"Thanks."
"Why're they staying out of range?"
"Maybe they're just going to pace us. I don't know.**
Then the fogs began to lift. By the time Tanner had finished his cigarette, the visibility had improved greatly. He could make out the dark forms crouched atop their bikes, following, following, nothing more.
"If they just want to keep us company, then I don't care," he said. "Let them."
But there came more gunfire after a time, and he heard a tire go. He slowed, but continued. He took careful aim and strafed them. Several fell.
More gunshots sounded from behind. Another tire blew, and he hit the brakes and skidded, turning about as he slowed. When he faced them, he shot his anchors, to hold him in place, and he discharged his rockets, one after another, at a level parallel to the road. He opened up with his guns and sprayed them as they veered off and approached him from the sides. Then he opened fire to the left. Then the right He emptied the right-hand guns, then switched back to the left. He launched the remaining grenades.
The gunfire died down, except for five sources—three to his left and two to his right—coming from somewhere within the trees that lined the road now. Broken bikes and bodies lay behind him, some still smouldering. The pavement was potted and cracked in many places.
He turned the car and proceeded ahead on six wheels.
"We're out of ammo. Corny," he told her.
"Well, we took an awful lot of them...."
••Yeah."
As he drove on, he saw five bikes move onto the road. They stayed a good distance behind him, but they stayed.
He tried the radio, but there was no response. He bit the brakes and stopped, and the bikes stopped, too, staying well to the rear."Well, at least they're scared of us. They think we still have teeth."
"We do," she said.
"Yeah, but not the ones they're thinking about."
"Better yet."
"Glad I met you," said Tanner. "I can use an optimist There must be a pony, huh?"
She nodded; he put it into gear and started forward abruptly.
The motorcycles moved ahead also, and they maintained a safe distance. Tanner watched them in the screens and cursed them as they followed.
After awhile they drew nearer again. Tanner roared on for half an hour, and the remaining five edged closer and closer.
When they drew near enough, they began to fire, rifles resting on their handlebars.
Tanner heard several low ricochets, and then another tire went out.
He stopped once more, and the bikes did, too, remaining just out of range of his flames. He cursed and ground ahead again. The car wobbled as he drove, listing to the left. A wrecked pickup truck stood smashed against a tree to his right, its hunched driver a skeleton, its windows smashed and tires missing. Half a sun now stood in the heavens, reaching after nine o'clock; fog-ghosts drifted before them, and the dark band in the sky undulated and more rain fell from it, mixed with dust and small stones and bits of metal. Tanner said, "Good" as the pinging sounds began, and, "Hope it gets a lot worse" and his wish came true as the ground began to shake and the blue light began in the north. There came a booming within the roar, and there were several answering crashes as heaps of rubble appeared to his right. "Hope the next one falls right on our buddies back there," he said.
He saw an orange glow ahead and to his right. It had been there for several minutes, but he had not become conscious of it until just then.
"Volcano," she said when he indicated it. "It means we've got another sixty-five, seventy miles to go."
He could not tell whether any more shooting was occurring. The sounds coming from overhead and around him were sufficient to mask any gunfire, and the fallof gravel upon the car covered any ricocheting rounds. The five headlights to his rear maintained their pace.
"Why don't they give up?" he said. "They're taking a pretty bad beating."
"They're used to it," she replied, "and they're riding for blood, which makes a difference."
Tanner fetched the .357 Magnum from the door clip and passed it to her. "Hang onto this, too," he said, and he found a box of ammo in the second compartment and, "Put these in your pocket," he added. He stuffed ammo for the .45 into his own jacket. He adjusted the hand grenades upon his belt.
Then the five headlights behind him suddenly became four, and the others slowed, grew smaller. "Accident, I hope," he remarked.
They sighted the mountain, a jag-topped cone bleeding fires upon the sky. They left the road and swung far to the left, upon a well marked trail. It took twenty minutes to pass the mountain, and by then he sighted their pursuers once again—four lights to the rear, gaining slowly.
He came upon the road once more and hurried ahead across the shaking ground. The yellow lights moved through the heavens; and heavy, shapeless objects, some several feet across, crashed to the earth about them. The car was buffeted by winds, listed as they moved, would not proceed above forty miles an hour. The radio contained only static.
Tanner rounded a sharp curve, hit the brake, turned off his lights, pulled the pin from a hand grenade and' waited with his hand upon the door.
When the lights appeared in the screen, he flung the door wide, leaped down and hurled the grenade through the abrasive rain.
He was into the cab and moving again before he heard the explosion, before the flash occurred upon his screen.
The girl laughed almost hysterically as the car moved ahead.
"You got 'em, Hell. You got *eml" she cried.
Tanner took a drink from her flask, and she finished its final brown mouthful.
The road grew cracked, pitted, slippery. They toppeda high rise and headed downhill. The fog thickened as they descended.
Lights appeared before him, and he readied the name. There were no hostilities, however, as he passed a truck headed in the other direction. Within the next half hour he passed two more.
There came more lightning, and fist-sized rocks began to fall. Tanner left the road and sought shelter within a grove of high trees. The sky grew competely black, losing even its blue aurora.
They waited for three hours, but the storm did not let up. One by one, the four view-screens went dead and the fifth only showed the blackness beneath the car. Tanner's last sight in the rearview screen was of a huge splintered tree with a broken, swaying branch that was about ready to fall off. There were several terrific crashes upon the hood and the car shook with each. The roof above their heads was deeply dented in three places. The lights grew dim, then bright again. The radio would not produce even static anymore.
"I think we've had it," he said.
"Yeah."
"How far are we?"
"Maybe fifty miles away."
"There's still a chance, if we live through this."
"What chance?"
"I've got two bikes in the rear."
They reclined their seats and smoked and waited, and after awhile the lights went out.
The storm continued all that day and into the night. They slept within the broken body of the car, and it sheltered them. When the storm ceased. Tanner opened the door and looked outside, closed it again.
"We'll wait till morning," he said, and she held his Hellprinted hand, and they slept.
XVI In the morning, Tanner walked back through the mud and the fallen branches, the rocks and the dead fish, and he opened the rear compartment and unbolted the bikes. He fueled them and checked them out and wheeled them down the ramp.
He crawled into the back of the cab then and removedthe rear seat. Beneath it, in the storage compartment, was the large aluminum chest that was his cargo. It was bolted shut. He lifted it, carried it out to his bike.
"That the stuff?" she asked.
He nodded and placed it on the ground.
"I don't know how the stuff is stored, if it's refrigerated in there or what," he said, "but it ain't too heavy that I might not be able to get it on the back of my bike. There's straps in the far
right compartment. Go get 'em and give me a hand—and get me my pardon out of the middle compartment. It's in a big cardboard envelope."
She returned with these things and helped him secure the container on the rear of his bike.
He wrapped extra straps around his left biceps, and they wheeled the machines to the road.
"We'll have to take it kind of slow," he said, and he slung the rifle over his right shoulder, drew on his gloves and kicked his bike to life.
She did the same with hers, and they moved forward, side by side along the highway.
After they had been riding for perhaps an hour, two cars passed them, heading west. In the rear seats of both there were children, who pressed their faces to the glass and watched them as they went by. The driver of the second car was in his shirtsleeves and wore a black shoulder holster.
The sky was pink, and there were three black lines that looked as if they could be worth worrying about. The sun was a rose-tinted silvery thing, and pale, but Tanner still had to raise his goggles against it. , The pack was riding securely, and Tanner leaned into the dawn and thought about Boston. There was a light mist on the foot of every hill, and the air was cool and moist. Another car passed them. The road surface began to improve.
It was around noontime when he heard the first shot above the thunder of their engines. At first he thought it was a backfire, but it came again, and Corny cried out and swerved off the road and struck a boulder.
Tanner cut to the left, braking, as two more shots rang about him, and he leaned his bike against a tree and threw himself flat. A shot struck near his head and he could tell the direction from which it had come. Hecrawled into a ditch and drew off his right glove. He could see his girl lying where she had fallen, and there was blood on her breast. She did not move.
He raised the 30.06 and fired.
The shot was returned, and he moved to his left.
It had come from a hill about two hundred feet away, and he thought he saw the rifle's barret.
He aimed at it and fired again.
The shot was returned, and he wormed his way further left. He crawled perhaps fifteen feet until he reached a pile of rubble he could crouch behind. Then he pulled the pin on a grenade, stood and hurled it.
He threw himself flat a? another shot rang out, and he took another grenade into his hand.
There was a roar and a rumble and a mighty flash, and the junk fell about him as he leaped to his feet and threw the second one, taking better aim this time.
After the second explosion, he ran forward with his rifle in his hands, but it wasn't necessary.
He only found a few small pieces of the man, and none at all of his rifle.
He returned to Cornelia.
She wasn't breathing, and her heart had stopped beating, and he knew what that meant.
He carried her back to the ditch in which he had lam and he made it deeper by digging, using his handsHe laid her down in it and he covered her with the dirt. Then he wheeled her machine over, set the kickstand, and stood it upon the grave. With his dagger, he scratched upon the fender: Her name was Cornelia and I don't know how old she was or where she came from or what her last name was but she was Hell Tanner's girl and I love her. Then he went back to his own machine, started it and drove ahead. Boston was maybe thirty miles away.
XVII He drove along, and after a time he heard the sound of another bike. A Harley cut onto the road from the dirt path to his left, and he couldn't try running away from it because he couldn't speed with the load he bore. So he allowed himself to be paced.
After awhile, the rider of the other bike—a tall, thin man with a flaming beard—drew up alongside him, to theleft. He smiled and raised his right hand and let it fall and then gestured with his head.
Tanner braked and came to a halt. Redbeard was right beside him when he did. He said, "Where you going, man?"
"Boston."
"What you got in the box?"
"Like, drugs."
"What kind?" and the man's eyebrows arched and the smile came again onto his lips.
"For the plague they got going there."
"Oh. I thought you meant the other kind."
"Sorry."
The man held a pistol in his right hand and he said, "Get off your bike."
Tanner did this, and the man raised his left hand and another man came forward from the brush at the side of the road. "Wheel this guy's bike about two hundred yards up the highway," he said, "and park it in the middle. Then take your place."
"What's the bit?" Tanner asked.
The man ignored the question. "Who are you?" he asked.
"Hell's the name," he replied. "Hell Tanner."
"Go to hell."
Tanner shrugged.
"You ain't Hell Tanner."
Tanner drew off his right glove and extended his fist.
"There's my name."
"I don't believe it," said the roan, after he had studied the tattoo.
"Have it your way, citizen."
"Shut up!" and he raised his left hand once more, now that the other man had parked the machine on the road and returned to a place somewhere within the trees to the right.
In response to his gesture, there was movement within the brush.
Bikes were pushed forward by their riders, and they lined the road, twenty or thirty on either side.
"There you are," said the man. "My name's Big Brother."
"Glad to meet you.""You know what you're going to do, mister?"
"I can really just about guess."
"You're going to walk up to your bike and claim it."
Tanner smiled.
"How hard's that going to be?"
"No trouble at all. Just start walking. Give me your rifle first, though."
Big Brother raised his hand again, and one by one the engines came to life.
"Okay," he said. "Now."
"You think I'm crazy, man?"
"No. Start walking. Your rifle.**
Tanner unslung it and he continued the arc. He caught Big Brother beneath his red beard, and he felt the bullet go into him. Then he dropped the weapon and hauled forth a grenade, pulled the pin and tossed it amid the left side of the gauntlet. Before it exploded, he'd pulled the pin on another and thrown it to his right. By then, though, vehicles were moving forward, heading toward him.
He fell upon the rifle and shouldered it in a prone firing position. As he did this, the first explosion occurred. He was firing before the second one went off.
He dropped three of them, then got to his feet and scrambled, firing from the hip.
He made it behind Big Brother's fallen bike and fired from there. Big Brother was still fallen, too. When the rifle was empty, he didn't have time to reload. He fired the .45 four times before a tire chain brought him down.
He awoke to the roaring of the engines. They were circling him. When he got to his feet, a handlebar knocked him down again.
Two bikes were moving about him, and there were many dead people upon the road, He struggled to rise again, was knocked off his feet.
Big Brother rode one of the bikes, and a guy he hadn't seen rode the other.
He crawled to the right, and there was pain in his -fingertips as the tires passed over them.
But he saw a rock and waited till a driver was near. Then he stood again and threw himself upon the man as he passed, the rock he had seized rising and falling, once, in his right hand. He was carried along as this oc-curred, and as he fell he felt the second bike strike him.
There were terrible pains in his side, and his body felt broken, but he reached out even as this occurred and caught hold of a strut on the side of the bike and was dragged along by it.
Before he had been dragged ten feet. he had drawn his SS dagger from his boot. He struck upward and felt a thin metal wall give way. Then his hands came loose, and he fell and he smelled the gasoline. His hand dove into his jacket pocket and came out with the Zippo.
He had struck the tank on the side of
Big Brother's bike, and it jetted forth its contents on the road. Twenty feet ahead. Big Brother was turning.
Tanner held the lighter, the lighter with the raised skull of enamel, wings on either side of it. His thumb spun the wheel and the sparks leaped forth, then the flame. He tossed it into the stream of petrol that lay before him, and -the flames raced away, tracing a blaeing trail upon the concrete.
Big Brother had turned and was bearing down upon him when he saw what had happened. His eyes widened, and his red-framed smile went away.
He tried to leap off his bike, but it was too late.
The exploding gas tank caught him, and he went down with a piece of metal m his head and other pieces elsewhere.
Flames splashed over Tanner, and he beat at them feebly with his hands.
He raised his head above the blazing carnage and let it fall again. He was bloody and weak and so very tired. He saw his own machine, standing still undamaged on the road ahead.
He began crawling toward it.
When he reached it, he threw himself across the saddle and lay there for perhaps ten minutes. He vomited twice, and his pains became a steady pulsing.
After perhaps an hour, he mounted the bike and brought it to life.
He rode for half a mile and then dizziness and the fatigue hit him.
He pulled off to the side of the road and concealed his bike as best he could. Then he lay down upon the bare earth and slept.
XVIII When he awoke, he felt dried blood upon his side. His left hand ached and was swollen. All four fingers felt stiff, and it hurt to try to bend them. His head throbbed and there was a taste of gasoline within his mouth. For a long while, he was too sore to move. His beard bad been singed, and his right eye was swollen almost shut.
"Corny ..." he said, then, "Damn!"
Everything came back, like the contents of a powerful dream suddenly spilled into his consciousness.
He began to shiver, and there were mists all around him. It was very dark, and his legs were cold; the dampness had soaked completely through his denims.
In the distance, he heard a vehicle pass. It sounded like a car.
He managed to roll over, and he rested his head on his forearm. It seemed to be night, but it could be a black day.
The Last Defender Of Camelot Page 22