by Gavin Smith
* * *
The muscle car skidded to a halt, brakes screaming. Long after the sound of the brakes had echoed into nothingness over the sea of grass Joe was still screaming, striking out at the inside of the car and pounding on the dash. Somewhere in the back of his red mind, overtaken by rage and instinct, the sentient part of what was left of Joe was trying to suppress the noise in his head. The screaming. Just a little longer it promised.
Joe gripped the dash fighting for breath and control. Seeing the aces and eights of the stylised playing cards painted on the vehicles parked outside the barge did nothing to help control the rage. It was their logo, the Dead Man’s Hand, the symbol of the Hard Luck Commancheros. Road pirates and nomadic gang trash from Crawling Town, the vast city sized convoy made of various tribal gang nations. Crawling Town plied the Dead Roads, the strip of polluted land that ran from the rust belt in the North East down into Texas. Some of it was still irradiated from the Final Human Conflict some three hundred years ago.
Calmness returned, though the rage seethed just under the surface allowing him to make sentient actions and decisions. He could pretend he was human just a little longer and not just rage’s hollow vessel. Soon he could allow himself to fall into the workings of the car. Possess it in spirit form like his ancestors had once done with animals. Become an animal, a four-wheeled predator, leave nothing left of Joe.
He had to force the hatred down as he could see them now. Members of the Commancheros stood looking out of the window. They had heard the car scream to a halt and they knew and appreciated the sound of a well tuned, performance engine under duress.
Time to hit them where it hurt what was left of Joe decided. He used the link to feed alcohol to the engine, gunning the car and then slipping it into gear with a thought. The car leapt forward across the dirt of the barge/roadhouse’s car park. Joe turned the wheels with a thought, the car slewed around into a hundred and eighty degree skid. The car slid, hard into the end line of the Commancheros’ parked bikes.
The Commancheros looking out the window watched, appalled, as the bikes were pushed into each other, going down like dominos in a pile of twisted metal.
* * *
Gibby got the feeling that Momma was about to use one of her prosthetic hands to pry open Jack’s head. He had hoped that Momma’s appearance was going to make violence less, rather than more imminent but it did not look like it was going to happen that way.
The impact of metal on metal got their attention. It was the metal on metal sound of a collision that only meant bad things to any self respecting gear head. Intra gang violence, beaten prostitutes and corn-holing pretty young guys were all forgotten as priorities were rapidly reorganised. Something bad was happening to their rides.
Momma, Buck, Gibby, Jack and Nokker all scrambled out of the room and joined the other members of the Commancheros. They made their way towards the bar area of the Roadhouse to find out what had happened and who needed to be killed.
They spilled out into the bar area. The rest of the Commancheros, those who had witnessed the automotive carnage, were still stood at the window. They were still too traumatised to move.
As Gibby and Buck reached the window the dusty, patched, battered but still very serviceable looking muscle car shot back over the car park and skidded to a halt on Route 27 pointing north.
Buck looked down at the bikes. All five of the bikes that the Commancheros had were down on the ground. They were now a tangled mass of metal. Buck’s had been on the end and looked the least damaged.
As they watched, a figure got out of the muscle car. Gibby zoomed in on him, the image of the Native American suddenly large in his internal visual display. He was a big, powerfully built Native American. Wires stretched from the four plugs in the back of his neck back into the car. He wore leather with various hard armour plates over the top of it. Gibby guessed that he would have some kind of inertial armour under-suit beneath it. The fabric hardening when impacted against. The Native American had black lenses for eyes and wore his hair in a short mohican, shaved at the side. He was also, Gibby thought, the angriest looking man he had ever seen.
“My bike!” Buck howled.
“What’s this guy’s problem?” Gibby wondered aloud.
“He’s Miccosukee,” Timothy said. He had appeared at Buck’s shoulder.
“How’d you know fag?” Jack demanded. Timothy just pointed at the Miccosukee Tribal Police insignia partially obscured by dirt and mud on the side of the muscle car. Gibby saw Jack and Nokker exchange a glance. Was something worrying them, he wondered?
“Motherfucker!” the Trev shouted. He was one of the Commancheros whose bike had been more badly damaged. The Trev headed straight for the door.
“Wait!” Gibby and Momma shouted at the same time but the Trev, righteously furious at the damage to his chopped hog, was already at the door. He moved towards the muscle car shouting insults at the driver. The Trev had moved between Buck and Gibby and the Native American when his brains exploded in a shower of bone, gristle, flesh and implants all over the window of the roadhouse. The Trev hit the armoured glass of the barge and slid down to the ground. The assembled Commancheros saw the Native American work the lever on a big bore hunting rifle as he chambered another round and waited, the barrel was still smoking. Nobody moved.
“Bunch of fucking pussies. He’s one guy,” Jack spat. One of Jack’s toadies, Cletus, nodded in agreement. Actually it was less like a nod and more like a jerk or a spasm as he was so highly wired. The painfully thin and almost albino pale Kid Buzzsaw also muttered an agreement.
“After you guys,” Gibby said. Unfortunately Cletus, Kid Buzzsaw and another Commanchero called Roscoe decided they’d had enough. They were all younger members, all hot-headed and all looked up a little too much to Jack in his status as a Special Forces veteran. Also Cletus and Roscoe had just seen their bikes knocked over. They spilled out of the Roadhouse firing. They were heedless to shouted warnings from Gibby and Momma.
Joe calmly ducked down behind the armoured body of the muscle car as it was lit up in a hail of gunfire. The whole body of the car seemed to be sparking. With another thought the turret mounted 20mm Retributor Railgun uncoiled like a Jack-in-the-Box from the back of his car.
Inside the Roadhouse the Commancheros dived for cover as the hypersonic ripping sound tore through the air. All the Commancheros were veterans and as such had dampeners implanted in their ears that dulled the noise. Most of the prostitutes, however, did not have dampeners. Blood pored out of burst eardrums as they hit the ground screaming and clutching their ears.
The armoured glass cracked and spider webbed but did not shatter. Cletus, Roscoe and Kid Buzzsaw were not so lucky. The power of the rail gun rounds threw them into the air and tore them apart. Lumps of meat, metal and plastic that had once been their compadres hit the glass.
The barges automated defences were triggered by the Retributor’s onslaught but Joe was in the car and screaming up Route 27. The tracers from the autocannon formed an arc of light between the barge and the car but they could not get through the armour and were just ricocheting into the glades.
Gibby looked up from where he was lying on the floor and found himself looking at Jack’s gleeful face.
“It’s on!” Gibby heard Jack say, his dampeners picking it up as they filtered out the screaming prostitutes. Asshole, Gibby thought. The Commancheros scrambled to their feet and headed for the door.
* * *
Out in the open air and despite the urgency the humidity hit the Commancheros like a wall. All of them were immediately coated in sweat, though many were still sweaty from their prostitute-based exertions in the Roadhouse.
Buck ran to where his custom chopper was lying on the ground. He managed to wrench it free of the wreckage and began walking it upright. It was not as badly damaged as he had feared.
“It going to run?” Gibby asked.
“It’ll run,” Buck said grimly. Someone had fucked with his ride. He was
not happy.
All around them the Commancheros were climbing into their vehicles. Bearded Momma into the throne like driving position on her six-by-six converted monster cargo truck. Jack into his muscle car, it was stripped down and lightly armoured for speed, the fastest vehicle they had with them.
“You going to want a take a moment to put on some pants?” Gibby asked.
“I ain’t got time for pants,” Buck answered as he gunned the bike. Gibby raised an eyebrow but turned and headed for his car.
There was a rumbling noise and dirt and debris were pushed across the hot dirt car park as an armoured hovercraft started up, its armoured skirts inflating. The hovercraft belonged to Squealer, a heavyset, bordering on fat, Commanchero with an oddly high-pitched laugh. The others had all laughed at Squealer when he had shown them his latest project: A pre-FHC Russian military surplus, armoured hovercraft that he had fixed and upgraded. The trip down through Florida to the Keys had changed everybody’s mind. Gibby watched Squealer turn the hovercraft and head into the Glades parallel with Route 27. Squealer would need all his skill, experience, his boosted reflexes, the upgraded sensor package he had installed in the hovercraft, and a degree of luck to move at speed through the Glades in the hovercraft.
Gibby reached his ride. The door to his car unlocked as he texted a heavily coded message to it with a thought. He opened the door and climbed into the bucket seat. It felt like coming home, it always did. He slid the jacks from the car into the four plugs in the back of his neck. The car growled into V12, supercharged life. Diagnostic readouts appeared in Gibby’s Internal Visual Display.
The steering wheel was superfluous unless the cyberlink to the car had gone very wrong and manual control was required but Gibby, like most of the Commancheros, liked the authenticity and nostalgia of the wheel. Besides it was where the palm connections for the vehicles smartlinked weapons were. Gibby ran other diagnostics on the weapons but kept them folded down for the time being so as not to affect the car’s aerodynamics.
Car. Gibby shook his head. This wasn’t a car. This was so close to him it was like an extension of his body. Gibby nodded at the thought. He liked that, an extension of his body, probably his cock.
Gibby had built the car with Buck’s help. It was four-wheel drive as all vehicles needed to be on the Dead Roads. The armoured body styling Gibby had fabricated was based on a Pre-FHC design for a car called the 1950 Mercury. It was all meanness and smooth sensuous lines, from the armoured air intakes sucking down oxygen for the supercharger, to the reinforced rear bumper. It was electric blue and Gibby called her Daisy. Which in retrospect was a funny name for a cock substitute, he thought frowning.
Buck skidded his 2500cc chopper to a halt next to Daisy in a shower of dirt. He interrupted Gibby’s cock substitute gender confusion musings. Buck threw his hat into the back of Gibby’s car.
“Fuck man! The paint!” Gibby complained.
“You don’t think there’s a chance that this guy might shoot at us doing more damage to the paint than some sweaty-assed Glade dirt?” Buck growled. Gibby had to admit Buck had a point. Still.
“That’s not the point man, show some fucking respect!”
“Give me the carbine,” Buck demanded. Gibby reached up and removed the short-barrelled Kalashnikov gauss carbine from its clips and handed it to Buck. Buck clipped it to the opposite side of the bike to where the semi automatic shotgun was clipped.
“Let’s roll partner.” Buck gunned the bike, all but sliding sideways onto Route 27, the wheels gripping the pitted and scarred blacktop as the bike sped up the ancient road.
The Mercury hit the lip of the road so fast that the heavy vehicle was airborne. It crashed down, and surged up the road behind Buck’s chopper.
The Commancheros where in a staggered line strung out along Route 27. Buck and Gibby began weaving in and out between them making their way up the high-speed convoy.
Buck quickly overtook Bearded Momma in the six-by-six monster truck. Gibby glanced up at Bearded Momma on her driving throne as he passed her. He opened a comms link.
“Hey Bearded Momma, this guy’s got a railgun, you didn’t fancy riding inside today?” The truck had two driving positions. One was inside an armoured compartment.
“You got to get the wind in your dreads,” Momma laughed over the link. Then with a thought her truck’s music suite started broadcasting out to all the Commancheros. The pounding beats and slow, heavy, grinding guitar riffs of country and metal filled the airwaves. The singer started to growl out lyrics about how his grandmother had left him but not before she’d done beat his mule to death.
* * *
“Control, control, control, control,” Joe repeated to himself like a mantra. Just a little longer he thought. Then he would see Nadine, Jeremiah and Lucy again.
The split screen on his IVD showed the Commancheros approaching like they were eating the distance between him and them. Joe had lit out of the roadhouse fast but not so fast that they would not catch him. He wanted them to catch him.
* * *
Piggy was out front in his Dune Buggy, followed by Little Hattie and Big Hattie on their motorcycle and sidecar combination. Behind them was Nokker in his six-by-six pickup. Jack was holding back behind Nokker in his car.
Buck slewed the bike round Black Zart’s Passion Wagon. Gibby followed, he knew that Buzzy and Naz would be in the back rattling around like the two amphetamine crazed car boarders they were.
Buck and Gibby shot past Gentle Suzy on her trike. Gentle Suzy was a Twist, somewhere along the line her predecessors’ genes had gotten screwed up in the war and she had been born very short. The massive trike made her look even tinier. On the back of the trike was a jury-rigged, homemade plasma gun that made all the rest of the Commanchero’s very nervous. Gentle Suzy was leant forward over the dropped handlebars as if that would make the slightest bit of difference to the drag with the massive weapon on the back of the Trike.
Over the sound of howling engines Buck and Gibby heard gunfiret. Out in the swamp Squealer was firing the quad autocannon on the hovercraft at Joe’s pursuit car. Tracer fire joined the two vehicles with arcs of light as they sped north. Sparks flew from Joe’s car as the armour deflected the cannon fire.
Behind Joe, Big Hattie opened up with the sidecar mounted HSAW. Next to the two Hatties, Piggy began firing the smart linked automatic grenade launcher from his dune buggy. Joe’s pursuit car was engulfed in rapidly blossoming balls of fire as 30mm high explosive armour piercing grenades detonated on or around the car.
* * *
Joe seemed to be surrounded by flame, he wrestled with the car as it was battered around by repeated concussion waves. His audio dampeners struggled to deal with the sound of the explosions as well as the multiple impacts on the armour. The wall of fire and force that surrounded him obscured the view of the targeting system so he fired where he last knew the dune buggy with the AGL to be.
* * *
Time seemed to slow down for Gibby. He had assumed that the fusillade of grenade would speed things up if not deal with the problem entirely. Instead he watched rounds from the railgun walk in on Piggy’s buggy. The stream of grenades stopped, as Piggy’s buggy seemed to disintegrate and spread itself over the highway. Joe’s pursuit car appeared out the other side of the multiple fireballs.
Buck had to swerve to avoid the tumbling debris and Gibby felt some of it impact against the Mercury’s armour. Moments later the Hatties’ motorcycle and sidecar seemed to pick itself up off the highway and disintegrate in mid-air as the railgun rounds tore it apart. The bike/sidecar combination’s scavenged, homemade armour plate was no match for the Retributor’s 20mm belt-tungsten cored penetrator rounds.
Nokker drove through the wreckage of the Hattie’s bike. The pursuit car’s railgun swung round in its turret and began firing, rapidly switching between Nokker’s pickup and Squealer’s hovercraft. Both vehicles were significantly more armoured than the dune buggies and the bikes but the railgun w
as already starting to chew through that armour.
Gibby was worried that they might not have anything with them that could do the job. Well maybe Gentle Suzy’s homemade plasma gun but Gibby had never like the word homemade connected with the word plasma. Missiles were their best hope he decided.
* * *
Joe switched fire between the hovercraft flanking him in the glades and the six-by-six pickup with the chaingun, both of which were slowly chewing away at his armour. He saw the motorcycle and sidecar peak out behind the pickup. He switched target. It took a moment.
* * *
Bearded Momma launched a remote. It headed up and forward but the speed of the convoy soon out distanced its small engine, however it provided her with the lock she needed.
“Fire mission. Squealer, Nokker you ready?” Bearded Momma said receiving Squealer’s high-pitched affirmative, which was shortly followed by Nokker’s. “Light her up.”
Gibby watched as ahead of him Nokker fired his roof mounted man portable light anti-armour missiles or Laa-Laas as they called them in the war. To his right he saw Squealer empty the hovercrafts heavier surface-to-surface missile battery. Moments later more surface-to-surface missiles flew overhead from Bearded Momma’s truck.
* * *
Joe saw the fire and contrails of the incoming missiles. He smiled. This was their money shot, their big guns and it was far too early. He triggered the counter measures and the ball mounted independently targeting point defence lasers.
* * *
Chaff filled the air and then laser fire, the whole world in front of Gibby seemed to explode as warhead after warhead detonated before reaching their target as a result of laser fire and chaff impact. Nokker’s truck and Jack’s car were engulfed in the multiple blasts.