Nemesis

by James Axler

  The smoke from the volcano covered half the sky in black. The lowering sun was a red ghost occasionally glimpsed through it. The shifting red-and-orange glow cast on the underside of the smoke pall from the mountain’s fiery throat was actually brighter.

  “Get them mad,” Ryan said, “and you’d be better off throwing yourself right into that crater than tangle with them.”

  “What about the bunch to the south?” Morty Croom demanded. His brother’s gloom wasn’t infecting him. Or maybe it was, making him shriller and angrier and more demanding than ever. “There’re only a few dozen of them. Can’t we break out that way? Can’t we take ’em?”

  “Maybe if we still had thirty-odd people with blasters to shoot our way through,” Mildred said waspishly.

  “I take it you never heard tell of the Road Weasels Motorcycle Club, son,” J.B. said. “Your life was better before you did.”

  “Wouldn’t think they’d be the types to line up with the Stones,” Ryan said.

  “No accounting for taste,” J.B. said. “Didn’t know they were riding in this part of Deathlands. Makes me glad we don’t get up here much.”

  “Uh,” Ricky Morales said hesitantly from behind Ryan. “They’re, uh, they’re getting close.”

  Ryan looked back. The kid cringed as if expecting him to bite his head off. Am I that big a bear? Ryan wondered. Then he reckoned now wasn’t the time for such concerns.

  “He knows,” J.B. said. “But they’ll come as far as they want whether we eyeball them or not.”

  “Isn’t there anything we can do?” Morty asked.

  “It doesn’t look like it,” Krysty said as she strode up to Ryan’s left and slipped her arm through his.

  Bass emitted a sigh, then moved with surprising energy to open the rear driver’s door of his wag and rummage under the seat.

  He came out with a mostly white handkerchief and an entrenching tool.

  “What are you doing with those, Bass?” Sandra asked.

  He frowned with concentration as he knotted a corner of the hankie through the enclosed grip of the short shovel.

  “Only thing I can,” he said, and his voice actually seemed to have some steel in it again, as did his spine. “What I should’ve done before.”

  He straightened and held up the shovel for inspection. The eye-searing wind made the hankie flutter like a flag.

  “What I do,” he said. “Talk.”

  “Talk about what?” Morty asked with a whipped-dog whine.

  His brother looked at him for a long moment, then nodded toward the Stones.

  The line of bikes had halted a hundred yards south down the road. It seemed to stretch endlessly left and right. Dead center of it Ryan saw a familiar figure, a tan face with big white teeth grinning out from the midst of a pyramidal mass of kinky black hair. The only thing different about Speaker from when they’d first laid eyes on him, the day before, was the sling that carried his disabled right arm.

  The Stone Nation chieftain’s eyes caught Ryan’s gaze. “I’m not so easy to chill, One-Eye,” he called. His giant shadow, Morning Glory, had her bike parked next to his right knee and stood astride it, gazing impassively as if she’d been carved from a log.

  “I’m going to talk about what they want,” Bass said to Morty.

  “What they want? What’s wrong with you? Are you a total idiot? They want to chill us all!”

  “If they wanted that,” J. B. Dix said, “what do you think they’re waiting for?”

  Jak appeared like a white apparition to Ryan’s left, leaning against the rear left-passenger door of the command wag. Ryan gave him a brief nod. He felt comforted that all of his companions were standing together now.

  Waving the white flag high over his head, Bass stepped out twenty feet toward the line of bikes. The Stone Nation had fallen silent now. They’d even switched off their bike engines. The only noises were birdsong, the sighing wind and a nasty protracted fart from the volcano.

  “You don’t need that rag,” Speaker called. “We can hear you, you know.”

  “I’m asking you man to man, Speaker,” Croom said. “What do you want?”

  Speaker’s handsome face took on a skull-like aspect.

  “Vengeance,” he said. “Justice, if you care to call it that. I told you what we wanted—the monster who raped and murdered our sister Little Feather. And that is all. Give him up, walk away free as air.”

  “But who?” Bass pleaded. “Is he even still alive?”

  Ryan had stepped up to stand a little to his right. He saw a tear run down the furrowed skin of the master trader’s cheek to vanish in his beard.

  “He is,” Speaker said.

  Bass shook his head. “Why didn’t you just tell us who you wanted at the outset, save us all this grief? There have been losses on both sides. Tragic losses.”

  “That much is true, Bass Croom. And we, at least, will mourn by our campfires tonight. And for many nights to come. But the fact is, we didn’t say because you didn’t ask.”

  Bass’s head jerked back as if Speaker had punched him.

  “It’s not that simple, Speaker,” Ryan called. “Don’t play coy.”

  Morning Glory gave Ryan a hard look. Well, harder than she’d already been looking. He hadn’t been sure her facial muscles were up to the task, truth to tell.

  That she’d change expression less than that if she were being roasted on a spit, he took for granted. If it was him over the flames, and her hand doing the turning, then she might register more emotion.

  But Speaker laughed. “You have balls, One-Eye,” he said. He dipped his head toward his injured arm. “But I knew that. You’ve got brains, too. It’s not that simple. The fact is, we didn’t reckon your boss would give up the criminal. Not when he’s no other than his precious younger brother!”

  Bass’s jaw dropped so hard Ryan was surprised it didn’t dislocate. His weather-beaten face turned white beneath the grime and ash. He turned and marched without a word back to the half-circle of wags.

  Ryan looked at Speaker and shrugged, then turned and walked back, too, hoping the Stone Nation boss didn’t bear a grudge and shoot him in the back.

  “That’s it,” Bass told the waiting people when Ryan walked up. “There’s nothing we can do.”

  “What do you mean, there’s nothing you can do, Bass?” Sandra asked.

  “Surely you don’t expect me to hand my brother over to them to be tortured to death?”

  Morty laughed shrilly.

  Sandra frowned. “I could say I don’t want to watch you die, Bass,” she said, “and that’d be true. I’ve worked for you for many years. I like you. I admire you. You’re a strong man and a good one.

  “But that would be cowardice on my part. The fact is, I don’t want to die. Not for a rapist and woman-chiller!”

  Bass gave her a look of sunk-eyed desperation, then turned furiously away.

  García wouldn’t meet his eye.

  “But, Bert,” Bass said. “Surely you’re with me on this—”

  “You took me in, too, boss,” the dark-skinned sec man said. “Just like you did Dace. Like you did so many of us. I’ll fight and die for you. That’s what I signed on for. I’d be proud to join my bros and sisters who have already done just that. All of them.”

  He looked down at his scuffed sneakers a moment before he could go on.

  “But not for this, man,” he said. “You gotta give him up. He did wrong, and it’s already chilled most of us.”

  “You can’t listen to him, Bass,” Morty said. “You won’t give me up. You can’t. You promised Mother!”

  Bass looked at his brother and opened his mouth. No words came out.

  “Bass!” Morty screamed. He looked frantically left and right, then gathered himself as if to bolt,
but froze at a multiple metallic clicking from somewhere just behind his right ear.

  “Just hold tight here, boy,” Mildred said in a low dangerous voice. She held her ZKR .38 target revolver aimed at the younger Croom’s head. “Given my druthers, I’d splatter your brains halfway back to the Columbia. Healer or not. But if the Stones want us to turn you over, I believe we’d better do that.”

  Bass turned to look at his drivers, still hanging back. They wouldn’t even look at him.

  He looked, at last, to Ryan. “I can’t,” he whispered.

  “I can.”

  Ryan walked up to Morty. The young man ground his teeth and rolled his eyes like a panicked horse. He squirmed with the need to bolt, but he feared the rage he heard in the black woman’s voice. And her blaster.

  The one-eyed man punched him hard across the jaw. He went down. Shaking his hand slightly at the stinging in his knuckles, Ryan reached down and grabbed the young man’s collar, hauling him bodily to his feet. He began marching the semiconscious Morty toward the waiting Stones.

  “You have demanded we turn the murderer over to you,” he called out. Morty began to wake up. Ryan transferred grip from left fist to right so he could twist Morty’s left arm behind his back in a hammerlock.

  “You’ve promised to let us go if we turn him over.”

  He was looking Speaker in the eye. The Stone Nation boss met his gaze, then nodded.

  “I give my word, as Speaker for the Stone Nation,” he said. “You have fought me, One-Eye. You know my honor.”

  I know no such triple-stupe thing, Ryan thought. But it’s not like we’ve got a mess of options here.

  “Then I’m turning him over to you,” he called. “Come and get him.”

  He didn’t hear Speaker utter a word or see him gesture, but he had to have, because four husky young warriors parked their bikes and hustled forward.

  Ryan thrust Morty at them. They caught him neatly, turned him around and marched him back toward the other nomads.

  Morty began to cry and plead.

  With all eyes on the wretched captive, Ryan dropped his hand to the slender grip of his Scout. Dropping to one knee, he swung the weapon to his shoulder.

  “Blaster!” a Stone Nation woman screamed, but it was too late.

  Ryan got a flash picture over the iron battle sights. He let out half the breath he’d gulped down hard and squeezed the trigger.

  The Steyr roared. The 174-grain boat-tailed hollowpoint slug punched directly through Morty Croom’s spine at a level just before his shoulder blades, on its way to exploding his heart and punching a fist-size hole in his front ribs on its way out.

  Ryan hadn’t dropped for aim or stability, but for angle. Even if the hollowpoint deformed the bullet, it was likely to pass through a man’s chest front and back with plenty of energy to chill a nomad waiting beyond. But at this angle it arced safely over the heads of the nomads.

  They had pulled up in a single or double line to stop. If the bullet hit a straggler on its way back down, somewhere behind that line, Ryan reckoned it was their lookout.

  The warriors froze, staring down at Morty’s deadweight, pulling their arms inexorably toward the ground despite their youthful strength.

  “You stupe bastard, you’ve chilled us all!” he heard one of the drivers shriek from behind.

  By reflex he completed the motion he began automatically after riding the recoil, and rechambered a fresh round. Then he let the Scout drop on its sling and stood slowly. He held his open palms away from his sides.

  The Stones were staring holes through him. Morning Glory’s sled lay on its side; she had obviously dropped it to try to throw herself in front of Speaker when Ryan’s blaster came up.

  Speaker had just as obviously stopped her with a mere flopping-turning gesture of his right arm, since he couldn’t raise it.

  For a moment Speaker stared at Ryan, then he stepped off his bike, leaving it propped on its double kickstand.

  The warriors let Morty fall on his face. At their leader’s approach they quickly melted back to the sides.

  Speaker strode forward to stand facing Ryan from six feet away. For a moment he simply gazed at the man’s face.

  Ryan gazed back. He reckoned he and his friends could make the Stones chill them all instead of taking them alive.

  Speaker flung his arms wide and a vast grin split his face.

  “You are a man, Ryan Cawdor!” he declared in a ringing voice. “The Stone Nation embraces you as a true bro!” He caught Ryan in a one-handed hug that was fervent and as awkward as Ryan felt.

  The Stone Nation erupted into uproarious laughter, as if Ryan had just told them the greatest joke ever.

  Releasing Ryan, Speaker turned and walked back to his people. He trod across Morty’s body without hesitating or looking down. He remounted his bike and kicked its engine to life. A many-throated roar of engines echoed him down the line.

  And then the Stone Nation, true to its word and ways, turned and rode away.

  Chapter Thirty-One

  “So there I was,” Bass Croom said in a voice as hollow as the eyes that stared down into the low flames of the campfire. Krysty thought the yellow light gave a greenish cast to his underlit features.

  “I was strapped,” he went on. “Robbed of everything I had by Baron Doyle of Choad. Left to get by on the lint in my pockets.”

  The wind cried like lost children up the narrow mountain valley where they’d camped for what the master merchant told them was the very last night of their journey. The air smelled of smoke, cold and the ever-present reek of volcanic smoke and ash from the fire mountain, when the wind turned the right way. Krysty could see its evil glow lighting the smoke above the peaks to the south and west.

  With the exception of Jak, who as usual was prowling restlessly in the darkness outside the little camp, the survivors were huddled in the lee of the parked wags. They numbered three, now, one of the cargo wags having busted an axle the morning after Morty’s death and the withdrawal of the Stones and their allies.

  By now they’d lost most of their food and meds, and burned up much of the ammo that hadn’t gotten lost. Fortunately there were fewer demands on those resources now.

  Sitting catty-corner across from Krysty, Ricky opened his mouth. Mildred, who sat beside him, clamped a warning hand on his jeans-clad thigh. His eyes got big but his mouth snapped shut.

  Not that Croom would’ve likely noticed if the boy had blurted about the group’s encounter with the nefarious baron of what was more recently called Doylesville. Even though it entailed vengeance of a sort for Bass’s long-ago loss. The burly, bearded man seemed to be living far more in that moment twenty years ago than now.

  The way Doc sometimes did.

  “Now I’d spent the whole night listening to this drunk guy rave about how his daddy left him a map to someplace he called the Promised Land, where there was amazing scavvy just waiting for the taking. How his daddy had to keep moving, but always meant to go back—passed on the secret to him when he ran out of life instead.”

  He stopped and sighed. He’d been doing that a lot since the younger brother he’d loved and shielded for so long had died. Though to his credit, he had never spoken a word of reproach to Ryan, either for turning him over to the Stones, nor for chilling him.

  Of course, he hadn’t thanked Ryan, either, for saving everybody else’s life as well as Bass’s, or for saving Morty from death by torture. But Krysty knew her lover neither needed that nor expected it.

  “So, I stole it. Stole the map from him.”

  Krysty looked around the circle: at Sandra, close to her boss’s side, her face showing disbelief; at Bert García looking shocked yet also sympathetic; at J.B.’s mild expression of interest, with his eyes invisible behind eyeglass lenses turned by reflection to dis
ks of orange fire, and Olympia, her face devoid of visible emotion and yet her eyes focused closely on the trader.

  “It was wrong. I knew it was wrong even as I was doing it. But I was afraid to try giving it back. I was stuck without a washer to my name in a little crack in the Zarks not a whole lot different from this one, dead winter, at a gaudy where it was said those who caused trouble, or just couldn’t pay, got dropped down an old mine shaft in the back. So I ran away.

  “I set out to rebuild my life. I determined to devote my life to two things—living by utter honesty and building up to the day I could make my own journey to this Promised Land.”

  He covered his face with his hands. Krysty found the sight almost shocking. They were middle-aged hands, though obviously well used and not sheltered from hardship, but they seemed decades younger than the face they obscured.

  “And now I’ve cost everyone so much. So many good people their lives. Morty—I—” His voice clotted like spilled blood. He had to stop for a moment and just breathe deeply.

  “I know the wrong I did brought this on, but I’ve come too far. Tomorrow I’ll press on. I’ll find the Promised Land, if it’s there, and I believe now as I have for every heartbeat of every day for the past twenty years that it is. And I will do my best to rebuild, and move on. Build a better life for myself and the rest of you.

  “That includes all of you. Otherwise, feel free to take an equal share of whatever we got left and go your way, and all best to you.”

  Krysty looked at Ryan, who hunkered down beside her. As she did, she saw his features seem to harden, ever so slightly. She smiled. That meant they’d softened. Ryan was a man who always did what he thought necessary, as hard as he could. He could act as ruthless as any stoneheart. But his heart wasn’t stone. That was why she loved him.

  Croom had earned Ryan’s respect. All his companions respected and liked the trader. And while it was testimony to Bass Croom that those who knew him best, his assistant, his last sec man, even his two drivers, seemed shocked that he’d done a dishonest thing, well, nothing they’d seen or just heard of the man was anything they hadn’t done or worse in the past year, truth to tell.