“If you take a shot at Axyl when they run, they might veer off on a side road and miss Kita’s ambush all together.”
She turned to him, deep anger on her face, but she didn’t reply.
“Take the shot.” Shell told her, with his mouth tape none to gently pulled off he was in an even more foul mood. “Little shit was going to leave me there to starve in an empty building. Give the bastard what he deserves!”
She lowered the rifle. “Were I you, I would be cautious about speaking of what people deserve. I intend to see you get what YOU deserve, and it won’t be kind or pretty.”
“Isn’t it enough that you’ve made me a cripple for life? I’m stuck in this wheelchair for the rest of my miserable days.”
She walked over to where he sat and placed her face inches from his. He looked into her rage blazing eyes for only a moment before having to look away. Suddenly, Shell found he couldn’t stop shivering.
“I wouldn’t invest too much time,” she said very softly, “into planning the rest of your days.”
****
“C’mon, dammit!” Axyl screeched, “Get on your fucking bikes! We are leaving now!” The Axe Man was a true expert when it came to looking out for his own ass, and the last minute loading of crap on to bikes had exhausted his patience. He gave the signal to the drivers of the vans, and aimed his fusion cycle for the front garage door. “Guess we won’t need to close that this time.”
Gordon jumped on his bike just as the group roared up the ramp onto the road leading to the highway. He was last leaving the burning building and Axyl was in the lead, the two vans right behind him. The remaining Road Sharks spread out in front of the abused guard, all likely wondering what their future was going to be and how things had gone so wrong so fast.
Gordon, who was Tail-End Charlie, was feeling very bitter indeed. He’d had only a very short time to gather belongings, and compared to the bulging saddlebags and packs that other ‘brothers’ carried he had only a few items and half full saddlebags. He was not a happy camper.
“Fucking Axyl. If he hadn’t fucked things up so bad, we wouldn’t be in this predicament,” he growled to himself. “If Shell hadn’t been knocked down so far, we’d still be on top. Now we gotta run like a buncha pussies from some stupid-ass farmers and we got young Shit for Brains in charge. We’re so screwed.”
They had just reached the intersection with the main highway when he learned how screwed they actually were.
Gordon actually heard the whine and the thwack as his fellow rider, Cooler, seemed to leap sideways from his bike and rolled on the ground. Gordon veered to miss him and looked down as he passed. Cooler’s bike was still rolling but Cooler himself actually had flopped to a halt, a large bloody hole in his chest.
“Ambush!” was the last thing he said, screaming it out at the top of his lungs. The next moment, he felt a burning impact in his ribs that caused him to hunch over in pain, losing control of his bike. He hit the pavement hard, the heavy machine on his leg and realized he couldn’t get a breath in. He looked down his body and saw a growing pool of blood, and it was spreading fast.
“Oh… no… please…” he said, as the darkness claimed him.
****
Axyl realized something was wrong the second he heard the yell of ‘ambush!’ His hands gunned the throttle before he even thought of looking back.
The van that had been following him veered suddenly to the left, impacting an old Volvo rusting on the street. The larger vehicle seemed still intact, except for a few crumples on the left fender…
And a windshield full of new bullet holes.
“Gun it! Go! Go! Go!” he screamed. This was the third ambush he’d been in today and each had only made his survival reflexes faster. It seemed to have improved the timing of many of his men as well. The remaining van almost popped a wheelie as it jumped forward, and it was all Axyl could do to get out of the way. The remaining Sharks didn’t hesitate to open up their throttles as well.
Speed wasn’t going to save all of them though. He glanced back and saw fusion cycles going down left and right. The ambushers were doing a hella better job leading their targets now that they were using firearms.
“Move it! Unless you want to stay here forever!” he yelled and turned back to the front. He narrowly missed a small tree and rolled up on the right sidewalk. As he jumped the cycle back onto the street, he heard a large thump and felt a shock wave pass him and looking back and saw that the entire north end of the garage was on fire. Something must have been flammable, explosive or both.
That home was a goner.
“Goddamn it! I WILL be back, and you fuckers will PAY!” he screamed. He looked back and what he saw dismayed him. They had cleared the ambush and were heading south on old 97, the ones that were left anyway.
A quick head count of his remaining men told him he now had one-quarter the manpower he’d started the day with. Anyone who’d gone down in that last barrage of bullets, even if only wounded would probably never be seen again. The Sharks had been yanking the people of this area’s chain for a long, long time. They tore down the now-empty highway, leaving their dead and wounded to their fate.
Axyl noted, even in the dim light of the headlights, some of his men were directing semi-covert looks at him, and the looks were not kind. The men knew since he’d taken over everything had gone to piss and he was sure some of them were going to try to make trouble over it.
“Better sharpen my axes when we stop,” he said. “May have to do some culling.”
The pitiful remnants of the once mighty Road Sharks zoomed south through the night and their pitiful leader thought dark thoughts all the way.
CHAPTER FORTY-ONE
Justice?
****
They watched the building burn with deep satisfaction.
Ghost Wind made sure to roll Shell’s wheelchair to a clear vantage point so the Road Shark’s former leader could see not only the end of his former base of operations, but also the bodies lying in the street in front of the burning building.
“It’s all gone.” His voice was bitter with regret. “Everything I built, everything I worked for. Goddamn it! So fucking unfair!”
She looked at the pathetic creature beside her, complaining of the unfairness of his life and anger came up from her chest like magma.
“Unfair? UNFAIR!?” she snarled at him. “If you want to know what unfair is, ask that poor young girl you had chained to your wall so you could rape her whenever the mood took you. Ask the people whose lives you ruined when you sent them off to be slaves! Ask everyone who had to worry every moment of their lives when your bunch was going to come along and destroy everything THEY worked for!”
She leaned close and Shell tried to move back in his chair, ignoring the shooting pain in his vertebrae. Her hand went to the big knife at her belt and for a moment, he thought she was going to decapitate him. But he saw Ghost Wind master herself, slide the half-exposed blade back into its sheath, take a deep breath and look with cold fury into his eyes.
“Perhaps you should ask me,” she said, oh so quietly, “the woman you hung from chains in a room filled with men ready to rape and sodomize me at your bidding. I could tell you what unfair is like.”
Shell looked away at the ground, unable to face her any longer.
“Ghost Wind,” Horace walked up and looked at their captive with contempt. “You gonna put one in his brainpan, or will ya be a sweetheart and let me do it for ya?”
“Well, that would be quick for him, wouldn’t it?” she said. “Oh no Horace, I have plans for Mr. Shell. None of them involve quick.”
****
The elderly bio-diesel truck moved slowly up the old logging road.
They were high in the Cascades now, on a road that had been graveled and oiled years ago, somewhat retarding the number of small trees in the way. The huge tires rolled over the smaller ones and the larger trees were far enough apart to weave around.
“You sure you want to
do this?” Eli asked.
“Yes. Sure.” Ghost Wind’s answer was terse.
They sat on opposite sides of the open back of the big truck, Shell and his wheelchair, tied to the truck with extensive rope-work, sat between them.
“What are you going to do to me?” Shell whined. “You can’t just take me out and execute me like a mad dog! It’s inhuman. Your soul will suffer, I promise you!”
He’d been going on in this vein for approximately the last hour. Eli and Ghost Wind ignored him.
“I got no problem with shootin’ him. It’s not like there’s a judge and jury here. I do however, have a problem with sitting there and torturing the man, human vermin that he is.” Eli looked very pointedly at Shell as he said this.
“I have skills! I CAN be useful!” the man began lightly crying.
“I don’t intend that you, myself, or Horace will lay a hand upon him,” Ghost Wind said. She banged on the back of the truck’s cab and the big diesel came to a stop. She jumped down from the back and walked up to where Horace sat in the driver seat, Kita next to him on the passenger side. Horace rolled down the window.
“Well, miss! This where you want to give the old boy a new hole in his head?”
Ghost Wind looked up the road. “There’s a wide spot just ahead where you can turn the truck around. Eli can help me get him down.”
Eli didn’t really need her help to get Shell from the truck. Once untied, Shell’s chair with Shell in it, seemed to be no more trouble than the fusion cycle he had carried earlier. Less in fact. Once on the ground, he began to push, but Ghost Wind gently elbowed him out of the way.
“I’ll do this.” she told him.
“You don’t have to do it alone.”
“Come if you wish, but I will do this deed.”
Eli looked at her grim countenance, beautiful even with its huge scar and relented. As much trouble as Shell had caused the people here, none of them could hold a candle to what Ghost Wind had been through, even before she came here. He nodded and walked beside her as she wheeled the chair up the rough surface of the old road. He didn’t try to assist when the going became difficult and simply walked on, listening to Shell try to bargain for his life.
“Now look, you two, be reasonable,” Shell whined. “I know we’ve had our differences, but this was a simple case of conflicting visions of what could be. I wanted to unify this region under one government, much like the old republic, but you can’t make the ol’ omelet without breaking eggs.”
“Godamighty,” Eli laughed, “That stale analogy has been used for more fucking atrocities than any other in the history of man. Shell, just be honest, you were the king of assholes, man. This is Karma, Your Royal Highness, and Karma likes to eat the arrogant. Shut up and take your medicine like a man.”
“You do not understand what you’re throwing away here, Eli. I have a lot to offer you people! I’m a skilled tactician and planner! I can manage people! I have a lot of Beforetime knowledge that will be fucking LOST if you do this! All I want in return is a place to live and people to help me get along. I’m not asking for much. PLEASE! See reason!”
“Not my call, man,” Eli said, looking at Ghost Wind. Her face was a stony mask and Eli was glad he wasn’t her enemy at that moment.
She stopped, then walked a little ways farther, leaving Shell and Eli to wait. She kneeled, looking at something in the road. She nodded with seeming satisfaction then walked back. Pushing their enemy again, she moved toward what looked like a wide turnout in the old road. As they advanced, Eli looked at what she had kneeled to see. A grim smile came to his face.
“This is the spot,” she said. “This will do.”
She had pushed Shell near the edge of the slope. The view over the valley below was stunningly beautiful. She stood looking out at the view, but Shell could only watch her, trembling.
“Please, you can’t just dump me down this hill like trash. It’s inhuman!”
“I have no intention of doing so,” she said, still admiring the vista before her.
“Well, if you’re going to shoot me goddamn it, just get it over with!”
“Not that either. Nor knife, nor fist, nor club.” Ghost Wind heard something up the hill behind her and turned to look. Eli saw some birds fly up from the brush up there and when he looked back at the wolf woman, she had a small, slightly satisfied smile on her face.
“Let’s go,” she said.
Eli might have argued earlier, but just nodded. Shell watched them walk away.
“You’re just leaving me here!?” he yelled.
“Remember the lesson of Karma,” Eli yelled over his shoulder. “Or simple cause and effect. You caused this, and this is the effect. Goodbye Shell.”
****
Darwin Shell, former leader of the Road Sharks, looked out over the valley and wondered what the hell had just happened. He had no illusions that this was supposed to be mercy, being left out here to freeze to death, but Darwin Fucking Shell did not intend to go out like that.
He laboriously turned the wheelchair and pushed himself down the road. After about twenty yards, he was breathing hard and the part of his lower back he could still feel throbbed. Surviving this might be harder than he thought. If this had been the Beforetime, he’d still be in a hospital bed and maybe have a chance of at least a partial recovery.
He really hated this new age.
“Don’t know what I’m gonna do when I get to the bottom of this road, but I sure as shit don’t want to die out here in the ass-end of nowhere.”
He passed over what Ghost Wind had seen on the ground without noticing. This wasn’t surprising. Shell was the kind of man who noticed if his potato didn’t have enough butter or if his home brew was too warm. He wasn’t the sort of man to take much interest in marks on the ground.
He’d been hearing small birds nearby, but didn’t really notice their song until it stopped completely. He ceased straining at the wheels of his chair for a moment, and looked around. He, of course, saw nothing. Nonetheless, he instinctively knew something wasn’t right. He tried to ignore it.
“They think they can just leave me to die of the cold out here, well Mama Shell’s little boy won’t be going down without a fight. Who knows, I get to the main road, and find someone who’ll take pity on a man in a wheelchair. Might take me south, maybe to Nevada!”
He knew this was unlikely, in this age of wide open spaces with few people. You could go for days, weeks even and not see another person but Shell had to hang his hope somewhere.
“Goddamn it, I AM going to make it, and Axyl, and that bitch will be damn sorry when I do!”
It was as he pushed over a particularly stubborn hump that he heard growling behind him.
Shell’s bladder, none to steady since his injury, emptied and he smelled the pee that ran down his leg.
The growling grew louder and he heard a twig break a short way behind his chair. He stared straight ahead, frozen. He was too afraid to look over his shoulder.
When the impact came, it was over much more quickly than his enemies might have liked.
****
As they rode back down the hill in the truck, Eli looked over at Ghost Wind’s stoic face.
“I guess he thought you were being merciful.”
She looked away and grimaced. “I gave him all the mercy he deserved.”
“I saw the tracks.”
Ghost Wind returned Eli’s stare. “He had to be punished, and her tracks said she was getting old. Probably having difficulty making her kills. I was just going to leave him to die alone in the cold, but two birds, one stone.”
“Death by big cat?”
“No less than he deserved.” Ghost Wind looked back over the passing landscape, and her thoughts for the rest of the trip were her own.
CHAPTER FORTY-TWO
Going Home
****
The next day started with a cool spring morning. Ghost Wind stood on the small plateau were her shelter had been built a co
uple of days before and looked out over the incredibly beautiful sunrise view. She had spent the last two nights alone, asking Eli to drop her off near where she had originally been captured, so she could just sit and think for a while.
In the past week, she had killed several men (though she felt she was using the term men quite loosely) and the thought weighed on her. Without empathy, those men destroyed others and she did not want to walk that path. She didn’t want to be one who killed without remorse, to truly walk into darkness. She had no sympathy for the Road Sharks; she just didn’t want to become one.
“It had to be done, Go-Go. If the Road Sharks hadn’t been broken, they would have continued to grow like a cancer in this area.” She told her small companion.
She packed everything including the stuffed bear, broke down her camp and spent time making all traces of her having been there disappear.
It was time to go.
****
At mid-afternoon she walked up on the concrete building at the old hatchery, and a slight whiff of smoke told her the hibachi was going.
“Hello the house!” she called out, mindful of the appropriate way to approach these things. “This is the entire Road Shark gang. Permission to pass?”
She felt a tug of happiness when Kenji walked out and saw her. He broke into a quick run, dashing up to give her a quick hug, then fell back a little, embarrassed at his own audacity.
“Ghost Wind! You finally came! Eli told me to watch carefully for you and he told me you’re coming to live with us. It’s AWESOME!” Kenji sang the last word and started a little dance, obviously of his own design. It took every resource Ghost Wind had not to start laughing.
“It seems that I am, Kenji. The thought of it makes me happy too.”
“This is so great! Here, let me escort you to the village.”
Ghost Wind simply looked at him.
“I know I’m on lookout, but you all trashed the Road Sharks, so being on lookout isn’t as important…”
The Road Sharks Page 21