by M. R. Forbes
He had driven for nearly four hours before switching off with Gus to get a little rest. They had covered a good distance in that time, making it west from Fort McGuire and crossing a wide river before the Liberator’s road turned south. The river had been interesting, with what appeared to be a somewhat freshly minted bridge covering the banks between the wide flow of water, the original structure in pieces beside it. It had most likely been destroyed by the USMC or the USSF at some point during the war to keep the trife from crossing. Like with Manhattan, it hadn’t been enough.
“What’s up?” he asked.
They had stopped moving, that much was obvious. The sky was darker, which meant he had been out for at least an hour or two. If Pyro’s face had been worried, he might have thought they had spotted Tinker’s militia or a trife nest, or some other danger. But the road had been surprisingly clear so far, and while the condition of the pavement and the general need for caution had slowed their pace, it hadn’t been a difficult journey to this point.
“We’re out of gas, Sheriff,” Gus said. “I looked for an old station, but no such luck.”
Hayden sat up, rubbing the crap out of the corners of his eyes. “Where are we?”
“I don’t know,” Gus said. “We’ve never been this far south before.”
Hayden climbed out of the car, taking in their surroundings. They were still on the highway, but Gus had brought them to a stop near a long line of vehicles both on the side of the concrete roadway and along the center.
“Have you checked any of them yet?” he asked.
“No, Sheriff,” Gus said. “Not yet. I figured you’d want to help out.”
“Did you check the trunk for a siphon?”
“Pozz,” Pyro said. “There were two. That’s why we woke you. Two to check the tanks, one to guard.”
“Pozz that,” Hayden said.
He looked out past the highway. To the east, he could see overgrown greenery mixed with the remains of civilization and what appeared to be an island in the center of the same river they had crossed earlier, now much wider than before. Turning west, he noticed an old shopping center with a parking lot filled with more old cars, ahead of rows of two and three-story buildings. He realized the part of the roadway they were currently on was elevated, and parts of it both in front and behind them had already collapsed. There was a clear route around the broken parts of the road, but he couldn’t help but wonder about the stability of the platform. He couldn’t imagine heavy trucks winding around the collapsed segments and large holes.
“Are you sure this is the Liberator’s road?” Hayden asked.
“There were two roads, Sheriff,” Gus said. “We spotted what looked like a checkpoint on the other one, so we decided to come up this way.”
“You didn’t want to wake me for that?”
“This direction was cleared, just like the rest. We figured they use both routes, depending on the traffic.”
“You come to a decision like that again, you wake me up, okay?” he said. There was nothing he could do about what had already happened.
“Pozz.”
Hayden breathed in, his face burning and his head throbbing. “Where’d we stash the meds we got from the fort?”
“In the bag with the guns, Sheriff,” Pyro said.
Hayden found the bag. He leaned over and unzipped it. They had taken a good supply of guns and ammunition, mainly standard-issue rifles and handguns with plenty of magazines. Keeping it simple was a good decision. He pushed them aside, finding the box of patches and the pills the nurse had given them, taking them out. As he did, he uncovered another weapon at the bottom of the bag and started to smile.
“You found one,” he said, digging out the revolver.
“You didn’t see the belt?” Gus asked.
Hayden hefted the gun. It was heavier than the revolvers they were manufacturing back home, silver, with a long, wide barrel and a large cylinder. He looked into the gun bag, finding the ammo belt a moment later. The rounds were fifty caliber, each close to six centimeters long and over a centimeter in diameter. Close to fifty of them were tucked into the loops on the belt and ready for a quick reload.
He didn’t know why he liked the guns so much. They were inferior in terms of their overall usefulness compared to a laser pistol or even a high-capacity automatic, especially against the trife where shot volume was much more important than stopping power. There was something about the feel of them, and that was important too.
“Thanks for picking one up,” Hayden said, wrapping the belt around his waist and clipping it closed.
He slid the revolver into the attached holster. Then he opened the bottle of painkillers, picked one out, and swallowed it dry. He could live with the pain, but why hurt if he didn’t have to?
He put his hand on his face, feeling the stitches holding the gash there closed. He wasn’t sure how it would heal if he added a patch on top of it, but he preferred faster healing to having it get infected. He opened one of the patches and stuck it on, covering the cut.
“Let’s find some gas,” he said.
They circled to the trunk, opening it and leaning over the spikes aligned along the rear bumper. The siphons were simple devices, a pump with two hoses, one to pull the gas in and one to deliver it out. There were a pair of gas cans to go with it, slightly rusted and stinking of old fuel. Hayden and Gus picked them out, while Pyro climbed back into the car, hefting the mounted machine-gun and swiveling it in their direction.
“Don’t forget to turn around,” Hayden reminded her.
“Pozz that,” she replied.
He carried his siphon and can over to the cars on the left, pausing at the first one and noticing its gas cap was long gone. He stuck the hose in and pumped a few times, not surprised when nothing came out. He moved to the next vehicle.
He continued like that for close to ten minutes, testing every car in the line. They were all dry. It wasn’t all that surprising. The cars were on the road, the most convenient targets for anyone who fell short on fuel. He crossed the road to where Gus was finishing up with his cars.
“Got anything?” he asked.
“Negative, Sheriff,” Gus replied. “I think these were cleaned out a long time ago.”
They walked back to the car together.
“Anything?” Pyro asked.
“Nothing,” Hayden said.
“Skunked,” Gus said.
“What about those cars down there?” Pyro asked, pointing to the parking lot half a kilometer distant. “They look like they haven’t been raided too badly.”
Hayden looked over at the cars a second time. Some had broken windows, others had been stripped for parts, a few more had old grafitti sprayed onto the sheet metal while random tall weeds that had broken through the concrete grew around them.
“We can’t take the car down there. We’ll have to go on foot,” he said.
“Will do, Sheriff,” Gus said. “The car’s got a little fuel left. We can move it to the side of the road. Hopefully nobody will come by this way.”
“If they do, they’re likely to be Liberators,” Hayden said. “And they’ll probably recognize the car. We’ll have to take our chances.”
Gus made his way back to the drivers’ seat. He started the car and slowly advanced it to the side of the road, pushing it into another car to move it aside and make it look like it had crashed and been abandoned.
“Disconnect the ammo feed too,” Hayden said. “We’ll toss the belt in the trunk. We don’t need anyone coming on the car and shooting us with our own gun.”
“Pozz that,” Gus said.
They stored the machine-gun’s ammo belt and box. Gus and Pyro grabbed a rifle from the gun bag, and then Gus hung the gun bag over his back. They couldn’t leave that behind either. Hayden ranged ahead to a couple of the collapsed sections of the highway, stopping and waving the other mongrels over when he found one they could descend.
They joined him there a moment later. Hayden went first,
sliding down the fallen break of concrete on his ass. He hit the ground and stood, doing a quick sweep. Nothing.
Pyro and Gus came down behind him, and they all started toward the parking lot.
Further back, something shimmered against the sunlight as it rose from its hiding place.
Chapter 31
Hayden, Pyro, and Gus crossed the urban terrain from the highway to the shopping center, staying out in the open but moving carefully, making sure to monitor their surroundings.
They reached the edge of the lot without incident, making it to the first line of cars and starting to check them for gas. This time, Gus kept watch while Hayden and Pyro went car-to-car. He gained a better perspective by jumping onto the rooftop of one car and then hopping to a taller van. He spun in a slow circle like a radar tower, eyes scanning the area.
“There’s nothing here,” Pyro said, after finishing her fifteenth car. “Let’s face it; people are lazy. We’re all going to start at the outside and work their way in.”
“Fair enough,” Hayden agreed. “You want to start at the middle?”
“Sounds good.”
They started toward the cars closer to the center of the lot, winding their way through the maze of rusting steel.
“See anything, Gus?” Hayden asked through his comm.
“Negative, Sheriff,” Gus said. “We’re the only people around for as far as my eyes can see.”
Hayden was glad for that. They could all use a break from the chaos and violence.
They were close to the center of the lot when Hayden noticed something on the ground between two of the cars, tucked under one of the flat wheels. It was relatively clean, meaning it had only recently been dropped. He leaned over to get a better look at it, noticing a mark on the cement in the space between the fronts of two of the parked vehicles as he did. It looked like something had scratched at the hard ground. He didn’t think much of it, returning his focus to the item on the ground.
He picked it up. It was a head. A plastic doll’s head, with fake blonde hair. The hair wasn’t that long, and it appeared the ends of it were burned.
Hayden glanced back at the mark on the ground. There was something about it he didn’t trust.
He heard a snap from somewhere on his right.
Pyro started to scream.
“Ahhh, fuck!” she shouted. “Damn it. Ahhhh.”
Hayden stood, finding her in the row ahead of him, a dozen cars away. She was looking down.
“Pyro?” he said, starting to cross the aisles before thinking better of it. He jumped onto the nearest car, running along it in her direction.
“Fucking bear trap or something,” she said. “It’s in my leg. Damn, it hurts.”
He jumped from one car to the next. “Gus, any sign of activity?”
Someone had left a trap, and it wasn’t the first time. He looked over and down. Another small trap was resting on the ground between two of the cars. It also wasn’t the only one.
“Gus?” Hayden said again when the mongrel didn’t answer. He looked back toward the van Gus was standing on.
He was gone.
Without a word.
Without a sound.
What the hell?
“Gus?” Hayden repeated. Even if someone had taken him, he would still have the comm. Unless he was unconscious.
Or dead.
“Fuck,” Pyro said again, leaning down and dropping her rifle.
She was trying to pry the trap open, and if she had two replacement hands she might have succeeded. Hayden reached her, hopping down and grabbing the other side, helping her pull it out of her leg. She used her free hand to pick it up as blood streamed from the puncture wounds and onto the ground.
“Damn, I need some of those pain meds,” she said. “It hurts, Sheriff.”
“We’ve got a problem,” Hayden replied. “Gus is gone.”
“What?” Her head whipped toward the van. “Gus?” She picked her rifle up off the ground, the pain in her ankle forgotten. “Where the hell did he go?”
“I don’t know. I didn’t see—”
A dozen forms rose from between the cars on the other side of them, to the west opposite the highway. They had cloaks over their backs, dark robes that blended in with the sea of rust in the parking lot. Each of them was carrying a crossbow, a bolt cocked and ready.
“Don’t move!” one of them barked.
They had their hoods up, goggles over their eyes. Only the nose and mouth were visible. Most of them had beards. All men. Whoever these nomads were, Tinker had gotten to them too.
Hayden turned slowly to face them, hand hovering over the revolver. “Where’s our third?”
“He’s ours now,” the man said.
“Sheriff,” Pyro whispered. He glanced at her. She was looking back toward the van. “They have him. They’re carrying him to the building.”
“What are you saying?” one of the nomads asked.
“Alive?” Hayden asked her, speaking softly.
“I don’t know.”
The nomad approached them, lowering his crossbow and pulling out a sword. It was crude and ugly and appeared recently made. He put the blade against Pyro’s chest. “Shut. Up,” he said slowly.
“Obviously, you want something,” Hayden said. “I’m open to trade for our man.”
“You shut up too,” the same nomad said.
“First thing we want is your woman,” their apparent leader said, head shifting to Pyro. “She’s a little skinny, but she’s young enough to breed. Next thing we want is your meat over our cook fires.”
Hayden groaned softly. He had dealt with cannibals back west. “Why not trife meat?” he asked.
“No trife around here, thanks to Tinker,” the man replied. “Plenty of travelers though. All on their way to Edenrise, again thanks to Tinker. Furping bastard and his furping promises. Come to Edenrise. Furp him. Bastard turned us away at the gates.”
“Why?” Pyro asked.
“Says we aren’t viable, whatever the furp that means. I’m plenty viable. Hell, I’m viable right now.” The other bandits chucked slightly. “Now drop the piece, arsehole, or we drop you.”
“I don’t want to hurt you,” Hayden said.
The group laughed.
“You? Hurt us?” the leader said. “I see you got a mongrel arm size of my wanker, but that won’t help you from there. Besides, you get twitchy, Holden there gets twitchy, if you know what I mean.”
The bandit with the sword pushed the blade a little tighter against Pyro’s chest.
Hayden stared at the bandit leader. His fingers lightly brushed the handle of the revolver. How fast was Holden? How fast was he?
One thing he was sure of — if they managed to get he and Pyro disarmed and inside neither one of them would have much of a future.
He had to risk it.
“Well, mongrel?” the leader said. “You gonna drop that gun, or are we going to kill the girl and cook you both?”
“I’m going to kill you,” Hayden said.
“Heh. I’d like to see you—”
Hayden’s Centurion hand dropped to the revolver, grabbing the handle and yanking it free of its holster. He pulled it up in one smooth motion, pulling the trigger and firing a single round. He felt the massive kick of the weapon in his grip, but he expected a gun like that to jump. He held it steady with the strength of the replacement, his other hand already reaching out for the blade pressed against Pyro’s chest.
Holden’s robes shifted, his arm tensing to stab. Pyro had guessed what he was going to do and was already moving, turning aside to escape the blade. Hayden grabbed it in his hand as it started forward, through her shirt and pressing lightly into her flesh. He held it tight, stopping its momentum at the same time he swung the revolver toward the bandit.
He didn’t see his first round hit the bandit leader in the chest, the force of the slug knocking the man back as it punched straight through him. He pulled the trigger again, a point-blank shot into
Holden’s side. The force of the blast tore him apart, all of the force vanishing from the blade in an instant.
The strings of ten crossbows thwipped as their bolts were released. Two of them hit Holden in the back, digging into the already dead man’s flesh. Six of them missed completely, bouncing off the cars around Hayden. One of them hit his arm, and the last one hit his side. It tried to pierce the bodysuit there, but it didn’t have a sharp enough edge to defeat the woven spider-steel.
Pyro dropped behind the closest car. She was still holding her rifle, and she brought it up, rising to fire.
Hayden turned his revolver on the other nomads. They all vanished behind the cars, ducking low to reload. He wasn’t about to wait for them to take another shot at him.
He rushed forward, vaulting across the tops of the cars toward the bandits. The first one to reload stood to his right and a quick adjustment sent a fifty caliber round hurtling toward him. It went through the rusted roof of the car he was hiding behind and then the glassless window frame, catching him in the chest and knocking him down.
A second bandit rose further to his right. A burst of rounds from Pyro’s rifle followed, a few of the rounds pinging off sheet metal, the rest sinking into flesh.
Hayden jumped across to the next car. A bandit jumped up in front of him, swinging a blade at his legs. He rolled sideways, off the roof and onto the hood, barely getting his arm up in time to block the blade as it slashed down at his face. He pushed back against it, throwing it to the side, bringing the revolver over his head and firing. The round tore into the bandit, throwing him back off the car.
Hayden rolled off the hood to the ground, narrowly avoiding another trap there. He moved between the columns, turning to his left as a pair of bandits fired fresh bolts at him. He put his hand up in front of his face, catching one of the projectiles. The other hit his leg and skidded off his bodysuit.
The bandits shrank back when they saw the bolt didn’t stick, suddenly afraid. Hayden might have let them go, but then one of their hands reached beneath a cloak and returned with a gun. Hayden aimed his revolver and fired, knocking both of the bandits down with shots square to their chests.