Desert Kings (13 page)

“Caution is the virtue of the wise,” Doc proclaimed, awkwardly exiting the cage.

“So where are?” Jak asked, shaking his head and running stiff fingers through his hair. Then he paused. What was that smell…rotten eggs? He sniffed again, but this time there was only the dry desert breeze, as dead and sterile as the depths of a forgotten tomb.

“Looks like Australia,” Mildred said, taking out a canteen to dampen a cloth and wipe down her face. But she knew they could be anywhere. These days, there were swamps in New York, and deserts in Kentucky. How anybody had survived skydark seemed a miracle.

“Tell you in a sec,” J.B. said, removing the cloth from his hair. Crumpling it into a ball, the man stuffed the rag into his munitions bag, then reached under his shirt to pull out a minisextant. Facing the partly cloudy sky, he found the sun, got the half mirror into focus, then did some fast mental calculations. Tucking the little device away, he pulled a predark map from a pocket and spread it wide.

“Best as I can tell…we’re in Colorado, near the Utah border, just above the Great Salt,” J.B. announced, folding the plastic-coated sheet again and tucking it carefully away in his munitions bag. “If we had any juice left we could drive to Two-Son ville.” The companions had been there a while back, and helped the local baron deal with a nasty infestation of stickies. It was one of the few villes in the world where they would receive a friendly welcome.

“Utah,” Ryan whispered, a chill running down his back in spite of the dry heat. Briefly, he touched the leather patch covering his missing eye, remembering the nightmare once more. Then he shook it off. Mildred had said that a dream was just your brain cleaning out the drek of the day, and carried no special meaning.

“Something wrong?” Jak asked, a knife slipping into his waiting palm. Squinting hard, the teenager glanced over the sandy vista, but there was nothing dangerous in sight. Not even a screamwing moved through the lonely sky.

“No, nothing’s wrong,” Ryan answered, brushing back his long hair.

“The Zone,” Doc repeated, his face darkening in somber thought. Clutching the silver lion’s head on his sword stick, he twisted the handle and pulled out a few inches of the Spanish blade hidden inside, then slammed it closed again with a solid click. This was near where he’d last tangled with Delphi, and he wondered if the locale had some special significance to the blackguard.

The faint crackle of blasterfire reached them, closely followed by the muted roar of predark engines.

Instantly the companions drew their blasters and waited. Nothing happened. Then the sounds of blasters came again, accompanied by the rotten-egg smell of spent black powder.

“J.B., with me!” Ryan snapped, drawing the SIG-Sauer and starting up the sandy slope. “Everybody else stay with the supplies!”

Working the arming bolts on their Kalashnikovs, the companions moved protectively around the speedsters as J.B. sprinted forward to try to catch the other man. He joined Ryan at the crest of the dune. The other man was lying on his belly, head tilted as he listened intently to the soft sounds of battle. Lying down, J.B. crawled closer and concentrated. He distinctly heard predark revolvers and muskets firing, along with some sort of homemade explosive. Mebbe a pipe bomb or Molotov. Then he caught the death scream of a horse.

“Could be mercies jacking a convoy,” J.B. guessed.

Saying nothing, Ryan took out the longeyes and crawled over the top of the dune until the other side was visible. Through the longeyes he saw a horse-drawn buckboard being chased by a pack of norms on motorcycles with an odd-looking war wag bringing up the rear. The machine seemed to have wooden planks along the exterior instead of metal armor. Then the man noted the arrows sticking out of the wood, along with the splinter clusters of bullet hits. Off by itself, a second war wag was burning out of control, the occasional crackle of live brass coming from the fire as ammo cooked off from the heat. His guess would be a hit from one of the homemade bombs, but it was only a guess.

“Wood armor,” J.B. muttered softly in disbelief. “Smart. It’d be easier to make than sheet metal and weigh a lot less.”

“Certainly better than sand bags,” Ryan said grudgingly. “One cut and the sand runs out, leaving you with an empty bag for protection.”

“True. The stuff wouldn’t stop a gren, but then, what would?” J.B. said, answering his own question. “Nice touch that big eye. Bet a live brass that throws off the aim of most coldhearts.”

Grunting in agreement, Ryan changed the focus on the longeyes and looked along the rocky valley, finding corpses scattered around, and a smashed two-wheeler burning. A couple of horses were galloping into the distance toward a dry riverbed.

That was when he spotted the cage full of chilled people in the buckboard. Slavers! Were the folks attacking them sec men from some ville? He studied them closely and frowned at the sight of their pointed teeth, many of them wearing necklaces of dried human fingers and ears.

“Cannies,” the Deathlands warrior growled in disgust.

“Which are the cannies?’ J.B. asked, squinting at the fight. “No, wait, I see the cage. Dark night, cannies jacking slavers. Kind of makes you wish for the acid rain to come, doesn’t it?”

Ryan nodded in reply just as a huge explosion cut off the team of horses pulling the buckboard, and the two merged, the fighting going hand-to-hand. Knives and hatchets were flashing in the bright sun, blood spraying, the cursing of the living mingling with the screams of the dying combining into the low growl of combat.

“Hell of a fight,” J.B. said with a humorless smile. “This could be just what we need.”

“Yeah, I thought of that.” Ryan grunted, lowering the longeyes. “Notice those other bikes hidden in the crater?” There was a circle of tumbleweeds placed around the depression to help mask the presence of the machines.

“I’m not blind yet,” the Armorer replied, squinting through his glasses. “Those must be the reserve troops in case the fight goes bad for the cannies. Too bad there’s only four of them, and six of us, or else we could…” Sucking air through his teeth, he exhaled slowly. “You know, I just got a crazy idea.”

“Way ahead of you, amigo,” Ryan said, compacting the longeyes and tucking it away to bring up the Steyr SSG-70. “Better move fast, this could be over soon.”

“I’m already gone,” J.B. answered confidently, crawling backward until he was past the curve of the dune and out of sight.

Setting the barrel of the longblaster on the grainy sand, Ryan worked the arming bolt and fiddled with the focus on the telescopic sight. A few moments later he spotted a furtive motion near a group of boulders, and saw three of the companions running low across the valley floor toward the blast crater. A glance down the other side of the dune showed Mildred standing guard over the piles of supplies with the scattergun.

“Here we go,” Ryan whispered out of the corner of his mouth, placing a finger on the trigger of the longblaster and choosing his first target.

“Burn, ya bastards!” Dragon Webber screamed, wheeling around the buckboard and throwing a Molotov at the horses in the front.

The sloshing glass bottle hit the wooden harness and burst apart to cover the animals in flames. Screaming in terror, the horses began bucking and kicking, fighting to get away.

Lashing his whip at the cannie on the bike, Frederickson fell forward off the buckboard and was trampled to death. Then the leather reins snapped and the flaming horses bolted away in blind panic, trying to get away from the orange thing that was eating them alive.

Out of control, the buckboard wheeled wildly and plowed into a stand of cacti coming to an abrupt halt. The slavers in the rear were thrown around haplessly, Barton going over the side to land in the spiky plants.

Bleeding from a score of minor wounds, the slaver rose and fired both of his handcannons at the nearest cannie. The double load of lead slammed hard into the woman’s wooden armor, cracking off a piece. Grinning in triumph, Iron Mary Cantone shot back, and the slaver dropped the blasters to clutch his missing groin, hot blood gushing between his fingers as he rolled about screaming.

Braking to a halt near the buckboard, Dragon swung his ax, ending Barton’s pitiful wails, then climbed off his bike just as another slaver launched a crossbow. The quarrel went straight through his shirt, missing the cannie by an inch and stabbing deep into the patched leather seat.

Whipping the ax forward, Dragon got the slaver directly in the face, the man falling backward, the fresh quarrel and unloaded crossbow flying from his limp hands.

Shouting a war chant, Hammer climbed into view from the other side of the buckboard, his ax dripping crimson and a scalp in his hands. Caught in the act of loading his musket, a slaver let go of the ramrod inside the barrel, swung up the weapon and pulled the trigger. The hammer dropped, sparks flew, the pan flashed bright, then the blaster seemed to bulge slightly just before it exploded. Dropping the shattered stock, the slaver reeled around clawing at the ruin of his face, one eye dangling down a cheek by a long string of whitish ganglia. Laughing, Hammer tossed away the scalp, pulled a knife and buried it in the chest of the mutilated slaver.

Dropping the spent shells from his revolver, Dragon thumbed in fresh brass when he heard a galloping horse. Spinning, he closed the partially loaded cylinder and fired twice from the hip. The slaver on the horse slid off the saddle to land on the sand with a crunch, her neck twisted at an impossible angle.

Hauling a weeping slaver up by his hair, Hammer slowly slit the struggling man’s throat, then shoved him out of the buckboard.

“Come on, before the rest of these assholes come back!” Iron Mary snarled, kicking a corpse in the face just to make sure.

Wasting a second looking for more horseback riders, Dragon then joined the others in the buckboard. Ignoring the barrels of trade goods, they started stripping the bodies of blasters, when one of the supposed corpses rolled over to raise a crossbow. There was a sharp twang as the slaver fired.

Jerking to the left, Dragon felt the breeze of the arrow pass his cheek. Shitfire, that’d been close!

Knocking aside the crossbow, Iron Mary jumped on the dying slaver, slashing wildly with a curved knife. He tried to hold her off with bare hands to no avail. Blood flew everywhere, her laughter masking his shrieks of pain until the slaver went still. Panting from the exertion of the chilling, Iron Mary smiled as she raised the blade to lick the blood off the steel.

“Mighty sweet.” The buxom cannie chuckled, sheathing the knife.

“We can do that later!” Dragon ordered, rattling the small door of cage. The bars were set too closely together to pull out any of the meat without hacking them apart first. “Now, hurry and find the damn key for that cage! The other slavers will come back soon, and I will not leave all of this behind!”

“Mebbe it was in the pocket of somebody who fell out of the buckboard,” Hammer squeaked in a childish voice. The muscular cannie stood over six feet tall, but his head was grotesquely small for the gargantuan body, almost as if it had been an afterthought. A necklace of tongues hung around his throat, his exposed back covered with different tattoos of eyes to protect him from muties.

“So hop out and get it for us, will ya?” Iron Mary smirked, going through the pockets of a bald slaver. Then her head exploded.

Turning fast, Dragon fired his revolver at the group of slavers galloping toward them on horseback. The slavers shot back with colossal blasters, the lead balls actually humming as they went by the cannies.

Flipping an ax forward, Hammer got a rider in the leg. The slaver went tumbling off the mount to land with a sickening crunch. Another slaver threw a net at the cannies in the buckboard, but it tangled on the cage. Shooting repeatedly until his wheel gun clicked empty, Dragon dropped behind the wooden side of the buckboard and pulled a blaster from the holster of a corpse. Checking the load, he crouched and fired, the deafening boom of the handcannon heralding a cloud of dark smoke that blocked out the world. More shots rang out from both groups, a man screamed, then a motorcycle buzzed past the buckboard with Pig swinging an ax coated with slimy human entrails. Behind him a slaver doubled over to clutch at his missing stomach and collapse sideways.

Dropping the black-powder blaster, Dragon started to reload the predark revolver with his last few rounds. In wild confusion, the bikers and the horsemen circled about each other, firing their blasters nonstop, knives and axes flying about as the two groups battled to the death in the desert valley.

W
ITH THEIR BLASTERS
held at the ready, the three companions crawled along the sandy ground, edging closer to the ancient blast crater. Stopping a few yards away, J.B. checked the rad counter on his lapel and relaxed when there was only background rad showing. Good. They needed those bikes, but he had no wish to charge into a hot pit to get the Red Cough. Nothing was worth that kind of misery.

The sounds of battle were still going strong when they reached the clump of tumbleweeds. This close, the companions could see that the desert plants had been lashed together with rope to keep them from rolling away on the breeze. A wise precaution, but having somebody hidden as a guard would have been a smarter move.

Easing to the weeds opposite the combat, J.B. gently parted them just enough to peek through. Three cannies sat on the big bikes, resting their arms on the handlebars, grisly human trophies dangling from strands of rawhide. Every bit of chrome was covered with dull tape and the glass windshield had been replaced with a wooden board bolted to the frame. They all had throwing axes dangling from their belts, along with revolvers riding in low holsters.

“How’s it going?” one of the bikers asked, rotating the cylinder of the wheel gun in his hands. The Colt .22 had little stopping power, but the cannie had found an entire box of cartridges in a crashed mil wag. What his grandie called an Apee, or, sometimes, an APC. It was the find of a lifetime, so he was nursing the fifty live brass along for as long as he could.

“The slavers are coming this way,” a tall cannie replied, shifting his position on the Harley. “We could attack them from behind—”

“No,” the other snapped. “Dragon told us to wait right here, so here we stay until he signals for us to join the fight.”

“But they might all be aced by then!”

“So? That only means we eat sooner.” His stomach rumbled loudly just then in perfect harmony with the rumbling from the tainted clouds overhead. Fearfully, the cannie glanced skyward, then relaxed. Those were the wrong type of clouds for acid rain. Besides, it wasn’t anywhere near spring. Let the sky moan like an angry slut. The noise would help cover the sound of their engines starting just before they charged the last of the slavers. Then the feasting would begin!

Staying low to the ground, the companions separated to move around the blast crater in different directions. Leaving Doc near a scraggly yucca tree, J.B. headed for a pile of boulders when there came the soft sound of crunching sand and a cannie walked around a boulder zipping up his pants.

The two men stared at each for a full second, then the cannie clawed for his ax as J.B. stepped aside and Doc lunged into view to plunge his sword directly into the man’s throat. Red fluid gushed from the hideous wound and the cannie grabbed his neck, cutting off two of his fingers as they slid along the sharp blade. He looked into the Doc’s face with dull comprehension, then eased to the ground and went forever still.

Sliding out the blade, Doc waited until he heard a whip-poor-will from the other side of the pit, then he and J.B. grabbed the aced cannie and threw him over the wall of weeds. The warm corpse crashed between the parked two-wheelers, splattering them with blood. The cannies spun at the grisly arrival and gasped in shock.

That was when Krysty stepped into view firing her AK-47 blaster. A moment later, J.B. and Doc appeared from opposite sides of crater, triggering their own rapid-fires. The 7.62 mm Kalashnikovs and 9 mm Uzi tore the startled cannies apart, their lifeblood spraying into the air. Riddled with slugs, one of them staggered around still horribly alive, then yanked a predark gren from inside the bloody tatters of his shirt. Shooting from the hip, Krysty fired a single round and a black hole appeared in the middle of his forehead. Sighing deeply, the cannie dropped, his lifeless finger curled around the pin.

Kneeling, Krysty recovered the gren, while Doc and J.B. dragged the other bodies off the bikes. Briefly, they checked the corpses for any more grens, but there was only their axes and handcannons. Since the companions had much better weapons, those were left behind. Carrying too many weapons would chill you in the Deathlands even faster than having none. However, Doc did appropriate a cardboard box half full of .22-caliber copper-jacketed rounds. Those would make excellent trade goods at a ville.

Across the valley, the battle raged on. The smoke was getting thick around the buckboard, making it hard for both sides to see clearly. The bikers stayed in constant motion, firing their blasters and swinging axes. The slavers fought back with whips and handcannons, the flame from the muzzles of their weapons stabbing through the billowing smoke like angry lighting. One cannie stopped to pull out a Molotov and light the fuse, but a slaver discharged a scattergun, peppering the front of the big bike, blowing the tire and splintering the wooden shield. His hand raised to throw, the cannie shrieked as he drew back a bloody stump, blood pumping from the ragged tatters of flesh dangling from his wrist. Then the Molotov hit the ground at his boots and whoofed into flames. Covered with fire, the man insanely beat at the fire, his cries becoming louder and more frantic, until the gas tank of the bike hissed loudly, the fuel starting to boil from the rising heat.

“Run!” Pig screamed, stopping his bike. Kicking at the ground with both legs, he turned the bike and started to race away.

The rest of the cannie bikers followed his example, and they got a few yards away when the damaged Harley exploded, spraying out machine parts and human organs.

Taking advantage of the noisy distraction, the companions climbed onto big Harleys, kicked the engines into life and twisted the handlebar throttles until the bikes were roaring with power.

A slash of Doc’s cane cut away the restraining rope, and as the tumbleweeds rolled away, the companions raced out of the pit. Charging along the dusty ground, they curved around the loudly fighting groups and went straight for the eighteen-wheeler Mack with the big painted eye.

Standing in the rear of the war wag, a cannie smiled at the appearance of the bikes, then frowned. Those weren’t his people!

“Outlanders!” the cannie shouted, pulling a Molotov from a wooden box. He used a thumbnail to flick a wooden match alive and started to apply it to the oily rag fuse when he jerked backward to slam into the splintery planks edging the predark flatbed.

Dumbfounded, the cannie stared at the gaping hole in his chest, unable to comprehend why there was no pain from such a ghastly wound. Sliding into death, he dimly heard the report of the Steyr from the distant sand dune before eternal silence filled his darkening universe.

Sputtering in rage, the driver yanked out a rusty .45 autoloader and worked the slide just as the side window shattered, his head bursting apart from the arrival of the 7.62 mm round Ryan fired from the sand dune.

Rapidly braking to a halt near the cab of the truck, Krysty jumped off the stolen bike and yanked open the door to clamber up the step, then the seat, to reach the roof. Staying clear of the protective nails jutting from the thick planks, the woman sprayed the cannies in the rear with her Kalashnikov. Coming to a halt near the driver’s door, J.B. hosed the interior with his Uzi, the two cannies crying out in surprise as the bullets forced them into a short death jig, their lifeblood splattering the windshield.

Without bothering to slow, J.B. hopped off his bike, climbed into the cab and pushed aside the corpses to start the engine. There was a struggling whine, then the big Detroit diesels came to life, blowing blue-gray smoke from the double exhaust pipes.

Stopping behind the war wag, Doc leveled his AK-47 and looked around frantically, his heart pounding. In the pandemonium near the buckboard, a man turned in his direction. Doc swung up the rapid-fire, but before he could shoot the man doubled over clutching his stomach. Once more there came the sound of the deadly Steyr.