Nemesis

by James Axler

  Ricky nearly screamed as Ryan went down.

  Chapter Twenty-One

  Krysty held her breath. So, it seemed, did everybody else, as the man she loved toppled backward in slow motion, but not all the way to the ground. He mostly turned his upper body and went to one knee. His left fist went to the ground to halt his downward progress as Cable danced back.

  The sec boss turned and strutted around the circle, his chest pushed out and his fists in the air. But his own people didn’t join in his celebration.

  “Uh, boss...” said Solo, the sec man with the spiky yellow hair.

  Krysty saw the side of Cable’s expression turn into a frown, then he followed his subordinate’s gaze.

  Ryan was kneeling as if in perfect relaxation, with his left arm propped on his knee. Despite the trickle of blood that ran from the corner of his mouth beneath his eye patch, he smiled.

  “My turn,” he said.

  He rose. Looking a bit bewildered, if Krysty was any judge, Cable turned back toward him and dropped into his hands-high fighting stance.

  The sec boss was as game as he was fast. He fired two more quick jabs as Ryan approached. The one-eyed man deflected both with his upraised right forearm.

  Cable unloaded an overhand right meant to smash full into Ryan’s face and drop him then and there, either stunned or out cold.

  Ryan ducked, turning his hips and upper body to the right. The massive punch skidded off the top of his head and glanced off his shoulder blade.

  At the same instant Ryan landed a palm-heel hook to Cable’s short ribs. Krysty heard bone give way with a loud crack.

  With a gasp scarcely less loud, Cable stepped back. His eyes were wide. While Krysty knew how much that shot had to hurt—she’d felt her own ribs break before—he seemed mostly reacting in surprise. Things weren’t going the way he had expected.

  Even as the sec boss backpedaled reflexively, Ryan advanced, without haste, yet inexorably. Like a man going to work.

  Which, Krysty knew, was exactly what he was doing.

  Out of nowhere, seemingly, Ryan launched his right fist in a straight punch so fast that Cable’s arm was just moving to intercept it when the fist crunched into his jaw.

  Cable staggered back. Ryan came on, unloading shots so fast that all of Cable’s responses came too late, and all landing with crunching impacts on his face. He was already staggering.

  He skipped back adroitly, gathered himself and actually countercharged. Ryan kept coming forward, too. Ducking under his jab, he doubled the sec boss over with a punch to the man’s washboard gut. Then he stood him back up with a palm-heel uppercut beneath the goatee that made the sec boss’s teeth clack together.

  Krysty heard neither teeth nor jaw break, but the shaved head snapped back. She thought the sec boss was already going down. His body fell back, while his hands dropped forward as if he could no longer hold them up.

  Yet so panther-fast was Ryan that he unloaded a spin kick of his own, blasting the outside of his vertical right boot full into the side of Cable’s face before he could fall.

  Then he did fall, full-length on his back, so hard Krysty felt the vibrations from thirty feet away.

  “Yay!” Ricky Morales shouted.

  “Hush, child,” Mildred said sternly.

  Nobody else said anything at all. Morty kind of frowned and rubbed his jaw. Krysty wasn’t even sure whether he was pleased or displeased by the turn of events. Likely, neither was he.

  There was no doubting his big brother’s reaction. Already hollow-eyed with regret and incipient despair, Bass Croom’s big face was slack and bleak with the look of a man who saw no possible outcomes to what he was witnessing but bad and worse.

  Ryan stood a few feet from Cable, who lay prostrate with arms outflung. The sec boss was moving and moaning. He wasn’t out cold, but he wasn’t altogether attached to his body, either.

  “Now that’s what I call a surgical beat-down,” Mildred murmured from Krysty’s elbow. “Wonder if that poor man appreciates how much trouble Ryan took not to hurt him too bad?”

  Behind the women, Doc said, “I doubt he appreciates anything at all just now!”

  Ryan stood calmly, his arms relaxed by his sides, knees lightly flexed, weight on the balls of his feet. If Cable was somehow feigning being stunned and launched himself off the ground in a fresh attack, the first thing he’d find out was that Ryan was a mile from as open as he looked. In fact, Krysty knew, he was in the perfect state to defend or counterattack.

  Of course, if somebody went for a blaster, well, that was a story that wouldn’t have a happy ending. But the sec men and women just stared at their fallen boss with a mixture of wonder and concern. The drivers and wrenches mostly just looked worried. Bass looked as if he didn’t dare breathe.

  Cable shook his head and raised it to see Ryan leaning over him with hand outstretched as if to help.

  Krysty bit her lip and held her breath. Mildred grasped her arm firmly for support and reassurance.

  Things could turn to blood and death right now, if they broke wrong.

  Dace Cable’s right hand came up to grip Ryan’s forearm. Ryan clasped his opponent’s arm in turn and hauled him to his feet.

  The lanky sec boss rocked back on his heels momentarily, then he got control of his sense of balance and got himself upright on his pins. He rubbed his jaw, turned aside to spit blood on the grass. He turned to Ryan and grinned.

  “All right,” he declared in a loud voice. “You beat me fair and square! And I’d be proud if I could call you bro!”

  Of all people it was Dan Hogue, the mild boss wrench who looked like predark pictures of Jesus, who raised the first cheer.

  Ryan nodded.

  Cable threw out his arms and came forward to embrace his former foe. Krysty still didn’t let herself breathe. She didn’t know whether to trust the man’s abrupt conversion or not.

  Yet Ryan made no move to pull away or to defend himself. Instead he let Cable enfold him in a full-on hug and for one of the few times in their life together, Krysty saw her life mate do something halfheartedly.

  Ryan raised both hands and patted vaguely back at Cable’s shoulders as if suspecting he might be red-hot.

  * * *

  “SO,” MILDRED CALLED to Krysty at the front of the fuel tanker. “Why do you think Bass Croom has gotten so fixated on our mystery lady lately? Is he hot to trot with her, or is there something else that I don’t see?”

  For a moment Krysty looked blank. Her long red hair was blowing behind in the wind of their passage through the western foothills of the Blue Mountains in what Mildred still thought of as northeastern Oregon. The day was sunny and warm enough neither woman had a coat on despite the fact they were moving at maybe twenty-five miles an hour along an ancient dirt road.

  Damn, Mildred thought. I used a slang phrase that’s been dead for like two hundred years. Hard to tell even now what’s still comprehensible, and what’s not.

  Then Krysty laughed. She had to have worked it out by context.

  “It could be,” Krysty said. “She’s very pretty. I can see how he might become overly attached. But he seems a pretty confident man, too. If he wants to be with her, why not just ask?”

  “Because he’s too old for her, maybe?”

  Krysty laughed again. “That doesn’t always slow them down. Believe me.”

  Spring was coming on fast if not yet hard. The sun was halfway up the sky and warm on Mildred’s face despite the crisp edge to the breeze. Wildflowers sprang out of everywhere, white and blue and yellow, in the flats and hollows and on the hillsides like tiny explosions.

  They were ten days out from the fateful stay at Raker’s Rest. After pausing to breathe and lick their wounds, they had had it surprisingly easy. They passed through a relatively low point
in the Rockies, then on across the Wasatch Mountains into the Snake River Plain. They followed the course of the Snake for generally smooth rolling past where it turned north toward Hell’s Canyon. Everybody said the canyon was a dangerous region to be avoided at all costs, both because of the lashings-out of a tormented nature, and the wildlife. Two-legged and otherwise.

  Instead they kept heading west across the Blue Mountains, into northeast Oregon by Mildred’s consideration.

  That passage hadn’t been so easy.

  Now they rolled west down a decent dirt road through dwindling foothills between high ridges, whose heights Mildred and Krysty watched carefully. As they hoped did everybody else.

  They were actually getting near the point Bass had pointed out on his ancient U.S. Geological Survey map as their destination—rather, as close to their final objective as he would divulge. Krysty reckoned they’d keep on west across the Cascades to the Cific coast. Mildred thought north into southeast Washington, into the heart of the Inland Northwest, maybe even across another bend of the upper Snake, which was earning its name at that point by sidewinding toward Hell’s Canyon.

  “Bass may be obsessing more because he’s boozing it up pretty hard,” Mildred said. “He hasn’t recovered from losing a third of his people at Raker’s Rest.”

  “Mebbe,” Krysty said.

  She kept scanning the high points. The nature of the convoy restricted it to what J.B. called “high speed routes,” meaning low stretches between high points such as streambeds and river valleys. Unfortunately that meant they had to put themselves at risk of ambush to advance at all. Like now.

  “It doesn’t explain his hang-up on Olympia, though.” Mildred chuckled. “I still can’t figure that one.”

  “Me, neither,” Krysty said. “When we started out I was worried she might make a play for Ryan.”

  Mildred laughed out loud. She couldn’t help herself.

  Krysty glanced toward her. Mildred noticed her friend’s motion from the corner of her eye. She was watching those ridges, too, like a hungry dog eyeing its humans at the dinner table.

  “It makes sense,” Krysty said a bit defensively. “Ryan is the strongest man around. It would be natural for her to gravitate toward him.”

  “Not that,” Mildred said. “It’s just the notion any woman could ever compete with you. You’re a goddess, Krysty. And least of all could anyone else compete in Ryan’s eyes. Uh, eye. Even a long, exotic drink of water like that one. She does have a look to her, I’ve got to admit, even if she could stand to pack some more meat on her bones.”

  It was Krysty’s turn to laugh. “I’m not worried about Ryan, silly,” she said. “It was her. Olympia showed herself formidable right out of the gates. She could cause trouble if she turned things into a woman-scorned situation. Chilling trouble.”

  “Could somebody that smart and strong really pull a stunt as stupid as that?”

  “What do ‘smart’ and ‘strong’ have to do with her heart?”

  Mildred bobbed her head to the side and sighed. “You got me there, Krysty.”

  “Mebbe it helps that Olympia seems as fixated on something as Croom is on her.”

  “Yeah. But what?”

  Krysty shook her head. “No idea.”

  She turned briefly to Mildred. “At least Cable’s been acting like a sweetheart.”

  Mildred frowned. Wasn’t that kind of a flying subject change, there? Still, if her friend wanted to talk about something else, Mildred would honor that. Krysty did very little lightly.

  “Yeah,” she said. “After Ryan pounded some sense in his fool head. Of course, who knew that’d work.”

  “Ryan suspected it might.”

  “Yeah,” Mildred said. “But it doesn’t always pan out that way. We all know that too well.”

  “That was one of the reasons Ryan was hoping to avoid the showdown,” Krysty said. “Also why he had to give Cable his shot first, so that he couldn’t delude himself the outcome was a fluke afterward.”

  “Yeah. So Ryan let Cable pound him in the head for what seemed like an hour, after Ryan and J.B. have rattled on for years how letting yourself get hit in head is stupid.”

  “You treated Ryan after the fight,” Krysty said. “How badly hurt was he?”

  Mildred sighed. “Not at all. A few bruises and contusions, a fair amount of facial swelling, the sort of thing that looks way worse than it is. Yeah, it took a truckload of skill to keep from getting hurt bad while giving the appearance of taking the best the sec boss had.

  “But I may be even more impressed with the fact Cable didn’t get hurt worse. Ryan’s skill was so sure—and he was so sure of it—that he’d held back while beating Cable. Also contrary to his usual advice.”

  “Good advice is to be followed always,” Krysty said. “Until it isn’t.”

  “Did Trader say that?”

  “No idea. But it sounds as if he might have, doesn’t it?”

  “Yeah. I guess Ryan figured he was more use to us all alive than staring up at the stars. And better fit to fight than crippled up.”

  “Wasn’t he right?”

  “Yeah,” Mildred admitted. “Cable’s a good man. Maybe not the swiftest arrow in the quiver, but not stupid.”

  She frowned at the heights. They were rising again to both sides, into long hogback ridges. For some reason that made her more uneasy.

  “Speaking of showing pretty good,” she said. “I sure wish Morty stayed the way he acted when we had to fight our way out of the rest stop. He fought like a champ along with everybody else.”

  “Danger focuses the mind,” Krysty stated. “I get the impression Morty doesn’t have much focus in his life the rest of the time.”

  “No,” Mildred said. “Bass plays mother hen to the boy so much, I kind of wonder if he’s smothered him some.”

  She gritted her teeth and shook her head. “Still, I wish Bass’d get back to doing a little more mothering of the boy. Rein him in some. But with big brother all distracted, Junior is starting to really act out. Acting real entitled and pugnacious because everybody else won’t do what he says.”

  “At least he hasn’t worked up the courage to start serious trouble,” Krysty said.

  “He will if he ever gets the nerve up to try to force the issue with Olympia.”

  “True.”

  “The boy’ll bring trouble down on all our ass— Shit.”

  “You see them, too?” Krysty asked in a tight voice.

  “Uh-huh,” Mildred said.

  It wasn’t hard to miss the dozens of warriors on motorcycles who’d appeared suddenly on top of the ridge to the north like bad Indians in a predark Western.

  Chapter Twenty-Two

  At Ryan’s urging Bass hit the horn of his Land Cruiser four times. It was the signal to stop.

  As soon as Ryan saw the wags following begin to slow, he told Bass to pull over and stop.

  The trader’s heavy sunburned face had gone dead pale behind his beard, which even in the moment Ryan could hardly help but noticing showed a lot more white than when they started out from Menaville. He obeyed.

  Ryan opened the door and stepped out before the big armored wag stopped rolling. He waved his arms vigorously above his head in what he hoped everybody would take as a “stand easy” signal. Of course it’d be straight-up self-chilling to start shooting at a hundred or more heavily armed biker nomads who had them unmistakably dead to rights. But even after all they’d been through there was still a chance somebody might panic and do something stupid, especially that fool Morty Croom, if he thought it would impress Olympia.

  To Ryan’s relief, no shots cracked out from the convoy. Everybody stopped without dinging anybody else, although the driver of the tanker rolled close up enough on the cargo truck ahead of it that Ryan�
��s throat sort of seized up for a moment.

  The bikers continued to sit, outlined against the sky. So were their weapons, which were abundant. Now that he was no longer riding inside the armored wag, Ryan could hear the muted growling of their engines, like a multitude of hungry beasts.

  Bass mopped his face with a handkerchief, although the morning wasn’t yet warm.

  “Boys sure know how to make an entrance, don’t they?”

  Ryan nodded. “Stone Nation,” he said. “I knew we were getting near their territory.”

  “Why haven’t they attacked us yet?” Morty asked, tumbling forward like a panicky puppy.

  The others were approaching, too, as if seeking safety in numbers. Not the best practice if the enemy opened fire. Still...

  “If they were going to attack us, they’d be all over us already,” Cable said, striding up from where he’d been manning the .50 in the tail-end blaster wag.

  “Then why are they doing that?” Morty demanded. He was embarrassed and his response was to get angry.

  “I’ve heard of this bunch,” Bass said. “Other traders talk about them. Bad bunch to cross, but I hear if you deal with them straight, they deal straight back.”

  “That’s the fact,” J.B. said as he joined the growing crowd. “What you got here, is what you call a strong negotiating posture.”

  * * *

  “WELCOME TO THE Stone Nation,” said the man with the pyramid of kinky black hair cascading over his wide shoulders as he swung off his bike. It was a big bastard, heavy for off-road use, but solid-built, powerful, its only real concession to biker flash being the tall ape-hanger bars gleaming chrome in the sun.

  “I am Speaker for the Stone Nation,” he said, walking forward to where most of the members of the convoy stood waiting near Bass’s wag.

  Ryan looked at Bass as some of the two dozen or so other bikers who had ridden down with their boss dismounted. About half remained astride their rides. The rest stayed up there, silhouetted against a painfully blue sky brushed with red feathers of clouds. “And that’s just the ones we can see,” J.B. murmured from Ryan’s side.