Axler, James - Deathlands 65 - Hellbenders

by Hellbenders [lit]

  Just as her shot had made the opposing sec man's head explode like a melon, so the two shots that had squeezed through the gap in the armoring reduced her head to pulp in a matter of a second or two and extinguished the life of the belligerent and feisty blonde.

  "Oh, for fuck's sake," Lonnie said, looking over his shoulder as her body was thrown across the wag and landed in Danny's lap, making the youngster puke. "When Rudi finds out, he'll go shit mad—he'll probably take 'em out on his own. And don't stop firing just because of that," he added as Jak and Dean returned their attention to their blasters and started to loose shots once more at the trade convoy.

  One thing was certain, though—the sudden, freakish and unexpected chilling of one of their own people had brought home to everyone in the wag that they were outnumbered at least two-to-one by those on the outside of the Hellbenders' caravan, and that every life lost, especially in such a stupe manner, was more of a blow to them than to the men of either Charity or Summerfield.

  "WHAT DO YOU MEAN, you can't drive one of these?" Claudette yelled at Ayesha. "Didn't your daddy ever give you a wag as a present, like your brothers?"

  Inside the wag that had carried the women into the arena, the noise from outside was drowned by the argument within. With the chilled body of the sec man still in the corner, and now bereft of both sec shotgun and driver, as well as the traitorous Anita, the women were huddled in the rear while Ayesha and Claudette stood face-to-face.

  "Of course he didn't, you stupe," Ayesha yelled back. "I'm a girl, not a boy. Shit, you worked at the palace, or so you say—you know what he was like. Girls are for fucking, and boys get the toys."

  A look clouded across Claudette's face suddenly, as though the argument was suddenly forgotten.

  "Yeah, you're right," she said quietly. "My ma always said that Red was like that."

  Ayesha's anger suddenly dissipated as she heard her father referred to in that manner. There were few people left alive who referred to Baron Al Jourgensen as "Red"—she had no knowledge of this being one of the ways in which Danny and the rest of the Hellbenders knew the baron from Correll's ranting—and a cold shiver ran down her spine as she suddenly realized something.

  "Your mother?"

  Claudette nodded briefly. "Yeah, she ended up slit from pussy to throat in a gaudy house by some drunk asshole, but before that she'd been one of his regular sluts before he got bored. That's how come I'm here. And she told me how he got the name of Red, and how come people don't use it anymore unless they want to die."

  "Red like the blood of the women when he finished them," Ayesha said in a small voice. "That what happened to your mother?"

  Claudette shrugged. "Mebbe. If not him, then some wiseass who was working for him or wanted to be him and knew who my ma was. She always said there were only so many sluts, and every man gets around to them sooner or later. Don't think she meant to kill them, though."

  "So you're my sister," Ayesha said quietly.

  "Yeah, me and mebbe half the women under twenty in this wag." Claudette laughed harshly. "Don't get stupe on me about it—it still don't change the fact that you can't drive this stupe wag. Can anyone here?" she asked in a louder voice, addressing the rest of the women. There was a general agreement that Ayesha was right—women in Charity weren't given the power to do these things, and none of them had any driving experience.

  "Boy, that's us well and truly fucked," Claudette said, rubbing her face, "more than if we'd let those assholes from Summerfield get their paws on us."

  "Mebbe not," Ayesha said, her face determined and set as she went past Claudette and climbed over and into the front of the wag, ignoring the blasterfire that was erupting all around and could easily come through the windshield, toughened glass though it was. "Come and ride shotgun—you've got just about the only blaster we've got," she added to her newly discovered sister.

  "What the rad-pocked, scum-sucking, sticky-fucking hell are you doing, girl?" Claudette spit out as she slipped over the seat and joined Ayesha.

  "Look, I might not know exactly how to drive one of these things right, but I must know something. I've sat next to sec men driving, to my brothers, to my asshole father. I've seen these stupe things being driven all my life. It can't be that hard to work it out."

  "Hell of a time to start learning," Claudette said with a smile.

  Ayesha laughed. "Never better, babe."

  J.B. WAS FAR from happy. He could see that Correll's strategy was already falling to pieces, and he and Mildred were a long way from where they wanted to be—at the side of Ryan and the rest of their companions. The only way to get out of this—if there was any way at all—was to be back-to-back with people they could trust. At least that way they had a chance, with people they knew they could rely upon.

  Not like here. Not like now.

  The Armorer straightened his wag and headed toward the gap between the rocks that formed the entrance to the arena.

  Ahead of him he could see the Summerfield convoy from the rear, getting nearer as he closed on them. The front of the convoy was lost in the swirl of the dust storm, but he could see sec men chasing back to their wags, and those who were already mounted turn around, blasters at the ready. He could also see the sec men who were standing guard on the top of the supply wags, with the homemade flamethrowers. They bore little resemblance to anything else the Armorer had ever seen, but he recognized the danger with an unerring instinct.

  "Get into position and hold on," he yelled, "this is going to be a little tricky."

  J.B. rarely overstated anything, and this was one of those occasions—for, almost as he spoke, the sec man on the flamethrower nearest the approaching wag swung the contraption toward the oncoming Hellbenders' vehicle and attempted to open up with a jet of flame.

  "Dark night," the Armorer cursed softly at the sight that confronted him as the sec man opened up the pressure on the flamethrower and attempted to ignite it. The rickety and ramshackle weapon spluttered twice as the sec man attempted to ignite the flame and then exploded on top of the wag, throwing up a ball of flame and a dense cloud of oily smoke that made it even harder to see in the arena as the wag beneath also went up, a dull whump , resounding around the rock walls as the sides of the vehicle flew outward—just as J.B. piloted his wag into range.

  The Armorer threw the wheel of his vehicle, swinging it as far to the left of the arena as he dared, hoping that the majority of the debris would avoid damaging their wag. The vehicle shook as lumps of metal thudded into it, driving it toward the rock and making him swing the wheel back to try to compensate.

  "Sweet Lord, will you look at that," Mildred whispered as the sec men on the exploding wag were thrown into the air and across the arena, one of them thudding against the wag with a force equal to that of some of the metal debris. Their clothes and skin were covered in the flaming fuel that was used to power the flamethrower, and they described arcs of flame in the air, cutting through the dust and poor light to show where they landed.

  "Heads up—more ahead," J.B. yelled, mindful that the explosion may yet have distracted his crew from the wags ahead.

  It was a good point. The sec men on the two wags in front of the one that had exploded had thrown themselves onto the roof of each of their wags, and were now scrambling to their feet with only one idea in mind—to meet the oncoming assault head-on.

  J.B. righted the course of his wag, and the Hellbenders and Mildred armed the blasters, ready to start firing as soon as the flame and smoke cleared and they could get a sighting.

  Unfortunately for them, the next Summerfield wag in line was able to fire first. The flamethrower crew was raised just above the smoke that was still pouring from the ruined wag, and so was able to sight the Hellbenders' wag first. Swinging around the flamethrower, and not even thinking about the fact that one before had exploded, the sec man in charge of the contraption fired it up and ignited the flame.

  A great yellow-and-red gout of flame roared from the barrel of the flameth
rower, scorching the side of J.B.'s wag and heating up the interior so that the blasters on the inside became almost too hot to touch.

  "Shit!" Jenny yelled as the rapidly heating metal burned the palms of her hands, "what the fuck are they doing?"

  "Take him out, Millie," J.B. yelled.

  Mildred acted quickly, yet seemingly with little fuss. She slipped her arms out of her jacket and used the sleeves to pad and insulate her hands against the heat. She moved the floor-mounted blaster until the sight caught the top of the wag, and kept her head just a fraction away from the blaster sight, so that she could feel the heat drying out her eyeball and scorching her eyebrow, yet it didn't actually touch or burn her skin.

  Mildred had always been a crack shot. A short burst of fire from the drum-mounted machine blaster shattered the fuel tank for the flamethrower and also ripped a line of holes through the flesh of the sec man standing by it, throwing him backward off the roof of the wag as the fuel ignited and shot a line of fire along the feed line of the flamethrower, exploding it from its mounting on the roof of the wag.

  But it wasn't just the flamethrowers that were causing problems. Although they were the most immediate danger, there were sec men both in the wags and also climbing onto the roofs of the wags armed with Uzis, Heckler & Kochs, and also AK-47s. They were starting to fire, not just at the wag driven by J.B., but also at all the Hellbenders' wags that followed the Armorer. Heavy-duty blasterfire thudded into the armored and reinforced sides of the wags as the Hellbenders used their mounted blasters to return the fire.

  It was here that they had the advantage. There may be less of them in terms of wags and manpower, but they knew from their recce and spy reports that the wags from each ville weren't entirely armored. The wag stock of each ville was low, and the very nature of some of the trade to be exchanged would make the use of an armored wag impossible for a quick turnaround. So it was that the Hellbenders could, in theory, take advantage of surprise to cut down wag and man numbers if they hit hard and fast.

  It was then that both Baron Al Jourgensen and Baron Tad Hutter changed their own agendas and made the entire matter a whole lot more complicated.

  Chapter Twenty-One

  "Tulk! What the fuck is going on?" Hutter raged.

  Elias Tulk spared himself a small smile as he sat at the wheel of the static wag. "I don't know, Baron. We appear to be under attack of some kind." He giggled. His mind was filled with thoughts of revenge, and in part he no longer cared if Hutter guessed the part he played.

  Hutter fixed his sec chief with a long hard stare, for a moment forgetting the battle that was raging outside. "This is something to do with you, you son of a gaudy slut," he hissed, "and I'll find out when we get back home."

  "If…" Tulk interjected.

  Hutter said nothing for a moment that seemed to stretch to forever. The inside of the wag was like a calm eye of the storm that—both in terms of nature and of a firefight—swirled and raged around them.

  "We will get back," he said finally, and in a menacingly quiet tone. "And what's more, we'll take the women with us. Screw the rest of this. We're going to grab them and get the fuck out of here."

  "How am I going to relay orders to the rest of the crew, then?" Tulk pointed out the carnage outside.

  Hutter looked behind him at the two sec men who were manning the wag with himself and Tulk. They had their attention seemingly fixed on the outside, flinching at the slugs that hit the armor plating and toughened glass, starring it, but the baron knew that they had been listening intently to the discussion in the front of the wag.

  "There's four of us. In case it escaped your notice, those sluts don't have any sec with them, and Baron Al and his boys are occupied with the assholes attacking them from the other direction. We just break ranks here, ram into the middle of the convoy, scattering everyone in their surprise, grab the girls and get the fuck out."

  Tulk grinned wryly. "And that's a plan?"

  Hutter was serious. "Got anything better to do, Elias?"

  BARON Al "Red" Jourgensen was seeing the color of his nickname—which hadn't been used by anyone except Correll in many a year, both in terms of his temper, and in the blood that was flowing into the earth outside as both sides counted casualties against the sudden assault group.

  "What the motherfucking hell is going down here?" he demanded of no one in particular. "That shithead Hutter thinks he can sell us down the river like this?"

  "Don't think it's him, Baron," replied the sec man who had been driving the leading wag. "He's getting the attack as much as we are."

  Jourgensen shot a look over his shoulder at the men who were manning the blasters behind him. They were rattling off bursts of machine blasterfire at the Hellbenders' wags as they passed, but were trying to conserve ammo and shoot on sight, their visibility impaired by the storm and the dust raised by the circling wags.

  "How we doing?" he snapped.

  One of the sec men took his eye away from the blaster sight for a moment to answer. "Can't see a thing out there, Baron. I dunno if we're hitting anything or even what it is we're aiming at half the time."

  Baron Al nodded. "Right. We need those crops, so we're gonna take 'em." He picked up the handset of the radio. "Listen up," he yelled, "all wags head to the opposite camp and try to take the trade. Then get out as fast as you can."

  "You think anyone actually heard that?" his driver said as slugs from the Hellbenders' blasters whined and ricocheted off the armored wag.

  "Dunno." Baron Al shrugged. "But at least we've tried. Now hit the fucking gas!"

  Ayesha heard the message from her father on the radio as she tried to hotwire the wag with all the women who were the trade from Charity. The sec driver had taken the ignition key with him, possibly as some kind of private token of his own security, or just from habit. As he was now lying chilled in the center of the arena bloodbath, there was no way that either Ayesha or Claudette was going to risk getting it back again.

  Claudette, seated beside the girl, also heard the message. "Lovely man," she muttered. "No mention of us in there."

  "Did you expect anything else?" Ayesha said through gritted teeth as she stripped, then joined the wires. "Please work this time, you stupe bastard," she added to the machinery. With a cough and a splutter, the wag's engine came to life. "Shit, I thought that'd never happen," she added with relief, then, "let's get ourselves out of here and wait for the dust to settle."

  "In this storm?" Claudette grinned.

  Ayesha didn't grace the poor joke with an answer. Instead, she stared ahead of her at the chaos framed by the windshield as she tried to put the wag into gear. With a squeal and grind that was painful, and made all the women inside the wag wince, the wag ground into gear. Swinging on the wheel, Ayesha pulled it out of the convoy.

  Straight into the line of the approaching wag.

  THE HELLBENDERS, led by Correll, had completed four or five circuits of the convoy, and the firefight was starting to get monotonous. In the wag driven by the gaunt man, Ryan and Krysty exchanged glances that spoke volumes, and both knew that their thoughts were being echoed by Jak, Dean and Doc in the wag behind, and by J.B. and Mildred in the opposing convoy. Any attempt at strategy had gone out of the window, and after the initial gains made by the Hellbenders when they had been able to pick off sec men who hadn't been able to make it back to secured or armored wags, the firefight had degenerated into the assault party driving around and around taking shots at whatever they could see through the storm, while sporadic fire returned at them suggested that the sec men from Charity were now all safely inside wags that offered them some protection from the fire.

  It couldn't go on like this. Sooner or later, ammo or fuel would run out, and then it would descend into hand-to-hand combat. Ryan knew that his people were more than capable of holding their own, but they would be outnumbered, and if it came to a situation where blood lust held sway, he knew that they couldn't guarantee that the Hellbenders would recognize them when it
came to face-to-face combat in a sandstorm.

  Glancing across at Correll, Ryan could see that whatever shreds of sanity and reason had kept the man going for so long had now all been cast to the winds of the storm. The Hellbenders' leader was staring maniacally ahead through the windshield, hunched over the metal box on his lap, stroking it and muttering to it as he piloted the wag in a continuing circle, occasionally whooping as he saw some blasterfire hit home.

  "Not good, lover," Krysty whispered to the one-eyed man, noticing the direction of his glance. "I figure he's gone totally. Problem is, how do we get out of this?"

  Ryan spared the woman a look. Her hair was coiled tightly to her head and neck, reflecting the way she felt about the conflict and the manner in which it was proceeding rapidly to stalemate.

  "Fireblast! There's nothing we can do while we're stuck in here."

  It was at this point that fate took a hand.

  Ayesha pulled the wag out, stamping on the accelerator to get the vehicle out of its confinement quickly, while the wheel was still at full spin and the tires bit into the swirling earth, turning the wag out of the space it occupied in the stationary convoy. The wags had been stopped and parked up close to one another, and she braced herself as the wing of the wag caught the rear of the wag in front with a squeal and a shower of sparks as metal ground on metal, slowing the progress of the wag with the women, and making Ayesha bite so hard on her lip with concentration that the salty taste of blood flooded her mouth.

  The noise of grating, grinding metal was such that it seemed to the occupants of the wag to completely overtake the other sounds from outside, filling the wag with an eardrum-bursting noise that made it hard to think.