by James Axler
“We’re over the mountains!” Ricky whooped in unabashed delight.
“Please inform me when that is of immediate use!” Doc responded with a grimace.
Riding dangerously close to the man, Krysty yanked the belt from her pants and handed it over. Clumsily, Doc took it, and managed to get the leather strap under his bleeding leg. Fumbling to attach the buckle, he barely got it done, then brutally pulled the belt closed as tight as possible. The bleeding slowed, but Doc went pale and sagged in the saddle.
Reaching out to steady the man, Krysty felt her horse respond to the new direction. Realizing what she had just done, Krysty tried to correct in the other direction, but it was too late. Her horses bumped his, and Doc went flying sideways.
Wheeling sharply around to avoid crushing the man, Mildred went off the back end of her own horse, and Jak slammed into her mount, taking a dive forward.
Reining to a stop, Ryan started firing the Steyr into the forest in an effort to slow the wolves and bikes.
“Get back in the bastard saddles,” he called tersely, despite being afraid to speak loud and let the sec men hear.
However, two of the horses were still running, and one of them reared, screaming in pain as red geysers erupted from several holes along its muscular neck.
Scrambling to the nearest horses, the downed companions frantically climbed behind a friend, and they took off again, but noticeably slower with the double weight.
“Not outrace now!” Jak muttered, spitting blood from his mouth. “Need bolthole!”
In the distance Ryan saw the burned ruins of a farmhouse, then off to the side, a weathered grain silo that had the structural integrity of a political argument.
“There!” Ricky shouted, pointing into the trees.
Standing on the crest of a gentle hill was an old ramshackle barn. The sides were splintery gray wood, every touch of paint scrubbed off by the long winters. But the structure looked basically intact, and certainly was a lot better than trying to have a gun battle in the middle of an open field.
With no real choice in the matter, Ryan changed direction away from the slope and charged back up the hill.
The companions wasted precious seconds circling the barn to make sure that it had four good sides, and wasn’t currently in use by anything. Thankfully, it seemed intact and abandoned.
Staying outside, Ryan guarded the entrance while the others dashed inside. Then he joined them and J.B. slammed the door shut with an echoing boom.
Glancing around, Ryan saw that they could have done much worse. There were ventilation spaces in all of the walls, just like any proper barn. But the wood looked solid, and not riddled with worms or termites. There were the rusty outlines of some tools along a wall, and the skeleton of a large, six-legged cow in a stall.
“Ricky, guard the door,” Ryan commanded, pulling out the Steyr. “Everybody else into the hayloft!”
Grabbing their saddlebags of spare ammunition, the rest of the companions began scrambling up an aluminum ladder to the second story.
“Clear!” Krysty reported, a hand holding her side.
“What should I use for cover?” Ricky asked, looking around anxiously.
With an expression of stone, Ryan turned and shot his horse directly in the heart. The animal bucked in surprise at the totally unexpected attack, and limply fell back on the frosty ground.
“Use that,” Ryan stated, going to join the others.
The rest of the companions had already spread out across the hayloft, taking positions behind anything serviceable as cover.
“Clear,” J.B. reported, crouched behind a large coil of rope.
“Same,” Jak stated, standing behind a wooden beam that supported the roof.
“And here they come,” Mildred said calmly, resting her M-16 rapidfire on top of a empty water barrel.
Charging up the hill, the motorcycles immediately spread out at the first sign of the barn. Zigzagging across the snow, they disappeared into the forest.
Then from the other side, the pack of wolves converged on the barn door, pawing and scratching at the old wood, trying to find a way inside.
“Eat this, you cold chillers!” Ricky snarled, firing a fast three times.
Resting on the dead horse, the silenced weapon made barely a sound, but the wood alongside a ventilation space cracked and splintered. Outside, a wolf dropped in the snow surrounded by a rapidly spreading pool of blood.
A moment later there came a flurry of machine-gun fire, and the barn door rattled from the impact of a lot of incoming lead. Hunkering low behind the warm horse, Ricky flinched every time it jerked at the arrival of a bullet.
Scrambling up a ladder to the second floor, Ryan knelt behind a wooden post to check the magazine in the Steyr, then sidled over to the windows. The slats in the louvered shutters were slanted down as protection from the rain, which offered him a perfect view of the area outside the barn.
There came the sound of a revving engine, and a big Harley-Davidson exploded from the bushes charging straight for the barn door. Ryan aimed and fired in a single movement.
With a strangled cry, the fat driver of the bike dropped away, both hands wrapped tightly around the ruin of his throat. Immediately the front wheel veered and the bike flipped over to loudly crash on the snow.
Firing twice more, Ryan put a hole in the fuel tank and another through the dashboard. Sparks flew and the stream of shine caught fire. In only a few seconds the entire machine was engulfed in licking flames, a thick column of black smoke rising high.
Howling and yipping, the wolves moved away, only to try to gain entrance on another side of the ramshackle building, and then another.
“Dark night, they’re well trained,” J.B. commented, triggering the Uzi in short bursts.
A wolf died and another was wounded. But the smell of blood seemed to enrage the beasts, and they came straight back, slamming the old walls with their full weight, as if trying to smash their way inside.
“So are we!” Doc snarled, triggering the assault rifle in short, controlled bursts. The spent brass went flying out the side, to hit the dusty floor and roll away randomly.
“But more of them!” Jak countered, shoving the vented barrel of his blaster through a knothole. “Let’s see if smart!” Leaving the M-16 in place, he went to an open window and started firing his Colt Python.
Catching a sec man dashing between two clumps of bushes, Jak winged the man on the fly. Spinning from the impact of .357 Magnum round, the sec man came up with a boxy Ingram MAC-10 steadily spitting flame.
One of their horses screamed on the ground floor as the wild stream of lead seemed to go everywhere but toward Jak. He responded with a single booming round. With most of his head gone, the sec man outside dropped on top of the weapon, the Ingram still chattering underneath.
“Crappy range,” Jak explained, quickly going behind a post to reload the revolver.
“As if I ever doubted you, young Phoenix,” Doc replied, spraying his assault rifle along the side of the barn. There came the answering yelp of a wounded wolf, then the wall shuddered as something large and heavy crashed into the other side.
“What does that make you, Achilles?” Mildred demanded, stroking the trigger of her weapon rifle. At each shot, a wolf died, then the weapon jammed, a bent brass cartridge sticking out of the ejector port.
“One was the tutor of the other, madam!” Doc replied in a haughty manner, then shuddered as the impromptu tourniquet slipped free and fresh blood pumped from his wound.
“Any second now!” Ryan shouted in warning.
Outside the barn, the saddlebags of the burning motorcycle jumped as a round of spare ammunition ignited from the heat of the flames. Another cartridge cooked off, as did several others in rapid succession, then the saddlebags thunderously blossom
ed as a ripping fusillade of rounds cut loose.
Everybody dived for cover as the barrage of random lead went flying: trees, bushes, barn, snow and even the corpses jerking from the arrival of hot lead. For a few seconds it sounded like Doomsday. Then the pipe bombs in the saddlebags detonated in unison. The motorcycle disintegrated in a thunderclap, ragged chunks of metal flying out in a wild corona. Branches were knocked off trees by a piston, the drive chain slammed through the wall of the barn in a splintery explosion, a wolf was beheaded by a muffler, and a sec man shrieked in pain.
Stumbling from the bushes, Baron Rushmore was holding the tattered stump of his left arm, a torrent of hot blood pumping from the ghastly wound.
Instinctively, Mildred grabbed her medical kit. “I could save him,” she whispered to nobody in particular, the conflict of professional ethics and moral necessity clearly tearing her soul apart.
“Their thanks for doing that would be to cut your throat,” J.B. said, firing the Uzi into the shaking greenery.
Nodding in understanding, Mildred sagged slightly, then straightened and hurried to the window. Several of the Little Eden sec men were rushing to the aid of the fallen baron, a burly woman yanking off a dirty neckerchief to use as a tourniquet.
With surgical precision, as if she was removing a malignant tumor, Mildred drew the ZKR revolver and shot each of them in the stomach. Cursing at the top of their lungs, the wounded sec men grabbed their crimson bellies in a futile effort to staunch the hot river of life leaving through the gaping hole.
Floundering through the deep snow, Rushmore struggled to reach the burning bike, his bloody arm desperately stretching for the flames to cauterize the ragged end. But halfway there, he simply lay in the snow and went still, his last breath visible in the cold air for a few seconds before it faded away.
“Sometimes you scare me, Dr. Wyeth,” Doc said, thumbing fresh .44 rounds into the LeMat.
Reloading her weapon, Mildred said nothing in reply, her thoughts on the matter deeply private.
With a crash of glass, something hit the far side of the barn, and that spot burst into flames.
“Suck on that, outlanders!” a sec man said loudly.
Molotovs! Ryan had been worried they might be smart enough to think of those.
“If anybody has a clever idea, now is the bastard time to start talking!” he snarled, triggering the Steyr Scout at any shadows moving outside the barn. A wolf yelped in pain, then a sec man cursed, and another fire erupted.
“Give me sec,” Jak said unexpectedly, holstering his blaster.
Rushing to a window, he checked outside. There were bodies and debris everywhere, but directly behind the barn was a smooth vista of pristine snow, aside from a few footprints and tire tracks. The ground sharply angled away in a steep incline, and there was nothing to use as cover for a mile, just flat, smooth snow. It would be suicide for them to try to get away on that side. The sec men would bust a gut laughing at how easy it would be killing the companions as they waddled through the deep snow.
“If you’re thinking about what I think you are...” Krysty warned hesitantly, firing the assault rifle. The 5.56 mm hardball rounds punched clean through the old planks, and she heard the dull thud of a body falling to the ground.
“Got better idea, tell now,” Jak said, grabbing the plywood gate from a stable and ripping it free.
Laying the smooth side on the ground, he added two gates more on top, then started looking around the barn. A sharp whistle caught his attention, and Ryan tossed over a coil of rope. Making the catch, Jak began lashing the three sheets together.
“Are you insane?” J.B. demanded, firing the S&W shotgun. The bushes rattled and a sec man cried out in pain, but there was no high-pitched scream of a confirmed kill.
“Never expect,” Jak muttered, vigorously rubbing a candle across the plywood.
“You got that nuking right!”
“Madness is often the best defense,” Doc said, clambering down from the hayloft to help with the work.
Together, the two men quickly coated the top sheet of wood with a thick layer of candle wax, then Doc liberally used an entire can of precious gun oil.
Flipping the makeshift sled over, they started piling on the saddlebags. The chill was starting to leave the air inside the barn, and the horses were becoming frightened by the growing cloud of smoke. It took both men to control the animals and get the saddlebags without an injury.
While they tied the bags into place, the other companions maintained a strong defense. But in spite of that, two more Molotovs crashed onto the barn, the fire quickly spreading across the old wood.
“Wish we had time for rails,” Jak muttered, looping the straps of the saddlebags around the twisted remains of a broken hinge.
“And I wish we had a fully loaded twentieth-century Apache gunship,” Doc retorted, doing the same thing.
Every side of the barn was ablaze now, the air thick with smoke, and the rest of the companions came down from the hayloft to help with the work.
“We’ll only get one chance at this,” Krysty said, driving a knife into the top sheet of plywood. It went only in halfway, so she used the plastic stock of the assault rifle to hammer it in to the hilt.
“All need,” Jak said, bending to push the sled. Amazingly, it moved rather smoothly across the frozen dirt, then promptly caught on a rock.
Cutting loose with their blasters, Doc and Mildred fired long bursts of lead outside, spent brass flying in high arches, while the others went on their hands and knees to quickly smooth a path toward the rear wall.
“Any grens?” Ryan asked, yanking free some of the rusty remains of a cowbell and tossing it aside.
“One,” J.B. stated. “You?”
“Same.”
“Good enough.”
Taking positions behind the pile of saddlebags, Ryan and J.B. primed the grens, then gently tossed them across the barn. The spheres landed in the dirt directly at the base of the burning rear wall.
“Time to die, outlanders!” a sec man called from somewhere.
A few seconds later a powerful double explosion rattled the entire barn, splintery planks crashing and snapping. Even before the smoke cleared, the companions looked up and the rear wall was gone, broken planks still flying through the air.
Putting their backs to the task, they shoved the crude sled across the floor and out of the barn onto the smooth snow. As it started to build speed, they dived on board. Grabbing on to the looped ropes, they braced for the sled to come apart, or stop moving, or start spinning helplessly around. However, it kept moving, slowly increasing in speed until the barn was a hundred feet away, then two hundred....
“Gaia, it works!” Krysty shouted, both hands tight on a knotted lashing.
Behind them, the horses galloped out of the swirling cloud of smoke, heading in different directions. In ruthless efficiency, the Little Eden sec men gunned down the animals, then started bitterly cursing that there was nobody riding them.
“Sayonara, suckers!” Mildred shouted, making a rude gesture.
The replies from the sec men were lost in the distance, but they seemed to be holding their sides and laughing.
“Why would they do that?” J.B. asked with a scowl.
“Look straight ahead!” Krysty shouted over the rush of the snow.
Craning his neck, J.B. peeked over a saddlebag to see the hill angle sharply downward. If there was an end, it was lost in the distance.
“I think this is a ski trail!” Mildred shouted.
“Is that good?” Ricky asked hopefully.
“No!”
Steadily, their speed accelerated until the trees alongside were only a blur of colors. Loose snow billowed high behind them, forming a wintry contrail that blocked any further view of pursuit.
�
��If we hit anything at this speed, we’re shit in a can!” J.B. shouted, holding on to the rope with both hands.
Experimentally, Ryan tried lowering his combat boot into the snow behind them to act as a tiller, and possibility regain some small measure of control. As he made contact, the sudden drag almost jerked him free, and Ryan quickly raised the boot.
Just then, the sled hit a bump and all of the companions were tossed into the air. Still clutching the ropes, they came back down hard, the old plywood gate loudly creaking from their combined weight.
“This bloody contraption is falling apart!” Doc yelled, grabbing on to the rattling plank, and trying to hold it in place.
“We may have to jump off!” Krysty yelled, her hair sparkling with an effusion of snowflakes.
“Agreed!”
“Toss supplies first!”
“Cliff!”
Everybody tried to see, and a split second later the sled was airborne. The companions cursed as each of them got the stomach-tingling sensation of uncontrolled flight, then the sled started to angle downward
“Lake below!” Jak shouted in relief.
“Frozen?”
“No!”
“Relax your muscles!” Mildred yelled over the rushing wind. “We’ll break fewer bones!”
“Fewer?” Ricky repeated at the top of his lungs.
“Ricardo, follow the bubbles!” Doc interrupted as the shimmering expanse of blue began to expand underneath them. “When you are under water, do not trust your sense of direction! Follow the bubbles!”
Confused for a moment, the youth then grimly nodded in comprehension.
“Ready...and...jump!” Ryan shouted, releasing the rope. As he did, the wind yanked him away, and chaos filled the universe for an unknown length of time. Then Ryan slammed into icy-cold water.
Chapter Thirteen
Ryan came awake gasping for breath, then a surge of adrenaline flooded his body and he sat up clawing for the SIG-Sauer. The blaster wasn’t on his hip, and he started to curse, when he spotted it lying on a clean cloth alongside his pile of straw.