by James Axler
Parked just outside the ville was a massive war wag, the armored chassis bristling with rapid-fires. Steel shutters covered the windows and tires, and the spiked roof was frothy with coils of concertina wire, the razor-sharp lengths glistening in the afternoon sun. But much more importantly a tall pole jutted from the top of the war machine, the flag fluttering from the top bearing the very simple design of a circle with a diagonal line cutting through it, the symbol of a non-combatant, a trader.
There were some folding tables and chairs alongside the war wag, and the armed occupants of the formidable transport were doing business with the ragged locals, buying and selling whatever was available: food, black powder, old boots, new leather and the like. Plus, a lot of small items carved out of the local pinewood: rifle stocks, knife handles, belt buckles, hair combs, bowls, spoons, drinking mugs and anything else the locals thought would bring a fair price from travelers coming to drink from the effervescent waters of Tickle Belly Lake.
“And there he is, right on schedule,” Petrov said, smiling in frank relief, his arms resting on the handlebars.
“Good thing, too,” Charlie stated. “Baron Ronson would never sell us shine again, not after the last time.”
“There was nothing wrong with those tampons!” Rose snapped defiantly. “They’re perfect for deep bullet wounds.”
“True, but I hear she was just a little pissed that we had used most of them already,” Thal said with a hard grin.
Rose snorted. “Well, we had to test the merchandise, didn’t we?”
“Not all of it, no.”
“Hey, buy your own underwear, as the ancients used to say.”
“The phrase was ‘buyer beware,’ and that’s why we’re only dealing with the trader and not the ville,” Petrov stated, opening his full canteen to empty it onto a bush. Screwing the cap back on, he slung it over a shoulder, then kicked the big twin-V8 engine alive. “Now, cut the talk and start smiling. Remember, we’re just here for fuel, nothing else matters.”
Riding down the bumpy hill, the gang was thankful when they finally reached smooth grassland. Rolling along a dirt ground that meandered through the titanic pine trees, Petrov and the others slowed their speed when the trader’s campsite came into view. Instantly, the rapid-fires sticking out of the armored hull shifted directions to track the advance of the four riders. Playing it smooth, the gang rode to the edge of the lake and filled their canteens again with the fizzy water, being sure to drink some of the stuff on the spot just like every other outlander who tramped through the mountain valley.
“Damn bubbles go right up your nose,” Thal growled, trying not to smile at the weird sensation.
“Hence the goofy-ass name of the lake.” Rose laughed, pouring some into a palm to rub the back of her neck. Her hand jerked at the touch of the hidden razor blades in the feathers along the collar, and the woman did her best not to curse out loud. There were a dozen tiny cuts on her fingers from them already. Someday, she would love to meet up with that albino mutie again and rub the razors across his groin in thanks for his secret gift.
Driving slowly back to the war wag, Petrov and the others parked their bikes facing the machine to show they weren’t getting ready for a fast escape. The ancient recipe for rabbit stew came unbidden to his mind: step one—catch a rabbit.
Climbing off the motorcycles, the gang tried to ignore the .50-caliber machine guns following them every step of the way. At first, Petrov began to bridle under the unwanted attention, then the man reasoned it was only prudent. The gang was very heavily armed, and nobody sane, not even a trader, allowed this much artillery to get within shooting range without taking some basic precautions. Attempting to be casual, Petrov glanced upward and saw that the missile pod on the roof was now pointing directly at the bikes. Fair enough. That’s exactly what he would have done in their place.
Feeling awkward, the gang joined the queue of ville people and sec men shuffling toward the war wag. At the head of the line were several large tables piled high with assorted items, wood boxes, wicker baskets, canvas bags and lots of glass bottles. Several people were sitting behind the tables, counting items, making a list or working scales. Only one person sat in front of the table, a burly-looking woman with blond hair and a long scar across one cheek. Her clothes were clean, her boots shining with polish, and she carried a small autoblaster in a shoulder holster, plus a massive handblaster on her hip and a bandolier of shells across her chest. Petrov knew that the display of blasters wasn’t to frighten the ville people, but to let them know she was a successful trader. Petrov approved. That was smart. Nobody ever wanted to do biz with a pauper.
Standing behind the trader were the real muscle, a couple of crewmen, each cradling a sleek rapid-fire that gleamed with fresh oil, the wooden stocks carefully exposed to show the neat rows of notches in the wood.
“Mutie shit,” Rose whispered out of the corner of her mouth.
“Subtlety,” Thal corrected softly.
“So, we have a deal, then?” the trader asked, lighting a cig with one hand, the other resting strategically on her gun belt.
Eagerly, the woman nodded and headed over to a wicker basket full of fresh bread, the hot loaves still steaming slightly. A crewman took the basket, and a woman passed over a pair of U.S. Army combat boots.
As the grinning woman walked away, marveling over her new possessions, the trader waved the next person in line closer.
“Morning, son. The name is Rissa, you buying or selling?” she asked around the cig. The words came out in a single breath, as if she said them a thousand times a day.
“I’m Jimmy, and I’m selling,” the boy replied, tugging on the reins of an old mule. The animal was almost a swayback from the load of bulging cloth sacks piled on its back.
“What have you got there?” Rissa asked, studying the boy more than the trade goods. The kid was wearing a buckskin shirt and fur pants, clearly homemade and properly tanned. Still in his teens, the boy’s face was gaunt from hard work, not starvation. If he was selling food, it was good stuff, and not some mutie plant that’d ace you after two bites.
“Mountain taters,” Jimmy stated defiantly, almost as if it was a challenge. “Hand dug, no rotters or muties. One hundred and nineteen.”
“And you hauled ’em all the way down here? Well done, boy,” Rissa said, glancing at the mountains on the horizon. Actually, she wasn’t very impressed. The trip couldn’t have taken more than two days, but part of her job was to establish good relations with the people in this valley. Profit wasn’t always the goal of a trade. A friendly ville where a trader could keep her crew warm and safe during a hard winter was often worth more than a ton of brass.
“Whatcha gimme?” Jimmy asked in an explosion of breath.
“You sure it’s a hundred and nineteen taters?”
“I kin count,” the boy snarled. “And do sums.”
“Can you now?” Rissa said, exhaling a long stream of smoke. “Then tell me, how much is four times six?”
“Twenty four,” the boy replied instantly.
The guards nodded their heads at the correct answer, and the other people in the line murmured among themselves, clearly impressed.
Rose looked at Charlie and the man shrugged.
“Fair enough.” Rissa smiled. “Okay, a hundred and nineteen good taters will get you…a used pair of boots, a plastic poncho that’ll hold off the acid rain, a compass and two forks, knives and spoons.”
“Make it the boots, a steel knife, the blaster, the poncho and four forks, knives and spoons.”
“Boots, knife, blaster, no poncho and three forks, knives and spoons.”
“I want that poncho.”
“Well, now,” Rissa said, taking the cig out of her mouth to tap off the ash. “You drive a hard bargain, James. But okay. Deal?”
“Deal!”
“Pay the man,” the trader directed the crew behind the table.
As the goods were exchanged, Rissa waited politely as a young
woman shuffled closer, holding a bundle in her arms. The trader started to repeat her usual spiel when the bundle started crying.
“Please, my baby is sick,” the young woman said. “I went to the healer in the ville, and he tried leeches, but—”
“Leeches?” Rissa roared, looking furiously at the nearby ville. Turning, she bellowed at the war wag, “Daniel, customer!”
Immediately, there came the sound of running, and a concealed hatch in the chassis slammed open. “What’s the problem?” a short man demanded, looking around quickly. He was wearing a long vest covered with tiny pockets that bulged with packets, bottles, twine, knives and other tools of his trade. His shirt was open at the collar, exposing a tattoo on his chest of a red cross and two snakes, the symbols of a healer.
“It’s my baby,” the woman began again.
Climbing down, the man strode over quickly. “Let me see,” Daniel interrupted, folding back the blanket to inspect the crying infant. “Hmm, yes, just a nasty ear infection. Nothing to worry about. I have some meds that’ll fix her in a day. Come on inside.”
“Yes, of course, the payment first,” the mother whispered, loosening the strings holding her tattered dress shut.
“Whoa! None of that now,” the trader growled, holding up a palm. “My folks don’t charge for healing a child.”
That flustered the young mother completely. “But…I mean…that’s how the ville healer…”
“Does he now?” Rissa muttered, her eyes narrowing. “Well, I’ll go have a little chat with him about that later.” During the night, in the dark, when there are no sec men around to stop me before he loses some teeth, the trader thought.
Turning toward the mother, her face softened. “Had a baby myself once. Lost her to the black cough. Now, get on inside.”
“No,” the young woman repeated, hugging the child closer. “I can’t. Not for nothing. It’s not right.”
“Fine.” Rissa sighed. “If you can cook, Shirley will be glad of some help in the kitchen. If not, there are always lots of pots and pans to scrub. Deal?”
“Yes, Trader!” she cried in relief, and followed Daniel through the doorway and down a metal corridor.
“Next!” Rissa said, watching them disappear inside the vehicle.
“We need juice for our bikes,” Petrov said as a greeting.
Turning slowly, Rissa studied the man. “Juice, eh?” she repeated slowly. “We have some to spare. What do you have for trade?”
Reaching into the munitions bag, Petrov extracted a cloth bundle and laid it on the table. Folding back the cloth, Rissa gasped at the sight of a leather-bound volume, Collier Encyclopedia, volume RE-STO.
“It includes detailed pictures of how to make a steam engine,” Petrov said, flipping open the book to that page.
Astonished, Rissa almost dropped the cig as she stared at the full-color illustration. Then Petrov slammed the volume shut again. “A peek is all you get for free,” he said.
“Well, I place a high price on books,” Rissa said honestly. “You got any more?”
“Nope,” Petrov lied. “This is it.” The other was going to buy them into the next ville, where they would steal the next load of juice. After that, they would reach the Darks and some real forests. If Petrov never again found sand in his food or clothing, he would die a happy man.
“Pity,” Rissa muttered, trying to hide her disappointment. Her gut instincts told her not to trust this man, but…a book! An entire book! That was worth risking a little gas for any fragging day. “Okay, that will fill all of your tanks. Real gas, too, not coal-oil mixed with shine. You savvy mileage?”
“Sure.”
“Good. Well, my gas will double what any shine mix gives you in those hogs.”
“Not enough,” Petrov said, crossing his arms. “Fill the tanks, and twenty extra gallons.”
“For one book? No deal.”
“Ten gallons.”
“No.”
“All right, I have a second book,” Petrov growled, placing the other volume on the table.
“Thought you might,” Rissa said drily, lifting the book for a brief inspection.
Holy crap, it was a dictionary! Rissa thought. She had only heard about those before!
“Hmm, this one isn’t from an encyclopedia,” Rissa said, trying to act casual. “And no pictures, huh? Well, a book is a book. Okay, full tanks, fifty extra gallons and two quarts of oil.”
“Three quarts. Deal?”
“Deal,” Rissa said with a nod. “Pay the man.”
The exchange was made, and a couple of crewmen came out lugging ten-gallon canisters that sloshed with every step.
While the fuel tanks of the bike were filled, Rissa had the two books escorted into the war wag under armed guard and securely locked in her private safe. A scribe could start copying the books tomorrow, but tonight she would read them herself as a special treat.
“I wonder where they got them, Chief,” a crewman asked softly, watching the outlanders check over their bikes. “Then again, where did they get any of that stuff? Bikes, a rad counter, rapid-fires…” He frowned. “Think they jacked a trader?”
“Maybe,” Rissa said, tugging thoughtfully on an ear. “I haven’t heard of anybody we know who recently went missing, but these things do happen.”
The crewman grunted in agreement, then asked, “What are those things the guy with the beard is wearing? I’ve never seen anything like that before.”
“They’re called glasses,” Rissa said, and the word unexpectedly triggered a flood of memories from a while back when she had been working for another trader called Roberto. A bunch of outlanders had saved his life, and one of them had glasses very similar to what this man was wearing.
Suddenly, the woman felt galvanized, as if hit by lightning. Shitfire, these folks had the exact same style bolt-action longblaster, SIG handblaster, Uzi rapid-fire, hammerless wheelgun, fedora, camouflage jacket with feathers and bits of metal, munitions bag, bearskin coat…
That raised the ugly question of how they got all of these things. One or two items might have been used to pay off a debt, but not fragging everything! Especially the glasses. If Rissa remembered correctly, the gunsmith who traveled with Ryan had been damn near blind without those. Which means these outlanders either aced Ryan and his people, or else found them chilled and looted the bodies. Ryan meant nothing to Rissa, but he did to Roberto, and that was good enough.
Dismissing the rest of the lineup with a wave, Rissa waited until the disappointed ville people were heading back to the front gate of the ville, before calling over one of the guards.
“Triple red, close the door,” Rissa said, scratching her belly to move a hand closer to her blaster.
The crewman blinked in confusion for only a moment, then nodded and strolled away to climb into the war wag, pull the heavy door shut and lock it securely.
At the loud clang, the Pig Iron Gang looked up, but never stopped their work.
“Damn, you’re right,” Rose said, checking the oil in her bike. “That bitch is watching us like a stingwing does a fresh chill.”
“Told ya,” Charlie whispered. “I think she recognizes these hogs as belonging to Big Joe and wants them for herself.”
“What should we do, Chief?” Thal asked, screwing on the cap to the gas tank.
“Gimme a tick,” Petrov muttered, kneeling to pretend that he was checking the tension on the chain.
As her crew began packing away the trade goods, Rissa started ambling over to the coldhearts. “Nice bikes,” Rissa said with a smile. “Where did you find them?”
Snarling in response, Petrov turned with a gren in his hands, the arming lever tumbling away. “Run!” he yelled, pulling the pin and throwing the explosive charge at the woman.
As Rissa dived out of the way, a brace of rapid-fires chattered into life from the front of the war wag, the streams of high-velocity lead chewing a double line of destruction across the ground and heading straight for the motorcycles,
a strange musical chime sounded. Instantly, there was a blinding flash of light and a powerful wind buffeted the gang, almost knocking them over.
A split second later, the wind died away, and Petrov looked about in confusion. What the hell kind of gren was that? Explosions pushed things away, not pulled them closer! Then the man noticed that the war wag was gone. Or rather, most of it had vanished; only the front grille and a single tire remained on the ground alongside a wide depression in the soil. The hole was a perfect circle, the sides mirror bright, and at the bottom was a small lump that resembled a chunk of old lava. There was no other sign of the armored transport, or any of the crew, aside from a hand tottering on the rim of the crater.
“What the frag just happened?” Charlie demanded, adjusting his glasses with one hand, the other brandishing the Czech ZKR. “Where did everybody go?” In the distance, the ville people were pelting madly toward the ville gate. On the wall, the sec men were waving them to run faster. Somewhere, an alarm bell started to clang.
“Nuked if I know,” Thal said, walking to the edge of the depression and picking up the hand. The flesh was still warm, the fingers twitching slightly. Tossing the grisly object over a shoulder, Thal kicked some loose nettles into the depression just to see what would happen. They scattered across the hole like green snowflakes to sprinkle down across the odd lump of material situated exactly in the middle of the half sphere.
“I think that lump is them,” Thal said hesitantly. “The war wag and the crew.”
“What?” Charlie scoffed. “Impossible!”
“Then you tell us what the hell just happened,” Rose said, looking around the area, the Uzi tight in her grip. “There was a flash of light, and a fifty-ton wag vanishes, just like that.”
“Mebbe we fell asleep,” Charlie muttered uncertainly, turning as if half expecting to see the war wag charging through the forest. “Or mebbe we—”
“An implo gren,” Petrov interrupted, his face alive with excitement. “Blind NORAD, that must have been a mutie-loving implo gren!”
“But those aren’t real,” Thal muttered hesitantly. “There’s no such thing as a…an implosion.” He stumbled over the tech word.