"You're Hell Tanner."
"Huh?"
"Your last name's Tanner, ain't it?"
"That's right. Who told you?" /
"I heard about you. Everybody thought you died in the Big Raid."
"They were wrong.'*
"What was it like?"
*T dunno. I was already wearing a zebra suit. That's why I'm still around."
"Why'd you pick me up?"
" 'Cause you're a chick, and 'cause I didn't want to see you croak."
"Thanks. You got anything to eat in here?"
"Yeah, there's food in there." He pointed to the refrigerator door. "Help yourself."She did, and as she ate Tanner asked her, "What do they call you?"
"Corny," she said. "It's short for Cornelia."
"Okay, Corny," he said. "When you're finished eating, you start telling me about the road between here and the place."
She nodded, chewed and swallowed. "There's lots of other gangs," she said. "So you'd better be ready to blast them."
"I am."
"Those screens show you all directions, huh?"
"That's right."
"Good. The roads are pretty much okay from here on in. There's one big crater you'll come to soon and a couple little volcanos afterward."
"Check."
"Outside of them there's nothing to worry about but the Regents and the Devils and the Kings and the Lovers. That's about it."
Tanner nodded.
"How big are those clubs?"
"I don't know for sure but the Kings are the biggest. They've got a coupla hundred."
"What was your club?"
"The Studs."
"What are you going to do now?'*
"Whatever you tell me."
"Okay, Corny, I'll let you off anywhere along the way that you want me to. If you don't want, you can come on into the city with me."
"You call it. Hell. Anywhere you want to go, I'll go along."
Her voice was deep, and her words came slowly, and her tone sandpapered his eardrums just a bit. She had long legs and heavy thighs beneath the tight denim. Tanner licked his lips and studied the screens. Did he want to keep her around for awhile?
The road was suddenly wet. It was covered with hundreds of fish, and more were falling from the sky. There followed several loud reports from overhead. The blue light began in the north.
Tanner raced on, and suddenly there was water all about him. It fell upon his car, it dimmed his screens.The sky had grown black again, and the banshee wail sounded above him.
He skidded around a sharp curve in the road. He turned up his lights.
The rain ceased, but the wailing continued. He ran for fifteen minutes before it built up into a roar.
The girl stared at the screens and occasionally glanced at Tanner.
"What*re you going to do?*' she finally asked him,
"Outrun it, if I can," he said.
"It's dark for as far ahead as I can see. I don't think you can do it."
"Neither do I, but what does that leave?"
"Hole up someplace."
"If you know where, you show me."
"There's a place a few miles further ahead—a bridge you can get under,"
"Okay, that's for us. Sing out when you see it."
She pulled off her boots and rubbed her feet. He gave her another cigarette.
"Hey, Corny—I just thought—there's a medicine chest over there to your right. Yeah, that's it. It should have some damn kind of salve in it you can smear on your face to take the bite out."
She found a tube of something and nibbed some of it into her cheek, smiled slightly and replaced it.
"Feel any better?"
"Yes. Thanks."
The stones began to fall, the blue to spread. The sky pulsed, grew brighter.
"I don't like the looks of this one."
"I don't like the looks of any of them."
"It seems there's been an awful lot this past week."
"Yeah. I've heard it said maybe the winds are dying down—that the sky might be purging itself."
"That'd be nice," said Tanner.
"Then we might be able to see it the way it used to look—blue all the time, and with clouds. You know about clouds."
"I heard about them."
"White, puffy things that just sort of drift across— sometimes gray. They don't drop anything except rain, and not always that."
"Yeah, I know.""You ever see any out in L.A.?"
"No."
The yellow streaks began, and the black lines writhed like snakes. The stonefall rattled heavily upon the roof and the hood. More water began to fall, and a fog rose up. Tanner was forced to slow, and then it seemed as if sledgehammers beat upon the car.
"We won't make it," she said.
"The hell you say. This thing's built to take it—and what's that off in the distance?"
"The bridge!" she said, moving forward. "That's iti Pull off the road to the left and go down. That's a dry riverbed beneath."
Then the lightning began to fall. It flamed, flashed about them. They passed a burning tree, and there were still fishes in the roadway.
Tanner turned left as he approached the bridge. He slowed to a crawl and made his way over the shoulder and down the slick, muddy grade.
When he hit the damp riverbed he turned right. He nosed it in under the bridge, and they were all alone there. Some waters trickled past them, and the lightning continued to flash. The sky was a shifting kaleidoscope and constant came the thunder. He could hear a sound like hail on the bridge above them.
"We're safe," he said and killed the engine.
"Are the doors locked?"
They do it automatically."
Tanner turned off the outside lights.
"Wish I could buy you a drink, besides coffee."
"Coffee'd be good, just right,"
"Okay, it's on the way," and he cleaned out the pot and filled it and plugged it in.
They sat there and smoked as the storm raged, and he said, "You know, it's a kind of nice feeling being all snug as a rat in a hole while everything goes to hell outside. Listen to that bastard come down! And we couldn't care less."
"I suppose so,*' she said. "What're you going to do after you make it to Boston?"
"Oh, I don't know... . Maybe get a job, scrape up some loot, and maybe open a bike shop or a garage. Either one'd be nice."
"Sounds good. You going to ride much yourself?""You bet. I don't suppose they have any good clubs in town?"
"No. They're all roadrunners."
"Thought so. Maybe I'll organize my own."
He reached out and touched her hand, then squeezed it.
"I can buy you a drink."
"What do you mean?"
She drew a plastic flask from the right side pocket of her Jacket. She uncapped it and passed it to him.
"Here."
He took a mouthful and gulped it, coughed, took a second, then handed it back.
"Great! You're a woman of unsuspected potential and like that. Thanks."
"Don't mention it." She took a drink herself and set the flask on the dash.
"Cigarette?"
"Just a minute."
He lit two. passed her one.
There you are. Corny."
"Thankh I'd like to help you finish this run."
"How come?"
"I got nothing else to do. My crowd's all gone away, and I've got nobody else to run with now. Also, if you make it, you'll be a big man. Like capital letters. Think you might keep me around after that?"
"Mavbe What are you like?"
"Oh, I'm real nice. I'll even rub your shoulders for you when they're sore."
"They're sore now."
"I thought so. Give me a lean."
He bent toward her, and she began to rub his shoulders. Her hands were quick and strong.
"You do that good, girL"
"Thanks."
He straightened up, leaned back. Then he reached out, took the flask and had
another drink. She took a small sip when be passed it to her.
The furieil rode about them. but the bridge above stood the siege. Tanner turned off the lights.
"Let's make it," he said, and he seized her and drew her to him.
She did not resist him, and he found her belt buckleand unfastened it. Then he started on the buttons. After awhile, he reclined her seat.
"Will you keep me?" she asked him.
"Sure."
"I'll help you. I'll do anything you say to get you through."
"Great."
"After all, if Boston goes, then we go, too."
"You bet."
Then they didn't say much more.
There was violence in the skies, and after that came darkness and quiet.
XV
When Tanner awoke, it was morning and the storm had ceased. He repaired himself to the rear of the vehicle and after that assumed the driver's seat once more, Cornelia did not awaken as he gunned the engine to life and started up the weed-infested slope of the hillside.
The sky was light once more, and the road was strewn with rubble. Tanner wove along it, heading toward the pale sun, and after awhile Cornelia stretched.
"Ugh," she said, and Tanner agreed. "My shoulders are better now." he told her.
"Good," and Tanner headed up a hill, slowly as the day dimmed and one huge black line became the Devil's highway down the middle of the sky.
As he drove through a wooded valley, the rain began to fall. The girl had returned from the rear of the vehicle and was preparing breakfast when Tanner saw the tiny dot on the horizon, switched over to his telescope lenses and tried to outrun what he saw.
Cornelia looked up.
There were bikes, bikes and more bikes on their traiL
'Those your people?" Tanner asked.
"No. You took mine yesterday."
"Too bad," said Tanner, and he pushed the accelerator to the floor and hoped for a storm.
They squealed around a curve and climbed another hul. His pursuers drew nearer. He switched back from telescope to normal screening, but even then he could see the size of the crowd that approached."It must be the Kings," she said. "They're the biggest club around."
"Too bad," said Tanner.
"For them or for us?"
"Both."
She smiled.
"I'd like to see how you work this thing."
"It looks like you're going to get a chance. They're gaining on us like mad."
The rain lessened, but the fogs grew heavier. Tanner could see their lights, though, over a quarter mile to his rear, and be did not turn his own on. He estimated a hundred to a hundred fifty pursuers that cold, dark morning, and he asked, "How near are we to Boston?"
"Maybe ninety miles," she told him.
'Too bad they're chasing us instead of coming toward us," he said, as he primed his flames and set an adjustment which brought cross-hairs into focus on his rearview screen.
"What's that?" she asked.
'That's a cross. I'm going to crucify them, lady," and she smiled at this and squeezed his arm.
"Can I help? I hate those bloody mothers.'*
"In a little while," said Tanner. "In a little while, I'm sure," and he reached into the rear seat and fetched out the six hand grenades and hung them on his wide, black belt. He passed the rifle to the girl. "Hang onto this," he said, and stuck the .45 behind his belt.
"Do you know how to use that thing?"
"Yes," she replied immediately.
-Good."
He kept watching the lights that danced on the screen.
"Why the hell doesn't this storm break?" he said, as the lights came closer and be could make out shapes within the fog.
When they were within a hundred feet he fired the first grenade. It arched through the gray air, and five seconds later there was a bright flash to his rear, burning within a thunderclap.
The lights immediately behind him remained, and he touched the fifty-calibers, moving the cross-hairs from side to side. The guns shattered their loud syllables, and he launched another grenade. With the second flash, he began to climb another hill."Did you stop them?"
"For a time, maybe. I still see some lights, but farther back."
After five minutes, they had reached the top, a place where the fogs were cleared and the dark sky was visible above them. Then they started downward once more, and a wall of stone and shale and dirt rose to their right. Tanner considered it as they descended.
When the road leveled and he decided they had reached the bottom, he turned on his brightest lights and looked for a place where the road's shoulders were wide.
To his rear, there were suddenly rows of descending lights.
He found the place where the road was sufficiently wide, and he skidded through a U-turn until he was facing the shaggy cliff, now to his left, and his pursuers were coming dead on.
He elevated his rockets, fired one, elevated them five degrees more, fired two, elevated them another five degrees, fired three. Then he lowered them fifteen and fired another.
There was brightness within the fog, and he heard the stones rattling on the road and felt the vibration as the rockslide began. He swung toward his right as he backed the vehicle and fired two ahead. There was dust, mixed with the fog now, and the vibration continued.
He turned and headed forward once more.
"I hope that'll hold 'em," he said, and he lit two cigarettes and passed one to the girl.
After five minutes they were on higher ground again and the winds came and whipped at the fog, and far to the rear there were still some lights.
As they topped a high rise, his radiation gauge began to register an above-normal reading. He sought in all directions and saw the crater far off ahead. 'That's it," he heard her say. "You've got to leave the road there. Bear to the right and go around that way when you get there."
"I'll do that thing."
He heard gunshots from behind him, for the first time that day, and though he adjusted the cross-hairs he did not fire his own weapons. The distance was still too great.
"You must have cut them in half," she said, staringinto the screen. "More than that. They're a tough bunch, though."
"I gather," and he plowed the field of mists and checked his supply of grenades for the launcher and saw that he was running low.
He swung off the road to his right when he began bumping along over fractured concrete. The radiation level was quite high by then. The crater was slightly more than a thousand yards to his left.
The lights to his rear fanned out, grew brighter. He drew a bead on the brightest and fired. It went out.
"There's another down," he remarked, as they raced across the hard-baked plain.
The rains came more heavily, and he sighted in on another light and fired it. It, too, went out, though he heard the sounds of their weapons about him once again.
He switched to his right-hand guns and saw the crosshairs leap into life on that screen. As three vehicles moved in to flank him from that direction, he opened up and cut them down. There was more firing at his back, and he ignored it as he negotiated the way,
"I count twenty-seven lights," Cornelia said.
Tanner wove his way across a field of boulders. He lit another cigarette.
Five minutes later, they were running on both sides of him. He had held back again for that moment, to conserve ammunition and to be sure of his targets. He fired then, though, at every light within range, and he floored the accelerator and swerved around rocks.
"Five of them are down," she said, but he was listening to the gunfire.
He launched a grenade to the rear, and when he tried to launch a second there^came only a clicking sound from the control. He launched one to either side and then paused for a second.
"If they get close enough, I'll show them some fire," he said, and they continued on around the crater.
He fired only at individual targets then, when he was certain they were within range. He took
two more before he struck the broken roadbed.
"Keep running parallel to it," she told him. "There's a trail here. You can't drive on that stuff till another mile or so."
Shots richocheted from off his armored sides, and hecontinued to return the fire. He raced along an alleyway of twisted trees, like those he had seen near other craters, and the mists hung like pennons about their branches. He heard the rattle of the increasing rains.
When he bit the roadway once again, he regarded the lights to his rear and asked, "How many do you count now?"
"It looks like around twenty. How are we doing?"
"I'm just worried about the tires. They can take a lot, but they can be shot out. The only other thing that bothers me is that a stray shot might clip one of the 'eyes.' Outside of that we're bullet-proof enough. Even if they manage to stop us, they'll have to pry us out."
The hikes drew near once again, and he saw the bright flashes and heard the reports of the riders' guns.
"Hold tight." he said, and be hit the brakes and they skidded on the wet pavement.
The lights grew suddenly bright, and he unleashed his rear flame. As some bikes skirted him, he cut in the side flames and held them that way.
Then he took his foot off the brake and floored the accelerator without waiting to assess the damage he had done.
They sped ahead, and Tanner, heard Cornelia's laughter.
"God! You're taking them. Hell! You're taking the whole damn club!"
"It ain't that much fun," he said. Then, "See any lights?"
She watched for a time, said, "No," then said, "Three," then, "Seven," and finally, "Thirteen."
Tanner said. "Damn."
The radiation level fell and there came crashes amid the roaring overhead. A light fall of gravel descended for perhaps half a minute, along with the rain.
"We're running low," he said.
"On what?"
"Everything: Lucfc, fuel, ammo. Maybe you'd have been better off if I'd left you where I found you."
"No," she said. "I'm with you, the whole line."
"Then you're nuts," he said. "I haven't been hurt yet. When I am. it might be a different tune."
"Maybe," she said. "Wait and hear how I sing."
He reached out and squeezed her thigh."Okay, Corny. You've been okay so far. Hang onto that piece, and we'll see what happens."
He reached for another cigarette, found the pack empty, cursed. He gestured toward a compartment, and she opened it and got him a fresh pack. She tore it open and lit him one.
The Last Defender Of Camelot Page 21