Devil Riders

by James Axler

  “Make a hell of a distraction, too, if we time it right.”

  “Sounds good. Help me with that barrel of black powder, will you?”

  While the two men got to work, Mildred continued sorting through some tools on a workbench, hoping to find a replacement for her lost scalpel, when she spied an ancient binder tucked into a shelf and blew off the dust to read the faded cover.

  “Rockpoint Water Storage Relay Station Nine,” the physician read aloud in amazement, flipping through the yellowed pages of the operations manual. “So that’s why the ville is here. This used to be a pumping station for a major city. Water shortage my ass.”

  “Which means that isn’t an artesian well attached to the fiberglass scorpion,” Krysty said, practicing to reload the Hollands & Hollands. “There must be a feeder pipe somewhere.”

  “Not matter,” Jak declared, checking the play of a Winchester lever-action rifle.

  There had been a lot of .38 long cartridges for the short-barreled longblaster, and it was in prime condition without a sign of rust or corrosion. A lot of folks would fire weapons and then store them away without cleaning, only to return a month later to find the dampness in the air had combined with the residue of the powder to form a kind of acid that ruined a blaster. Mildred had told him the name of the chem, but it slipped his mind at the moment. Carbolic, or something. But there was none of that on the Winchester, which shone with oil.

  “No, we can use that to our advantage,” Ryan countered. “Let’s find that feeder pipe.”

  Following a blurry map in the manual, Mildred led the group through the armory into a back room, the doorway damaged in spots where the door had been forcibly removed. Inside was a huge steel pipe rising from the ground and doubling back down again. There were some meters and a wheel valve on the pipe, along with a small diameter bleed rod that went into the brick wall and out of sight.

  “Straight up the ass and out of the mouth of the Scorpion God,” Ryan said. “Gaza controls the water from here, turning it on for the faithful, and off for the people he doesn’t like.”

  “Surprised he hasn’t declared himself a god yet,” Dean said, showing a surprising understanding of the situation.

  “Probably will someday,” his father stated. “Bastard of a way to rule a ville. A brave man will charge blasters, but thirsty people will do anything to get a drink of water.”

  Checking a toolbox on the sandy floor, J.B. used a cloth to wipe the condensed moisture off a pressure meter. “Dark night! This valve is holding back over fourteen tons of pressure. There’s enough water here to flood that whole ville. Wash it clean off the map.”

  “Over here!” Krysty cried out, waving.

  In the corner of the pump room was a predark iron ladder bolted to the brick wall leading to a hatch set into the concrete ceiling.

  “Let’s check outside,” Dean said eagerly, reaching for the ladder.

  Pulling the boy back, Ryan said, “Remember, these folks like traps.”

  Using his panga to probe the way, Ryan found razor blades attached to the center of the first couple of rungs. Anybody grabbing in a hurry would have sliced off fingers under their own weight. Checking carefully every foot of the way, he reached the ceiling and forced open the hatch. A warm wind blew into the armory, carrying the sound of the alarm bell still stridently ringing and clanging, and raised voices shouting in the distance. Crawling onto the roof, Ryan stayed low until he was sure there were no guards present, then worked his way to the edge and slowly stood to see the whole ville.

  Rockpoint was in turmoil, torches moving along the top of the wall and cries rising from everywhere below the rippling canopy across the ville. The light of the wag could be seen from the top of the temple in the distance, distorted shadows on the adobe wall showing the barn was occupied. But whether it was Sparrow looting the wag, or ville sec men setting a trap was unknown.

  “Everybody but the gaudy sluts out looking for us,” J.B. said, pulling out his Navy scope and peering through. “And I’ll be damned if they might also be hunting for us.”

  “Something sure put a round up the baron’s ass,” Ryan agreed, leveling his longblaster. “And Gaza doesn’t even know about the temple yet.”

  “Might be because we have blasters,” Dean suggested, joining the adults.

  “Or type of blasters,” Jak said, gesturing at the Uzi machine gun. “Some villes never seen rapid-fire. Only legend.”

  “That must be it,” Krysty said softly, crouching low in the roof shadows. “Our blasters. They think we’re spies for Trader.”

  Cradling the Steyr in both hands, Ryan scowled at the notion. “Fireblast! That makes sense. Okay, get back in fast before we’re seen.”

  Quickly and silently, the companions scrambled down the ancient ladder back into the pump room, but as Krysty started to leave she felt compelled to look toward the keep rising above the ville, as if something were forcing her attention there. Then the urge was gone, carried away by the chill desert wind.

  The last to leave the rooftop, Ryan left the locking bolt open to speed their escape. A plan was already forming in his mind, something he had never done before. But it seemed like their only chance to leave this pesthole without fighting Gaza and Hawk.

  “Okay, new plan. Jak, help J.B. to rig the feeder pipe to blow when somebody enters this room. Krysty, Dean, buy us some time by using the shackles from Doc’s table to chain the locking bar on the front door in place. Make it triple-hard for them to get inside. Mildred, give them cover.”

  “And I, sir?” Doc demanded. The man hadn’t joined them in the brief sojourn onto the rooftop, and was using his ebony stick as a cane when he thought nobody was watching. Ryan didn’t blame the man. A whipping took a lot out of a person, left him feeling bruised deep inside as if he had rad sickness. It was a testament to the old man that he was up and moving.

  “Sit and rest, Doc. We’re going to be moving fast soon, and you will only get us chilled moving slow,” Ryan directed, then saw a determined look of indignation grow on the scholar’s face.

  “Better yet, go make firebrands,” Ryan said. “All you can, fast as you can. We leave here in five minutes.”

  “At once, my dear Ryan! I shall serve where Icarus failed.”

  “Shut up, ya old coot,” Mildred chided, “and get cracking.”

  “What about you, Dad?” Dean asked, pausing in the open doorway of the pump room, one foot in the armory. “Going back up on the roof to do some sniping at the guards on the front gate?”

  “Not yet,” the one-eyed man answered, going to the master valve assembly on the feeder pipe and cracking the knuckles on both hands. “I’m going to set the Scorpion God free.”

  Chapter Fourteen

  Going to a wall niche, Ryan removed an oil lantern, blew out the wick and very carefully poured a few drops of the mineral oil onto the base of the valve. Setting the lantern aside, he took the wheel in both hands, braced himself and started applying pressure. The wheel turned only a smallest distance then seemed to become stuck. The man knew that he had to do this gently, too much force too soon and the spindle could snap.

  Dean started forward to help, but J.B. held the boy back. There was no room for another set of hands on the wheel; it was a one-person job.

  Ryan’s hands turned white, sweat appearing on his brow as he continued to exert himself more and more. One of his feet slipped and he almost lost his grip, but dug in even harder.

  There was a terrible crack, and for an instant Ryan knew for certain that he had broken the spindle, then with a squeal of metal the wheel came free and began to spin easily. The meters swung high at the rush of water throbbing through the slim bleeder pipe, the length going into the wall shaking from the water coursing through it. Softly from the room beyond came a splashing sound as a torrent of water flooded the stone basin to overflow in only moments and then started to spread across the temple floor.

  “It’ll take awhile,” Mildred said in the pump room, gingerl
y touching the bleeder pipe. It was already coated with condensation from the sheer volume of water going through. “But soon the temple will flood, and the excess will start seeping out the front door. The ville people will go insane.”

  “Good,” Ryan panted. “The more confusion the better. Mebbe it’ll start a revolt.”

  “Lots of folks would die in that.”

  “Lots of folks dying now,” Ryan answered, massaging his wrists. “You better get moving before the water gets too deep in there to work.”

  Everybody but Ryan left the room, while J.B. knelt alongside the main pipe and pulled a block of C-4 from his munitions bag. Gently, he molded it under the arc of the pipe were it would be difficult for anybody to find. Then he disassembled one of the concussion grens and inserted the detonator and ring assembly into the soft claylike material of the plastique. J.B. had a few timing pencils in his bag, but those had a maximum limit of five minutes, which was much too short for the companions to get away from the temple.

  “Along with the boobie, rig a secondary charge,” Ryan directed. “I know how we can set this off from a distance.”

  “Got a radio detonator in your pocket?” the Armorer asked, packing the C-4 firmly around the core of the grenade.

  “Better,” Ryan said, and went back into the armory to return with a coil of the dirty rope.

  “The water will be reaching here soon,” J.B. scoffed, attaching a length of copper wire to the pull ring of the gren. “We can’t trust that shit to burn when it’s wet.”

  “Not a problem,” Ryan said, looking at the ceiling.

  REACHING THE FRONT DOOR of the temple, Krysty and Dean paused to listen as sec men shouted outside. Then somebody knocked hard on the door and demanded admittance.

  The woman and boy drew their weapons as the person tried the lock several times, but after a while the guard went away. However, both of the companions knew the guards would return soon with tools and a lot more men.

  Unraveling the tangle of shackles and chains from the torture tables, the pair wrapped three of the lengths around the wooden bar, locking the shackles onto each other to hold the knot tightly.

  “Nobody is getting through that without explos,” Krysty stated in satisfaction when it was done.

  “Looks like we finished just in time, too,” Dean said, looking down at the arrival of the first trickle of the water.

  Expanding along the floor, the water puddled in front of the massive door, then began to seep outside. Almost immediately there were more shouts and somebody threw themselves against the door, rattling the chains. Then another joined the effort, their curses audible through the slim cracks along the jamb.

  “What the hell is that noise?” a man cried out. “Sounds like chains.”

  “Why would the baron chain the temple shut?”

  “He wouldn’t, ya feeb. Get Hawk, we need a battering ram!”

  Moving fast, the woman and boy retreated into the tunnel, and Krysty locked the iron grille while Dean keep guard with his crossbow. Then they both raced back to the temple, closed the set of double doors and looped the last chain through the handles. Now Krysty held the first and last link of the chain on top of each other and placed a dagger from the armory through the loops. Lowering the crossbow, Dean drew his Browning Hi-Power and hammered the dagger into the wooden door in lieu of a stake. It wasn’t much, but the knife would at least keep the chains from simply slipping off the handles when folks started banging to get inside.

  They knew that none of these things would hold off a truly determined force, but all of this would buy them time and make the baron waste a lot of troops trying to get inside and capture them. Hopefully, that would be enough.

  Returning to the armory through the iron maiden, Krysty closed the hinged hatch while Dean dragged over an empty wooden barrel. Together, they started to toss in any loose items available, tools, blasters, ammo, grinding stones, until the barrel was heaped high.

  “Got to be a good half ton of junk there,” Krysty said, dusting off her hands. “That’ll slow them down some.”

  Busy at a worktable, Doc merely grunted in reply. The old man was busy making firebrands, using bits of stiff wire to attach short pieces of the rope fuse to crossbow arrows. Mildred was stuffing the completed products into a patched duffle bag and Jak was nearby stringing a crossbow, a stack of four more nearby.

  “How did it go?” Mildred asked, cinching the duffel closed.

  “The door is solid,” Krysty replied bluntly, “but the sec men are already trying to get inside.”

  “So soon? Damn.”

  “Need any help?” Dean asked the people at the workbench.

  “Thank you, but this is the final batch,” Doc replied, handing Mildred the last arrow. “Especially since Ryan took the rest of the fuse.”

  Dean looked around to see the huge coils of ropy fuses were missing from the wall pegs. “He took all of it?” The boy frowned. “What for?”

  “See yourself,” Jak said, loading his arms with crossbows. “But watch step!”

  Heading for the pump room, the friends paused as they spied J.B. on his knees playing a candle along a piece of the copper wire stretched knee-high across the open doorway. The flickering flame was slowly turning the red metal a dark brown almost invisible in the dim recesses of the temple.

  “Hold it,” he directed, then turned off the nukelamp and the trip wire was gone, invisible in the darkness.

  “Okay,” J.B. said, turning the lamp back on. “But watch your step.”

  “First person through that door is going to discover a world of pain,” Dean commented, once on the other side of the trap.

  Shifting her duffel bag of firebrands, Mildred snorted. “Yeah, for about half a second.”

  Glancing at the feeder pipe, Jak saw the wheel was wired to blow, as was the gren at the door. Whatever else happened, the water shortage in the ville was going to end this night, that was for damn sure.

  “Where is Ryan?” Doc asked, stepping over the trip wire with exaggerated caution.

  Tucking the candle into a pocket, J.B. jerked a thumb at the open hatch in the roof at the top of the ladder. “Making sure we can leave,” he said. But interrupting those words was a fast series of soft chugs from the hatch. Drawing weapons, the companions scrambled up the ladder and onto the top of the temple. The last in line, Krysty caught the stock of the H&H Nitro on the hatch for a moment, and had to wiggle about to get through. The damn blaster was over five feet in length, much too long for such cramped quarters.

  Standing in the shadows, Ryan was sweeping the edge of the building with the SIG-Sauer. He froze as a hand slithered into view near the corner, but did nothing until the head of the sec man rose into view. Instantly he fired, and the man fell backward with a bloody crater in place of a nose. Going to the edge, Ryan fired twice more and another man cried out briefly.

  “Fireblast! Too bastard many people know about the roof hatch,” Ryan growled. “And somebody with a brain is going to figure out why there’s a pile of bodies in the street, at which point we’re shit out of luck.”

  “Let’s get to it,” Jak said, passing out the crossbows.

  Overburdened with weapons, the companions dropped their backpacks to take the weapons and got busy nocking the firebrands.

  “Think we can reach the motel from here?” Mildred asked, licking a finger to test the direction of the desert wind. Simple logic dictated what the plan was. She only hoped they could pull it off. They had been in tight scrapes before, but this was the first time they were doing a night creep on an entire ville. One wrong move would expose them, and then it was all over.

  “The bows have the range,” Ryan said, looking across the ville. “It’s just a matter of can we hit the target.”

  Stepping on the crossbar of his crossbow to grab the string in both hands, J.B. pulled it upward until the cord caught on the tongue. Lifting the weapon, he slipped in a firebrand.

  “Ranging shot,” J.B. directed, touching
the rope with his butane lighter. As the fuse sputtered into life, he raised the crossbow and pressed the trigger.

  The flaming arrows arced over the ville to drop beyond the motel a dozen blocks away.

  “Try ten o’clock, instead of eleven,” he said, reloading and lowering the angle. “All together. Ready, shoot!”

  The companions launched in unison, the flurry of arrows soaring high to plummet down into the open courtyard around the motel. Bursting from the building, Jed and Sparrow came running out with blasters drawn, both of their dogs baying wildly.

  “Again,” Ryan ordered brusquely, as tiny dots of light began moving along the top of the adobe wall. The sentries had spotted the firebrands. “Shift more into the wind!”

  The crossbows were armed once more, and the next flight went over the motel, one arrow spiraling away randomly to disappear into the distance.

  “The fuse came free and threw off the balance,” Doc rumbled angrily.

  Suddenly a chorus of voices rose from the opposite side of the temple, closely followed by a tremendous crash of splintering wood. Then it came again and again.

  “Sounds as if the sec men are busting through,” Dean said.

  “Check the wires,” J.B. commanded, running his fingers along the shaft of an arrow. “This volley has got to be on target!”

  Locking his crossbow and reloading, Jak saw a man carrying a longblaster appear on a roof a few buildings away. Only a sec man would have a weapon like that, so he fired from the hip. The unlit arrow flew straight and hit the man in the stomach partially going through. Dropping the blaster, the man clutched the shaft sticking out of his belly and shrieked in pain.

  Squinting in that direction, Ryan chanced two shots with the SIG-Sauer, but the wounded man was masked by the darkness and kept on screaming. Having no choice, he slid the Steyr off his shoulder, placed the crosshairs on the sec man’s chest and put a 7.62 mm round through his heart, ending the cries.