by James Axler
Several times, the companions had to circle around large craters, the bottoms glassy with lumpy plugs of fused earth.
“Careful, those are hot,” Ryan announced, checking the miniature rad counter clipped to his lapel.
“Kind of small for nukes,” Ricky said, craning his neck to steal a glance into the conical depressions.
“Mininukes, probably artillery shells,” Mildred said with a sigh. “Miniature nuclear weapons.”
“Agreed, madam,” Doc said. “The madness of the ancient government is quite unparalleled in human history.”
“Well, not quite that bad,” she replied tolerantly. “But damn near.”
Cresting a low ridge, the companions slowed their horses to a gentle walk. The other side was a dangerously sharp drop to a flat area full of old buildings clustered around a frozen waterfall. The ramshackle structures were clearly from predark times, the streetlights and fire hydrants a dead giveaway. Many of the smaller houses were made of brick, some even boasted aluminum siding. There were satellite dishes on a couple of the tilted roofs, and a few of the windows still had glass in the frames.
In the far distance was an old railroad bridge, a box trestle, extending across the valley. Off to the side was a roundhouse, the rusty remains of a locomotive partially visible inside the crumbling structure.
“Some kind of lumber camp,” Krysty said, pointing to a faded billboard. The lettering was long gone, but the plastic sign was still in excellent condition.
“Might be some good loot still on the shelves,” Ricky said eagerly. “Canned goods, preserves in jars. All kinds of stuff!”
“Never hurts to check,” Ryan said, starting forward at an easy walk. “Just stay razor for muties.”
“Always,” Jak muttered, tenderly massaging his crude bandages. There was no blood showing on his shirt, but Jak was obviously having trouble breathing, and he was drenched with sweat in spite of the chill.
“Lots of food is edible after a century,” Mildred said. “Honey, rice, even coffee, if it was vacuum packed in glass jars.”
“How’d they do that, anyway?” Ricky asked curiously.
“Suck hard, then slap the lid on fast,” J.B. said with a neutral expression.
Furrowing his brow, Ricky chewed that over for a moment, then snorted a laugh.
All conversation stopped as the companions concentrated on traversing the steep incline. The dirt was hard-packed and studded with pieces of asphalt and limestone, just rough enough to afford the horses irregular footing. However, at their passage the slope crumbled, the loose dirt sliding down the slope in an earthy river of tumbling rocks. The palomino carrying Ricky and Jak kept slipping, so the youth hopped off and walked ahead of the animal, kicking any loose debris out of the way.
Eventually reaching level ground, Ricky got back in the saddle, and the companions let the horses catch their breaths before slowly advancing toward the waterfall and surrounding buildings.
“There seems to be a plethora of cars,” Doc said, pointing to the left. “There could be a plethora of tools located in that brick garage.”
“As good a place to start as any,” Krysty said, ruffling the mane of her horse. Pleased, the animal gently nickered in pleasure—then abruptly went silent as its head simply fell off, the neck stump gushing a steaming torrent of red blood.
“What the...laser!” Krysty screamed, going sideways out of the saddle. As the shuddering body of the decapitated animal fell, she hit the ground in a roll and came up running.
As the laser flashed by overhead, the companions wildly kicked their horses into a full gallop. Leaning far over in the saddle, Ryan grabbed Krysty around the waist. Hauling her off the ground, he got her behind him, then lashed his horse with the reins.
“Head for the garage!” he bellowed. “We can make a stand there!”
“Report!” Ryan snapped, kicking both heels into the rump of his stallion.
“I see a dozen sec men on horses and bikes,” Krysty said, both arms wrapped around Ryan’s waist. “No, make that two dozen...more... Hellfire, it’s a fragging army!”
“Guess we really did ace their king!” J.B. yelled, curving around the garage.
“Any sign of the laser?” Mildred asked urgently, frantically glancing around the ruins.
“No!”
“Good!” Ryan snarled, charging behind the billboard. “Because if we can see it—”
“—then it can see us,” she finished. “Yes, I know!”
In a loud woof, the billboard burst into flames and a scintillating energy beam punched through, the rainbow-colored beam going deep into the frozen earth. A moment later a searing heat wave washed over the companions, making their skin prickle.
Unbidden, Ryan recalled an old conversation with the Trader about lasers. The bastard things worked on color absorption, and you could use a blue blanket to give limited protection against a blue laser, green for a green laser, and so on. Unfortunately, this one was a full-spectrum laser, quickly cycling through every color, hence the rainbow shimmer. Even a mirror would shatter after a few seconds from this military-grade weapon. The best protection against this type of weapon was the quick application of shoe leather.
As the companions arched behind the brick building, the laser sliced along the roadway, missing them by less than a yard. The old asphalt cracked and spread open wide, the material bucking and writhing like a living thing.
There came a crackle of assorted longblasters. Bullets and miniballs hammered a storage shed ahead of the companions, shattering every window and knocking down the old splintery door. The laser fired again, the beam stabbing deep into a huge gasoline storage tank.
Veering sharply away, Ryan braced for the blast, but there only came a brief hiss of escaping air.
“Those sec men can’t hit anything!” Ricky said, galloping around the storage tank.
“Hit what aim for,” Jak countered, firing his Magnum. On the slope, a sec man fell, clutching his belly. “Must want alive.”
As her horse jumped over a rusty feeder pipe, Mildred leaned back in the saddle. “Are you serious?” she demanded, rocking back into position.
“Yeah!”
She blanched. “But that would mean—”
“They want us alive?” Doc offered, drawing the LeMat. “Never going to happen!” Turning in the saddle, he squeezed off two rounds.
As he rammed a load down the muzzle of his flintlock, a sec man flew backward from the triphammer impact of the copper-jacketed hollowpoint rounds, his flintlock thundering impotently into the air as he fell away into forever.
Pausing to catch their breaths in the lee of the huge steel storage tank, the companions quickly reloaded their weapons.
“Son of bitches must have followed us,” Mildred growled.
“No way,” Jak stated forcibly. “I clear path good. Nobody follow!”
“Then they must have figured out where we’re going,” Krysty started slowly.
“Could they know about the redoubt?” Ricky asked with a worried expression.
“Doubtful,” Ryan growled.
“Then logically there must be something important in this lumberyard or along this road,” Mildred said with a frown. “Something they expected us to try for. A weapons cache, ruined city, maybe a military base?”
“That would explain the Ranger,” Doc replied doubtfully.
From the other side, there came a long pattering of bullets and miniballs ricocheting off the tank.
“Frag logic, what do now?” Jak panted, mopping the sweat off his forehead with a sleeve.
“We might have a chance if we can make it across that bridge,” J.B. stated, pulling a pipe bomb from his munitions bag. “But once we head in that direction, they’re going to stop trying to capture us alive, and go for the chill.”
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Krysty scowled. “Then we need a diversion.”
A stiletto of sunlight—the laser—stabbed through the storage tank and a rain of molten steel droplets sprinkled down to loudly hiss onto the cold ground.
“And quickly!” Mildred added, using the barrel of the .38 ZKR to flick a bright orange spark off her medical bag. The old patched canvas smoldered from the brief contact, and she spit on the spot to kill any chance of a fire.
“Give me three minutes,” Ryan snarled, jumping to the ground.
“One, then I come get you,” Krysty said, taking the reins of his horse.
Nodding, Ryan looked at the woman and they shared a private moment more intimate than any kiss. Then he turned and sprinted across the buckled street. A hail of incoming rounds peppered the ground behind him, but none of the rounds came close.
Ducking and dodging every yard of the way, Ryan could unfortunately see that Krysty had been correct. There was an army coming down the slope, dozens of sec men on motorcycles, even more on horseback.
Reaching the garage, Ryan assumed a position near the corner and unlimbered the Steyr. The telescopic sight brought the attackers into sharp focus. Situated in the middle of the advancing army of sec men was a big, boxy APC. He recognized the model as a LAV-25, an amphibian class military transport. But this vehicle had a couple of small differences. Perhaps this was a newer model?
Going low, Ryan aimed around the corner and emptied a magazine. On the slope, a sec man cried out and went flying off his motorcycle. He fell under the APC with grisly results, and his abandoned bike slammed into a horse, sending the animal and rider rolling down the slope to crash into several others.
Across the street, the companions broke cover and headed for the box-trestle bridge hell-bent for leather, using the reins to whip the horses onto greater speed, their hooves kicking up great gouts of loose snow.
Reloading, Ryan found his targets and fired repeatedly, sec men and horses tumbling along the slope completely out of control, their arms and legs flailing in an impossible manner with intact bones.
Dashing to the other side of the garage, the one-eyed man cut loose again, placing his shots for maximum chaos. As its front tire blew, a motorcycle flipped over to crash into another, and both gas tanks exploded. Ruthlessly aiming for the knees, Ryan crippled several horses, and their riders went airborne. Then what resembled a refrigerator cycled into view on top of the APC.
Instantly, Ryan ducked behind the garage and started running for the bridge. He had no idea what that big box was—minigun, grenade launcher, laser, microwave beamer, needler or missile pod—but he wanted nothing to do with it.
In spite of his best efforts, Ryan got only a few yards before a wave of heat enveloped him and a shimmering laser beam lanced by overhead. Throwing himself backward, Ryan hit the ground rolling and saw the beam slice the three-story garage in two, both sections bursting into flames as they separated.
Looking through a dirty window, Ryan saw rusty oil drums sitting near a grease pit. Firing from the hip, he put a couple of 7.62 mm rounds through the containers. The first merely fell over with a loud clang, but the second gushed a thick viscuous fluid that sluggishly spread across the floor. As the burning timbers fell into the liquid, a dense greenish cloud quickly filled the room and began flowing out the doors and windows.
Shouldering his longblaster, Ryan impatiently waited until the chemical smoke started expanding across the street, then he turned and sprinted for the bridge. Almost instantly the laser stabbed out again, missing him by a wide margin, then came a prolonged flurry of weapons discharging, the longblasters creating a crackling roar. In spite of the obscuring smoke, several of the shots came uncomfortably close. But Ryan didn’t waste any time on zigzagging. Speed was the best defense now.
Blindingly bright, the laser swept sideways across the ruins, cutting every building in two and starting countless small fires. Unexpectedly, something exploded in the roundhouse, sending out a mushroom cloud of broken machine parts.
Dodging a hard rain of gears and pistons, Ryan managed to reach the bridge and saw the rest of the companions were already on the other side, their horses nervously stomping the ground with their hooves.
“Move it or lose it, old buddy!” J.B. shouted, using a butane lighter to start the fuse on a pipe bomb. As it sputtered into action, he began swinging the bomb around at the end of a rope.
Redoubling his efforts, Ryan charged along the ramshackle structure, every step making the entire bridge shake, dust and rust sprinkling down from the corroded rafters. Muttering curses, the one-eyed man ignored that to concentrate on the wooden ties. They were just far enough apart to trip the unwary, and through the openings he could see white-water rapids very far below. The river was so far away that Ryan could barely hear the rumble, which meant that he’d die from the fall, and only his corpse would smack into the rapids. That sobering realization sent a cold surge of pure adrenaline through the man. Suddenly everything was in perfect focus, wire-sharp, and devoid of color. Move your ass, Cawdor, he urged himself.
Sputtering two-stroke engines loudly revving, a crowd of sec men on motorcycles appeared from the swirling green cloud bank rolling down the damaged street. Instantly the companions cut loose with their weapons, the hail of steel-jacketed lead tearing through the sec men, killing one, and blowing the front tire on a chunky chopper.
But even as the wounded sec men fell off the machines, the rest of them screamed curses and twisted the handlebar controls. The rear wheels on their motorcycles wildly spun, spraying loose gravel and smoke. As the studded tires finally caught, the Granite Empire sec men rocketed forward, whooping like madmen and firing huge .66 flintlock handblasters.
The discharge of fiery smoke hid them for a heartbeat. On the other side of the river chasm, Krysty screamed and dropped her blaster to grab her seemingly undamaged head. As the sec men reappeared, the rest of the companions annihilated the riders with a concentrated volley of subsonic lead.
As a panting Ryan reached the halfway point of the bridge, J.B. let the pipe bomb fly. It sailed over his head and landed with a clatter on an iron rail.
Without warning, the shimmering laser stabbed through the dense green cloud, the ravening power beam narrowly missing the man on the bridge as it disappeared into the snowcapped mountains on the opposite side. Icy boulders violently exploded from the abrupt temperature inversion, and an avalanche began churning down the mountain rapidly building in speed, volume and power.
Feeling the ever-mounting pressure of time, Ryan redoubled his efforts, and was only a few feet from the end of the bridge when the pipe bomb detonated. Desperately throwing himself forward, Ryan felt the concussion hit him hard in the back, and he went flying to painfully land sprawling on the snowy ground.
Scrambling to his feet, Ryan headed straight for his horse. The nervous animal was standing alongside a strangely quiet Krysty. She was deathly pale, and her animated hair was limp, hanging straight down past her shoulders.
“Lover?” Ryan asked, climbing into the saddle.
Giving a weak smile, Krysty shook her head in reply. At the motion, a clump of the filaments fell away.
Ryan grabbed the reins of her confused mare even as he kicked his stallion into a full gallop. A miniball had to have plowed through her hair!
That meant nothing to a normal human, but Krysty was part mutie, and her hair was made of living filaments, fully alive. It had to have felt like having a dozen fingers severed at the same time. The level of pain involved was unimaginable to Ryan, and he marveled that she was still conscious, albeit completely nonresponsive.
High overhead, the polluted orange sky rumbled, warning of an approaching storm.
Visibly flexing, the groaning trestles buckled, rivets popping like machine-gun fire as the steel beams twisted free of their concrete moorings. The rusty metal screeched
as the frame bowed, the wooden railroad ties loudly breaking as entire sections disengaged, pieces snapping off to plummet toward the thundering river.
On the other side of the chasm, a second gang of the Granite sec men frantically braked their motorcycles to a halt at the crumpling end of the street. A bearded sec man covered with tattoos failed to do so, and his sputtering Harley raced right over edge. Screaming obscenities, the man defiantly fired a flintlock blaster at the churning river below, then vanished from sight into the roiling mists.
Turning from the crumbling structure, the companions headed higher into the mountains, following the natural trail of a dried river. In spring it was probably another waterfall, but now it was a perfect avenue of escape for them.
Desperately holding on to the pommel with both hands, Krysty shuddered all over as more dead hair floated away on the cold breeze.
In a deafening groan, the railroad trestles completely broke apart, the main supports shattering from the wildly conflicting forces. Welds snapped louder than grenades, the last of the rivets burst free, and the entire bridge dropped from sight.
“I saved her blaster,” Ricky announced, displaying the hammerless S&W revolver.
“Good lad!” J.B. said, taking the weapon and dropping it into his munitions bag.
Following the riverbed, the companions rode hard and fast into the hills, quickly leaving the burning lumberyard far behind. From within the spreading green cloud, the laser stabbed out several times to sweep along the upper tors and peaks of the mountain range, starting several more small avalanches, but none of them was close to the fleeing companions.
“Once more, luck favors the brave,” Doc said with a scowl. “Cicero would be greatly pleased, eh, my good Doctor?”
“We didn’t exactly escape unharmed,” Mildred said, casting a sideways glance at Krysty.
Sitting perfectly balanced, the woman was expertly moving to the motion of her horse, but her face was blank, devoid of emotion. Even worse, her long red hair still hung motionless down her back, as if the living filaments had been reduced to nothing more than simple protein chains, as inert as fingernails.