Besides which, she was trying to cast a glance around her without giving it away, looking over his shoulder rather than at him, hoping that he wouldn’t notice.

The long bunker was well-equipped, looking for all the world like a mechanic’s wet dream. The motorcycle she was still secured to was one of three such vehicles. And the tools: she had never seen the like outside of military redoubts, which this wasn’t—there was none of the insignia, none of the signs, the rules and regulations that came with such places. The vehicles weren’t painted in camou colors or a uniform shade. In fact, a nearby armored wag was a bright scarlet, the like of which suggested that this had been a base with no military affiliations.

She knew enough about the jack before skydark to know that this would have cost big. So if not remnants of military, who were these people?

There were five doors at points along the walls. She would have loved to know what lay behind each. Maybe later. For now, she had to find out more about the crazie who stood watching her. Were the rest of the people here like him? Or—Gaia forbid—worse?

A thin smile cracked the face of the rider. It looked sinister, but was belied by the warmness of his tone.