Downrigger Drift

by James Axler

  Ryan stepped into the clearing, his longblaster still out in front of him. The turret on top immediately swiveled toward him, and he stood perfectly still, waiting for J.B. to recognize him. After a few seconds, the rotary-barrel 20 mm cannon turned away, and the main hatch opened.

  Ryan jogged over, handing his Steyr up and climbing inside. Everyone was there, and a cursory check showed no one was injured. Without a word, he settled into the driver’s seat, gripped the wheel and began hauling it over to the left to take them through the checkpoint and out of town.

  He stopped, his hands frozen where they had started their task. They had parked the wag in the middle of the lot, and Ryan saw the pinpoints of torchlight in the distant ville as the people reorganized. For a moment, his memory brought up that nightmarish vision of the boardinghouse basement and the horrors it contained, and his gorge rose at the sudden thought that they might have partaken of some of that, as well. He restrained it with an effort, telling himself that it was only vegetable soup they’d eaten. Even he wasn’t sure he believed that, but he clung to the thought like a drowning man, for to lose it was to risk a descent into madness.

  But if they turned and left, what would stop this hell-town from continuing their atrocities on the next convoy that came through the area? What might happen if they killed everyone around? Would they begin foraging farther for human flesh to eat?

  Would they fall upon Toma like the slavering wolves they were, gorging themselves at that waiting feast?

  If they had taken another route, it was likely they would have passed this quaint little ville by, and never been the wiser, but they hadn’t, and now here they were, with two paths to choose from—one leading to freedom and safety, and letting a monstrous evil survive to prey on the unknowing, and the other down a dangerous path that could see them injured or even killed. The first was obviously the wiser choice, but Ryan didn’t think he could live with himself if he drove away and let this ville continue to exist.

  Sensing movement beside him, Ryan felt Krysty slide up next to him. “Ryan?” He didn’t acknowledge her presence, but just stared straight ahead for long moments, until he said the only thing he could say.

  “We’re going back in.”

  She didn’t protest, but just kissed him on the cheek. “I’ll spread the word and man the rear gun.” She started to turn, but was stopped by Ryan’s hand on her arm.

  “No, I’ll do it. Get to the rear.”

  She did, and Ryan turned to face the others. “We’re going back. I want to wipe these hellspawned cannie bastards from the face of the earth. Kill anyone you see lifting a weapon against us. Make sure no one gets close. Wipe them all out.”

  No one said a word at first, then J.B. asked. “Burn them?”

  “Not unless we can do it from the wag. No one’s going outside.”

  “Give me a minute. I have to swap the belt in the main gun for tracer rounds.”

  “You got ninety seconds.”

  Except for the sounds of J.B. switching the ammo, no one else said a word. Ryan didn’t care how they were preparing for what they were about to do, as long as they were getting in the right mind-set. A few moments later, J.B. dropped into his chair. “Turret’s ready.”

  “Front blaster ready,” Jak sang out.

  “Rear blaster ready,” Krysty called from her position.

  Ryan heard muttering from Doc that was probably a prayer, but at the moment, he didn’t care. He pulled out onto the road, driving slowly back toward the ville. Ryan’s mouth was dry, and he swallowed to ease his throat. He’d chilled many before in his life, including some extremely evil bastards, but could think of few who deserved it more than these people, who extended a hand in seeming peace and friendship, only to cut your throat with the blade hidden in the other.

  “Going a mite slow,” J.B. observed.

  Ryan stared out into the darkness. “I want them to know what’s coming. Soon as you have targets in range, light them up.”

  The rotary cannon roared immediately after, with J.B. putting short bursts into the buildings lining the left side of the road. The tracers flashed out like giant orange fireflies that punched through doors and walls to roost in each home. Moments after each one hit, flames flared in each home, causing small forms to spill from the doors, and in several cases, jump from second-story windows. The Armorer was methodical, spraying each building with short, controlled bursts until it ignited.

  Ryan turned left down Hudson Street and proceeded until they were at Grandma Flannigan’s boardinghouse again, with J.B. torching every building they passed along the way.

  “Destroy it,” Ryan said.

  J.B. sent a long burst into the house, ensuring that it caught. By now the entire southeastern quadrant of the town was burning, with the wind from the east spreading the hungry flames to more buildings. Ryan relentlessly kept on his path of destruction, finding the ville’s main street and turning onto it. J.B. was about to continue his controlled burn when he noticed what was ahead of them.

  A double line of horsemen, about twenty in each row, had assembled in the street about fifty yards down, every rider carrying with a firearm and a torch. Catching furtive movement in the shadows of storefronts and on rooftops, Ryan glanced around to see more armed townspeople taking up positions for their last stand.

  “Ryan—” Jak called from up front.

  “The second you see one fire, unload on them. J.B., take the roof positions out. Krysty, make sure no one gets behind us.”

  For several long moments, no one on the street moved. The only sound heard above the idling engine was the crackle of flames as the cannies’ town burned around them. Then one of them held his longblaster above his head and screamed, a long, loud savage war cry that rose and fell in the night air. The rest of the mounted men followed suit, the street reverberating with their shouts and yells.

  The leader kicked his horse forward into a full charge, bringing his weapon to his shoulder and firing at the armored war wag. The rest of the line hurried to catch up, weapons leveled, bullets pinging off the thick armor plate.

  A second later, all hell broke loose.

  The wag shuddered as Jak opened up with his 7.62 mm machine gun, spitting full-metal-jacketed death at the line, chewing into the ragtag cavalry galloping toward them. Ryan hadn’t been idle either—as soon as the first man had burst forward, he’d tromped on the Gas, the wag accelerating toward the suicidal men and horses. The front blaster kept chattering, sending men and animals crashing down in tangled piles of horses and riders. But there was still enough left to form a weak barrier when the wag swept into them.

  The already panicked horses screamed as they were mowed down by the ten-ton behemoth. Their riders flew through the air, either killed from the wag’s impact or when they hit the ground. If by some miracle they were still alive, they were crushed under the inexorably advancing vehicle, belching fire from its front, top, and back like some strange, three-headed monster.

  At the end of the street, Ryan cranked the wheel and turned the LAV. The main thoroughfare of Poynette was now a ravaged killing field. Bodies of men and horses littered the street, either pulverized by bullets, crushed by the war wag, or both. Storefronts were riddled from dozens of light-machine-gun rounds, many with smoking bodies sprawled on the sidewalk outside, or dangling half out of windows. Several buildings were already on fire, and J.B.’s efficient manning of the 20 mm cannon was lighting up the rest.

  The air inside the wag was hot and smoky, and Ryan’s throat was parched. Still, he cruised down the street one more time, trying to draw out any last pockets of resistance so they could be destroyed. The front and rear blasters chattered only sporadically now, with Jak and Krysty mopping up any stragglers.

  J.B. tapped him on the shoulder. “Nothing more to do here. Fire’ll burn the rest.”

  “Yeah.” Ryan turned down a side street and drove back to the main road out of the ville, heading toward the guard post. Along the way, they saw the carved w
ooden sign: Poynette—Pop. 174.

  “J.B.?” Ryan asked.

  A short burst from the turret obliterated the sign and post, leaving only a shattered stump behind. Ryan revved the engine again and drove past.

  The guard post was deserted, the men most likely lying dead on Main Street. Ryan drove straight through the wooden barrier, which shattered under the impact, and headed down the road, the red and orange flames of the burning ville lighting the night sky behind him.

  Chapter Twenty-Five

  They drove for another hour, with J.B. keeping an eye out behind them for any signs of pursuit. The sun was just starting to glimmer over the horizon when they stopped for a cold meal and to reload the blasters. The wag’s engine was idling rougher now, but other than topping off the coolant with water, there didn’t seem to be anything that could be done about it.

  J.B. estimated they were about sixty miles from what used to be the city of Milwaukee, and after their last encounter, Ryan didn’t find much resistance when he suggested they skirt the town completely, cutting to the south and east to make a beeline for Chicago. Doc had been muttering darkly about nests of snakes in the garden of Eden, and Ryan figured it didn’t pay to stick around here any longer than necessary. No one else mentioned what they’d done, and the atmosphere inside the wag was somber and silent as a result.

  The bright sun didn’t last long, being overtaken by a thick bank of green-tinged clouds by midmorning. The air grew hotter as the day passed, turning thick and still. J.B. had also noticed his rad counter showing traces of radioactivity in the area, not enough to be concerned about, but edging toward the top of the green safe zone.

  They followed the decrepit highway east, looking for a turnoff, or even a clear path across the country. Ryan was just about to turn off and start carving his own path through the fallow farmlands when he heard a fusillade of blaster shots in the distance to the north. Turning, he saw a thin plume of dark smoke on the horizon.

  “What now?” he muttered. “We’ve already done our good deed for the day.”

  “Too far away too get a look with the camera. If that fire catches, could be days before it burns itself out in this weather,” J.B. said. “Don’t want to wake up one morning breathin’ cinders and ash.”

  Ryan sighed, resigned to J.B.’s implacable logic. “All right, we’ll get close enough so you can see what’s going on.” He turned the wag toward the noise, figuring they wouldn’t lose too much time by the detour. A few minutes travel brought them to the crest of a hill that would give anyone on top a decent view of the surrounding countryside, including the battle zone. Parking just below the crest, he and J.B. crept up to see what was going on.

  Ryan watched the aftermath as J.B. surveyed the scene with a pair of Zeiss binoculars he’d scavenged from the redoubt. Two groups of people were clustered around the still-burning remains of a charred building. “Looks like a group of raiders trapped some other folk in a farmhouse and smoked them out. Filthy looking bastards. Mebbe three or four survivors. What the…it can’t be…”

  “What?”

  J.B. passed Ryan the glasses in response. “I, uh, didn’t get a good look, but check out the tall one in the middle. The really tall one.”

  Ryan raised the glasses to his eye, focusing on the abnormally thin, tall man being prodded along by one of the raiders. He had long, gray-white hair, and wore a familiar pair of aviator sunglasses.

  “Fireblast! That can’t be…Donfil?”

  Donfil More was an Indian shaman the group had encountered on one of their adventures in the Southwest, where they had gone up against a blackhearted bastard named Cort Strasser, whom Ryan had encountered more than once in the past. In the stark desert, Strasser had styled himself after a long-dead military leader, and had been leading a war of extermination against the local Apache populace. Once his group had been destroyed, More had accompanied Ryan and his companions until settling down in a whaling community on the East Coast. Seeing him again after all this time was more than a surprise—it made Ryan’s jaw drop.

  “You know any other seven-foot-tall Mescalero Apaches in the area? What the hell’s he doing here?”

  “Only one way to find out,” Ryan said, pushing back from the hilltop and trotting to the wag. “We go in fast and take them by surprise. They’ll never expect it.”

  J.B. followed Ryan back to the wag, and they told the others who they’d just seen in the clearing. They were predictably surprised. Gunning the engine, Ryan hit the Gas, sending them roaring down the hill. As he’d suspected, the sight of the wag coming straight for them demoralized the formerly jubilant predators, most of whom took off into the surrounding trees, helped along with a few short bursts from the front machine gun. The former prisoners also took off in the other direction, but Ryan slipped to the hatch and poked his head out.

  “Donfil? Donfil More! Wait, it’s Ryan Cawdor!”

  The tall man had been shooting for the tree line as fast as his skinny legs could carry him, but at the shout of his name, he instinctively glanced back at the wag, his mouth opening in shock as he spotted the man calling out to him.

  “One-Eye Chills?” He slowed to a stop and came back “Is it really you? By the Great Spirit, it is good to see you again!”

  “None other. What the hell are you doing out here? Last we saw you, you were setting up with those whalers on the Lantic.”

  “My journey since parting company with you has been a long and strange one, my friend. Please, let me get my other friends back here first, and we will go back to Waukee and catch up.”

  “Sounds good to me.” Ryan kept a tight watch around them, in case the bandits were dumb enough to counterattack, while Donfil called to his fellows in the woods, eventually rounding up three of them. When they got closer, Ryan noticed that each one had minor mutations—one had what looked like a set of vestigial gills on his neck, the second’s head was bald, except for what appeared to be a small dorsal fin that started at his forehead and swept back to his neck, and the third who had webbed fingers and a distinct scaled pattern on his skin. Donfil made introductions, and they all nodded tentatively to him.

  Donfil wasn’t all that concerned. “The others know how to find their way back to the ville, or we might come across them on the way. Let us go and talk. There is much to discuss.”

  “You got that right. You and your group can hitch a ride if you don’t mind sitting on top.”

  “Most generous of you, One-Eye Chills.” After a brief conference with his comrades, Donfil led them to the wag and climbed on top, settling himself as comfortably as he could beside the cannon. The rest of his men followed. “Head due east, and you will come to the Great Lake. Once there, turn south and you will take us back to our ville much faster than we had left.”

  Ryan waited until everyone was secure before pulling his head back inside and engaging the wag’s gears. He kept it to around fifteen miles an hour, not wanting to spook anyone above into falling off.

  They drove for about ninety minutes, and located the missing fourth member of Donfil’s party on the way. Afterward, Ryan bulled through the thin forest to find himself near a cliff that overlooked a great, muddy-green expanse of water that stretched out over the horizon. There were several watercraft on the lake, their patched sails up as they skimmed along the surface. The wind blowing off the lake was redolent of algae and rot, with an underlying hint of metal. He heard a thump from up top, then Donfil’s muffled voice.

  “Welcome to the Great Lake Michgan. Follow the shore south, and we’ll be at our homestead soon.”

  Ryan obliged him, and they began traveling along the shoreline, careful to avoid the crumbling cliff edge. After several miles, they found a rutted dirt road, and Donfil yelled to take it. Ryan did so, and came across the ville of Waukee a few bone-jarring minutes later.

  From what he understood of predark maps, the shoreline of the Great Lakes had taken a terrible battering from the Russian nukes. The area around Chicago had been reduced to
a radioactive wasteland, black and empty. The city of Milwaukee had been badly damaged by the reshaping of the coastline, with much of its original waterfront destroyed long ago. The rebuilt port had grown up around a large concave bowl of land that might have been formed from a long ago landslide into the dark-green water. Crude wooden docks poked into the lake like fragile fingers, holding strange looking, low-slung boats between them like toys in a giant’s hands.

  The majority of the buildings around the harbor were houses, sturdy-looking, weathered cubes of wood with angled roofs and heavy shutters that could be pulled over the mostly open windows. Two larger buildings, each one several times larger than the biggest home, dwarfed the rest of the surrounding structures. The smell of lake water and fish hung over everything.

  Donfil directed him to the smaller of the two large buildings, where they parked the laboring wag, and waited for the group to get out of the vehicle before he headed inside.

  The interior was a communal room, filled with long tables and rows of benches. Several women, all dressed in heavy, plain skirts, blouses and white bonnets, bustled around. When they saw Donfil and the group in the doorway, a few of them stopped in surprise, then they all clustered around him, chattering excitedly. Some also noticed Ryan, Krysty and the others, and eyed them cautiously, particularly Jak’s and Krysty’s hair.

  While Donfil held up his hands to calm them, Ryan was also looking around. He noticed that all of the people in the room had a small mutation of some kind, from variants of the three he had seen earlier, to silver-eyed children and fish-mouthed girls.

  Donfil had finally gotten the milling women around them to quiet, holding his spindly arms above his head to placate them. “Just a minute—settle down, everyone. These are friends of mine that I met many moons ago, and have been rejoined with by the wisdom of the Great Spirit. I cannot say if they have been sent to help us—indeed, I have not even asked them if they would—but I must confer with the town elders first. While I see the elders, I would ask that you make them as welcome in our home as you have made me.”