by James Axler
“Can stop reporting back,” Jak said, dragging a thumb dramatically across his throat.
“Ace that. We want them to report to the local baron,” Ryan explained. “He’ll send out troops to hunt for us, and we’ll sneak into the ville tonight and steal a boat.”
“Dangerous,” Krysty said, taking out her canteen and drinking deeply. “But it should work. Surprise will be on our side.”
“No other options,” Ryan said grimly. They were strangers in enemy territory, with every hand turned against them. Back in the Deathlands, rapidfires offered a man some degree of protection; here they were a death warrant.
“Needs drive where the devil must,” Doc rumbled cryptically. “We didn’t start this conflict, but by God we shall finish it!”
“I just want to leave,” Ryan said, checking the clip in his handblaster. “Not interested in starting a war. Too many of them, and we’re low on ammo. I have twelve rounds for the SIG-Sauer. Two mags of five for the Steyr.”
“Four,” Jak said, patting the blaster on his hip. “And lost knife stickie fell out window.”
“Three rounds,” Krysty said. “And one is a black-powder reload that might not work.”
“Two,” Mildred said.
“Nine,” Dean announced proudly. “Full clip.”
“Uzi is out,” J.B. stated. “Six rounds for the scattergun.”
Fireblast! They wasted a ton of precious ammo in the fight with the stickies. At least they still had most of their food and water. “How much farther to the ville?”
Pulling out a sextant, J.B. shot the sun and did some quick calculations. The he carefully unfolded a map. Found in a redoubt, it was old and faded, the plastic coating worn thin in spots, but the priceless antique was still readable.
“Dark night, I have no idea where we are,” he complained, looking upward to scowl at the sun partially hidden by storm clouds. “According to my map, we’re half a mile in the ocean.”
“Nuke quakes must have moved the island,” Krysty said.
“So we’re lost,” Mildred stated with a frown.
“Pretty much,” he said, tucking the sextant inside his shirt. “We know the ville is somewhere close, and to the south. That’s it.”
Pulling out his compass, J.B. checked the direction. “And south should be that way,” he pointed. “Toward those big trees with the flower—Hey!”
Everybody waited expectantly while J.B. stared at his compass. “There it is again,” he muttered.
“What?” Dean asked, craning his neck to see.
He showed the boy. “Every couple of seconds, the compass needle flicks to the west. Something electrical that way,” J.B. stated, looking at the dense greenery to their right. “Something big and still in operation.”
“A pulsating magnetic field,” Mildred said thoughtfully. “If Cascade had an airport before, it could be the ILM beacons for the landing field.”
“Not south, west,” Jak said, leaning against a tree and massaging his armpit where the crutch had been rubbing.
Listening to the sounds of the forest, Ryan slowly said, “It’s got to be close. The atmosphere is so fucked up with rads that mag fields can’t reach very far. A mile or so, at the most.”
“Beacon is a sort of radio?” Dean asked.
Still studying the compass, J.B. nodded. “Yes.”
“Very close, then,” Krysty agreed, her hair fanning outward. “And the landing field should be far away from the buildings. The ville may not even know it’s there.”
“Could be a good place to rest,” Mildred added.
Jak shot her an angry look, then relented and shrugged. He was a crip at the moment. Only a stupe would deny it.
“Sounds good. Dean, think you can climb one of these,” Ryan asked, thumping the trunk of a mutated oak, “and get us a recce?”
The boy studied the tree closely. “Sure,” he stated, and dropped his backpack to the ground. Tightening his belt, the boy started shimmying up the thick trunk and disappeared into the foliage.
“Anything?” his father shouted.
“Nothing yet!” came back the answer. “Wait a minute.”
The companions drew closer to the tree, hands on their weapons in case of trouble. A minute passed, then several, their expressions began to turn worried.
“Dean?” Krysty called gently through cupped hands.
But only the rustle of leaves responded, a few colorful birds taking flight from the dense overhang of greenery.
“I’m going after him,” Ryan declared, passing the Steyr to the redhead. Dropping his backpack, the man grabbed a low limb and chinned himself off the ground just as Dean dropped through the leaves to land sprawling in the bushes.
“Plane,” the boy said standing, his face bright with excitement. “Think I found a plane!”
“In the air?” Mildred asked in concern, scanning the sky through the holes in the sylvan canopy. It was one of her biggest worries. Even worse than a runaway plague. Anybody who got a powered airplane into the sky could seize absolute control of the Deathlands. There were few enough weapons working these days, and nothing that would challenge a skyfighter. Even an old box kite like the Wright brothers made for the U.S. government to use in World War I and some black-powder bombs would be enough. Just the threat of death from above would make most villes surrender automatically. The destruction of the world from the sky bombs had burned a very real fear of aerial attacks into the very souls of the human survivors.
Dean shook his head. “No, just caught in the branches. About a mile away. Big one. Looks intact.”
“Useless,” Krysty said. “If it’s visible, it’s been looted.”
The boy shook his head. “No way you could find it from the ground. Got to be high to see it.”
There was a pause. “I think,” he added honestly.
“Even crumbling walls can offer shelter,” Doc offered as comment.
“An airplane,” Ryan muttered, rubbing his chin. “Same direction as the pulse?”
“Yes, Dad.”
“Remember what the Trader taught us about crashed planes,” J.B. said, patting his empty Uzi machine pistol.
“Just what I was thinking,” the Deathlands warrior said, almost grinning. Shelter or not, there could be salvage. Blasters, ammo, food, hidden sagely away where nobody would ever find them. Lots of things they needed.
“Let’s check it out,” Ryan said, and started pushing a path through the tangled growth.
GROANING SOFTLY, Whyte awoke to a pounding headache and the stink of burning flesh. Almost immediately, there was a violent explosion, and something fell alongside the sec man with a thump. As his vision cleared, Whyte saw it was a dead stickie with a gaping hole in its bleeding chest. The mutie worked its suckers a few times as if fighting for life, then went still.
Hastily scrambling away, the sec man drew his own blaster and scanned the area for more of the muties. There were none, but he gasped upon seeing the smoking remains of a huge explosion.
The bus was spread wide open, resembling a metal flower that had been set on fire. Thick black smoke from the chassis was curling high into the overcast sky. The charred remains of norms and horses lay strewed across the asphalt, many of the bodies in pieces as if torn apart by wild animals.
After a moment, he realized it had to be from their ammo pouches detonating when the men were set on fire from the explosion. Cooked alive, then blown in two. Black dust, what a bad way to get aced. Wasn’t even quick.
“A bastard trap,” Whyte growled angrily. “Triple damn the outlanders. I’ll make them pay.”
“Over here!” a voice called.
Spinning, Whyte cocked back the hammer on his big flintlock. But only the dead were in sight, skins burned black, hair gone and clothing reduced to a layer of ash over the charred remains. Then he noticed a smoking blaster being waved from behind the sprawled body of a cooked horse. Approaching carefully, the sec man went around the chilled animal to discover Colonel Mitchum on the
ground, his legs pinned under the beast from the knees down.
“Get this off me!” Mitchum ordered brusquely, wriggling.
“Yes, sir,” Whyte replied, and grabbed the reins. But as he pulled they broke apart, the leather straps severely weakened from the firestorm.
“Get a longblaster,” the colonel directed. “Shove it underneath and I can drag myself out. Hurry! My legs went numb an hour ago.”
“Gotcha,” Whyte said, rummaging around until he found a flintlock rifle that hadn’t been blown apart when its ammo cooked off from the heat. Carefully shoving the barrel under the limp beast, Whyte shoved hard upward and the half ton of deadweight slowly lifted off the ground.
Grunting from the exertion, Mitchum wriggled free, leaving his boots trapped under the beast, and rolled away. Whyte released the rifle and let the carcass drop.
“It was you,” the sec man said awkwardly. “You shot that stickie coming for me.”
“Of course,” Mitchum growled, massaging his legs and bare feet. With the return of circulation, pins and needles were making his legs tingle painfully and he rode out the return of feeling, not daring to move an inch.
“You saved my life,” Whyte said, feeling angry and confused at the same time.
“Had to,” Mitchum said, trying to stand and surprised to find that he could. His legs were throbbing like drums, but strength was returning faster than expected. Excellent. First good thing that had happened on this accursed island in months.
“You saved my life ’cause we’re fellow sec men,” Whyte said in an unaccustomed rush of pride. “Sir, I…I…”
“I shot the mutie because I needed you to move the fucking horse,” the colonel snapped, pulling the Colt Woodsman .22 from his belt. “Thanks, feeb.”
As Whyte gasped, Mitchum emptied the tiny revolver into the sec man. The small slugs drove the trooper backward, but he was still standing when they stopped coming. Blood soaking his shirt and pants, Whyte fought for breath as he tried to draw his own blaster, but the weapon dropped from nerveless fingers.
“Also needed your boots,” Mitchum said as he calmly picked up the fallen weapon and finished the job.
Shoving the massive .75 flintlock into his belt, the colonel then tossed away the useless predark revolver. Five rounds and the man had still been standing. What kind of a shitty weapon was that?
Stripping the warm corpse of footwear, blaster and ammo, the colonel got dressed and reloaded the hot blaster. Then he proceeded to search among the dead for what supplies and additional weapons he could find. When he was finished, the sec chief had a little food and no water, but a good knife, two handcannons, a single longblaster, plus plenty of shot and lead. More than enough.
“Now it’s your turn, Ryan,” Mitchum muttered as he stumbled into the forest, searching the ground for the tracks of the hated outlanders.
ISBN: 978-1-4603-7317-0
JUDAS STRIKE
Copyright © 2001 by Worldwide Library.
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