by James Axler
Dropping the inaccurate MP-5, Mildred drew her ZKR and banged a shot at the guy. He stumbled and grunted, but still reached Krysty. Grabbing a fistful of her long hair, the coldheart hauled the unconscious woman erect. Mildred felt herself flinch from the imagined pain of having the living filaments pulled that way. If Krysty had been faking before, she certainly was knocked out now. The pain would have been unimaginable.
“Lower those blasters!” Edward bellowed, placing a knife to the woman’s throat. “Or I’ll cut this bitch like a—”
Dropping the knife, the man released Krysty and slumped to the ground, giving a loud moan. Revealed standing behind him was a slim young woman with long black hair, holding a bloody rock. As the big man went flat, she picked up the fallen knife and pounced upon the man, hacking and slashing like a wild thing.
“Two down,” Mildred quipped, turning for the other men. But they were already scrambling inside the blockhouse as she got a bead. The physician fired again, and only hit the metal frame of the doorway, the slug musically ricocheting inside as the steel door slammed shut. Then it loudly bolted tight.
“And we have an ally, so it seems,” Doc muttered, advancing toward Krysty and brandishing both blasters. “You there, girl! Come with us, if you want to live!”
Nodding eagerly, the young woman tucked the bloody knife into her belt and grabbed Krysty under the arms to start dragging her toward the bikes.
No, the stranger was older than a teen. Doc saw the face and full figure through the thinning smoke. She was a beautiful young woman.
Slinging the rapidfire over a shoulder, Mildred rushed to assist, while Doc grabbed the boots and shirt off the ground. Modesty was a thing of the past these days, but without some sort of protection the cold desert night could ace Krysty just as fast as during the hot day. Then again, this was a wooded glen. How long had they been asleep? It had been early afternoon when the ville was attacked, and now it was dusk, going into night. Where were they?
“I’ll take her,” Mildred said, draping the limp Krysty across her shoulders. Thank God for her years of training. Every EMT in the world knew how to do a fireman’s carry. The tall redhead was heavy, but manageable. But more importantly, still alive.
“Thanks for the help…” Mildred paused.
“Lily, I’m Lily,” she replied. “Can…can I come with you please, master? I will serve you well.”
“Of course you’re coming with us.” Mildred grunted, hauling the unconscious redhead toward the gate in the bushes. “But we don’t keep slaves.” She paused awkwardly, then held out a hand. “Here! Reload that, and keep me covered!”
Utterly astonished, Lily stared in wonder at the huge blaster and speed loaders she held, the polished metal shining like a dream in the reflected light of the campfire. A wep. The strangers had given her a wep! Remembering what the Rogans always did with a blaster, Lily carefully opened the cylinder to look inside. All spent. Removing the dead brass, she used the speed loader, amazed at how easy it was. Then Lily flipped her wrist to snap the handblaster shut with a sharp click and thumbed back the hammer. She didn’t consider blasters tech, merely tools, like hammers or a fry pan.
“We’ll never make it on foot,” Lily declared, new resolution in her voice. “If you can drive the two-wheelers, I know how to make them safe to touch and not chill ya. I’ve watched them do it often enough.” The woman didn’t want to touch the filthy machines, but it was the only way to escape. The dirty act would only be one more thing Lily forced herself to do to survive.
Her heart pounding from the adrenaline in her system, Mildred grunted at that pronouncement. So she had been right about the lethal car alarm. Mildred had expected no less from the slavers, or cannies, or whoever the hell these bastards were. Coldfire, Doc had said once before. But that was for later. Run now, talk tomorrow.
“Deal!” Mildred snarled, changing directions. “I’m Mildred, and that’s Doc. Now move!”
In a burst of speed, Lily took off ahead of the physician. By the time Mildred reached the remaining motorcycles, Lily stepped back to reveal that all of the red warning lights were turned off and inert.
“Well done, Lily,” the physician said, easing Krysty onto a cushioned seat.
Wiping her hands clean on her pants, the young woman smiled at the compliment. Then she cast a furtive glance toward the blockhouse and tightened her grip on the blaster. “They’ll be coming out soon,” she warned tersely. “And with grens.”
“We surmised as much, dear lady. But now we are properly armed once more,” Doc rumbled in his stentorian bass, opening the cargo compartment and lifting out one of the homie pipe bombs. There was no sign of the mil grens, but these would do for the nonce.
“Better and better,” Mildred said, climbing onto the bike. “But this bomb will do nothing to that blockhouse. Any grens?”
“Sadly no, madam,” Doc stated, pulling out a butane lighter and flicking the flame alive before applying it to the fuse. With a fast move, he sent the charge hurtling toward the barbed wire and broke glass gate in the bushes. “However, I do believe this may be more than sufficient to blow down their impromptu walls of Jericho!”
The strident blast shook the entire glen, sending birds flying from the trees and actually rattling the pots and pans around the campfire. Suddenly the door to the blockhouse swung open and the two coldhearts cut loose with the combos, the chattering rapidfires chewing a line of destruction along the ground toward Mildred and Lily.
The raven-haired woman gasped in horror, the blaster forgotten in her grip. But Mildred answered with a long burst of the MP-5, and Doc fanned the LeMat until it clicked empty, hoping the gunsmoke would aid them one last time to escape.
“There’s boobies everywhere!” John shouted over the rattling rapidfire. “You’ll never make it out of here alive!”
Firing once more, Doc started to reply when he caught a motion out of the corner of his vision, and turned to see something flying through the air to land in the campfire. A second later, a tremendous explosion rocked the night and the fire was obliterated, instantly casting the glen into darkness. Caught by surprise, Mildred and Doc both looked at Lily lowering an arm, another pipe bomb tucked into her belt. The rear cargo compartment of her motorcycle was open, showing ammo clips, MRE packs and what looked suspiciously like a pile of human scalps.
“Ignore what John says, it’s a lie,” Lily stated, shouldering the bag of brass. “There’s nothing outside here, but free.”
As the two men in the blockhouse started to fire again, Mildred answered with the MP-5 and Doc flipped a sizzling pipe bomb their way. It landed between the bikes and the blockhouse and violently detonated, throwing out a blinding cloud of dirt in every direction.
“Doc!” Mildred snapped, raising her arms. “Do me!”
The old man swung the Ruger, aimed and fired, the booming .44 Magnum round blowing apart the chain of the handcuffs. Mildred grunted from the impact of the round, her wrists feeling like they had been hit by a sledgehammer. But then the physician spread her hands in triumph. Holstering his blaster, Doc assumed the position, and she returned the favor with the ZKR.
“Okay, let’s roll,” Mildred ordered, taking hold of the grips at the end of the handlebars and twisting the throttle. Hopefully, these bikes used the same style of controls as a civilian model.
With a subdued purr, the electric engine came to life and the dashboard began to glow with hologram gauges and digital readouts. She was astonished! This would have been high-tech in her own time period of the twentieth century! For the Deathlands it was damn near magical.
“I do not know how to ride one of these,” Lily whispered, her moment of bravado gone in the face of the unclean tech.
“Then come, my dear,” Doc urged, grabbing her by the wrist and hauling her onto the seat behind him. “This steely Pegasus certainly has wings enough for two!”
As Lily circled her arms around his waist, Doc worked the throttle to activate the sleek machine, the powerful engine pur
ring softly. On the glowing dashboard, he could read that the energy reserve was less than a quarter charged. That wasn’t very much, especially with a double load, but it would have to suffice. Certainly more than enough to get them very far away from there. Wherever that was.
“Move it, or lose it, ya old coot,” Mildred whispered, and threw another sizzling pipe bomb.
As the blast shook the glen, the two companions sent the bikes streaking toward the smoking opening in the thick wall of shrubbery. The Rogans cut loose with the combo rapidfires again, but the companions needed hands to steer, so they twisted the throttles all the way and prayed that speed would be enough to get them out alive.
Then Lily removed one arm from around Doc and started to fire her revolver backward at her brothers.
“Eat shit, ya little dick mutie fuckers!” Lily screamed above the roaring blaster. Then she pressed hard against Doc and dropped her arm. The handblaster fell away and vanished in the smoldering bushes.
“Lily?” Doc shouted anxiously over a shoulder.
The woman started to slide sideways, so Doc hurriedly reached around to grab her with a free arm. The bike nearly toppled from the movement. Doc wildly fought to stay erect and keep Lily on board. The woman was breathing but had gone limp in his grasp.
As her bike shot out of the tattered bushes, Mildred switched on the halogen headlight, wary of any pits or mantraps. The brilliant white beam illuminated the greenery ahead, and Mildred braced herself for some last barrier, but nothing barred the way and she hurtled out of the copse of trees onto a wide-open range of stubby weeds. Doc was right behind, his machine wobbling slightly as if he was having trouble with his balance. But as the bike reached the open field, Doc poured on the power and it straightened immediately.
To the left, Mildred could dimly see black mountains standing against the purple sky. Those could be the Mohawks. To the far right were the golden sand dunes of a desert. The Zone? Had to be. They hadn’t been unconscious long enough to get out of the state, even on these futuristic two-wheelers. The question was, which direction to run? Without much of a choice, Mildred started for the desert. If this was the Zone, then Ryan and the others would be coming from that direction and not from the mountains.
“How’s Krysty?” Doc asked through gritted teeth. The bikes were so silent that he could hear the grass and sand crunching under the weight of the people and machines.
“Alive!” Mildred replied, the handcuffs jiggling on her wrists painfully rubbing the scraped areas where she had tried to get them off.
“Excellent! But make speed, old friend,” Doc observed, pulling alongside. “We need to stop, and soon.”
“Were you hit?” Mildred asked, not daring to look away from the landscape. There were rocks and tree stumps and chunks of predark wreckage hidden in the weeds. That John fellow and Lily had both been right. There was nothing dangerous outside the glen, except the landscape itself. A single second’s inattention could send her and Krysty flying. And Mildred had no doubt that John and his two comrades would be after them in short order. Or at least one of them would. There was only that one bike left. Unless the bastards had more.
“I was not hurt, madam, but our young rescuer was shot during our escape,” Doc replied, driving with one hand. The other held a pale arm to his chest, the limb streaked with red. “I cannot see! Is she dead?”
“Can’t tell in this light,” Mildred answered, risking a fast glance. The others were merely blurs in the night. Great, they were free, but with two wounded, low on juice and no idea where the hell they were located.
“Ryan, where are you?” Mildred growled like a prayer in the night.
CHARGING OUT THE BUSHES, the three Rogan brothers fanned the darkness with their rapidfires, launching 40 mm grens randomly. A lot of landscape exploded, but nothing else.
Pausing to reload, John pumped a Star Shell upward. The charge streaked high into the dark sky, then billowed out a parachute before igniting into a brilliant magnesium flare that threw a swatch of bright white light down upon the landscape. There was no sign of the two stolen bikes, or the riders.
“That fragging little bitch!” Robert screamed, shaking his wep. Fresh blood was still trickling down the side of his head and along his scarred neck to soak into the handkerchief tied there. “I’ll do her myself! It’ll take Lily a moon to chill. A year!”
“We still got a bike,” Edward said, working the bolt on the rapidfire, then resting the hot wep on a broad shoulder. “One of us could give chase.”
Breathing heavily, John took a step into the weedy field, staring hatefully at the twin sets of tire tracks on the soft ground.
“Get the bike,” he said in a barely human growl. “But we’re all going. Bring every sleep gren we got, and this time we only bring Tanner back alive. Nobody else.”
“But what about Lily…” Robert started.
“We chill ’em all!” John repeated, shouting. “Now, mount up! I know how to find them.”
Chapter Twelve
The soft sounds of blasterfire drifted on the evening wind, a muted staccato that ebbed and flowed, then vanished.
“What the frag was that?” Sec chief Stirling demanded, reining in his mount.
The Two-Son ville sec men stopped their animals and listened hard to the wind. There was only the silken sigh of the bending weeds moving against one another. In the far distance a coyote howled and a stingwing announced a kill.
Then the crackles and pops came again. It sounded like explos and blasters.
The chief sec men frowned. No. Not blasters, rapidfires!
“Must be Ryan and the others,” Renée stated, kicking her mount into a gallop. “Nobody else has those kind of weps!”
“We found them!” Alton cried, lurching into action. “Yee-haw!”
“Cut the drek and get razor, people!” Stirling commanded, swinging the BAR rifle off his back. “If Ryan and the others are throwing lead, then you can be sure we’re riding into a shitstorm!”
“Well, that’s what Baron O’Connor sent us out here for!” Gill replied, holding the reins in one hand while drawing his sawed-off blaster with the other. “To protect their ass and get them back home, safe and alive.”
“Blood for blood!” Stirling shouted, giving the ancient code of unbreakable honor between sec men as a war cry. Ryan and the others had saved countless lives during their brief stay at the ville. Could the sec men do anything less in return?
As the others repeated the call, Nathan snapped his head toward the desert to the east. The light was dim, but it had almost seemed as if there were a couple of two-wheelers powering into the shifting dunes. But when he looked again, the shapes were gone. Had to have just been a moon shadow.
Unexpectedly, a star blossomed in the sky to their right, and slowly began to float back to Earth, shining an impossibly bright light on the flatlands.
“Over there!” Alton cried, pointing the way with his Remington.
Leading the way, Stirling jumped a small ravine and gave his mount full rein. The rough ground flashed below the pounding hooves of the black stallion as he headed for the dying star. Never seen anything like that before. Had to be Ryan and his people. Who else had tech like that?
Cresting a swell in the ground, the five riders galloped down into a depression and then exploded out of the other side onto level soil. Tightening his grip on the reins, Stirling frowned at the sight of a large copse of trees in an open field. One section of bushes was burning, and some men were shouting, but he couldn’t see them. Then as the sec chief watched, three big men burst out of the copse all piled onto a single two-wheeler. A motorcycle, as his grandpa would have called the machine. Stirling had never seen one of the wags in working condition before.
“Chief! Over in the dunes!” Renée shouted. “I think that I just saw—”
“Later!” Sterling barked as the sec men galloped closer to the stand of trees.
Suddenly the barrel-chested driver of the bike squealed to a
ragged halt and his two passengers tumbled to the ground. Where they hurt? But then the men stood and worked the bolts on their longblasters. No, those were the rapidfires he had heard earlier!
“Idiots,” Gill said, sneering. “We’re too far away for any blaster to reach!” That was when he threw back his head and blood sprayed into the sky, followed by teeth and bits of bones and hair. The aced man went slack, and the horse screamed in terror as a line of black holes appeared across its chestnut skin, each of them pumping out a river of red life.
Nuking hell! Twisting the reins, Stirling fought to bank his stallion when the rapidfires chattered again and he felt something red-hot scrap along his rib cage. Stirling cursed at the pain, but knew it was only a flesh wound and nothing life-threatening. That was a mistake on their part. Standing in the light of that wag, the gunners were perfect targets. Easy pie for the BAR.
“Spread out and take ’em!” Stirling commanded, wheeling his horse around. “That ain’t Ryan’s folks, so feed ’em lead! Nobody chills a Two-Son sec man and lives to tell the tale!”
“Blood for blood!” Nathan shouted, the cry taking on a whole new meaning. But as the sec men rode apart, the bright headlamp of the bike winked out.
Instantly suspicious, Stirling brought his horse to a stop, then slid off to take cover in the rustling weeds. A few seconds later there was an odd thump, closely followed by a whistling noise in the air, then a thunderous explosion. A hellish fireball lit up the field for yards, clearly exposing the three mounted sec men even as dirt rained down from the sky.
Grens! Rolling away from the detonation, Stirling caught his breath, then crawled back toward the crater, knowing that was the only safe direction. Reaching the charred earth, he went into a crouch and swept the landscape, looking for targets. But the night was much too dark and the fire in the trees was already starting to die, its meager illumination fading into a muted scarlet hue.
A black-powder longblaster boomed, then another. The rapidfires chattered: there was another explosion; a man screamed. A horse burst into flames. Bucking insanely, the burning animal started to gallop into the distance, dripping fire and endlessly screaming.