Desert Kings (24 page)

The forest was cool and thick with shadows that morning, the cloud coverings in the sky a brilliant orange that almost resembled early daylight. Soon, the dried brown pine needles covered the road once more, and Ryan eased up on the engine a little, deciding that traction was more important than speed. Doc often recited some old poem about such things, but the man could never remember it correctly. Something about being soft?

“Monkeys,” J.B. muttered, gazing out the open window. “Something to do with a monkey.”

“Softly, softly, catchee monkey.” Ryan chuckled. “Thanks, that was preying on my mind.”

“No prob.” J.B. chuckled. “I…” He stopped to frown, then sniffed hard. “Do you smell smoke?”

Quickly, Ryan looked over the dashboard, but the few remaining gauges that were still working seemed to be fine. “No trouble with the engine. Mebbe we’re just cooking some grease and oil off the engine block.” Then he caught a whiff, dark and pungent, almost sweet. Wood smoke!

Suddenly a huge crowd of animals surged across the highway—deer, wolves and a cougar—all moving fast. The sight was unnerving. Mortal adversaries like that would only travel together to escape from a greater danger—earthquakes, floods or their worst enemy, fire.

Just then, something thumped twice on the roof of the cab. “Get this shitbox rolling!” Krysty yelled from the rear of the war wag. “The forest is on fire!”

“Where?” J.B. shouted backward. “Behind or ahead?”

“To the sides. Both sides!”

Fireblast! Forcing himself not to look, Ryan concentrated on driving and shoved the stick to the highest gear while tromping on the floor pedal. The big engine responded and the war wag surged forward with renewed speed.

“Think the locals did this?” J.B. demanded, tightening his grip on the Kalashnikov. Billowing plumes of dark smoke were starting to come through the trees, slowly turning day into twilight.

“Nobody who lives in a wooden ville would set the bastard forest on fire,” Ryan admonished. “This must be just a coincidence. A lightning strike or something.”

The Armorer said nothing, but the expression on his face clearly stated his opinion of the matter.

“Yeah, I know,” Ryan muttered, hunching his shoulders. The war wag was still accelerating, but the engine gauges were starting to creep upward again, too.

More animals charged across the highway in front of the Mack, and a flock of birds and screamwings flew overhead cawing, tweeting and hooting their terror. Taking a gentle curve down the side of the mountain, Ryan ran straight into a river of smoke, the dense band of gray as impenetrable as any fog. Cursing bitterly, the one-eyed man turned on the headlights and twin halogen beams stabbed outward to pierce the swirling fumes and dimly illuminate the road surface. Mentally, the man praised J.B. for installing those nukelamps under the hood. The beams were a hundred times brighter than regular wag headlights, and didn’t drain the batteries. Without them, he’d be stone blind right now, lost in the murky gloom.

The smell of burning pine was getting stronger, and the companions started coughing. Pulling out handkerchiefs, they quickly wet the cloth with their canteens and tied the crude masks over their faces. That eased the coughing, but their eyes still stung from the pungent wood smoke.

Shrieking in agony, something dashed out of the burning bushes covered with writhing flames. The companions tracked the griz bear with their weapons, but, blind from the searing agony, the bear charged right back into the forest and disappeared in the roiling smoke.

Slowly, the companions were becoming aware of a faint noise, a low crackling that steadily grew in volume. Waves of heat were coming from behind them and to the right, and there were brief flashes of reddish light dancing between the densely packed trees. The fire was almost upon them.

Another mob of wild animals raced across the predark highway, squirrels, conies and a host of other small animals. Then something large came out of the smoke to slam hard into the wag, cracking a headlight. Ryan savagely twisted the wheel to avoid the blurred shape, and the startled face of a bull moose flashed past J.B.’s window.

The Armorer burst into laughter at the sight, then blinked and fired off a burst from the AK-47.

“What’d ya see?” Ryan demanded, trying to look to the right and watch the road at the same time. Just then the wag gave a thump as it rolled over something small and not quite fast enough to escape both the fire and the speeding war wag.

“Could have sworn…” J.B. started, squinting hard into the cloying smoke. Then he jerked back and triggered the Kalashnikov again. “Son of a bitch!”

Before Ryan could ask, he saw it, moving through the smoke and flames like some impossible colossus. It was huge and irregularly shaped, the shell glistening as if wet and rippling with a rainbow of colors. Then the smoke parted for a moment, and Ryan looked directly at the huge thing. It was the droid from the redoubt, but the machine was radically altered. It had only four telescoping legs now, the body was the chassis of the egg-shaped war wag and there was a projector of some sort perched on top. In a moment, it was gone, left behind the racing Mack. Then something stepped onto the highway and started following after the war wag with remarkable speed.

“Fireblast, the bastard thing must have fixed itself!” Ryan snarled, veering wildly away from the machine. “How is that possible? I smashed the comp!”

“I don’t think it is the droid,” J.B. retorted, yanking a gren from the box. “But the war wag! Doc said the damn thing was almost sentient. Delphi talked to it like a person!”

“Then the bastard thing was functional the whole time we were there!” Ryan snapped, dodging another throng of terrified creatures. “Fragging machine must have been playing possum, pretending it was aced to hide from the nuking droid!”

“So after we aced the droid and left, it took all those spare parts and rebuilt itself!”

“Either that, or this is another droid!”

“No fucking way!” This was the same LAV, he recognized some of the burn marks from the redoubt. So the bastard machine had been tracking them all these miles, gathering parts and metal to make jackleg repairs. Ryan wouldn’t be surprised if there were a few pieces of the speedsters and the two-wheelers mixed in there by now.

Striding purposefully behind the war wag, the LAV started lancing out shimmering beams of light. Wherever the scintillating rays hit, a tree burst into flames, the raging fire constantly building in intensity.

With a guttural cry, Doc dropped down fast, and a beam hit the rear of the war wag, the new green planks smoldering, the pine sap popping and snapping. In a tick it was through and bored out the other side, just missing the cab.

“Ryan, stay away from the maple trees!” Krysty bellowed, snapping off wild shots at the dimly seen machine. “If they’re juicy with sap and get too hot, too fast—” The woman was cut off as a maple tree violently exploded, the noise louder than a gren. A dozen other trees began to topple over from the unexpected blast, a hurricane of sparks swirling outward.

“Fucker,” Jak cursed, instinctively reaching for his Colt Python, then releasing the checkered grip. There was nothing the handcannon could do against this sort of threat.

Swinging up her ZKR target pistol, Mildred took a stance and snapped off three fast shots. Two of them ricocheted off the egg-shaped chassis, but the third directly hit the crystal lens of the laser. Instantly, the LAV answered back, the energy ray slicing through the thick smoke to punch a hole in the wooden planks, passing within a scant inch of the physician.

“Son of a bitch must have reinforced the focusing lens!” Mildred spat, lowering her blaster. “If the smoke wasn’t lowering the coefficiency of that beam we’d all be aced for sure!”

Uncaring about the tech talk, Jak and Krysty both put several bursts from their Kalashnikovs into the machine. But if the 7.62 mm hardball mil rounds did any damage it was impossible to say. The air was thick with smoky embers and the LAV kept constantly on the move, staying behind trees and only stepping into the clear to attack with the laser again. More than once it missed the bucking war wag completely, but every hit added more holes in the planks. In short order, the machine wouldn’t have to guess where the people were behind the wood; it’d be able to see them quite clearly.

Off in the distance, another maple tree loudly exploded, the LAV pausing at the sound before continuing after the war wag.

Digging into a pocket, Jak unearthed a spare clip for the AK-47 and whipped it at the approaching machine. The curved magazine landed amid some burning shrubbery. As the LAV walked past, the live rounds started loudly cooking off. Pivoting, the machine began peppering the shrubbery with the laser until there was no more banging.

“Stupe,” the albino teen said, searching for another clip.

Taking advantage of the brief distraction, Doc went to the front of the flatbed, thumped twice on the roof of the speeding cab and stuck out his hand near the passenger window. J.B. didn’t waste any breath asking what the scholar wanted. He simply passed up a gren.

Returning to the rear, Doc guessed the distance, then passed the sphere to Krysty.

Slinging the Kalashnikov over a shoulder, the woman took the gren and pulled the pin, but kept her hand tight on the arming lever until the war wag stopped bucking for a single instant. In a blur, she whipped her hand forward and the gren sailed high to disappear in the smoky air. A split second and it reappeared to bounce off the top of the LAV and explode thunderously.

The machine rocked from the detonation, one of its spidery legs bucking. But then the LAV righted itself and surged forward, the laser flashing nonstop. A dozen more holes were scored through the planks, and a rear tire blew, throwing everybody to the corrugated floor, which gave Mildred an idea.

Scrambling back to her feet, the physician grabbed a flat tire from a pile of rubbish they had been planning to fix, and heaved it over the side. The tire landed near a fallen tree and began to smolder, thick smoke coming off the burning rubber to spread out in a black cloud. Covered with the fumes, the LAV paused in confusion, and Jak threw another gren. Once more, the machine attacked the fiery bushes, all the time falling farther and farther behind the war wag. The laser stabbed out blindly and only succeeded in setting more trees ablaze.

The heat was becoming oppressive, and breathing was a chore. But all the companions could do was dampen their cloths and keep firing.

The horn sounded from the cab, and the companions looked in that direction to see Ryan waving an arm. Krysty rushed over, and he passed her a pipe bomb.

“Curve up ahead!” Ryan shouted, pointing that way.

“On it!” Krysty yelled in return, and went to the corner of the flatbed to find a likely candidate. She found one almost immediately. There was a huge pine tree covered with flames and leaning dangerously close to the road.

As the war wag raced past, she gently tossed the gren right at the base. They were only a few yards away when the charge exploded, ripping apart the base of the giant pine. In a splintery crash, the tree fell across the roadway only moments before the LAV reappeared from the stifling chaos of the conflagration. The companions held their breath but the machine didn’t even pause as it headed past the fiery tree and took off in a new direction.

“Fuckin’ stupe,” Jak said with a lopsided grin. “Whowee, that close!”

“Amen to that, brother.” Mildred sighed, brushing back her beaded locks.

Suddenly the flatbed jounced hard and the companions heard a gurgling splash. Clear water dripped through several of the laser holes, and looking over the riddled planks they saw that the Mack was forging through a shallow creek. The air was just a touch cooler here, and they all breathed easier while checking over their blasters.

The sky above them was a solid blanket of gray from the rampaging forest fire, the noise of the burning woods deafeningly loud. In every direction, maple trees were detonating every few seconds now, throwing up geysers of flaming branches and shattered bark.

Fighting to keep control of the big rig, Ryan twisted the steering wheel sharply to avoid a burning tree as it came crashing down into the creek. The water temporarily extinguished the flames and the charred branches scraped along the side of the vehicle as it passed by. The damp wood burst into flames once more, fed by the boiling sap inside the battered tree trunk.

Hitting a mud hole, the cab listed and the front tires spun freely, then found purchase. The wag lurched forward to glance off a broken slab of ancient concrete. Cursing steadily, Ryan brought the it back under control just in time. More slabs of concrete were lying on the shore, which offered an interesting possibility. Angling out of the creek, Ryan jounced the vehicle up the bank and the wag was soon shuddering along the cracked remains of a predark road. It was just one lane, not a broad highway like before, but the farther they got from the creek, the better the condition of the concrete slabs. Within minutes, the fire was left in their wake, the road surface humming below their tires.

“No sign of the LAV,” J.B. said, craning his neck out the window to look behind. “But that doesn’t mean anything. It tracked us for a hundred miles, and waited a week for us to come out of that ville. For my taste, that’s just too bastard smart for any comp or machine!”

Glancing into the dirty sideview mirror, Ryan said nothing. The fire was still coming their way, and the engine was close to overheating again.