Desert Kings (15 page)

“Any chance it might affect us by breathing?” Krysty asked, covering her mouth and nose with a hand. The millet had a rich earthy aroma that was very pleasant, but the woman had encountered perfumed flowers before that tried their best to eat her alive. In the Deathlands, the only place you were safe was the grave.

“No, impossible. You have to eat it,” Mildred replied after a minute. “The mold was much too heavy to be airborne.”

“Hey, back there!” Ryan called out the window, craning his neck. “Any sign of this field ending?”

“Not until we reach the mountains!” Krysty answered promptly.

“Well, let us know if anything comes into sight!”

“Will do!”

Soon the plants were so thick around the Cyclops the muddy earth below was impossible to see anymore.

“Dark night, there’s no way we’re ever going to find any tire tracks in this,” J.B. declared, downshifting to a crawl. “Mebbe we out to stop and—” But the man was interrupted by strident whistling, closely followed by an explosion of steam from under the hood. The dashboard engine gauge swung fast into the red.

“Thick we blew a hose?” Ryan snarled, throwing open the door.

“Only one way to find out.” J.B. sighed, turning off the engine. He waited a few moments, but the gauge stayed in the red. Yes, it had to be a hose. Then he thought, Or the water pump, or the thermostat, or a dozen other things. Who knew if the cannies knew the difference between a socket wrench and a sock?

“I’ll check for the box,” Ryan said, climbing out of the cab. Staying on the corrugated metal step a good foot above the murky water, he pushed the seat forward. Most predark trucks had spare storage there for small items, flares, shovels, tow ropes and the like. But the man found only some predark candy-bar wrappers, a crumbling yellow sex mag, a road flare reduced to waxy residue and a few rusty tools eaten through with corrosion. Clearly, the cannies had not even been aware that the seat moved, or else they would have taken the mag.

“Nothing useful in there!” Ryan called, pushing the hinged seat back into position. “I’ll get the tools and gray tape.” The Trader called it duck tape, but Mildred always said “duct.” Weird.

“And a bucket!” J.B. snorted, sloshing around to the front of the war wag. Steam was rushing out from around the hood. If it was just a hose, they’d be moving again in less than an hour.

As Ryan pushed some plants aside to slosh away, J.B. tugged on his fingerless gloves and checked for traps. Sure enough, there was a boobie, a spring-loaded blade set to chop off questing fingers. Using a lock pick, the Armorer easily disarmed it and cast the pieces aside. Bastard amateurs.

Tromping around the hulking flatbed, Ryan noticed some furtive movements among the muddy roots of the millet. Had that been a rat? Most likely, considering the combination of shallow water and abundant food. But that would be in their favor. Rats attacked people when they were starving, but with all of this millet around these rats looked fatter than the ass of a baron’s favorite gaudy slut.

Bunching up a handkerchief for protection, the man raised the hood and a wave of steam wafted out. It was definitely a split hose, J.B. noted, waving a hand in front of his face. His glasses were misty from the moist heat, but he could see the rent through the billowing cloud. The war wag had to have picked up some lead back in the valley. Stepping away, he used the handkerchief to wipe his glasses. There was nothing he could do but wait until the engine cooled enough to wrap some tape and twine around the split, then refill the radiator.

Going back into the cab, J.B. turned on the heater. The power gauge flickered as the batteries engaged, then waves of hot air blasted from the vents under the dashboard. This was a trick the Trader had taught him long ago. If you were short on time and a radiator was boiling over, then just turn on the damn heater. They used the hot water cycling through the engine block to warm the interior of the wag. It sounded craz, but turning on the heater helped cool down an engine. That could buy you extra minutes of driving, which sometimes was all the difference between sucking air or feeding the worms.

Reaching the back of the Cyclops, Ryan thumped a fist on the hatch, and it was opened by Krysty, holding the tool kit and a bucket.

“Figured you’d need this.” The woman smiled as she stepped down into the marsh. The dark water crested high on her blue cowboy boots, obscuring the embroidered spread-winged falcon design.

“Don’t forget these,” Mildred added, offering a fistful of relatively clean rags. “They’ll do for filtering the marsh water.”

“Thanks,” Ryan said, taking the rags.

Just then, a plump creature scurried between the man and woman, then darted under the war wag.

“Damn, that was a big rat,” Krysty said, touching the strap of the AK-47 slung over her shoulder.

“Mother of God…That’s a rat,” Mildred whispered, going pale. “Don’t move! Everybody stay perfectly still!”

Starting to turn away from the hatch, Ryan and Krysty froze motionless at the physician’s whipcrack tone. Warily, they glanced around at the thick rows of millet, their hands creeping toward their blasters. There was nothing in sight but the millet and the rats.

“Easy now,” Mildred said, slowly moving the scattergun forward and gently working the pump-action. “Back in the wag, and close the hatch. Easy! No sudden moves!”

As if encased in solid ice, Ryan and Krysty turned and stepped back into the Cyclops. The instant the jamb was clear, Mildred slammed the wooden portal shut and worked the bolt.

“John, get the fuck out of the water!” the physician bellowed at the top of her lungs, spinning and running to the front. Climbing onto a wooden box bolted to the planks as a firing step, she rose above the wall and pointed the S&W M-4000 at the hairy lumps waddling among the muddy stems of the millet.

“John!” she screamed, a touch of panic tightening her throat. “John Barrymore Dix, where the hell are you!”

“Right here, Millie,” J.B. said calmly, climbing into view on the roof of the cab. “Damn near lost my hat when I heard you shout like that.”

“Thank goodness.” Mildred looked over the man intently. The cuffs of his pants were damp, but it only looked like dirty water. “Did any of them bite you? Or scratch? Even a small bite could be fatal!”

Fatal? Now, the other companions scrambled onto the firing steps and prepared their blasters, gazing at the sea of rustling millet with newfound caution. What had the physician seen that none of them had noticed? Snakes? Millipedes? They had fought the big insects before, and that one time had proved to be more than enough.

“No, Millie, I’m fine,” J.B. replied, sitting cross-legged on the roof. Scowling at the waving cropland, the man swung up his Uzi and worked the arming bolt. “Okay, what’s the prob? Are there stickies here? Swampies?”

“Gator?” Jak asked, scowling at the swampy ground. The plants grew too close together for a gator to move around easily, but the teenager could not think of anything else that could have frightened the woman.

“By the Three Kennedys, I wish it was a gator,” Doc rumbled, his face registering alarm. “Good call, madam. I might never have recognized the rodents fast enough before they had swarmed through the hatch and into the war wag. I have only seen an illustration of them in the newspaper.” Keeping the rapid-fire in hand, the man also drew the LeMat. “Now, we at least have a fighting chance at life!”

“What mean? Just rats.” Jak sniffed in disdain, easing his grip on a Kalashnikov.

“Worse than that,” Mildred said grimly, the gentle wind riffling through her beaded locks. “These aren’t rats, but solenodons!” At their puzzled expressions, the physician explained.

Indigenous to Cuba, the tiny rodent was acknowledged by many as one of the most deadly animals on the planet. In Mildred’s day, solenodons had been hunted to the brink of extinction.

“The bite of a solenodon is toxic,” the physician added tersely, studying the small animals scurrying through the greenery. So peaceful and tranquil before, now the field of millet seemed a buzzing deathtrap. How many of the deadly little creatures were moving around the trapped companions? Hundreds, maybe thousands. She swallowed hard. They wouldn’t have enough bullets to stop them all if the rodents attacked.

“Is there an antidote to their bite?” Ryan asked, furrowing his brow. “Cut the bite, suck out the poison? Burn it with black powder?”

“No.”

The one-word answer sent a chill through the companions. A single bite from a predark solenodon meant unstoppable death, and these muties were ten times larger.

“Solenodons,” Doc repeated. “Even the pharaohs of Egypt never faced such a plague as this!”

“It was their size that almost threw me,” Mildred confessed to the man. “They’re just so damn big! But once I saw that head…” She shivered.

“How soon till we can move again?” Ryan asked

“Half hour, mebbe more,” J.B. answered, shifting his position on the roof. “And I still have to patch the hose and refill the radiator!”

“Do we also have to fill the tanks or do we have enough juice to leave?” Krysty asked in real concern.

“No prob. We’re good for at least a couple of miles,” J.B. said without much enthusiasm. “It’s getting the water that concerns me. How much is in the canteens?”

Walking over to the bedrolls, Mildred lifted the containers and shook. “Six canteens, each about half-full. Say, three quarts.”

“Barely enough,” the Armorer replied. “Nothing from the prior owners?”

“Sorry, no. They must have kept their canteen of water on their bikes.”

“Shit!” the man cursed.

“No, you mean, piss,” Ryan countered. Taking two canteens, he unscrewed the tops and poured the contents of one into the other. “Okay, people, fill ’er up. Every drop will help.”

“Shine, too,” Jak added. “Small amount won’t hurt much.”

“Any chance it’ll ace the smell of boiling urine?” Mildred asked hopefully, tying not to grimace.

“Nope. Make worse.”

“Swell.”

“Mayhap providence shines upon us and this new breed of solenodon has no venom,” Doc said hesitantly.

“Could be, but I’d hate to be the one to find out,” the physician returned. “Look, we’re probably safe inside the Cyclops, as long we don’t annoy them. Stay quiet, and make no noise. Let the engine cool, do the repairs and drive out of here nice and slow. Everything will be fine once we’re far enough away from here.”

Jerking her head toward the south, Krysty frowned. “Don’t think we have that option anymore,” she said, listening intently. “Engines are coming this way. A lot of them.”

Rushing to the other side of the war wag, Ryan pulled out his Navy telescope. Sweeping along the riverbed, he easily found a large dust cloud coming their way. Adjusting the focus, he saw the six caged speedsters they had left by the sand dune.

“Fireblast, it’s the cannies,” Ryan stated, compacting the scope. “Bastards must have had a cache of juice somewhere for those bikes, and they’ve come to get their war wag back.” The one-eyed man spoke calmly, but he was furious inside for not having considered the possibility and smashing the speedsters before leaving. Now the companions were trapped in a chilled wag, surrounded by a field full of poisonous muties.

His mistake might chill them all.

As the huge black doors to the redoubt in southern Arizona opened wide, Edgar Franklin paused to frown at the dark tunnel. There should be a guardian here, and Everbrites along the ceiling. Clearly something was wrong.

For a brief second the TITAN agent panicked, thinking he had walked into a trap set by Delphi, then he saw the destruction along the tunnel. Scorch marks pitted the curved walls, the mold on the bricks, marking where the tunnel had been three feet deep in water but wasn’t anymore. There had been some kind of a major fight here, and his suspicions automatically went to Delphi. Only who had he been trying to kill?

Suddenly a huge shape moved in the darkness, lumbering toward the man.

Calmly, he studied the creature. It was a translucent blob, vaguely resembling a worm, but inside the living jelly was an armature of steel and twinkling lights, the metal flexing and bending. Franklin did nothing as the colossal thing approached. Towering over the human, it seemed ready to strike, then the thing stopped dead.

Reaching out a hand, Franklin paused, and the jelly parted to expose the armature. As he stroked the cool metal with a fingertip, the internal circuits read his fingerprints and a hatch cycled open the display a small control panel. Tapping in a code on the keypad, a tiny rainbow-colored disc about the size of a quarter jutted from a slot.

Taking a small box from his belt, Franklin inserted the mini CD and watched as the blast doors opened again, this time revealing Ryan and the other companions. Hitting fast-forward, the man skimmed through the numerous battles with the companions until the guardian was destroyed in a massive explosion.

“Well done,” Franklin said, turning off the video disc. The agent was impressed in spite of himself. There were very few people in the world who could tackle a guardian and live. Yet these postwar vagabonds had done so with little more than raw bravery and a stolen APC. Most impressive. Turning off the monitor, Franklin waved a hand at the guardian and the deadly jelly flowed to cover the armature once more.

“Stay,” he commanded, pointing at the floor.

The guardian bowed slightly and did not follow as the man casually strolled along the tunnel. The Type 4 guardian was not quite as smart as a Cerberus cloud, but then it was harder to kill, and lasted much longer. Two very valuable attributes. Plus, it was also harder to find. A Cerberus always reeked of ozone and you could smell one approaching from a hundred feet away. Try as they might, there was nothing Overproject Whisper could do to correct that flaw, and so the other types of guardians had been created to see which functioned the best as a possible replacement. So far, the question was far from being settled.

After a hundred or so feet, Franklin reached a huge crater in the floor, the rim broken and sagging. Now this was a recent addition. More handiwork of the vagabonds? Going to the crumbling edge of the crater, Franklin looked down and saw only darkness. Using a thumbnail to flick the side of a ring, his entire hand began to glow and he aimed the palm into the pit. The brilliant halogen beam stabbed deep into the murky recesses showing the crumbled foundation and broken stalactites, of all things. How utterly bizarre.

Listening closely for any movements, Franklin could only hear the running water and the occasional squeal of a rat. Obviously some sort of a river had been formed below the access tunnel, probably runoff from the nearby mountains, the rushing flow undercutting the floor until it was so weak that the weight of the stolen APC had caused it to crash through. And they survived a fall of over a hundred feet? Odd.

“Attend me,” Franklin said in a normal tone. A few minutes later the guardian undulated into view and paused for more instructions.

“Fix that,” the man commanded, gesturing at the hole. “And reinforce the foundation so there will be no further collapses.”

Obediently, the guardian oozed away, gathering loose bricks and other debris inside its translucent form. Franklin nodded at that. Good enough.

Proceeding to the end of the tunnel, the TITAN agent studied the black rock wall for any signs of a breach, and decided that the vagabonds had not left or returned this way. Going to a seemingly discolored section of the brick wall, he pressed a palm there and a panel opened in the rock face, exposing a small keypad. Tapping in the standard exit code, he stepped back as the wall disengaged and rumbled apart, admitting a blinding display of bright golden sunshine.

As his eyes darkened to the hard exposure, Franklin walked out of the tunnel, his shoes crunching softly on the loose sand. A featureless desert extended to the horizon, and there was only the low moan of the wind to disturb the harsh landscape.

Franklin made a curt gesture with his right hand and a small compact needler dropped into his palm. Checking over the tiny weapon, he tucked it up the sleeve once more, then started walking due north. Roughly a hundred miles away was the last known location of Delphi, a new city that the locals called Two-Son ville. It was there he would begin the hunt for the rogue cyborg, and Dr. Theophilus Tanner. The council had chosen him, and he would not fail.

A
MOIST WIND BLEW OVER
the green field of millet, the fronds rustling around the stalled wag like a sea of autumn leaves.

“Okay, we gotta move. Give me those bastard canteens!” J.B. ordered, extending a gloved hand.

Rushing forward, Mildred stood on a firing step and reached out to press the straps into his grip. Their hands lingered together for a trifle longer than necessary, then the private moment passed and they were all business again.

“We’ll keep them off your back,” Krysty promised, sliding the Kalashnikov off her arm and working the bolt.

“Damn well better,” J.B. growled, scooting along the roof and onto the front windshield.

“Here!” Jak called, tossing over a brown bottle.

Turning just in time, J.B. made the catch, saw it was shine, nodded thanks and tucked the container into one of the large pockets of his leather jacket. Then, grabbing the raised hood, he artfully swung around the dented metal, out of sight.

“All right, we gotta keep them as far away from the wag and J.B. as possible!” Ryan said, placing aside the Kalashnikov and swinging up the Steyr SSG-70 longblaster. “It’ll be even worse if the cannies toss a firebomb in here and set off one of these mucking barrels of juice.” Clusters of steel drums were lashed into place at each of the four corners, the old rusty fuel drums looming dangerously among the companions like imprisoned foes just waiting to turn on their captors.

“If one of those ignites, the cannies wouldn’t need to cook their dinner tonight, that’s for damn sure,” Krysty added, cracking open her S&W revolver. Inspecting the load, the woman noted the five rounds: two predark, three reloads, all of them dumdums. She closed the weapon with a soft click.

“We could dump the fuel,” Mildred began, then stopped herself. That would only leave the war wag even more vulnerable, sitting motionless in a spreading pool of diesel fuel. Grimly, the physician made a hard decision and laid aside her precious med kit. She might need to move fast, and the weight would only slow her down. Slinging the AK-47 over a shoulder, she worked the pump on the S&W M-4000 and moved to the front of the wag. If any of the cannies wanted J.B., they’d have to go through her first! For a moment she wondered what her Baptist minister father would have thought about that, then she dismissed the thought. The Reverend Mr. Wyeth never had to defend his congregation from a horde of slavering cannibals. But she felt in her heart that if the occasion had arisen, her peaceful father would have sent them all straight to hell.

Bending to reach into a box, Jak pulled out several throwing axes and walked around the interior wall of the flatbed, stabbing them into the planks here and there.

Loosening the LeMat in his holster, Doc understood. Those were in case the cannies got inside the wag and the fight went hand-to-hand. The dire thought steeled the time traveler, and he went to the left wall of the flatbed to start emptying his frock-coat pockets of grens and ammo clips.

Ever so softly, the sound of racing engines increased as the disturbances in the millet fanned out, the location of the speeding wags only detectable from the trembling wakes left behind.

Good thing the millet was so high, or else we’d be visible for miles, Krysty realized, setting a muddy boot on the box that served as a firing step. Whispering under her breath, the woman said a fast prayer to Gaia.

“Think they might be stupid enough turn on the cages?” Mildred asked hopefully, studying the waving millet.

“Sure hope so,” Ryan answered roughly, the Steyr moving to track the distant movements in the plants. “In this watery marsh, that would fry their asses faster than swimming in a pond in Washington Hole.”

In spite of the situation, Mildred almost smiled at the image of the cannies getting thoroughly poached in a boiling, radioactive lake. The overconfident politicians in Washington, D.C., had to have been utterly shocked when they’d got hit by that long microsecond burst of hard reality. There was nothing in the world quite as sobering as atomic missiles shooting toward you.

A metallic clang erupted from the other side of the raised hood, J.B. muttered a curse, and something splashed into the soupy marsh. Instantly there was a low trilling from the muddy water, the musical tones rising in volume and steadily spreading outward until they seemed to fill the entire field.

“That solies?” Jak demanded, looking over the wall.

Down among the swampy roots, the plump creatures were running around, clearly excited about something. The dropped wrench? Then the teenager saw a faint trace of red in the dark water and he recognized it as blood. The stain seemed to be coming from the front of the war wag. J.B.’s wounded leg had to be bleeding again!

As Jak turned to tell Mildred, there was a commotion in the nearby plants and a speedster shot past the Cyclops only fifty feet away.

“They here!” Jak bellowed, sending off a long burst from the Kalashnikov. The hail of hot lead glanced off the protective cage around the speeding wag…and then it was gone, swallowed whole by the sylvan field.

“Okay, no need to be quiet anymore,” Krysty snarled, burping the AK-47.

Aiming toward the crest of the wakes going through the millet, Ryan and the others sent converging streams of hardball ammo into the field. If they hit anything, there was no way of knowing. But as they reloaded, there came back an answering fusillade from the black-powder muskets, puffs of dark smoke rising to pinpoint each cannie. Lead miniballs hammered the thick wood planks edging the flatbed as well as life brass from rapid-fires, and the companions stood on the firing steps to train their weapons on the greenery near the telltale muzzle smoke. But again there was no cry from a chilled cannie.

Grabbing a gren, Doc yanked off the tape around the arming lever, pulled out the ring and whipped the explosive charge forward as hard as he could. The mil sphere disappeared into the waving millet a dozen yards away, and there was a loud detonation, dirty water, uprooted plants and aced solies soaring high into the sky.

Lightning flashed across the darkening sky as the engines of the speedsters changed direction toward the blast. Trilling loudly, the carpet of solenodons also raced away to investigate the noise.

“Chew ’em up!” Jak shouted, jerking the arming bolt to clear a jam from the Russkie rapid-fire. The little solies seemed to like fire and explosions just as much as stickies.

“How are you coming along there, lover?” Mildred asked, not looking in that direction. There was a flutter in the plants and she fired a burst with no results. Damnation, the very plants that were protecting them from the cannies were also making it near impossible to chill the enemy. The irony was almost poetic.

“Tell you in a tick!” J.B. shouted in reply.

With his leather jacket draped over the engine, the man was lying on his belly with outstretched hands knotting a length of primacord fuse around a canteen. Lowering the container to the ground, he let it fill, then hoisted it up and poured the murky fluid over the outside of the radiator. Reeking steam hissed off the hot metal. Fanning away the reeking fumes with his hat, the Armorer did it again and this time got a little less steam, the muddy water clinging to the metal for a fraction longer.

Lurking in the plants nearby, the solies watched the incomprehensible behavior, unsure of exactly what was happening or how to respond.

A speedster burst out of the millet, the cannie inside holding a homemade scattergun. Jerking into action, Ryan and Krysty fired their Kalashnikovs in unison, just as Ratter discharged his blaster. The boom sounded louder than doomsday in the field as a barrage of broken glass and bent nails peppered the planks, splintering the wood near Doc. Turning sharply back into the millet, the cannie wheeled away and startled voices were raised out among the wild plants.

Continuing to burp rounds from the AK-47, Ryan caught a minor disturbance in the plants to his right. Firing a figure-eight burst in that direction, the one-eyed man heard an answering cry of pain and a speedster charged out of the millet to violently crash into the eighteen-wheeler. The entire war wag shook from the impact, and Big Suzy was thrown from her seat to smack into the protective cage.

Bleeding from the nose, the stunned cannie clawed at the steering wheel when Mildred delivered a thundering dose of double-aught buckshot. Suzy was blown open, falling backward onto the nuke batteries. As her blood gushed onto the terminals, there was a loud crackle. Quickly, Mildred looked away just before the entire cage was covered with a dazzling display of electric sparks. Galvanized, the corpse jerked wildly, the muddy water sloshing over the rubber floor mats, bubbling. A hundred solenodons in the nearby roots went stiff. Then the terminals were burned clean and the short-circuit vanished. The charred body fell to the floor mats, the distorted features burned into a silent scream. The plump little forms started bobbing in the swirling muck and a trill was raised from the other solies, but this time sounding different.