by James Axler
Okay, then. She could not take it for granted that they were coming in search of her. If they were able, then they would, but she figured that she couldn’t count on it. She would have to rely on herself.
The mystery rider obviously meant her no harm. Quite the opposite, from what she could remember of his words. In truth, there was something about that which made her skin crawl. But no matter. She couldn’t think about that now. She was too weak to attempt an escape, and out here it would be pointless.
Best to just play possum, as the old predark phrase went, and see where the rider was taking her. Once there she could see his strengths: personnel, equipment, tech. She could see how crazy he was, whether there was anything in his makeup she could use against him.
And she could recover her own strength while working out a way to wipe the triple-crazy bastard off the face of the earth.
THINGS HAD NOT, perhaps, gone quite as he’d wanted. All had been well up until the moment Krysty Wroth recovered consciousness. The file, he knew, had said nothing about the spasms that seemed to follow recovering from the gas. Her body was racked by them, and it made him wonder if there would be a similar risk of neural damage. It would be a shame if he had gone to so much trouble, only for the woman to be reduced to a vegetable. She would be of little use to him in such an event. Nonetheless, he would look after her. She would live out her days at the base, wanting for nothing in the way of care. It would, frankly, be the least he could do. He felt a responsibility to her.
Strange. This was the first time that he had felt such a thing. True, in a general sense he felt that he had a responsibility to the human race. But this was a very different feeling to that which had powered his forays into the field so far. He would have to record this later, discuss it and what it meant.
Meantime, he had distance to cover. He felt her move behind him and adjusted his balance accordingly. He could not see what she was doing, but he was sure it was not escape. The feeling was confirmed when an unpleasant sour odor assailed him. She had vomited, another side effect of the gas that the file had not mentioned.
In truth, he was beginning to wonder how accurate the files were—how much was evidential, how much supposition and how much was a sin of omission. There was a lesson to be learned here. Not to trust the computer systems a hundred percent, and to test equipment more thoroughly before use in the field.
There was something good to be drawn from any situation.
Meantime, he had other matters of more immediate importance. He took one hand from the bike’s handlebars and flipped down the mike at the side of the goggles.
“Thunder Rider reporting in. We are now approximately fifteen minutes from first defense lines. Please disable as approach registers. Estimated time of arrival at base, twenty-one minutes. Message ends.”
He flicked the mike back up and returned both hands to the handlebars. The farthest reaches of the border fence were now in sight. The ranch building was nestled in a small, man-made valley in the center of the compound. Those who had come before had made it this way. Finding the ranch from the ground without falling foul of the defenses was nearly impossible. He remembered Jenny’s words: “Nothing is ever fail-safe. Caution is the best word in the language. The most useful. Learn not just the word, but its real meaning.”
Air attack would be dealt with by long-range, radar-guided missile defenses. In many ways, these were much easier to deal with, as nothing could truly hide in the open skies. But it was—what was the word she had used?—“academic” now that there were no planes to take to the skies. Still, he was glad the systems were there, as one day, perhaps…
He snapped out of his reverie. The boundary was approaching. Time to concentrate.
Thunder Rider and his machine were almost as one as he guided it through the boundary defenses. Invisible to the naked eye, undersoil detectors registered movement within two square yards, and would detonate fragment grenades. The motion sensors would also send back to base details on the weight and bulk of any vehicles that came close. From this, the computer would estimate the probability of the grenades alone securing the base. If the calculations proved that the next line of defense was necessary, then digital imaging equipment that was in place around the land surrounding the ranch would kick into operation. Trackers would mark the intruders, and smart missiles would seek and destroy.
If, by any chance, an attacking force should get beyond this, a wall of chemical fire would be triggered. A particularly good tactician, or perhaps sheer weight of numbers, may get an enemy this far. The possibility of them getting beyond the chemical fires was very slight. However, while there was still the smallest possibility then it was politic to have a last line of defense. The ranch house itself was circled at a distance of five hundred yards by rapid-fire automatic heavy-caliber ordnance. Anyone who got past the fire, by some amazing quirk of chance, would surely fall at this stage.
No matter. The ranch house itself, merely a shell these days, was also booby-trapped. After the days following the nuclear winter, those left in the base had emerged to maintain the weapons and defense systems, considering these to be top priority. The wreckage of the ranch house itself had been left as it was. The disrepair and damage would act as a diversion. Besides, they had long ago opted to live belowground rather than try to rebuild on the surface.
So it became the perfect disguise for the base, a fortuitous act for which he could only thank those who had come before.
To gain access to the base, anyone approaching would have to steer a course between the triggering devices once they were in operation. This was a labyrinthine route that had to be intimately memorized by those who sought to use it. It was of a narrow gauge designed to be negotiated only by the bike. Any larger vehicle, even assuming they should accidentally stumble on the route, would overlap the safety zone and trigger the defenses.
Despite the almost nonexistent margin for error, Thunder Rider took the route at speed, such was his confidence. Why not? It was something that he had been learning from a young age. He had always been prepared for this moment.
PUKING HER GUTS UP had cleared Krysty’s head, if nothing else. Although her body still felt weak, she was starting to think a little more like her old self. She could have done without the twisting and turning of the bike, as the rider seemed to pilot it on a completely random course—it made her already weakened body feel even more fragile—but her mind was sharp enough to figure that there was a reason for this action.
It had to be that there was some kind of hidden defenses in these parts, and that the evasive course of action was to drive a course through them. Concentrating, no matter how hard it seemed, she scanned the area. To take in the terrain at the kinds of speeds they were using was almost impossible, and as far as she could see there was nothing to mark this area of wasteland as any different from that which they had traveled straight. But there had to be something…
It was when he veered to ninety degrees for a short stretch that she realized why here, why now. She caught her first glimpse of the ranch house, hidden in a small valley but with the roof just showing above the slightly raised level of the ground. Before, any indication of it had been concealed both by its own location and by the broad back of the rider, her primary view during the journey.
This had to be his base. Where it was exactly in relation to where they had come from, she had no real way of telling. She squinted up at the sun, hoping that she could deduce something from its position in the sky. But given the twists and turns of their course, the most she could get from the position was that it was now past the middle of the day, which, she wryly reflected, was next to useless.
Instead, she concentrated her attention on where they were headed. Moving as much as she could behind the rider, not wanting to attract his attention, and also mindful of the fact that she had no goggles, and it was his back that had protected her eyes from the onrushing wind resistance, she tried to look around him as he righted direction and drove head-on for
the ranch house. It was almost impossible. The briefest of glances gave her a fleeting impression of a building that showed only a roof gaping with holes, the upper story barely visible but seemingly stripped of paint and stucco, weather-beaten, with the frame of the ranch house showing through in places.
That was all she could get before the solid wall of air drove dust and bugs into her eyes. Dipping back behind the cover of his back, she blinked rapidly, her eyes streaming. She desperately wanted to wipe, no, to claw at them and stop the irritation, but her arms were too secured around the rider to allow her to do this.
Still, this brief glimpse had been enough to make her wonder. There was no way that anyone could live in a building like that, especially if the rest of the building was as derelict as the top sections. So why head for it? Perhaps it was just a marker on the route?
No. That wouldn’t account for the strange maneuvers he had indulged in with the bike. The building had to be the key. Her mind raced. If there were a number of defense systems that couldn’t be seen, then that would suggest a survival of predark tech. And if the ruined ranch house was a front, then that would suggest something hidden, like a redoubt. Gaia alone knew that they had encountered enough of those over the past few years; some other hidden bases, too.
The mystery rider obviously knew enough about the tech to work it, and there were others where he came from. She wondered if he was in some way allied to the tech-nomads, the elusive and loosely knit bunch of travelers she had encountered after meeting the rail ghost, Paul Yawl. They liked to keep themselves separate from what passed for civilization out in the Deathlands, so it would be unlikely that they would have wanted anything to do with the rider. The last thing he could be accused of was keeping himself apart from the rest of society.
She was guessing that he wasn’t military. He wore no uniform as such, and remnants of old military had a way about them that he didn’t. Whitecoat survivors like those freak mutie crazies they had once encountered at Crater Lake? Perhaps, but he seemed a little too proactive for those types: they liked to keep themselves apart, like the tech-nomads. So was he, perhaps, part of a group that had stumbled on old tech, much as they had soon after she had first met Ryan and J.B.? Sure, they had used it mostly just to move on from place to place, but what if some bunch of mercies or coldhearts had decided to use it to gain power and jack?
No, that didn’t make sense. Despite all the damage he had done, the rider hadn’t taken anything. And the way he talked was odd, old-fashioned. He didn’t speak like a mercie, although he did act like a coldheart. But even then, it was like there was some kind of twisted logic at work. He was a coldheart who wanted to do good things. That crazy talk about justice and crime, concepts that she, like Ryan, had heard of only in things that survived from before the nukecaust.
No, whatever was going on here, it was unlike anything they had ever come across before, which made it even more dangerous for her. There would be no second-guessing and no second chances. If she was to get out alive, then she would have to get it right first time.
In the time it had taken her to think this through, they had crested the small rise that ringed the valley holding the ruined ranch house, and were now descending toward the building itself. Every part of it looked derelict, and the outbuildings were little more than matchwood and rubble. No one would ever think of looking twice at this place. It looked as if it had been empty since skydark.
But it wasn’t. She knew this was their destination, and she figured she’d find a few answers before too long.
Whether she wanted them or not.
THE FIVE COMPANIONS HAD BEEN traveling in silence for some time. There was nothing to say, and idle talk would only have cost them energy that they needed to conserve. So they traveled, wrapped in their own thoughts.
The horses had been affected by the nerve gas, but had recovered before their human masters. They had been at a greater distance from the point of impact, and by the time the gas had reached the point where they were tethered, its worst effects had been dissipated in the air.
While the friends were still weakened by the time they had gathered the horses, the wag and set off, the horses showed no signs of wear, and proceeded at their usual dogged pace.
All within could have wished for greater speed, but it was the same old trade-off they had lived with since coming back to this region—they had no real idea of the kind of distances involved in their chase, and they had only limited supplies of food and water. Food could be overcome to a degree. There was enough game emerging at night for Jak to make them a meal, although keeping the horses fed would be a problem with the lack of grass.
But water: this was both friend and enemy. Friend because it was all that kept them alive. Enemy because they only had the supplies they carried. A trap to catch the cold air deposits of the night, the dew of morning, would not give them enough should they run low. The cacti would not yield enough, in a similar manner, although this carried with it the additional problem of not knowing if the mutated cacti carried water without taint.
So it was important that they keep their expenditure of energy to a minimum, to make the most of their meager rations. The horses could not be driven too fast, because they might use more than could be allocated to them. Here, in the wastelands of dustbowl soil and desert sand that comprised the territory, the worst thing that could happen would be the demise of the horses. Without them, a draining trek carrying supplies that would be eaten up all the faster by the energy used to carry them was a certain way to buying the farm.
So it had to be slow and steady, slow and sure. Slow, with nothing to do except dwell on what had happened to them.
It could take days to catch up, even if the tire tracks remained visible. Perhaps they never would.
Would they find the mystery rider? Would the trail just end? If it didn’t, then would they find Krysty alive at the end of it? Would she have been hurt, damaged, harmed in some way? Not just physically?
Every dark imagining that could lurk in the recesses of the mind kept welling up to the forefront of Ryan’s imagination as he sat in the back of the wag. The bond that existed between himself and Krysty went deeper than the bond between himself and any of the others. Even though he would buy the farm to fight for them, and they for him as he knew, there was something deeper and more intimate between himself and the flame-haired woman. If such a concept as love could find a home in the stony soil of the postdark world, then it existed in what he felt for Krysty, just as he knew it existed between his oldest friend, J.B., and Mildred.
His mind went back to the last time they had been in this part of the Deathlands. The time when he had been shot, presumed chilled, and the others had been captured. All except Krysty, who had evaded capture and had then single-mindedly pursued the coldheart responsible until her actions had resulted not just in his demise, but in the collapse of the plans that had powered the man’s existence. Her vengeance had been total.
She had done that for him, even when she had assumed that he was no longer alive. It was no more than he would have expected of her, in truth, knowing her character.
Just as she would expect that he would do the same for her. They had never talked of it. There had been no reason, and to even broach the subject implied the threat of it occurring, which is something that neither of them would wish to contemplate.
Well, he was doing it now. Except that it didn’t feel like that. At this plodding pace, with her how many miles ahead of them now? If that coldheart bastard had harmed her, she would be avenged. But that wasn’t enough. He wanted to get to her before she was harmed. The question was, would he be able to?
His brow furrowed as he remembered something. Reaching into a pocket in his combat pants, his fingers searched until they found a delicate chain. He extracted it and looked at the locket that dangled from between his fingers, so small and delicate at the end of the chain that it seemed absurd between his scarred and calloused knuckle joints.
Krysty ha
d given him this locket when she had found that he was alive. It had been given to her, in turn, by a man who had helped her in her quest.
He fervently hoped that he would be able to give it back to her, yet again in turn, when they found her alive. She would know they would come looking for her if they could. That he would. But could she assume that they would be able to do this?
He just hoped to hell that she wasn’t going to rely solely on them.
THE RUINED RANCH HOUSE showed no indication of being anything other than that. The rider circled it, almost as if giving her the chance to scout the territory. Parts of the walls had collapsed, the interior floors and ceilings were patchwork constructions, sometimes held together by only one surviving beam. And original decoration and furnishing had long since been stripped bare or reduced to wormwood. A couple of metal objects, corroded and covered by debris until they bore no resemblance to anything she could name, stood out from the sea of trash that littered the ground floor. A staircase stood, half demolished, leading to nowhere. The bottom section seemed to have suffered little damage, suggesting reinforcement. There was a door set into the staircase. Stripped of its wooden facade by time, she could see that this bottom section had survived as it had a concrete surround, the inset door being of steel, showing signs of wear but no corrosion. No ordinary household metal.
It was the briefest of glimpses through a tumbledown wall, but it was enough for her to realize that her suspicions had been correct. There was more to this site than just a ruined predark dwelling like so many that had housed farms and ranches before skydark.
So they had arrived at the place the mystery rider called home. She had been aware, over the roar of the engine and the rush of the wind, that he had been intermittently speaking to someone on a headset. The extraneous noise had precluded her making out the nature of these brief communications, but now that he had eased the throttle, and their decreased speed cut out the roar of onrushing air, she was able to half grasp what he said.