by James Axler
“Of course,” the sec woman replied, kneeling low in the grass. Closing her eyes, Hermonie tried to hear past the river and the wind, listening to the night with her whole body. “The outlanders drove into the apple orchard, and now they’re doing repairs.”
“Then we got them,” Youngerford growled, the hair of the sec man stiff and matted with the blood of a friend. The outlander and his crew had aced a sec man, several of them in fact, and for that alone they should go to the wall post for a full moon. Sec Chief Dunbar wanted them alive, the baron wanted them chilled, but as the old saying went, what happens outside the ville wall stays there. As long as they brought back the bodies, nobody would seriously question how the outlanders got aced. His personal goal was to dig out the other eye of the big bastard Ryan and make his bitch eat it. Then she’d eat some other things of a more personal nature.
“We still better stay razor. These gleebs are trickier than a gaudy slut on wolfweed,” Wild Bill growled, both hands resting on the buckle of his gun belt. His face and hands betrayed his real age, but he still walked with the swagger of a newbie, and nobody questioned the speed of his blaster. A dozen coldhearts and even more muties were in the dirt with no idea of how they got there aside from facing Wild Bill and then seeing a brief flash of fiery light.
Standing in a pool of shadow underneath a raised farmhouse, the rest of the sec men muttered their somber agreement. Their horses were exhausted, their hides shiny with sweat from the long, hard ride from the distant south gate.
“Orders, sir?” Bellany asked. The kid was a newbie, as green as a spring rain, but there were already two notches in the handle of his Colt .44 blaster. The weapon was a gift from the baron himself in appreciation for the deft handling of a coldheart who had been raiding the outer farms for years. Bellany had lain inside a bin of taters for a week before the thief finally returned, and soon afterward the boy returned to the ville with several teeth missing, blood on his knife and a new pair of boots.
“All right, Dale, Leroy, guard the horses. The rest of us will do this as a nightcreep,” Fenton ordered, drawing a knife and his blaster. “Wild Bill and Youngerford, take the left, Hermonie and Bellany, the right. I’ll take the slot with everybody else.”
Tethering their horses to the thick wooden poles supporting the tiny farmhouse, the sec men divided into groups and began moving low and fast through the tall grass, their weapons hunting for targets.
The apple orchard was hundreds of yards away, but Fenton could still vaguely hear somebody working on the wag, the metallic sounds almost lost in the noise of the river.
Trying not to step on any twigs or branches to reveal their presence, the three groups of sec men eased ever closer to the copse of trees. A sec woman inhaled sharply at the discovery of a chunk of flapjack lying on the ground, then another did the same. Clearly, the outlanders had discovered what a nuking bad idea it was to park under any tree along the river.
Crouching in the weeds near the wizened corpse of a griz bear, Fenton studied the rustling trees for a long time before finally deciding to take a chance. Easing forward, the lieutenant felt his skin crawl while he passed under the branches, but if there had been any of the muties in the vicinity, they would have already attacked. The name of the things was more than merely what they resembled, but also how smart they were. Fenton thought a flapjack was dumber than a barb, and that was really saying something.
Pausing in the darkness, Fenton saw a battered wag standing in the center of a small clearing, and he strained to hear any voices or footsteps. But there was only the metallic clangs coming from under the raised hood and the soft ticking of the cooling engine. Wary of a trap, the man circled the vehicle, then stopped in surprise at the sight of nobody at the front of the wag. Instead, there were only some wrenches tied to pieces of string and hung from the hood. Moved by the wind, the tools softly clanged off one another, making it sound exactly like somebody doing repairs… Blind NORAD, this was a suck play!
“Nobody touch the wag!” Fenton yelled.
Instantly, everybody moved away from the vehicle, and Hermonie cursed as she felt a brief tug on her leg, then heard a string snap. “Run!” she screamed even as the blaster tied to the string discharged inside the van. There was a microsecond pause before the stores of black powder ignited, filling the interior with roiling flames. Then the stores of ammunition detonated into a thundering fireball that tore the wag apart, blew the leaves off the trees and sent the tattered bodies of the sec men hurtling away in a grisly carnage.
A hundred yards away, the five horses tethered under the farmhouse unhappily shuffled their hooves and snorted at the smell of blood from the two sec men lying on the ground nearby. On the horizon, the companions rode the other six horses into the eastern hills and soon galloped out of sight.
Chapter Thirteen
As dawn broke, the Pig Iron Gang was comfortably camped underneath a predark bridge located just outside Horseshoe Canyon. It was raining, cool, clear water, the deluge coming down hard onto the ancient bridge and oddly sounding like meat sizzling on a grill.
On guard duty, Thal was the only person awake, the rest still snoring in their bedrolls. Which was only natural, since they’d tangled with a wendigo yesterday and only barely managed to escape by chilling a wild boar and quickly stuffing the corpse with river moss. Since a wendigo would eat nearly anything, it happily consumed the entire boar before continuing the chase of the gang. Then while crossing a river, the mutie suddenly slowed and fell asleep, the currents washing it quickly away. Delighted the ploy worked, the gang reclaimed their hogs and raced away from the area as fast as possible. When it awoke, the wendigo would be insane with rage, but that was somebody else’s problem to solve.
The crackling of the campfire was low and steady, perfectly matching the patter of the rain cascading over both sides of the bridge. Fishing had been good for the gang, and several fat trout were hanging from the iron rod near the flames, slowly jerking the meat for the long journey to Modine.
Sitting on a rock, Thal was going through the contents of the med bag. Most of the items he could understand, such as the curved needles for stitching shut wounds, tampons for deep bullet wounds, bottles of clean water, shine and such. But some of the things made no sense, like the strange curved scissors, or the skinny pliers that locked into position. Weird stuff, but Thal assumed it all served the same purpose—putting folks back together after a fight.
Exploring the lining for any hidden caches of drugs, the big man got excited when his fingers found a disguised zipper on the bottom. But pulling it aside, Thal discovered only a book. Bah, who could read anymore? That didn’t put brass in a blaster. It was only by chance that he had been taught to read by an old trader who had hired him as sec for a journey through the Darks. Thal was an avid learner. He’d been getting sick of opening cans of predark cleaning supplies, hoping it was food.
Flipping through the pages of the book, Thal grunted in annoyance, his frown deepening with every passing second.
Rising from his bedroll, Charlie joined his friend at the fire. He poured a cup of warm coffee sub and took a sip, sloshing it about in his mouth to wash away the taste of sleep.
“Something wrong?” Charlie asked, sipping some more of the dark brew. “You have the look of a dog with a mutie trapped just out of biting range.”
“Close,” Thal replied, offering the journal. “I found this tucked away at the bottom of the med bag inside a secret compartment.”
A book? Why would anybody hide one of those? Unless the pages were exceptionally soft and the owner didn’t want to share the lav paper with anybody else. “Curious. This isn’t even written in English,” Charlie muttered, setting the tin cup aside to accept the book. A fat ember in the fire banged just then, but the men completely ignored such a minor interruption.
“Yet the letters and numbers are,” Thal countered, his brow furrowing. “Do you think it might be in code?”
“I’ve heard that other languag
es sometimes use the same alphabet that we do, just in other ways,” Charlie said, engrossed in the mystery. “So that would be the same as a code, I guess.” Turning a page, his interest piqued at the sight of a hand-drawn map. He wasn’t sure, but it seemed like some kind of a bomb shelter, except that it was huge, five stories, with elevators, stairs and all sorts of odd things.
“What’s for breakfast?” Rose asked around a yawn, shuffling over to the men.
“Fish and coffee, same as last night,” Thal replied, smiling. “Sleep well?”
“Always do when it rains.” Rose grinned, pouring herself a cup of the coffee sub. “What’s that, lav paper?”
“Not sure yet,” Charlie countered, tucking away the volume to peruse later. “Might be something useful, but probably not.”
“Well, can I have a couple of sheets?”
“Try these instead.” Thal laughed, reaching into a pocket to pull out a battered paperback. “Nice and soft.”
Nodding her thanks, the woman wandered over to the section of the underpass blocked off by their bikes for a modicum of privacy, then squatted out of sight.
Still in his bedroll, Petrov turned over and began snoring louder than before.
“Think this might have anything to do with all of these fancy blasters and the implo gren?” Thal asked hopefully, rubbing his unshaved face.
“Could be,” Charlie guessed. “But first we gotta break this code, or whatever it is.”
With a laugh, Thal stretched and rose. “My turn in the sack,” he announced. “At least that little book will give us something interesting to do in the rain aside from eat, sleep, play cards and fuck.”
“That it will,” Charlie replied.
A FEW DAYS LATER the companions were crossing a sylvan valley, rich in a wild profusion of flowers, a perfumed rainbow of nature’s majesty. There were hundreds of tiny creeks and ponds in the area, the ground was soft, almost marshy.
The polluted clouds were thin overhead, and brief snatches of sunlight actually made it through to tenderly stroke the world. The grass was a deep emerald-green, and the trees were heavy with fruit. A swarm of butterflies was feasting upon the corpse of a wolf. Nearby stood a giant sunflower with a bite mark on the stalk.
Stepping out of some of the thick bushes, a bull moose looked about the greenery. Bending, he started to lap at the small pond, when there came a distant crack, very similar to the snapping of a branch heavy with winter snow. The moose snapped back its head, blood spraying from its throat. The longblaster sounded again, and this time the animal dropped to the ground.
Instantly, the cougar hiding in the bushes leaped on the dying moose and began savaging the corpse with its claws, snarling wildly as if claiming the kill for itself. But once more the longblaster sounded, and the cougar tumbled sideways. It hit the grass in a scramble and streaked away to vanish in the dense greenery.
“Fireblast! It got away,” Ryan growled, lowering the Marlin. “The moose is fine, but always did love cougar. Not as much as bear, but still good eating.”
“And I’ll wager they say the same about us.” Krysty chuckled.
“Same here,” Jak said from the back of his horse.
Riding to the fallen moose, Ryan and Jak did the butchery, while the rest of the companions stood guard. Sprinkling the hunks of raw meat with some salt as a preservative, they tightly wrapped the steaks in pieces of the hide, then packed them away into the saddlebags.
“Ah, steak for dinner.” Doc smiled. “I was beginning to despair of mulligan stew.” The random mixture of rabbit, gopher, woodchuck, owl and anything else the companions could ace was filling, but generally rather bland, and there was no other word for owl meat but wretched.
“Now how do you know that phrase?” Mildred asked. “Mulligan stew comes from long after your time, during the Great Depression.”
“Mayhap it does, madam, but I learned it from you,” Doc answered with a smile.
Suddenly, the horses began to snort and shuffle their hooves, the six trying to sound like a hundred.
“Something in wind they not like,” Jak said, drawing his blaster.
“I don’t hear any hooting, so it isn’t stickies,” J.B. muttered, squinting into the forest as he worked the arming bolt on the MAC-10. Beyond a few yards, the world was a blur to the man, and his frustration over the matter was growing daily. He had prepared for such a contingency by making a couple of crude explosive charges from what he had managed to carry away from the van. But J.B. was rapidly getting to the point where he was going to start becoming a liability to the others rather than an asset.
“The smell of blood is attracting another predator,” Krysty guessed, freeing her rapid-fire from its gun boot. “Probably just another cougar.”
“No sense wasting brass when we’re on horseback,” Ryan decided, kicking his heels into the stallion and breaking into a full gallop.
But as the companions rode away, a section of the forest broke away from the trees and bushes to quickly follow after them. Streaking across the ground, the fur of the creature changed into an emerald-green, dotted with Shasta daisies. Only the eyes stayed the same, shiny black orbs fastened upon the hated two-legs with grim intent.
Leaving the valley behind, the companions galloped onto a section of a predark road, the concrete stained and cracked, but still in relatively decent condition. The clopping of the horse hooves on the soft earth changed into a clatter, and something roared behind them.
Turning in the saddle, Ryan scowled to see nothing unusual in sight. Then the man blinked, and his vision focused on a patch of concrete moving low and fast toward them—a patch of roadwork with two large black eyes.
“Mutie!” Ryan shouted in warning, clawing for a blaster.
The companions cut loose with their weapons, hitting the disguised creature several times. Yellow blood erupted from the hits, but almost instantly, the small wounds healed, like a mouth shutting.
“Gaia, it’s a biowep!” Krysty yelled, switching her rapid-fire to full-auto. Going for the eyes, the woman put a prolonged burst of 7.62-mm rounds into the creature, but half of the rounds went wild as her horse bucked in fear, almost throwing her from the saddle.
With a bellow, the wendigo circled the armed companions, pausing for only a second to allow a writhing nest of tentacles loose from its humped back.
“Son of a bitch!” J.B. snarled, cutting loose with the MAC-10. The chattering hail of 9-mm rounds sent a score of the tentacles to the ground, where they flopped about madly like live snakes in a frying pan. Firing single rounds into the mutie, the Armorer started to reach for the Molotov in his munitions bag, but stayed his hand. There was only one, so he had to make it count.
Bellowing in pain, the wendigo tried to reach the oldest two-legs, but Doc put a burst of 5.56-mm rounds from his rapid-fire directly into the creature, then slashed at the tentacles with his machete, cutting off more of the flesh. Jak threw his hatchet, but the blade merely rebounded from the tough hide of the slavering mutie.
Constantly changing color, the wendigo circled the pack of two-legs, clawing for the riders or trying to bite the horses.
Raising the M-16/M-203 combo, Doc aimed the gren launcher but couldn’t get a bead on the nimble creature. Damnation, it was almost as if the thing understood what a blaster was. J.B. had been unable to make a new warhead and so changed the gren launcher into a shotgun. Black powder, of course, as that much regular gunpowder would have blown the weapon apart.
Testing to see how smart the mutie was, Ryan dropped a handful of spent shells onto the road, the brass tingling musically as he pretended to fumble with the Marlin. Instantly, the wendigo charged for the two-legs, thinking the boomstick wasn’t alive anymore.
With a grimace, Ryan triggered the longblaster at point-blank range, the muzzle-flash actually touching the mutie. The colossal .444 round punched through the creature, throwing it to the ground and coming out the back in a wide golden spray.
Moaning in pain, the wend
igo moved away from Ryan, the gaping crater in its matted fur slowly closing.
“Hammer the bastard!” Ryan commanded, levering in a fresh shell and firing past the head of his horse.
As the beast roared defiantly, the rest of the companions fired their weapons, the hail of soft lead and hardball rounds driving the mutie to the surface of the ancient road. Lightening in color, the wendigo reached out a distorted hand, the claws only scratching along the rough concrete, then it went still.
“Mutie shit!” Jak snarled, drawing his blaster and putting five fast rounds into the mutie. Rolling to the side, the wendigo scampered across the highway to vanish into the forest.
“Thank God, we drove it off.” Mildred sighed in relief, cracking open her blaster to replace rounds with sure fingers.
“That was just to test our defenses,” Ryan said, intently studying the rustling greenery.
“Be back,” Jak agreed, slamming a fresh clip into his blaster and jacking the slide.
“Hell, yes, here it comes!” J.B. shouted, squeezing the trigger of the MAC-10. As he waved about the stream of bullets, leaves exploded from the ground in a whirlwind. A clean miss. Drawing the sawed-off, J.B. fired both barrels and some bushes splattered yellow blood, the plants retreating into the gloom howling in bestial rage.
Spotting a nearby hill, Krysty saw that the greenery only reached halfway up the sloping sides, the grass at the top was dry and dead. A dead zone like that amid the lush greenery could only mean a rad pit. That would chill norm and mutie, but the dead grass around the blast crater might work for them.
Briefly offering a prayer to Gaia, the woman charged her horse up the side of the hill at breakneck speed. “Follow me!”
The rest of the companions paused for only a split second before following close behind. Rad pit or not, they trusted the woman’s judgment. The companions reached the top just as the wendigo appeared from the opposite side of the highway. Its fur was now a dull black, a perfect camouflage for hiding inside a shadowy forest. As it raced across the concrete, the long hair of the wendigo rippled into a pale tan once more, with a double-yellow line running across the middle.