by James Axler
Over the long miles, the hard-packed salt became mixed with golden sand, more and more windswept dunes rising as they departed the dead zone and the land became a simple desert. Finding a stand of cactus, Ryan slowed the wag to a mere crawl and Krysty got out of the back to use Doc’s sword to safely hack off chunks of the plant, spearing the pieces and bringing them back to the wag. Eagerly, the companions used their knives to cut off the thick barbed thorns and cut the cactus open to munch on the moist pulp inside.
“Kind of bitter,” Dean said unhappily, his face smeared with the sticky juice.
“Indeed, yet ambrosia compared to some of the things we have eaten to stay alive, lad,” Doc rumbled, chewing each mouthful slowly before forcing a swallow. “Actually, it is rather similar to pickled turnip, albeit a tad more spongy.”
“That’s from being so close to the salt lands,” Mildred said, wiping her mouth, but then added, “Turnip?”
Lowering his pale green slice, Doc smiled, flashing his oddly perfect teeth. “Most assuredly, dear lady. My mother considered it a necessary tonic for good health.”
“Ate a lot of it as a kid?”
“Not willing, no.”
It was noon when the dropping fuel gauge forced the companions to stop in the delicious shade of a large dune. Ryan took advantage of the break to get out of the broiling vehicle to refuel the wag even though it wasn’t his turn to do the job. J.B. did the same, taking on the disagreeable task of pouring a few pints of saved urine into the boiling radiator. As much as the friends would have liked to stop there and sleep through the remainder of the day, the threat of the bugs was too pressing and they had no choice but to keep going.
Driving back into the harsh sunlight, Ryan saw the break didn’t really help reduce the temp of the engine and could only assume there had to be something wrong with the thermostat. When he got the chance that night, he would open the cooling system and remove the bloody valve completely. The bastard thing was designed to keep the heat in on cold wintry days and channel it off during a hot summer. But since there was only heat in the desert, they had no need for the other function and it could be safely removed. But not abandoned. While they kept the wag, they would save any spare parts. Only a fool threw away a blaster just because nobody was attacking at the moment.
“Ville!” J.B. said, squinting to the north.
Shifting gears, Ryan headed in that direction and soon there rose from the sands a ville of tan bricks. The high walls weren’t straight, but extended to points like a star, forming deep passages between each section. Ryan approved. Those were murder alleys, where the ville sec men could concentrate their blasterfire to cut down invaders. The lower bricks were shiny with pieces of broken glass studding the surface, and along the palisade were firing slots and some rusty metal frames dangling with nests of rope that he instinctively knew was a lift of some sort for bringing folks in and out of the ville without opening the gate. This was a real hard-site, safe from any army of coldhearts. Unless somebody had a functioning tank, or a working plane, which was about as unlikely as drinkable rain falling from the tortured sky in this desolate part of the Deathlands.
As they got closer, Ryan couldn’t see a door or a gate in the walls, and drove around the ville in a wide arc until locating first one, then another door, separated by a starpoint wall. The large doors were both wooden and strapped with metal. The one-eyed man was willing to bet a live round of ammo that only one of those actually opened into the ville. The other would be a sham, a thick door placed in front of a solid wall to make attackers waste time and men by dividing their forces to hit a useless target. Smart. The baron here was no fool.
“Dark night,” J.B. whispered, shoving his hat back on and pulling the arming bolt of the Uzi.
“I see it,” Ryan growled, grinding the damaged clutch as he brought the wag to a halt in the open sand.
Directly in front of the wag was a low adobe brick wall only about a foot high that seemed to circle the entire ville at about four hundred feet of distance. Old weathered crosses jutted from the ground, and at one point the skeleton of a man was staked spread-eagle near the little wall, iron spikes driven through the empty sockets of both eyes. The message was clear—cross this line and die.
“In a world of illiterates, this is an easily understandable denouncement,” Doc rumbled, using a strip of canvas to tie his silvery hair off his neck. “Most elucidating.”
“A simple skull and crossbones would have sufficed,” Mildred told him, using the barrel of her Czech-made ZKR target pistol to push aside the tattered canvas awning to peek out from the rear of the vehicle.
“Over there,” Dean said, jerking a thumb to the left.
His pale skin painfully flushed from the sunlight, Jak took a tiny sip from his canteen, sloshing the water around in his mouth before swallowing, still hoarding the precious fluid even with a ville only minutes away. Mebbe it was empty, or full of muties. Life had taught him that until it was in your pocket, you didn’t have anything for sure.
“Must have a lot of coldhearts in the area for them to go to this much bother,” Krysty suggested, her hair coiling tightly to her head. She was getting a very bad feeling about this ville, not a sense of direct danger as if a sniper had them in the cross-hairs, but more a sensation of betrayal. Then it was gone, the ghostly impression vanished like a dream in the night.
“Or one big enemy,” J.B. guessed. “Might be both.”
Turning off the engine, Ryan pushed aside the blankets and stepped out of the vehicle, enjoying the sensation of the desert wind blowing over his sweat-damp clothes. When nothing happened after a few minutes, he pulled a small plastic mirror from his shirt pocket and reflected the bright sunlight along the top of the wall. That should get somebody’s attention soon enough.
Almost immediately, there was an answering flash, and the huge metal framework loudly creaked as it rotated out over the wall and slowly began to lower something to the sandy ground.
“It’s a man,” Krysty said, her eyes picking out the details of the lone sec man. “Blaster, no grens in sight.”
“Mighty suspicious folks,” Dean muttered, drying a hand on his shirt before pulling his Browning. “Wouldn’t even open the door for seven people.”
“Seven people in a wag,” his father corrected. “Could be a hundred more of us just over the horizon.”
As the man touched ground, a dozen more people appeared along the angled walls of the ville, brandishing a wide assortment of longblasters, crossbows and something that could have been either a piece of stovepipe, or a predark antitank weapon. It was hard to tell at this range, which was probably the idea.
As J.B. dug out his Navy scope, Krysty squinted hard.
“Looks real,” she said softly.
“It is,” J.B. added, lowering the telescope and collapsing it back down. “That’s a 70 mm recoilless rifle, sort of a baby bazooka. Packs a hell of a punch. Might not be loaded, but even a homemade rocket could send us into a world of hurt.”
“I’m already in sight,” Ryan said out of the corner of his mouth.
“No problem,” the physician replied, holstering her handblaster.
She took Ryan’s Steyr SSG-70 off the front seat and pulled it into the rear of the wag. Back in her day, the black woman had been an Olympic silver medalist for target shooting, and she was the second-best long distance shooter among the companions. Working the bolt, Mildred checked the clip in the breech to make sure it was fully loaded, then eased the barrel through a slit in the awning and started adjusting the focus on the scope to find the sec man on the wall brandishing the 70 mm recoilless. At the first sign of danger, she would put a 7.62 mm round of hardball ammunition directly into his front temporal lobe, instantly turning the sec man into a mindless vegetable. The second round would go into the firing mechanism of the U.S. Army recoilless, rendering it equally harmless before anybody could get off a shot. There was a scorpion design painted on the weapon that made a fine target.
Surreptitiously readying the rest of their weapons, the companions stayed still while the lone man walked to the low wall and stopped on the other side. He was lean to the point of gaunt, his light-colored clothing tied off at the ankles and wrists, probably to help keep out the windblown sand. A double holster gun belt was strapped around his waist, but only one carried a blaster. The original pistol grip was gone, replaced with a dark wood of some kind, polished bright and cut with the pattern of a trippant scorpion.
Squinting his good eye at the ville, Ryan again approved. Why risk losing two blasters when one would do the job?
“Where did you find our wag?” the sec man demanded, a hand resting on his gun belt only inches from the shiny blue steel of the revolver. “Thanks for bringing it back. Now get out and start walking.”
“You mean our wag, feeb,” Ryan corrected hotly, feeling a rush of fury at the clumsy trick. He pulled out the SIG-Sauer and let the fool look down the barrel. “Now shut the fuck up and bring out the sec boss, we got business to jaw.”
The skinny sec man bared a grin, displaying missing teeth. “That’s me,” he stated, stabbing himself in the chest with a stiff finger. “I’m in charge here.”
Swinging open the passenger-side door, J.B. raised the Uzi into sight. “That’s a load of crap,” he said calmly. “You’re the newest sec man the ville has, sent out in case we ace first and talk later.”
“Get your boss,” Ryan growled dangerously, “and stop wasting our time. You aren’t in charge of wiping the baron’s ass.”
Startled by the insult, the sec man contorted his face into a mask of rage and started for his blaster only to freeze at the sound of several hammers locking back on blasters. A few long seconds passed in silence, then the snarling man eased his hand away from the piece and turned to walk back toward the ville.
“I’ll remember you, One-eye,” he muttered hatefully.
His black hair ruffling in the dry wind, Ryan made no comment, but kept the 9 mm blaster trained on the man until he was well out of range.
Going to the apex of the ville, the skinny sec man shouted something to the people along the wall. Shortly thereafter in the second murder alley, there came the squeaking of hinges and the big door was ponderously raised. A group of armed men on horses rode through the doorway spreading out so that they wouldn’t present a group target in case of a firefight, most of them stopping about fifty feet from the low wall. Only one rider kept going past the boundary until he reined in the animal only yards away from the wag.
The engine was ticking steadily as it cooled, and the dry wind swirled the desert dust around their boots like miniature tornados. A dusty lizard raced by from out of nowhere and headed into the unknown.
“Who’s in charge here?” the sec man demanded. He was wide with muscle, not fat, his features oddly flat as if there were a lot of Oriental or American Indian blood in his heritage, or just a touch of mutie. His long black hair was tied off in a ponytail with a ornately decorated length of rawhide, his boots were some kind of lizard skin and a brace of pistols rode protectively behind the buckle of his gun belt, the handles turned out for a fast draw. The blue head of a scorpion tattoo peeked from under his shirt, and he had too many scars to count.
Scorpions again, Ryan noted. Had to be the crest of the local baron. Yeah, this was the sec boss without a doubt. The son of an East Coast baron himself, he could tell the difference between a hired gun and a leader.
“That’s me. The name’s Ryan Cawdor.”
“Alexander Hawk, sec chief here at Rockpoint ville,” the big man replied, openly appraising the people in the wag. There was a lot of hardware on display, pointing his way. “Those blasters work?”
“Only one way to know for sure,” Ryan stated calmly, crossing both arms across his chest. “But it’ll cost you red.”
Leaning forward in the saddle, Hawk barked a laugh. “Fair enough.” These outlanders didn’t rattle worth a damn. Good, mebbe he could hire them on as mercies. Always needed more blasters during the dry season.
Shifting his stance, Hawk addressed Ryan directly, as if the rest of the companions were no longer of any importance. “So what do ya want here?”
“Food and water,” Ryan said, indicating the wag. “Got mil fuel to trade. The good stuff.”
“Won’t buy ya a thing here. We don’t have any wags,” Hawk said, stroking the neck of the stallion. “Anything else?”
“Ammo,” J.B. said, lifting a small box of .22 cartridges and shaking it to make the rounds jingle. “You’ve got blasters, don’t you?”
The metallic sound snapped Hawk’s head around fast, and he squinted as if reevaluating the situation. “Full box of fifty?” he asked suspiciously.
“Count them if you want.”
“I will,” Hawk warned. “Better not be duds loaded with dirt.”
Krysty drew her S&W and fired a single round into the sky. The noise echoed along the plain, and in seconds a dozen more armed people were at the ville wall pointing longblasters their way. Hidden behind the canvas sheets, Mildred didn’t take the scope off the man with the 70 mm pointing at the GMC wag.
Hawk stared at the redhead for a moment, then cracked his face into a hard smile. “Fair enough. Food, rooms and water for all of you for a day in exchange for the box.”
“One day for a whole box?” Dean snorted. “That’s feeb talk!”
“A week is more like it,” Ryan countered, shifting his boots on the hot ground.
“One day,” Hawk declared, shaking his head. “This is the only water east of the glass lakes. Next spring is a week’s ride away, if you can find the spot. Take it, or leave. Your call.”
Reaching into a pocket, Ryan pulled out another box of .22 cartridges and tossed it to the sec man. “Two boxes, three days.”
Caught by surprise, Hawk gave that emotionless smile again. “Deal,” he said, tucking the ammo into his shirt. Then turning the Appaloosa stallion, he started walking the beast back toward the ville.
Climbing back into the cab, it took Ryan two tries to finally get the engine running, the whole vehicle shaking from the effort of the struggling diesel. Sounded like a seal might have broken, but at least the fan belt was still holding.
With the gauges rapidly climbing back into the red zone again, Ryan drove the wag over the boundary marker heading toward the main murder alley of Rockpoint ville and the large open door.
Chapter Ten
The mounted sec men led the way through the murder alley and into the gate. Keeping to a crawl so the horses could stay in front, Ryan drove the rattling trunk through the opening, the heavy gate rumbling shut behind to leave them trapped inside a short tunnel that penetrated the wall. The sides were smooth and plain, without decorations or even blaster ports for defense. On the other hand, the wag was barely able to traverse the passageway, the canvas awning less than a foot from the ceiling with the tall radio antenna loudly scraping along overhead to the obvious annoyance of the sec men. Any vehicle slightly larger than the GMC would never be able to gain entrance, much less make it completely through.
“An ambush by any other name,” Krysty muttered, glancing around them on every side.
“Indeed, dear lady,” Doc agreed. “I do believe the operative phrase, quote sitting ducks end quote, would be in order here.”
Born and raised in a ville protected by a drawbridge, Ryan agreed with that assessment. To any invaders on foot, the tunnel would be a death trap with nowhere to run or hide from the blasters of the ville sec men.
The tunnel was dark with the front gate closed, but there was no need to switch on the headlights as dim sunlight showed at the far end. As the companions drove into a sunny courtyard, the ville spread before them in disorganized rows as if each house had been built wherever the owner felt like it.
“This is a maze,” Mildred stated under her breath, and drew a pencil and notebook to start tracing their way along the twisting streets.
Stretched between the adobe brick buildi
ngs were sheets of cloth that rippled with the desert breeze, but the material effectively reduced the devastating effects of the noontime sun to a tolerable level.
An adobe brick machine-gun nest stood directly in front of the tunnel, with two more off to the sides to give cross fire. Stout pylons of gray rock jutted from the blue cobblestone street, and the companions recognized them as tank traps, designed to bust the treads on an APC, rendering it immobile.
As the horses turned into a side street, the wag followed and the milling people stopped whatever they were doing to stare in wonder at the vehicle. The effect was unnerving until Ryan remembered that Hawk said the place had no wags. Just simple curiosity, then. Or was it something more? In spite of the apparent wealth of Rockpoint, there seemed to be a lot of fear in the faces he saw.
The crowds parted before the armed sec men to keep from being trampled by the unshod hooves of their mounts. But they avoided even looking at Hawk. The sec chief rode like a baron through the streets, the iron-clad hooves of his stallion ringing loudly against the cobblestones, announcing his approach.
The people were sensibly dressed in loose clothing of varied stages of cleanliness, the usual mixture of salvaged clothing from predark days and tanned hides. Shoes were ragged and repaired into faded patchwork that resembled the deliberate camou patterns of military fatigues, with children going about bare foot. Nothing that could be a weapon was in sight, and no machines, even nonfunctioning devices.
In the shade of the rippling cloth roof, a legless leather smith was tanning the hide of a mountain lion, while a young assistant stitched a saddle. A dwarfish woman was sharpening knives of a whetstone, and drunken laughter sounded from the second-floor windows of what was obviously a gaudy house. Situated on a corner, an old potter was palming red clay into the shape of a bowl. Behind him were wooden racks filled with drying plates and pitchers. On the top shelf, the better plates carried the detailed design of a scorpion.