Desert Kings

by James Axler

  “The slavers are coming this way,” a tall cannie replied, shifting his position on the Harley. “We could attack them from behind—”

  “No,” the other snapped. “Dragon told us to wait right here, so here we stay until he signals for us to join the fight.”

  “But they might all be aced by then!”

  “So? That only means we eat sooner.” His stomach rumbled loudly just then in perfect harmony with the rumbling from the tainted clouds overhead. Fearfully, the cannie glanced skyward, then relaxed. Those were the wrong type of clouds for acid rain. Besides, it wasn’t anywhere near spring. Let the sky moan like an angry slut. The noise would help cover the sound of their engines starting just before they charged the last of the slavers. Then the feasting would begin!

  Staying low to the ground, the companions separated to move around the blast crater in different directions. Leaving Doc near a scraggly yucca tree, J.B. headed for a pile of boulders when there came the soft sound of crunching sand and a cannie walked around a boulder zipping up his pants.

  The two men stared at each for a full second, then the cannie clawed for his ax as J.B. stepped aside and Doc lunged into view to plunge his sword directly into the man’s throat. Red fluid gushed from the hideous wound and the cannie grabbed his neck, cutting off two of his fingers as they slid along the sharp blade. He looked into the Doc’s face with dull comprehension, then eased to the ground and went forever still.

  Sliding out the blade, Doc waited until he heard a whip-poor-will from the other side of the pit, then he and J.B. grabbed the aced cannie and threw him over the wall of weeds. The warm corpse crashed between the parked two-wheelers, splattering them with blood. The cannies spun at the grisly arrival and gasped in shock.

  That was when Krysty stepped into view firing her AK-47 blaster. A moment later, J.B. and Doc appeared from opposite sides of crater, triggering their own rapid-fires. The 7.62 mm Kalashnikovs and 9 mm Uzi tore the startled cannies apart, their lifeblood spraying into the air. Riddled with slugs, one of them staggered around still horribly alive, then yanked a predark gren from inside the bloody tatters of his shirt. Shooting from the hip, Krysty fired a single round and a black hole appeared in the middle of his forehead. Sighing deeply, the cannie dropped, his lifeless finger curled around the pin.

  Kneeling, Krysty recovered the gren, while Doc and J.B. dragged the other bodies off the bikes. Briefly, they checked the corpses for any more grens, but there was only their axes and handcannons. Since the companions had much better weapons, those were left behind. Carrying too many weapons would chill you in the Deathlands even faster than having none. However, Doc did appropriate a cardboard box half full of .22-caliber copper-jacketed rounds. Those would make excellent trade goods at a ville.

  Across the valley, the battle raged on. The smoke was getting thick around the buckboard, making it hard for both sides to see clearly. The bikers stayed in constant motion, firing their blasters and swinging axes. The slavers fought back with whips and handcannons, the flame from the muzzles of their weapons stabbing through the billowing smoke like angry lighting. One cannie stopped to pull out a Molotov and light the fuse, but a slaver discharged a scattergun, peppering the front of the big bike, blowing the tire and splintering the wooden shield. His hand raised to throw, the cannie shrieked as he drew back a bloody stump, blood pumping from the ragged tatters of flesh dangling from his wrist. Then the Molotov hit the ground at his boots and whoofed into flames. Covered with fire, the man insanely beat at the fire, his cries becoming louder and more frantic, until the gas tank of the bike hissed loudly, the fuel starting to boil from the rising heat.

  “Run!” Pig screamed, stopping his bike. Kicking at the ground with both legs, he turned the bike and started to race away.

  The rest of the cannie bikers followed his example, and they got a few yards away when the damaged Harley exploded, spraying out machine parts and human organs.

  Taking advantage of the noisy distraction, the companions climbed onto big Harleys, kicked the engines into life and twisted the handlebar throttles until the bikes were roaring with power.

  A slash of Doc’s cane cut away the restraining rope, and as the tumbleweeds rolled away, the companions raced out of the pit. Charging along the dusty ground, they curved around the loudly fighting groups and went straight for the eighteen-wheeler Mack with the big painted eye.

  Standing in the rear of the war wag, a cannie smiled at the appearance of the bikes, then frowned. Those weren’t his people!

  “Outlanders!” the cannie shouted, pulling a Molotov from a wooden box. He used a thumbnail to flick a wooden match alive and started to apply it to the oily rag fuse when he jerked backward to slam into the splintery planks edging the predark flatbed.

  Dumbfounded, the cannie stared at the gaping hole in his chest, unable to comprehend why there was no pain from such a ghastly wound. Sliding into death, he dimly heard the report of the Steyr from the distant sand dune before eternal silence filled his darkening universe.

  Sputtering in rage, the driver yanked out a rusty .45 autoloader and worked the slide just as the side window shattered, his head bursting apart from the arrival of the 7.62 mm round Ryan fired from the sand dune.

  Rapidly braking to a halt near the cab of the truck, Krysty jumped off the stolen bike and yanked open the door to clamber up the step, then the seat, to reach the roof. Staying clear of the protective nails jutting from the thick planks, the woman sprayed the cannies in the rear with her Kalashnikov. Coming to a halt near the driver’s door, J.B. hosed the interior with his Uzi, the two cannies crying out in surprise as the bullets forced them into a short death jig, their lifeblood splattering the windshield.

  Without bothering to slow, J.B. hopped off his bike, climbed into the cab and pushed aside the corpses to start the engine. There was a struggling whine, then the big Detroit diesels came to life, blowing blue-gray smoke from the double exhaust pipes.

  Stopping behind the war wag, Doc leveled his AK-47 and looked around frantically, his heart pounding. In the pandemonium near the buckboard, a man turned in his direction. Doc swung up the rapid-fire, but before he could shoot the man doubled over clutching his stomach. Once more there came the sound of the deadly Steyr.

  Suddenly a hatch swung open in the planks and there was Krysty holding her Kalashnikov and a gory knife. On the bloody floor, a muscular cannie groaned softly and went still.

  “Change of plans,” she snapped, wiping the knife on her sleeve before sheathing the blade. “There’s no room for the bikes!”

  “Then hasten thy chariot, Hermes!” Doc replied, hastily getting inside and closing the hatch.

  Krysty didn’t know the quote, but understood the tone. Going to the front of the wag, she thumped a fist twice on the metal roof. Promptly, the war wag lurched forward, rattling and clanging across the rocky ground.

  Starting to turn toward Ryan and the others on the hill, J.B. cursed as a group of cannies looked up at the noise of the approaching vehicle.

  Realizing that they were being jacked while they were in the middle of a fight, the cannies raced toward the companions.

  A bald woman whose arms were covered with tattoos almost reached the big wag when the bike toppled over, juice gurgling from a new hole in the fuel tank. Stunned at the sight, the woman stood still for a moment, then the war wag plowed directly into her.

  The limp body went flying to land ahead of the wag, and J.B. drove over the cannie, the heavy tires smashing her flat.

  Heading around the battle, the Armorer saw that more of the cannies were running toward the war wag as it rumbled past, their faces darkly grim. One cannie pulled back his arm to throw an ax, then spun, his throat pumping out blood like a broken fountain. As the sound of the Steyr arrived, the cannies and slavers both dived for cover.

  Sticking an arm out the broken window, J.B. fired a couple of bursts from the Uzi at the group, then ducked behind the door. A heartbeat later, incoming rounds hammered the side
of the Mack, shattering the sideview mirror, punching clean through the wood shutter covering the door and scoring a bloody path across his left calf. Nuking hell! Snarling at the pain, J.B. switched legs and started working the gas pedal with his other foot.

  In the rear of the wag, Doc and Krysty looked around frantically for a blasterport, but apparently that particular invention was unknown to the cannies. But there were boxes nailed to the floorboards to make steps so that you could get higher than the protective planks and fire at folks outside.

  “Have to do this the hard way,” Krysty said, dropping a nearly spent clip to insert a full one.

  Going to a firing step, Doc did the same. “On your mark, dear lady.”

  She nodded. “One, two…” But the wag jerked hard to the side, throwing them to the filthy floor, and there came the dull explosion of a gren.

  Scrambling to their feet, the man and woman raced to the rear wall and climbed on the boxes to peek over the top. Several cannies had reclaimed their bikes and were racing in hot pursuit. Then a flight of arrows sailed overhead from the side of the war wag, closely followed by scattergun boom, lead shot peppering the wooden armor with a rattling sound.

  “It seems that the last of the slavers has expired and now the cannies have turned their full attention on us!” Doc muttered, crouching to flick the selector switch on the AK-47 to full-auto.

  “Too bad for them,” Krysty retorted, doing the same. “One, two, three!”

  Standing up together, they fanned the rapid-fires at the scurrying people until the clips ran empty, then they ducked again. Incoming lead pounded the wooden planks, throwing splinters with stinging force. Then something hit the side of the war wag with a clunk. A moment later there was a huge explosion behind the wag, a hail of something very hard hammering the planks.

  Pulling the pin on a gren, Krysty tossed it over the wall. As the charge detonated, she rose and began shooting at the nearest biker. The stuttering rounds chewed a path across a wooden shield, then sent up puffs of dust from the ground. A tall cannie lost his hat and another fired back with a crossbow. The barbed quarrel hit the top plank only an inch below Doc’s face. The scholar recoiled, then fired back in grim resolve.

  As the rapid-fire cycled empty, Krysty dropped the blaster and drew her S&W wheel gun. It didn’t have the range of the longblaster, but it was much more accurate. Squeezing off careful rounds, Krysty saw the lead smack into the wooden shields on the lead bike, but fail to get through. Fair enough. Taking a stance, she fired again, slower, more deliberately. A tire blew on a bike, sending the rider flying, then another rider dropped his crossbow as blood gushed from a minor shoulder wound. The bike wobbled, almost toppling over, but the cannie managed to right the two-wheeler and come on even faster.

  Deciding to follow the success of the redhead, Doc slung the rapid-fire over a shoulder, set the selector pin on the LeMat to the 16-gauge shotgun, stood and fired. The front tire of a second Harley disintegrated into rubbery shards, the nose dropping to stab into the sand. As the bike flipped over, the howling cannie went flying as if launched by a catapult, and impacted onto the rear of the war wag with a grisly sound. After a moment Doc checked, and the corpse was dangling from the wooden armor, held in place by the rows of sharp nails.

  Holstering her blaster, Krysty checked her pants’ pockets, then her shirt. “Lighter!” she demanded, holding out a hand.

  Searching his frock coat, Doc tossed over a butane lighter, one of several the companions had found in a New Mex redoubt. She made the catch, just as the war wag jogged to the right, then the left. There was another loud explosion, this time so close that loose sand rained down into the rattling eighteen-wheeler. Going to a box of Molotovs, she lit the oily rag fuses on several, tucked away the lighter, grabbed the box and heaved the entire thing over the back wall of the flatbed. Tumbling away freely, the box crashed on the ground behind the Mack war wag and the twelve firebombs exploded, combining into a towering inferno.

  Arching wide around the fiery obstacle, one of the bikers jerked his head back as a 7.62 mm round from Ryan’s Steyr took him squarely in the face. Almost casually, the cannie slid off the bike, the two-wheeler continuing onward for several yards before the front wheel twisted and it flipped, tumbling along the ground, throwing off broken machine parts.

  Finding himself alone, the last cannie biker shouted something unintelligible over the sputtering diesel engine of the Mack war wag, then veered sharply away, zigzagging across the rough terrain. Twice the sandy ground kicked up along the escaping bike, then the cannie swung behind a stand of cacti and was gone from sight.

  Angling out of the valley, J.B. drove the wag onto the desert and around a couple of sand dunes to finally find Mildred. He braked to a halt near her, the backpacks and extra supplies piled around her boots.

  “Anybody hurt?” Mildred asked, looking closely at the dirty people. Their clothing was matted with fresh blood, but none of it seemed to be from them.

  “Nothing serious,” Krysty replied coolly, reloading her S&W blaster and tucking it back into the holster. Then she did the same for the AK-47 and slung it over a shoulder.

  “I caught one in the leg,” J.B. said, hanging an arm out of the window. “But it’s just a scratch.”

  “You sure?” Mildred demanded.

  “Yeah.” He grunted. “No biggie.”

  But seeing the man’s obvious discomfort, Mildred yanked open the door to inspect the wound. Thankfully he had been right; it was only a flesh wound. Yanking a clean cloth from her med kit, the physician tied it around the bloody pant leg as a temporary bandage. Later on she would clean the scratch and give it a couple of stitches if necessary. But for now, that would do.

  A sharp whistle announced Ryan’s arrival, the big man sliding down the slope on the seat of his pants, the Steyr held tightly in a raised hand.

  “Five of them are still sucking air,” he stated, working the bolt on the Steyr to remove the spent ammo clip from inside the longblaster. “Couldn’t get a clear shot once they figured out where I was hiding.”

  “Damn!” J.B. snarled, closing the door again. He flexed his injured leg and it did feel a little better. Millie could handle a bandage the way he did plas.

  “However, I did spot more tire tracks,” Ryan added.

  “Delphi?” Krysty asked from over the planks.

  He nodded. “Could be.”

  “Great!” J.B. said. “Then get your ass in the Cyclops and let’s roll!”

  Ryan smiled. Cyclops was a pretty good name for a war wag.

  Just then, a hail of blasterfire sounded, dust kicking up from the top of the dune.

  “Good shots,” Jak admitted grudgingly. “They got bikes?”

  “Nothing that looked in working condition,” Ryan answered, dropping in a fresh rotary clip; the clear plastic was slightly cloudy with scratches, having been used a hundred times before over the years. But the five live rounds inside were still visible. The Kalashnikovs and the Steyr took the same size ammo, but it had been a trip-long time since the man had found any replacement clips. When these were gone, the longblaster would have to be individually loaded before every shot.

  “Horses?” Jak asked pointedly.

  “Chilled, or on fire and running for their lives.”

  “On fire?”

  “Yep.”

  “Damn.” The teenager snorted, throwing his bedroll up and over the wall of planks.

  But Doc caught it and dropped the roll inside. “No need for that. There’s a hatch in the back,” he said, jerking his chin in toward the rear.

  Heading that way, the albino nodded, and the companions quickly relayed their supplies and spare blasters inside the Cyclops, along with the precious toolbox, and a couple of the nuke batteries. When he had the chance, J.B. planned to wire them to the wag headlights to make a nukelamp. It was a hundred times brighter than a flare, and would last until the halogen bulb died. The downside was they weighed more than a wheelbarrow and exploded if drop
ped into water. But the nukelamps were still much better than tallow candles.

  Dragging out the corpses, Ryan took the gunner seat, with J.B. staying at the wheel. Going to the rear, Jak and Mildred climbed through the hatch and into the fortified eighteen-wheeler. The physician could see that the wag had started out as a flatbed, designed for hauling concrete abutments, steel girders and other heavy cargo. The truck probably had an industrial transmission and reinforced frame, which made it damn near perfect for a war wag.

  “Head for the dry riverbed,” Ryan directed, hefting the rapid-fire to a more comfortable position. “That’s the direction the tire tracks go.”

  “Sure they’re not from this wag?” J.B. asked, starting the engine.

  Brushing back his hair, Ryan frowned. “No way. This heap has worn tires. The ones from the redoubt were brand-new.”

  “Fair enough,” J.B. said, shifting into gear. “Let’s haul ass!” With a shudder, the Cyclops lurched forward a couple of feet, then settled into a steady chugging as it began to build speed rolling across the hard sand.

  Chapter Ten

  Charging into view, Dragon and the rest of his crew reached the top of the sand dune, their longblasters sweeping for the hidden sniper. But nobody was there anymore, only some empty brass glinting in the sunlight along with a lot of footprints.

  “Son of a bitch got away!” Dragon snarled.

  “And there they go,” Pig growled, pointing to the north.

  Holding a hand to his forehead to shade his eyes, Dragon stared hatefully at the moving dust cloud kicked up by the heavy war wag. The bastards seemed to be heading for the dried riverbed, which was both good news and bad, he thought. If the outlanders went south, the banks were much too steep for the wag to get out again until reaching the Great Salt, and if they went north…

  “Gone,” Big Suzy muttered, lowering her handcannon and ax. The nicked blade was smeared with blood, with tufts of hair sticking out. “The fragging Cyclops is gone! Black dust, we spent years putting the thing together, jacking tires, learning how to make shine, fixing the radiator…”