by James Axler
Blood spouted over Finnegan, soaking his face and chest. Shards of jagged bone were torn from the creature's savage teeth, pattering into the water. One of its eyes disappeared, the whole cavern of the socket disintegrating under the high-velocity fire from Ryan's weapon.
The reptile was kicked back into the water, off the edge of the causeway, its claws tearing away at the wood. Propelled at an extreme velocity, the rounds punched into the target with fearsome force.
There was no need for anybody else to fire. More than a dozen bullets had ripped the alligator apart, sending it flailing and thrashing, throwing up a great pink spray that darkened to crimson, covering its death throes. Hennings helped Finnegan to his feet, and they stood on the edge of the torn planks staring as the monster passed from life. The others, including Ryan, with his finger still on the trigger, also watched carefully.
"Bastard that big could still come at us," he said.
"Be fine way to go. After all he's fucking eaten," grinned Hennings, one hand still on Finn's shoulder. "Being that fucker's dinner."
"Why did you sit down there?" asked J.B.
Finnegan shook his head, wiping the mutie's blood from his face and neck. "I asked a man that. Tail-gunner off War Wag Three. Dean Stanton, his name. Little runty guy with a lot o' balls. Once seen him throw himself clear off a high bridge into a couple of feet of water. Near Missoula. We dragged him out and I asked him why he done it."
"And?"
"And he said it just sort of seemed a good idea at the time."
Finnegan began to laugh, hanging onto Hennings for support. The laughter was contagious, and they all began to laugh, even J.B., easing away the tension of the fat man's near escape.
"Crazy bastard," called Ryan, patting the stamped sheet-metal housing of the automatic rifle. It was damned near the closest he ever came to showing any affection.
"Thanks, Ryan," said Finn.
"Sure," he replied.
The alligator was nearly still, no more than a twitching corpse. Around it the water was stained a deep brown-red, and small fish began to appear by the hundreds near the carcass.
As Ryan and the others looked on, fascinated, the dead alligator, better than fifty feet in length, began to jerk and roll, its white belly up, the fish tearing at it.
Within less than five minutes the corpse had been stripped to raw bones and shreds of tattered sinews.
"Piranhas," corrected Krysty. "And you're right, Henn. They are mean bastards."
It was a relief to finally set foot on dry land at the end of the walkway.
There was a small stone building, with a roof of woven reeds, standing among a grove of oaks. Its windows were unbroken, and although the stucco on the walls had peeled, most of it remained undisturbed by the elements.
It was an odd sight in a world where the great bombings of 2001 had reduced virtually every building to rubble. Ryan could almost count on the fingers of one hand the number of times he'd seen prenuke architecture intact like this.
"Figure the low land protected this place?" he asked J.B.
"Has to be."
"No."
"What's that, Doc?"
Doc Tanner rubbed at a green stain on the side of his stovepipe hat. "Not the lie of the land, my dear Mr. Cawdor. Have you not heard of a little toy called the neutron bomb?"
"Neutron bomb?" asked Ryan. "What the fireblast was that?"
"I heard of it," said the Armorer slowly. "Took out men and left the houses. That it?"
Doc nodded. "A simplistic summary of the effects, but accurate enough for our purposes."
The door of the little building was open; the weather had apparently cleared out whatever it might have held.
With the aid of Ryan's long machete, they hacked through a screen of tumbled vegetation about forty feet thick, which screened off the walkway and ultimately kept the location of the redoubt and its gateway a secure secret.
On the far side was a crumbling road, winding southward. Standing on the cracked pavement, they heard no sign of life, just the occasional crying of a distant bird and the endless clicking and chirping of insects.
"There's more water," said Krysty, pointing ahead. "Cross the road."
It was a slow-flowing muddy-brown river, wide as the eye could see, moving toward the east; it washed out the remains of the highway. Finnegan, still visibly shocked by the near miss from the mutie alligator, dipped his hand cautiously in the water to wipe off some of the blood. He touched a finger to his mouth.
"Fresh. Not salty like the other."
"How come this has risen, but the swamps back there look like they're 'bout the same height they was before the war?" asked Krysty, puzzled.
At first no one answered; then Lori spoke.
"All rivers bigger. No people drink them."
"That's the fucking most stupid thing I ever heard," laughed Hennings. "Rivers rise because there..."
Doc Tanner interrupted him with a raised finger, crooked like a claw, the nail yellow as old ivory. "Mock not, my somber-hued brother. Think that we are close to the delta of the old Mississippi River. I would surmise that even now, a century later, barely one-fiftieth of the people live and work in its basin. No factories to drain it. No rest rooms, flushing away millions of gallons. No drinking, as Lori said. No commercial uses at all. No wonder the levels of the streams and rivers have risen."
"You figure we're stranded here?"
The old man looked sideways at Ryan. "It is conceivable. Perchance we should go back and try the gateway."
"What the bastard big freeze does perchancemean?" hissed Finnegan, but nobody answered.
"East or west?" asked J.B.
Ryan looked both ways. The vegetation was stiflingly thick to the east; to the west it looked a little clearer. Along the edge of the river there almost seemed to be some sort of cleared pathway.
"West," he replied.
It wasa path.
Not very wide, flirting with the water, but it was most definitely a trail. After a few paces, Ryan dropped to his knees among the bushes, peering at the marks in the soft ground.
"Animal?" asked Hennings.
"No. There's something looks like deer. Cloven hoof, sharp. But there's human feet. Deep tread, working boots. Recent. Let's be careful."
The warning wasn't really necessary. Even young Lori had been with them long enough to realize that life was lived astride a singing blade.
While she had been with them in Alaska, one of the party had mentioned problems to Ryan. She recalled his answer.
"Problems? Solving problems isn't our business. We deal in death."
She sensed what that meant.
As before, Ryan led the way, gun cocked and ready, his finger on the trigger. Everyone followed in their places, their own blasters ready for instant action.
Once Ryan thought he caught the sound of human voices ahead. But Krysty's mutie hearing didn't register anything, so he figured he was mistaken.
It was an error that within an hour would culminate in the death of one of the party.
* * *
They found the vehicle less than a quarter mile along the trodden path. It was beached, like a long-dead swollen whale, pulled in among the trees, its rear wheels still in the water. At first glance it looked like a boat on wheels. Its six wheels held it about eight feet above the mud; it had small metal ladders on each side, and the biggest, fattest tires that any of them had ever seen Ч their diameter was at least six feet. Ryan poked at the tires, finding them amazingly soft and underinflated.
"Swamp buggy," pronounced Doc Tanner confidently. "Deep tread on the tires. Go through or over just everything you can imagine. Land or water. As well as anything that lies between."
J.B. clambered up a ladder and peered inside. "Seats for eight. Couple o' cans of gas. Steers with a rudder kick-bar. Box of old scattergun shells. Fish hooks. Something looks damned like a ramrod. Figure it can't be. Only blasters from two hundred years back use a ramrod. Muzzle loaders."
"No."
"I can drive it," said Finnegan. "Let's get the fuck out of here 'fore they come back."
After a moment Ryan nodded his agreement. There was a simple rule you learned in the Deathlands. If you held it, then it was yours. If someone else held it, then it belonged to them.
The swamp buggy was about to belong to Ryan and his comrades.
* * *
The Trader had established routines for most occasions. Even for stealing someone else's transport.
"One gets in, slow and easy. Watch for traps. Small landwag, one man can watch. Big one takes two or three. Don't start it until the last possible moment. Say again. Don't start it until the last moment. Once you make a noise, then they're on you, and you got borrowed time. Once it's running, get the chill out of there."
Finnegan sat in the driver's seat of the buggy. Krysty, Doc and Lori took the other seats, each watching a different section of the land and river around them. Hennings, Ryan and the Armorer moved into the surrounding forest, their eyes and ears ready for the return of the men who owned the vehicle.
Once he felt he could master the controls, Finn gave a low whistle. The three men fell back, ringing the swamp-wag with their backs to it, eyes raking the shifting wall of green all around them.
"Which way?" asked Finn.
"Cross the river. That's where the old road went. Must lead to a ville of some kind."
"Ready?"
"Ready, Finn," replied Ryan.
The starter was a three-inch nail, bent and smoothed from use. Finn grasped it, pushing on the gas pedal a couple of times. His left hand nursing the throttle, he twisted the starter.
There was a spluttering muffled cough, like a sleeping bear waking in a deep cavern. Finn tried it again. A puff of thick blue smoke spurted from the exhaust, but the engine still wouldn't fire.
"Again!"
"Bastard won't..."
"Come on, Finn. You're going to bring every citizen for miles."
On the third go the engine very nearly caught, turning over a dozen times, then dying away. Krysty half stood in her seat, pointing to her right; to the west.
"I hear someone, Ryan. Men running."
At the fourth attempt the engine of the swampwag fired, filling the small clearing with a deep throaty roar. Smoke rushed from the exhaust in a choking pall. Standing on the ladder, rifle at the ready, Ryan gestured for the others to climb aboard.
"Go. Fast as you can, Finn. Go 'cross the river. Make for cover."
"Only blasters they got look like they come from a hundred years 'fore the nukes," said J.B.
The massive wheels began to rotate, throwing a spray of mud and brackish water in the air.
"All the tires give power," shouted Finnegan, kicking at the rudder bar to steer the buggy into the water.
Ryan watched behind them, where Krysty had warned of men coming fast. But there was no sign of them. He suddenly realized that the bottom of the ladder was going to be immersed as the buggy slid fully into the river and he hastily climbed aboard. Clambering up, his eye caught a movement near the bottom of the short ladder: the scaly spade-shaped head of a huge water moccasin emerged above the water, and the two deep-set eyes gazed blankly into his.
The utter depth of feeling made the short hairs bristle at the nape of his neck.
"Left, you gaudy bastard bitch!" cursed Finnegan, wrestling with the unfamiliar controls.
"Open her up!" yelled the Armorer, one hand hanging on to his beloved fedora hat.
"She's open wider than a low-jack whore's legs already," replied Finn, sweat streaming from his chubby face.
They were about halfway into the serene brown water when men appeared on the bank.
"Five of... no, six. Seven," amended Hennings, leveling his gray Heckler & Koch submachine gun, steadying the drum magazine on the side of the swampwag.
"Hold fire," warned Ryan. "We already stole their buggy. Let 'em deal the first hand. See what they're holding."
Krysty shaded her eyes with her hand, peering toward the men silhouetted against the elusive sun as it broke through the clouds.
"Nothing much. Nothing automatic. The one on the left with the scarf around his head has a... some kind of long blaster. He's thumbing back on a sort of hammer."
Hennings stood up. "I'll waste them all, Ryan?"
The buggy was very close to the belt of sycamores that lined the far side of the river. Another ten seconds or so, and they'd be under their cover.
"Hold it. There might be hundreds of the double-poor bastards round here on both sides o' the water."
"I'll just warn them some," said the black, bracing himself and squeezing the trigger.
The blaster was set on continuous, and a stream of bullets flowed out, with a sound like tearing silk; it kicked up a line of spray a few paces from the watching men.
Finnegan glanced over his shoulder, whooping his approval at his old friend's success. "Teach them suckers not to fuck with us!" he crowed, his enthusiasm making the swampwag veer alarmingly to one side, nearly sending Hennings toppling into the water.
"One of them's got a blaster aimed!" shouted Krysty warningly.
Hennings waved his hand derisively toward the group of natives, clenching his fist in a power salute.
Ryan watched the men pick themselves up after Hennings's burst of fire and scatter. All but one. He stood still, a long rifle at his shoulder, rock-steady.
There was something menacing about the man's deadly calm. There was the look about him of someone who knew precisely what he was doing, not frightened by the shattering effects of the fire from the buggy. Ryan could almost feel himself inside the man's skull.
He considered the windage, the elevation, the drift, the distance.
Then he squeezed and squeezed again.
Ryan turned toward Hennings, tasting the immediacy of the danger like cold steel on his tongue.
"Get down, Henn!" he shouted.
The tall black glanced sideways at him, the smile of triumph still on his lips. From the corner of his eye Ryan spotted the puff of gray powder smoke as it billowed from the muzzle of the long gun.
A moment later he caught the crack of the explosion. Almost simultaneously he heard the unforgettable flat wet slap of lead striking flesh. Hennings gave an "oh" that held more surprise than fear or pain.
"No," said Finnegan, half standing, losing control of the swampwag for a moment, sending it skittering sideways, down the river.
"Keep on it," yelled J.B., nearest to Hennings, holding the black man as he folded into his arms, blood gushing from the back of his head.
Ryan sprayed the men on the bank with his blaster, getting a vicious satisfaction from seeing three or four of them go down, kicking and jerking. But the man with the musket had reached the safety of the fringe of low scrub.
The buggy jolted and tipped as it reached the far side of the river and moved up the sloping bank. The six wheels worked independently, grinding over the tangled roots of the bayous. Mud and water splashed up off the huge tires.
Low branches scraped across the top of the swampwag, leaves crowding in on the crouching men and women. The moment they were totally under cover, Finnegan kicked the engine to a stop, letting it idle and die in a grinding of fears; vaulting off his seat he got back to where J.B. still cradled Hennings.
"How is?.."
Both Finnegan and Hennings had ridden with the Trader on his expeditions for some years. They'd both seen a lot of deaths. Both of them knew the truth.
The leaden ball had struck the black man just above the right eye, leaving a neat dark hole from which a little blood seeped, bright scarlet against the skin. The exit hole was huge: a chunk of skull the size of a man's fist had been punched out in jagged fragments, blood and brains slopping all over the bottom of the buggy.
Krysty, Lori and Doc stood helplessly by, looking down at the felled man. Lori was crying silently, her shoulders shaking, tears sliding down her
smooth cheeks, pattering into the spreading pool of blood.
Hennings's eyes were open, blinking in shock. Though the brain damage was clearly terminal, a shred of life still remained. His eyes sought Finnegan, fighting to focus on the red face of his oldest friend.
"I'm here, Henn," said Finnegan, leaning over the dying man.
"Going dark, Finn."
"Yeah. Mebbe a storm on the way."
"What?.."
"What blaster?" guessed Finnegan. "Some fucking musket from the cave days."
"Good, shooting." Hennings's tongue flicked out across his dry lips.
"Not fucking bad, friend."
Not far to the west, there was a dazzling burst of sheet lightning, followed by a deafening peal of rolling thunder.
Henn struggled to speak. "Do this mean what I think it do?"
Finnegan nodded. "It do."
Hennings's eyes remained open, but life slipped away, leaving them blank and empty.
As the first heavy drops of rain began to fall about them, Finnegan lowered his head and wept.
Chapter Five
For nearly two hours the rains came pounding down so hard that it was impossible to move. There was a stained brown tarpaulin inside the swampwag that they managed to pull up over themselves, keeping the worst of the storm off. But even then the rain was so devastating that it seeped through the canvas in a fine spray, soaking them all. Water collected in the bottom of the buggy, diluting the blood from Hennings's corpse, turning the crimson to pink.
It was the worst storm that Ryan Cawdor had ever experienced.
It wasn't the banshee gales Ч he'd heard those farther north in the Deathlands. But the lightning and thunder were almost continuous, pounding at the ears until the senses began to totter. The rain swept in, seeming at times as if it were a solid shroud of tumbling water. At one point J.B. stuck his head from under the tarpaulin, taking care to remove his glasses first, trying to see if there was any sign of the storm abating. He pulled back a few seconds later, blinking and gasping.
"Can't breathe. Drown out there, in open air. That's the trouble. No damned air. Just water."