by James Axler
With a loud snap, the last strand parted. Stiffly, Doc rose from the prone position, groaning like a corpse escaping from the grave.
“Easy now,” Krysty said, slipping an arm around the wounded man and helping him to a nearby rock. “Keep your weight on me.”
Keeping a hand on his aching left side, Doc made it to the rock and sat heavily. “Thank you, dear lady,” he whispered, his dirty face sweaty.
Splashing more shine on the blade, Mildred wiped the knife clean and sheathed it at her side. “Okay, where does it hurt?” the physician asked, kneeling on the ground.
“Indeed, where does it not hurt, madam?” Doc retorted with a subdued groan. “I have had fun before, and this is not it.”
“Aw, shut up, ya old coot,” Mildred admonished, peeling back the man’s shirt to expose a badly bruised chest.
Gently as possible, she probed his skin with fingertip pressure. Every touch evoked a grunt, but there was no fresh blood welling or white bone showing through his skin. All of the crimson streaks seemed to be from the Rogan brothers or the horses. Excellent. A wound contaminated with a stickie’s blood got an infection that was difficult to cure.
Flicking a butane lighter alive, Krysty lit the wick on a lantern and lifted it high for the physician to see clearly. In her other hand, Krysty kept her S&W revolver in a loose grip.
In the yellowish glow, Mildred examined the old man’s wounds and sighed gratefully when none proved to be life-threatening. Just as uncomfortable as hell.
“How did you find me?” Doc asked, trying to keep his mind off the medical examination.
“An Indian showed up,” Krysty said.
“Okay, you have two cracked ribs, and one that’s broken,” Mildred stated, turning for her med kit. “But your lungs are unharmed, thank goodness for that. I’ll wrap you tight in some bandages, and try not to lift anything heavy for a month.”
“A month?”
“That’s what I said,” Mildred retorted hotly, looking directly into his face. “Good God, Doc, you’re lucky to be alive after a pounding like that!”
“Not that you don’t deserve a good ass-whipping,” Krysty added unexpectedly. “Leaving us in the middle of the night like that.”
Trying not to move, Doc blinked in confusion. Had he really seen his wife, or was that only another hallucination? Exhaustion and pain were blurring his world until nothing seemed real anymore. His tumbled into the valley, the warning of the shamans, the underground fight with Delphi…
“Probably trying to save us from the Rogans,” Mildred chided, pulling out rolls of cloth. “Damn fool. Three against one isn’t a fight, that’s suicide.”
“Four against one,” Doc corrected through clenched teeth. “However…I survived, while…Delphi most certainly…did not.”
“Yeah, we heard. Buried in an avalanche,” Mildred said, starting to wrap the cloth around his thin chest. “Now stop squirming, sit upright and raise your arms more.”
“As you command, Torquemada,” Doc demurred, gingerly doing as instructed. “And he was not buried, my dear Krysty, the cyborg was crushed to a pulp. His forcefield was down, short-circuited by contact with the river.” Then he told them the entire story, leaving nothing out. Including the mysterious hologram.
“Just a trick,” Krysty snorted in disdain. “Probably some automatic system in the wag to defend Delphi.”
Noticeably, Doc brightened at the possibility. Yes, of course, how simple. There was no other answer that made any sense. If there were other agents of Coldfire in the area, they would surely have made their presence known by now.
Tying off the bandage, Mildred inspected her work. “Okay, you’ll live,” she declared, then added, “Did Delphi really have a working forcefield?”
“Most assuredly, madam.”
“So who was he?” Krysty demanded frowning. “A friend of Silas, or somebody from the Anthill?”
“Much more dangerous than that,” Doc wheezed, carefully easing his stance somewhat. Amazingly, the pain was considerably less. It seemed that he would live, after all. “Delphi was an operative for—” The man stopped talking.
Just then, Lily started coming their way. She had changed her clothes and now wore a black duster that reached to her ankles, denim pants, a dirty T-shirt with a leather vest, and a pair of green leather boots that looked a little big. There was also a gunbelt around her trim waist, the loops full of brass, and a .44 Webley revolver in the holster. A sheathed knife was on her other hip, and a switchblade jutted from her boot. The young woman was carrying a lumpy saddlebag and limping slightly, but there was a fresh bandage on her bad leg.
Lowering the lantern, Krysty silently asked Mildred a question, but the physician shook her head.
“I took care of Doc first thing,” Mildred replied. “Must have put on the bandages all by herself.”
“Beautiful and resourceful,” Doc stated, unable to keep a tone of pride from his words.
“You almost sound smitten.” Mildred chuckled and saw the tall man blush. Good Lord, was the old coot falling for the girl? In a rush of relief, a great weight seemed to be lifted off her shoulders. Well, it was about time he found another partner! He’d been alone for far too long. The physician was firmly convinced the isolation only served to augment his irregular bouts of memory loss. Doc Tanner needed to be firmly grounded in the present, instead of trying to live in the past. That hologram of Emily had clearly hit the man hard. Maybe Lily was the solution to that problem.
Impulsively, Mildred could not stop herself from adding, “Oh, yes, one more thing.”
“Yes, madam?” Doc asked, bracing himself for bad news. Had stickie blood gotten into his cuts? Was he already a dead man?
“Absolutely no sex for at least a week.”
“I beg your pardon?” Doc asked in a small voice, the words almost lost in the desert breeze.
“You heard her,” Krysty said, laughing.
“Madam, I am a married man,” Doc replied.
“Was married. A couple centuries ago.”
“That didn’t stop you from having a bed partner before,” Mildred reminded sharply, tugging on the bandages. “Several of them, if I recall correctly.”
Fully aware of the unspoken admonishment, Doc could only sigh, his feelings in total conflict. His love for Emily was not diminished, yet there was this growing attraction to Lily. Could he actually care for her as a person, or was it just lust, raw sexual desire? That brief view down her blouse had been wildly intoxicating. Although he appeared to be in his sixties, Doc was only thirty-eight years old. Traveling through time did that to a person. And it had been a very long time since he’d last walked with any woman through Cupid’s secret groove….
“Here, I found your weps,” Lily said, dropping one of the saddlebags on the ground. “Your blasters are pretty foul. Want me to clean them for you?”
“No, thank you, dear child,” Doc acknowledged coolly, stressing the last word. “I can do that perfectly well by myself.”
At the gruff rebuke, Lily’s smile melted. She began to speak, then shifted the other saddlebag on her shoulder to a more comfortable position and turned to angrily stomp away, her bad leg dragging slightly in the loose sand.
“You really need to have that bandage changed!” Doc shouted after her.
“Go frag yourself!” Lily retorted, walking faster.
“I was only trying to help,” Doc muttered, tugging on the wrappings around his chest. I’m a married man, and old enough to be her father, and a gentleman, and a good Christian, and…a total fool.
“Gaia teaches us that life is for the living,” Krysty said softly, resting a hand on his shoulder. “You might want to try that sometime.”
“Amen!” Mildred added with feeling.
Unable to conjure a reply, Doc said nothing, lost in a personal whirlwind of emotions.
Furiously shuffling across the sandy field of still bodies, Lily headed for the cliff. She saw that Jak was still on the rill watching f
or any danger. The other men, J.B. and Ryan, were studying the impenetrable blackness of the canyon below. That took some of the starch out her back. But unless her brother Edward had grown wings on the way down, he was just a smear on a rock now. Food for the scorpions and dung beetles.
“Hey,” Lily said in greeting. “I just wanted to say thanks and…” She paused in the goodbye, then spoke quickly, the words rushing out in a torrent. “I can cook. Better than anybody. I know some healing, and…and I have other skills.” She added the last part almost too low to hear.
The two men said nothing for a moment, pretending to consider the offer. But Ryan and J.B. had seen her bring Doc the blasters, and his blunt rebuff. They could guess at the reasoning behind both actions, and had already made a joint decision.
“Dark night, we sure could use a decent cook,” J.B. lied, scratching his unshaven cheek. In harmony, his stomach rumbled, sounding like a distant storm.
“Could you?” Lily asked, her eyes alive with hope.
She’d stayed to fight, when running was the wisest course. “Bet your ass,” Ryan stated gently. “Find a bedroll. A bedroll for one, mind you. We need a cook, so if you want the job, then we’ll be happy to have you ride with us for a while.”
Standing taller, Lily nodded in thanks and turned to limp away.
“Hope she’s a better cook than she is a shot,” J.B. stated, tilting back his hat.
“Doc can teach her to shoot,” Ryan answered, giving a rare smile. “You know that Trader always said it’s the ability to pull a trigger that has to come natural. The rest you can learn.”
“You can load that into a blaster and fire it.” J.B. chuckled. “But Doc is really going to have his hands full with her.”
“Once he pulls his head out of his ass,” Ryan said, looking around the desert valley. About a mile away, he saw the burning remains of the Indian settlement. He had noticed it when they’d arrived on horseback from the north. The dome and thorn fence were still burning out of control, and there was no sign of any survivors. But clearly visible in the reddish light, Ryan could see the strange egg-shaped wag of Delphi.
“Might be some good scav there,” Ryan suggested warily. “And we do need transport to reach the Mohawks Mountains.”
“Yeah, but there’s also gonna be a lot of boobies,” J.B. replied grimly, then paused as the big wag flickered. How odd. Just for a moment, the Armorer could have sworn that…
Delphi came walking out of the night, a blaster in each hand.
“Fireblast, light him up!” Ryan bellowed, diving to the side and firing the SIG-Sauer.
But the rounds seemed to have no effect on Delphi as he ran among the companions, darting here and there, moving incredibly fast.
“He’s trying for Doc!” J.B. cursed, triggering short bursts from the Uzi. He tried to track after the cyborg, but it was like grabbing for shadows. How could anybody move that fast? he wondered.
As Delphi darted between Krysty and Ryan, the two almost shot each other attempting to zero in on the sprinting whitecoat. In ragged formation, Mildred, Doc and Krysty cut loose from their position, and their rounds hummed past Lily, one of the miniballs grazing her cheek so closely that she felt the breeze.
Fanning the SIG-Sauer, Ryan could have sworn he hit Delphi several times. But there weren’t any ricochets off his forcefield or body armor. What was going on here? Then he saw Delphi move through the body of an aced stickie. What the…A hologram!
“He’s a fake!” Ryan shouted, lowering his wep.
Suddenly, a brilliant crimson beam cut through the air, missing Jak by an inch, and the rill alongside the albino youth violently exploded. The concussion threw the teenager aside and he landed sprawling in the sand, his Colt Python dropping from a limp hand.
“Laser!” Mildred cried, snapping off shots at the blurry Delphi. “From the wag!”
Moving fast, everybody went for cover, taking refuge behind some of the boulders dotting the battlefield.
His frock coat flapping behind, Doc charged into view, moving through the illusion of Delphi and brazenly standing in front of Jak’s still form.
“Get down!” Lily shouted from behind a large rock. She was trembling in terror from the predark tech. “They can see you!”
“Yes, I know,” Doc rumbled in his stentorian voice. Waiting in horrible tension, the man gripped his weps with fierce determination. If he could clearly see the cyborg’s war wag, then he was in range of the laser. The machine probably hadn’t attacked earlier because the on-board comp wasn’t sure which of the distant figures was Doc. But if the war wag was creating the holograms, then why had it tried to make him go off the cliff before?
The answer hit Doc like a fist in the stomach, stealing the air from his lungs. Because going over the edge wouldn’t have killed him. There had to be a mesa below, and he would only have broken his legs. Or mayhap there was a large body of water. That could mean that Edward was still alive! That wasn’t good news.
By now the rest of the companions had stopped shooting at Delphi, realizing the hologram was trying to get them to gun down one another in deadly cross fire. Or better yet, get them away from Doc and into a clear view of the laser.
Stopping to kneel by a headless stickie, Delphi flickered and a roaring stickie charged at the companions, waving its hands and hooting madly. It took everything Ryan possessed not to shoot at the mutie as the illusion darted among the companions.
Spinning with a snarl, John Rogan appeared holding a rocket launcher.
“Is that the best you can do?” Ryan taunted.
Instantly the laser beam came again, bracketing Doc on either side, the ground erupting into lambent steam and red lava from each strident hit. Buffeted by the thermal concussions, Doc refused to budge, covering the unconscious friend behind him.
“Incompetent poltroons!” Doc roared defiantly, red fluids starting to tint the bandages around his middle. “I shave closer than that!”
As if in reply, a flurry of laser probed among the boulders dotting the battlefield. The big rocks shook at the touch of the energy beam, white-glowing holes appearing in the material, some of them a foot deep. But penetration wasn’t achieved. The ancient handiwork of Nature standing indomitable to the advanced weapons technology.
Starting forward at a run, Doc holstered the LeMat and pulled a pipe bomb into view. The globular war wag was a long distance away, maybe a full klick, but if he could just get close enough without endangering his friends…
For a moment, it seemed as if the vehicle had been hit by lighting from above, then Doc realized it was gone. The huge egg-shaped wag had just vanished into thin air.
Chapter Twenty
Staying low and moving fast, the companions charged through the pearlescent dawn of the desert valley, every weapon at the ready. A reddish dawn was coming, the stars slowly disappearing as the blazing sun struggled to shine through the ever-thickening dark clouds of rad and chems.
While the horses and bike of the Rogan brothers had been destroyed in the fight with the stickies, their own mounts had been safely ensconced behind the defensive lava rill, unreachable by either the slavering muties or the sizzling laser.
Arching around to the east, the companions hid their mounts in an arroyo behind the smoldering Indian ville. Then they proceeded on foot, darting from boulder to boulder, tree to sand dune, using the natural formation of the land to mask their swift approach. Even if the enemy war wag had infrared, it would be impossible to find them among the smoky destruction of the nomadic ville, especially mixing with the growing heat of the coming dawn.
Or at least, that had been the plan, Ryan noted dourly, his long hair sailing in the wind of the galloping stallion.
Holding tightly on to the reins with his weak right hand, the one-eyed man held a primed gren in the other, the pin already pulled and stuffed into a pocket. He didn’t think the AP explos could harm the armored war wag, but it would throw a lot of sand into the air, giving them vital cover from that
big laser until J.B. could get closer with the C-4 pipe bomb.
During the frantic ride, Doc had quickly recapped his previous tangle with Delphi. By taking out that missile pod, the scholar had to have done significant damage to the war machine. Which meant the armor would be thin on top. If they could just get close enough, J.B. could flip in the bomb and open that military wag like a self-heat. Hopefully.
Following a dried rain gully, the companions peeked out from a collection of tumbleweeds to recce the crumbling predark fortress. The front gate had been smashed into splinters, the brick buildings inside dotted with molten patches from hits by the energy wep.
Listening to the whispering wind, Ryan tried to detect any sound of machinery. The chem-laser of the lady Trader needed a good minute to recharge between shots and made quite a racket. True, this wep was a lot more sophisticated, smaller, faster, hotter, but Ryan guessed that the basic principles would be the same. Generate power, accumulate, condense, then focus and release. It was sort of like firing a bolt-action rifle. You had to reload completely with every shot. Deadly, but slow.
Long minutes passed with nothing happening. Then J.B. gave a fake sneeze. Everybody ducked low in the gully, Krysty pulling a puzzled Lily down with them. Then the Armorer popped up fast, fanning the Uzi across the desert. The 9 mm Para-bellum rounds hit only air and sand dunes.
“Not invisible,” Jak declared, rising into view, the Colt Python still in his grip. The relief of not having to fight an invisible enemy was clear on his pale face.
“Didn’t think it was,” J.B. told him, dropping the empty clip and slapping in a fresh one to work the arming lever. “But it never hurts to double check.”
Warily, the companions crawled from the gully and started walking toward the ruins in a loose formation. They soon found the tracks of the globular war wag, and began to follow them, grimly alert for land mines or some other type of predark boobie.
“Stay razor, people. It’s possible Delphi isn’t chilled, after all, and is watching us from somewhere in the desert,” Ryan growled, watching the shifting sands for any suspicious movements. But he felt the risk was low, and returned the pin to the gren to tuck the explos charge into his coat.