Blade walked up to the first corpse and examined the area. Why would anyone leave three motorcycles, apparently functional, out here in the middle of nowhere? Could he ride one? he wondered. If he could manage to figure out how it was done, he’d find Rikki that much faster. He’d never ridden one before, but that didn’t—
No!
Blade froze as his gaze rested on a bloody sword lying amidst the slain canines. It was a katana! Rikki’s katana! Blade would recognize the sword anywhere! And there was the scabbard! But Rikki would never cast aside his cherished weapon. Or would he? There was no sign of Rikki’s body, and it was doubtful anyone would bother to cart it off but leave the three women behind. So Rikki must be alive, and he must have deliberately left the katana as a warning to his fellow Warriors. The katana’s presence conclusively proved Rikki had been here, but was gone now.
To where?
St. Louis?
Blade retrieved the sword and the scabbard. He wiped the blade clean on a dead dog and slid the katana into its scabbard.
A low rumbling sounded from beyond a hill to the east.
Blade quickly eased the scabbard under his belt, aligning it in front of the Bowie knife on his left hip. He crouched and darted across the road and into the trees on the right side of the highway. He was barely out of sight before more motorcycles appeared at the top of the hill. Without hesitating, they descended toward the bodies.
Would Rikki be with them?
Blade peered around the trunk of an oak tree, watching the approaching riders.
There were three motorcycles, each hauling a trailer with a cage on top.
In one of the cages were three dogs. Two men were on each motorcycle: the driver and a passenger, each man straddling his narrow seat with accomplished ease, despite the numerous ruts and bumps the bikes struck as they sped nearer.
They reminded Blade of the Cavalry, the superb horsemen occupying the Dakota territory. These bikers displayed the same casual mastery of their cycles shown by the Cavalry toward their horses. Whether it was man and machine or man and faithful steed, both seemed as one.
What was going on?
The three cycles braked and halted near the bodies. One after the other the drivers shut off their motors.
One of the passengers, a skinny man with baggy leather pants and a bushy brown beard, sighed as he eased to the ground. “I don’t see why we had to be the ones,” he said bitterly. “She could have sent somebody else.”
“Oh, yeah?” countered one of the drivers. “Who? We were the closest.”
“Besides,” added another, “I think Terza was pissed at us over what happened to the dogs.”
The bearded biker stared at the dogs littering the highway. “It wasn’t our fault,” he said sadly.
“It was that damn guy in black!” commented another.
Guy in black? That had to be Rikki! Blade inched a bit further around the tree, not wanting to miss a word.
“Who was that joker?” asked a portly biker as he climbed from his cycle.
“Beats me,” answered the bearded one. “The messenger from Terza didn’t know. He told me she wanted us to get these bikes and take care of the dogs. That was all.”
“Damn!” fumed the third driver as he walked up to the slain dogs.
“Look at this! How the hell did the guy do it?”
The bearded biker shook his head. “I don’t know. But he must be one mean son of a bitch.”
One of the other men snorted. “Not for long, he won’t be. You can bet Terza will rack his ass for what he did to Pat and the others.”
“And we’ll probably miss out on the fun,” complained the third driver.
“I wouldn’t say that,” interjected a deep voice from the edge of the highway.
Startled, the bikers spun, shocked to behold a towering man with dark hair and simmering eyes pointing a machine gun in their general direction.
“Who the hell are you?” demanded the bearded biker.
“Would you believe the tooth fairy?” replied the big man.
The bikers exchanged confused, worried glances.
“Drop your weapons,” Blade commanded.
All of the bikers were armed, four with revolvers and two with knives. A Winchester was strapped to one of their motorcycles.
Blade waited, sensing one of them would make a play, watching their eyes for the telltale hint of an impending violent attack. Very few fighters could disguise this instinctive reaction, a slight tightening of the eyes, a shifting of the pupils, prior to galvanizing their body into action. Almost every fighter telegraphed his assault in one way or another, whether it was a movement of the eyes or a contracting of the shoulder muscles right before he threw a punch. Only an extremely skilled and accomplished fighter was capable of perfectly masking his intent. Such a fighter didn’t reveal his maneuver or foreshadow his blow beforehand; he simply executed it with lightning speed and devastating results. While all the Family’s Warriors were trained in hand-to-hand combat, only a few demonstrated this exceptional ability of concealment, and Blade knew of only one who was the acme of perfection: Rikki-Tikki-Tavi.
One of the bikers, a hefty, unkempt individual with pink hair and an earring in his left lobe, was cautiously moving his right hand toward the revolver tucked under his belt.
“I don’t want to kill you if I don’t have to,” Blade said, hoping they would wisely avoid a clash.
They weren’t that wise.
Pink Hair clutched at his revolver, and that was the signal for the rest of them to go for their respective weapons.
Blade was left with no other option. He swung the Commando in an arc as he pulled the trigger, holding the barrel at chest height.
Pink Hair was the first to drop, his torso racked by the Commando’s heavy slugs, his body spurting crimson geysers as he was flung backwards onto the highway. The three other bikers with guns were likewise decimated. One of the bikers with a knife managed to whip his weapon from its sheath and lunge at the giant with the machine gun, but a veritable hail of lead knocked him for a loop. Only one biker was left standing, untouched, with his knife partially drawn; it was the skinny man with the baggy leather pants and the bushy brown beard.
“Drop it or die!” Blade snapped.
Bushy Beard promptly discarded his knife. “Don’t k-kill me, m-mister!” he wailed, stuttering, in fear for his life.
Blade strolled up to the biker. “Whether you die or not will depend on you. I’m going to ask some questions and I want truthful answers.” He rammed the Commando barrel into the biker’s abdomen. “One answer I don’t like and you’re going to develop a split personality. Understand?”
The biker nodded vigorously.
“What’s your name?” Blade asked.
“Jeff,” the biker replied.
“What are you?”
Jeff’s eyes narrowed and his brow furrowed, as if he was puzzled. “How do you mean?”
“Are you part of a gang?” Blade queried. He nodded at the bodies around him. “All of you wear black leather. Why?”
“That’s our color, man,” Jeff said.
“Color?”
“Yeah. Where are you from? Don’t they have colors where you come from?” Jeff inquired.
Blade pressed on the Commando and Jeff blanched. “I’ll ask the questions,” Blade reminded him.
“Sure thing,” Jeff promptly responded.
“What is the name of your gang?”
“We’re called the Leather Knights,” Jeff said proudly.
“And do the Leather Knights have their…” Blade paused, trying to recall the words he wanted. Once before, during Alpha Triad’s run to the Twin Cities, he had dealt with street gangs. What was the name they used for their territory? Something to do with grass or sod or—“…turf in St. Louis?” he said as the word came to him.
“St Louis is our turf,” Jeff boasted.
“The Leather Knights control the entire city?” Blade interrogated the biker.
“Detail the history of the Leather Knights,” Blade instructed.
“What?” Jeff almost laughed. “Are you kidding?”
Blade leaned forward, his raging eyes burning into Jeff’s. “Do I look like I’m kidding?”
Jeff gulped. “No, sir. You sure don’t.”
“Then start talking.”
“There’s not much to tell,” Jeff said in a frightened tone. “I don’t know a lot about it, honest!”
“You must know something.”
“All I know is what I’ve heard,” Jeff explained, “what some of the old-timers have told me.”
“I’m waiting.”
Jeff reflected a moment. “The Leather Knights got started way back before the war,” he detailed.
“When the war broke out, most of the people in St. Louis took off. I think they were evacuated by the Government, or something like that.
Anyway, the Knights stayed put and got involved in some fights with two or three other gangs over who was going to claim the turf. The Knights came out on top.”
“Are there any other people in St. Louis besides the Leather Knights?” Blade asked.
“Yep. Bunches. A lot of people strayed back after the war was over. I don’t know how many there are now, but there’s got to be at least a couple of thousand,” Jeff said.
“How many Leather Knights are there?” Blade questioned him.
“Six hundred, if you count the studs,” Jeff answered.
“Studs?”
“Yeah. I’m a stud. The guys you just wasted were studs. You’d be a stud, too, if you were a Knight.”
Now it was Blade’s turn to be confused. “I don’t understand,” he admitted.
“You’ve got balls, don’t you?”
“Balls?”
“Nuts. Coconuts, man. Gonads,” Jeff said, accenting the last word.
Blade was more bewildered than before. “What do my sexual organs have to do with it?”
“Everything. If you ain’t got nuts and a pecker, you can’t hardly be a stud,” Jeff explained.
Blade’s eyes widened in comprehension. “You mean all of the men are studs?”
Jeff snickered. “The foxes ain’t got the hardware, if you get my drift.”
“And the studs control the Leather Knights?” Blade speculated.
Jeff snorted again. “Where’d you ever get a dumb idea like that?” He hesitated, appalled at his own stupidity. “I didn’t mean anything by that crack,” he quickly blurted out. “Honest!”
“If the men… the studs… don’t control the Leather Knights, then who does?” Blade demanded.
“Who else? The foxes.”
“The women?”
“Why do you look so surprised? Ain’t it the same where you come from?” Jeff inquired.
Blade shook his head. “Our men and women share responsibility. You can’t really say one dominates the other.”
“You’re putting me on!”
“I’m serious,” Blade stated. “How did the women assume control of the Leather Knights?”
“It’s always been that way,” Jeff replied.
“Always?”
Jeff frowned. “I did hear a story once, but I thought the old guy who told me was wacko. He said that long ago, way back about the time of the war, the men ran the show. But all the fighting over our turf killed off most of the men. The Leather Knights became top dog in St. Louis, but few of the men survived. So the foxes, the mamas, sort of took over.”
“And the women have been running the show ever since,” Blade concluded.
“They do now,” Jeff affirmed.
“How many of the Knights are studs?”
“Oh, about two hundred,” Jeff answered.
“But you said there are six hundred Knights?”
“That’s right,” Jeff said.
“And the other four hundred are all women?” Blade asked.
“Yep.”
“That doesn’t make sense,” Blade said. “How can you have so many women and so few men?”
“We’ve got more men,” Jeff responded. “Lots more. But the women don’t let every man into the Leather Knights. Only enough to handle their dirty work.”
“Dirty work?”
“Yeah. Things like the cleaning and the laundry and stuff like that. It’s a real drag! I wouldn’t of joined up, but it was the only way I could get me a bike,” Jeff elaborated.
“Only the Knights are entitled to motorcycles?”
“Of course.”
Blade stepped back, studying the biker, debating. He believed the man.
But where did it leave him? What good did the knowledge do? In the final analysis, what did it matter whether the women or the men ran the Leather Knights and controlled St. Louis? Either way, getting Rikki out of there promised to be no easy task. “You mentioned a guy in black earlier.”
“The one who wasted our dogs,” Jeff said. “We were after Lex and Mira, when Cardew came hauling ass and told Terza about this guy in black who racked three sisters. That’s what the women all call themselves. The sisters. Anyhow, Terza got real ticked off and ordered us to send the dogs out.” Jeff paused. “I’ve been on the dog detail for six months. I’m so damn sick of dog shit I could scream.”
“Back up a bit,” Blade directed him. “Who are Lex and Mira? And Cardew and Terza?”
“Lex is one of the sisters,” Jeff said. “She got tired of the Knights and was trying to split. But the sisters ain’t allowed to split once they take the oath. As for Mira,” he said, shifting to his right and pointing at a woman lying among the dogs, “she got racked.”
“And Cardew and Terza?”
“Cardew is one of the studs. He was riding point when they caught up with Lex and Mira. He’s the one who told us about the man in black.”
“That leaves Terza,” Blade reminded him.
“Terza is our head, man,” Jeff revealed. “She runs the whole show.”
“Terza rules the Leather Knights?”
“You got it.”
“What kind of a woman is she?” Blade asked.
“She’s one mean mother!” Jeff said. “She don’t take any crap from anybody. Sort of like you.”
Blade grinned. “Where are they holding the man in black?”
“Is he a friend of yours?”
“Yes. Where is he?”
“I don’t know,” Jeff answered.
Blade took a step forward.
“Hey!” Jeff held up his hands. “Really, man! I don’t know where they’ve got him! He’s in St. Louis, but that’s all I know.”
“What will they do? Hold him prisoner?” Blade inquired.
“The Leather Knights don’t take no prisoners,” Jeff said. “He may be dead by now. Terza don’t like it when one of the sisters gets wasted, and your friend racked three. One of them, that one there,” and he pointed at another corpse, “was called Pat, a real good buddy of Terza’s. I imagine Terza will rack your friend first thing. Maybe take him out herself, or stake him out for Grotto, or even feed him to Slither.”
Blade wanted to pose additional questions, but he realized time was of the essence. He had to reach Rikki as swiftly as feasible. “You’re taking me to St. Louis,” he announced.
“You’re crazy!” Jeff responded.
Blade hefted the Commando. “Pick a cycle. I’ll ride behind you. Don’t try anything funny,” he warned.
Jeff glanced at the Bowies and the sword. “I’ll take you, but there’s no way you’re gonna get your friend out in one piece.”
“You let me worry about that. Start a bike.” Blade waited while Jeff climbed on one of the cycles and kicked it over. He straddled the seat behind the Leather Knight and tapped Jeff’s head with the Commando barrel. “Let’s go.”
Jeff gunned the bike, executed a U-turn, and headed toward the east.
“This just isn’t my day,” he muttered to himself.
Chapter Five
An hour must have elapsed, possibly longer.
Rikki’s arms were aching, hurting from the sustained strain of being suspended from the coarse rope. Periodically he glanced at Lex, and although she never complained or uttered a moan or other sound it was obvious that she was in extreme agony.
The crowd on the bank had grown until over 200 men and women were now gathered for the event.
But what were they waiting for? Rikki scanned the river for the umpteenth time. What was down there? He had asked Lex once, but all she said in reply was “Slither.” What was this Slither? It must be some sort of creature lurking in the river’s depths. Rikki twisted and gazed at the watchers on the west bank. None of them was anywhere near the dock, which was good. But firearms were in abundant evidence, which was bad.
How could he free himself and Lex and escape before Slither arrived and avoid being shot? “When will Slither show up?” he asked Lexine.
She shook her head, gritting her teeth as a spasm lanced her shoulders.
“Any time,” she said after the pain subsided. “It comes when it feels like it, when it’s hungry.”
“Is it a large animal? Reptile, amphibian, mammal, what?” Rikki inquired.
“I don’t know,” Lex said softly. “It’s not like any other animal I know.”
“A mutant,” Rikki stated. Ever since the war a century before, since the environment had been ravaged by massive dosages of radiation and deadly chemicals and other toxins, the animal life had altered drastically.
The genetic constitution of many forms of wildlife had been radically affected by the radiation and chemicals; mutations had become commonplace. Bizarre carnivorous strains had developed. Giantism had appeared in some species. Although in some areas, such as the inhabited major cities still standing and in the Civilized Zone, the mutants had been ruthlessly exterminated over the years, there wasn’t a solitary place on the continent completely safe from the biological deviates. Or so it was believed. One could crop up anywhere, anytime.
Like now.
There was a rustling and murmuring along the west hank.
Rikki glanced at the assembled mob, noting they were all staring upriver, to the north. He looked in the same direction and spotted a commotion in the water approximately 50 yards away.
Capital Run Page 5