The deal was on the table

“Come along with us to Cascade. Lend a blaster if there’s any chilling to be done on the way. The healer helps patch any wounds, and talks to the old-timers, and the six of you get a fair share of every trade I make,” Roberto stated.

Having done something similar a hundred times before during his years traveling with the Trader, Ryan was impressed. It was a fair offer. And the chance to see a predark city. Ryan got a flutter of excitement in his guts. He glanced at the others. Were they interested? Hell yeah.

“Deal,” Ryan said, offering a hand.

Looking coolly at the man he had wanted to ace only a few hours earlier, Roberto marveled at the strange complexities of life. Friends became enemies, and enemies became friends, often in less time than it took to load a blaster.

“Done, and done,” he growled, and they shook.

Eden’s Twilight

Death Lands®

James Axler

www.mirabooks.co.uk

The world was all before them, where to choose

Their place of rest, and Providence their guide:

They hand in hand with wand’ring steps and slow

Through Eden took their solitary way.

—John Milton,

1608–1674

THE DEATHLANDS SAGA

This world is their legacy, a world born in the violent nuclear spasm of 2001 that was the bitter outcome of a struggle for global dominance.

There is no real escape from this shockscape where life always hangs in the balance, vulnerable to newly demonic nature, barbarism, lawlessness.

But they are the warrior survivalists, and they endure—in the way of the lion, the hawk and the tiger, true to nature’s heart despite its ruination.

Ryan Cawdor: The privileged son of an East Coast baron. Acquainted with betrayal from a tender age, he is a master of the hard realities.

Krysty Wroth: Harmony ville’s own Titian-haired beauty, a woman with the strength of tempered steel. Her premonitions and Gaia powers have been fostered by her Mother Sonja.

J. B. Dix, the Armorer: Weapons master and Ryan’s close ally, he, too, honed his skills traversing the Deathlands with the legendary Trader.

Doctor Theophilus Tanner: Torn from his family and a gentler life in 1896, Doc has been thrown into a future he couldn’t have imagined.

Dr. Mildred Wyeth: Her father was killed by the Ku Klux Klan, but her fate is not much lighter. Restored from predark cryogenic suspension, she brings twentieth-century healing skills to a nightmare.

Jak Lauren: A true child of the wastelands, reared on adversity, loss and danger, the albino teenager is a fierce fighter and loyal friend.

Dean Cawdor: Ryan’s young son by Sharona accepts the only world he knows, and yet he is the seedling bearing the promise of tomorrow.

In a world where all was lost, they are humanity’s last hope….

Contents

Prologue

Chapter One

Chapter Two

Chapter Three

Chapter Four

Chapter Five

Chapter Six

Chapter Seven

Chapter Eight

Chapter Nine

Chapter Ten

Chapter Eleven

Chapter Twelve

Chapter Thirteen

Chapter Fourteen

Chapter Fifteen

Chapter Sixteen

Chapter Seventeen

Chapter Eighteen

Chapter Nineteen

Chapter Twenty

Chapter Twenty-One

Chapter Twenty-Two

Chapter Twenty-Three

Chapter Twenty-Four

Chapter Twenty-Five

Chapter Twenty-Six

Chapter Twenty-Seven

Epilogue

Prologue

Alone, the man stood on the edge of the cliff, the cool wind blowing over the rocky escarpment weakly stirring the dry leaves around his boots. A thick growth of ivy covered the ground like a living carpet.

Resting a hand on the automatic pistol holstered at his side, Dale MacIntyre gazed thoughtfully down into the foggy chasm. A cool mist rose from the thundering river below to moisten his face and clothing, the white-water rapids sounding like the distant thunder of a perpetual storm.

Had skydark sounded something like that, MacIntyre wondered, when a rain of nuclear bombs destroyed civilization in only a few hours? Possibly. But there was no way to know. That had happened a hundred years earlier, and not even the founding fathers told about such things in the doomsday book. Facts were few and far between. Nobody knew how the war started, why, how it ended, or even if it had ended. Perhaps the last remnants of the predark military were still battling ancient foes in some forgotten corner of the world. The fighting never seemed to cease. The fathers thought they had stopped the killing, but all they had done was postpone it for a few decades, nothing more.

Shaking his head to dispel the dark thought, MacIntyre shifted his stance a little farther away from the edge of the crumbling cliff. The Barrier River at the bottom could be heard, but it had never been seen since Last Day, when it changed from a gentle creek into a savage torrent of deadly whirlpools, hot water geysers, jagged boulders…and creatures. Huge indescribable things of teeth and tentacles that lurked at the bottom of the river patiently waiting for somebody to cross, and then they would strike. The unstoppable lurkers moved lightning-fast, and the poor victims were still horribly alive when dragged below the churning water to vanish forever. Nothing could get across the Barrier River. Especially with the bridge gone.

Jutting from the opposite side of the chasm were the remains of a predark bridge, the broken steel beams extending for only a few feet before ending abruptly in ragged ends, the metal twisted and partially melted. The sagging girders were covered with rust and festooned with vines, the crumbling asphalt dotted with potholes and covered with moss. There was absolutely no sign of the bridge on this side of World’s End, every trace of it carefully removed decades earlier. Then hundreds of trees had been lovingly planted by hand to create an artificial forest that completely hid the isolated farming community. The little town of Cascade was invisible, and unreachable.

We live in a damn castle, MacIntyre noted dourly, hitching up his gunbelt, with mountains for walls, the river as a moat, muties for guard dogs…and me as the gatekeeper.

Dressed in the blue-and-gray uniform of a City Protector, MacIntyre wore his wavy brown hair cropped short, the black boots shiny with fresh polish. There was a discolored patch on his face from being caught in the acid rain as a teenager. The flesh puckered into a gnarled ruin, and the left side of his mouth curled back into a permanent snarl. A great many women found the disfigurement oddly attractive, as if it were some kind of badge of honor. A touch of the savage in their peaceful world. But MacIntyre considered it only a badge of shame. It was his own damn fault he’d been caught in the downpour. He had been drunk that night, using a full year’s ration of whiskey in a single evening to try to burn out the terrible memory of learning the truth about his hometown, and the locked back room of the sheriff’s station. It was a shock to discover that everything he believed was a carefully sculpted lie. Some folks leaped off the cliff after the ceremony of adulthood, while others quietly went into a tub of warm water and slit their wrists, but the gaunt teenager had merely gotten royally drunk, permanently scarred and then joined the Protectors the next morning.

Now I’m the chief, MacIntyre thought, clenching a calloused fist at his side. His nails cut into his flesh, the pain strangely reassuring. And it is time for me to do a Harvest. Harvest! What a hideously deceptive word.

Suddenly there came the crunch of loose gravel from behind.

Ignoring it, MacIntyre didn’t turn. There were no muties, coldhearts or slavers in Cascade. No warlords, kings, dictators or despots. Stingwings were the only real danger to Cascade, and the strong mountain winds that kept out the acid rains also served to repel the winged muties. Most likely, the isolated mountaintop community was the only safe place left in the world. The last bastion of civilization. I’m the most dangerous thing in Cascade, a natural-born killer, and they’ve asked me to leave.

“Have you made a decision yet?” a familiar voice said gently.

Glancing over a shoulder, MacIntyre frowned at the mayor of Cascade. Technically the woman should probably be considered the de facto president of the United States, as she was the only elected official in existence. But to claim the leadership of a nation that no longer existed would be the height of foolishness, and Henrietta Spencer was anything but a fool.

Dressed in a forest-camouflage-pattern military jumpsuit, the woman wore comfortable sneakers and a gunbelt that holstered a large-caliber revolver, the blue metal glinting dully in the afternoon light. Known as Etta to her friends, the middle-aged woman had gentle touches of silver highlighting her long auburn hair, and a wide generous mouth. A very generous mouth, as he remembered. Etta possessed the most amazingly blue eyes he had ever seen, and her lush, womanly figure was completely covered with freckles. The childhood friends had become lovers over time, but had been forced to end the romance when they became the mayor and Chief Protector. Cascade was a democracy, and having the two most powerful people in town living together was getting a little too close to the creation of aristocracy, something the townsfolk would never tolerate. Now, in an odd twist of fate, she was sending him to his death.

Possible death, MacIntyre corrected. I might return alive. Others have before. Not all of them, but a few, so why not me?

“Well, old friend?” Etta asked softly, resting a hand on his shoulder.

Her warm touch brought back memories of youthful fumbling in haystacks, and then more adult pleasures in a soft bed before a roaring fireplace. Wine and laughter, an intimate touch, smooth bare skin, a heartfelt sigh. But that was too much to say, so the man simply nodded.

“When will you leave?”

He shrugged. “Tomorrow morning.”

Etta started to say something but stopped and wordlessly turned to start walking back into the trees. She did not enjoy being out in the open for too long. It seemed like tempting fate.

Listening to her leave, MacIntyre drew his gun and dutifully checked the load before holstering it once more. The man was glad she had not asked to stay the night. He might have accepted, and that would have only made leaving that much more difficult. And he already had enough on his mind planning for the harvest.

Studying the broken bridge for a while longer, MacIntyre turned away from World’s End and started the walk back toward Cascade, his thoughts full of violence, betrayal and bloody death.

Chapter One

The howling sandstorm filled the Ohio desert like a boiling ocean of dirt and salt, making it impossible to tell where the land ended and the thundering heavens began. The dull red sun was long gone, swallowed whole by the tempest, the only illumination coming from the endless volleys of sheet lightning flashing in blue-white fury across the tumultuous sky.

Brutally pounded by the savage winds, six masked figures stumbled through the maelstrom resembling animated corpses freshly escaped from the grave. Ratty blankets were tied around their bodies as crude protection from the stinging grit, and torn strips of cloth were wrapped tightly around their faces to make breathing possible, only a tiny slit left open in front for them to dimly see through. Moving in a ragged line, their arms were linked together, only the combined weight of the companions keeping them on the ever-shifting ground.

In every direction sand dunes rose and fell like cresting waves on the ocean to briefly form yawning valleys that filled as quickly as they were formed. Hopping across the desert, a large mutie rabbit was caught in a depression and vanished beneath the flowing sands to never emerge again. Easing the grip on their blasters hidden under the whipping blankets, the companions turned away from that area and grimly kept moving. They hated losing all of that meat, but to try to harvest it now would only get them chilled.

Only this morning they had arrived at a peaceful ville on the Kentuck River and traded a handful of live brass for an old horse and new wooden cart. A doomie warned them not to venture into the Great Salt until after nightfall, but they had been eager to reach the Ohio redoubt to the north, and departed anyway. Only a few hours later, the roiling sandstorm had come over the western horizon like a tidal wave of destruction. The terrified horse had choked to death before they were able to rig a mask for the poor animal, and the companions had been forced to abandon their precious supplies to make a desperate journey back to the ville. But it was impossible to go against the hurricane-force winds, and the companions were resigned to traveling blindly to the east toward the unknown.

Without warning, a woman in the middle of the line yelled as the sand flowed out from under her boots, leaving her suspended in midair, supported only by the arms of the other companions. Tightening their hold on her, the people moved quickly away from the whirlpool until she was back on the ground once more. The woman shouted something at the others, but if it was advice, or her thanks, nobody could tell, the words lost in the deafening sandstorm.

Hunched low against the fierce wind, the big man at the front of the line slowed as something appeared out of the storm ahead. But a moment later he saw that it was only the wreckage of an ancient APC, an armored personnel carrier. The metal chassis was stripped bare of paint from decades of erosion, the hood buckled back to expose a corroded engine block, the wiring and rubber hoses lashing about like a nest of snakes.

As the companions shuffled past, the wind kicked up to briefly clear off the windshield, and behind the badly scratched plastic they could vaguely see a grinning skeleton strapped into the driver’s seat, the tattered remains of a blue-and-gray uniform hanging off the bleached bones. At the end of the line, a stocky woman hugging a lumpy canvas bag bowed her head for a moment in silent prayer, and a tall man with silvery hair made a brief sign of the cross.

Suddenly the leader stumbled over something buried in the ground. At first he assumed it was a part of the APC. But the obstruction extended for several yards. Bending low, he cupped a hand protectively around his eyes and could just make out the regular pattern of predark bricks. It was part of a wall. There could be ruins nearby! If even pieces of the buildings were still erect, the companions could get out of the bastard storm for some much-needed rest.

Wordlessly tugging the others to follow, he moved along the ancient barrier until he found the end. A huge concrete eagle rose defiantly to face the storm, wings outspread as if about to take flight. Everybody took heart at the sight and quickly stumbled around the statue onto cracked pavement. As they crouched behind the brick wall, the force of the wind noticeably lessened, and they all took a moment to catch their breath before noticing the rusty remains of a car. This was a parking lot! Which meant they were very close to the ruins. Eagerly rallying, they charged back into the full power of the sandstorm.

Temporarily blinded by the windblown grit, the companions were forced to proceed more slowly, until a large dark shape loomed before them and once more the wind eased. Shuffling closer, they could make out the rough shape of a large cinder-block building. This side was solid, without any cracks, and a row of intact milky-white windows sat just under the roof. Nuking hell, could the whole damn place be intact? That raised their hopes again, but unfortunately there were no doors in sight nor any windows low enough to reach.

Hurrying around the corner, the group discovered a concrete loading dock fronted by a row of huge metal gates, the louvered steel sandblasted to a mirror polish. This was some sort of garage or warehouse! Scrambling onto the dock, the companions tried the handles, but the gates refused to budge. They were locked tight, with no keypads or keyholes in sight. However, searching along the wall, they soon found the mandatory fire exit. This door was also made of steel, without any handle or visible lock. But the companions had seen enough of these to know the weak points.

Moving closer to the door, a small person knelt as the others clustered around him as protection from the wind. Expertly running his fingers along the jamb for any traps, the wiry youth finally grunted in satisfaction, then hurriedly rummaged under his blanket to produce a small wad of grayish clay and a stubby black stick. Slapping the lump of C-4 plastic onto the fire door exactly in the middle, he stabbed in the timing pencil and snapped it off at the twenty-second mark.

As he stood, everybody moved to the far end of the dock. A few moments later there was a hard bang and the door violently swung aside, exposing the dark interior.

Moving fast, the companions scrambled through the doorway, loose sand billowing along with them like gritty smoke. As soon as they were all inside the building, the big man grabbed the door and forced it closed against the buffeting wind by sheer determination.

“Find something to block this!” Ryan Cawdor yelled, the words muffled by the dirty strips of cloth covering his face. “I can’t hold this bastard shut forever!”

Nodding, Krysty, Mildred and Doc rushed to obey, while J.B. and Jak put their backs to the cinder-block wall and pulled out blasters just in case they were not alone.

In spite of the soft light coming through the sand-blasted windows, the interior of the building was murky with shadows, and the two men watched the pools of darkness for any suspicious movement. Slowly their sight adjusted to the gloom and they could see that the garage was a single huge room, about one hundred feet wide. The floor was smooth concrete, the faint remains of painted lines still dimly showing through the thin covering of sand and the long passage of time. The nearby wall was Peg-Board covered with hanging tools, while a workbench in front was littered with assorted small pieces of machinery. Heavy chains dangled from the overhead rafters and clumps of equipment stood scattered around, the hulking metal shapes dotted with shiny plastic controls.

“Nine o’clock is clear!” J. B. Dix shouted, easing his grip on the S&W M-4000 shotgun. He would have preferred to use the 9 mm Uzi machine pistol hanging under his blanket, but there was probably loose sand in the works and he would most likely only get off a few rounds before the rapidfire jammed. However, the deadly 12-gauge scattergun should be more than enough for anything they encountered in here, norm, mutie or droid.

“Three is same!” Jak Lauren added, watching the other direction. A big-bore Colt .357 Python was tight in the albino youth’s hand, a leaf-shaped throwing knife held loosely in the other. If there had been anything waiting in the dark, the pale teen would have used the blade first, before spending a live round. When the horse died, the companions had been forced to choose between carrying extra food or ammo. No choice there. As his father had always liked to say, rice is nice, but brass will save your ass. True words, and there was always something trying to ace a person in the Deathlands.

As if in reply to the thought, the wind moaned louder through the ragged hole in the door, the stream of loose sand blowing across the murky garage. Pushed back slightly, Ryan grimly dug in his boots and slammed the door shut again. “Knife!” he bellowed.

Understanding what he meant, Jak stepped closer and rammed the blade between the door and the floor as a makeshift stop. Still holding the shotgun, J.B. joined them and together the three men put their shoulders to the trembling metal.

“Dark night, this is like trying to wrestle a grizzly bear!” J.B. cried out, angrily curling his chapped lips. There were red marks on his nose where glasses normally rested, and the wiry man was squinting against the windblown grit peppering his face. Without his wire-rimmed spectacles, J.B. was terribly nearsighted, but that wasn’t really a problem inside the building.

“Worse!” Jak snarled through clenched teeth, his ruby-red eyes glaring hatefully. “Could always ace bear!”

Suddenly a sharp whistle sounded and everybody turned to see Krysty Wroth standing in a rectangle of window light, a wrapped hand resting on top of a large fifty-five-gallon steel drum.

“This one is full!” the woman shouted, tufts of crimson hair sticking out of her wrapping, the prehensile filaments moving defiantly against the acrid breeze.

Abandoning their own searches, Mildred and Doc hurried closer, and the three companions tipped the heavy container to awkwardly roll it across the garage, the loose sand crunching underfoot. As they approached, J.B. and Jak got out of the way and the five of them set the barrel firmly against the door. Easing his stance, Ryan grunted in satisfaction as the fire exit rattled slightly but stayed in place.

“That’ll do,” the one-eyed warrior said grudgingly. “But we better get another.” Irritably, Ryan rubbed the back of his hand against the leather patch where his left eye used to be located. Sometimes in nightmares he could still see his brother’s knife descending and feel the terrible stab of pain that haunted him for so many years afterward.

“And find something to block that nuking hole!” J.B. added, blinking repeatedly. He started to reach for the glasses in his shirt pocket, but forced himself to stop. These were his only good pair—his spares had hideous purple frames—and he could not risk getting them damaged.

“Will this serve?” Doc Tanner asked in a deep stentorian bass, gesturing at a piece of corrugated steel lying on the floor.

“Yeah, looks good,” Ryan growled, lumbering that way. He was tired and sore from battling the storm, but there was a lot to do before any of them could rest.

Each taking a side, Doc and Ryan tried to lift the ramp, but the thick plane of steel proved to be a lot heavier than it looked, and it took all six of the companions to cumbersomely hoist the corrugated sheet off the floor. As it moved, a grease pit was exposed, the shadowy depths lined with shelves filled with plastic bottles of lubricant, oil filters and miscellaneous objects.

Wary of where they stepped, the six companions moved carefully around the deep opening, and hauled the protective cover across the dark garage. Wiggling it between the shaking door and the barrel neatly sealed the hole, and the stinging wind died away completely. However, the companions added another fifty-five-gallon drum to the barricade, and then a third, before they were finally satisfied.

Lighting some candles, the companions dutifully checked their blasters, then did a second recce of the garage just to make sure they were truly alone. More than once they had entered a supposedly empty building only to be attacked by coldhearts hidden in a closet or to have a mutie drop down on them from the rafters. However, they took heart at the fact that there were no unusual smells in the air, just the expected reek of old grease, rust and decaying rubber.

There proved to be nothing lurking in the bathroom, utility closet or even hidden inside the refrigerator, the insides of which resembled a high-school lab experiment gone bad. There was a wooden desk in the corner, but the drawers contained only requisition logs, order forms, time sheets, pencils, paper clips and other assorted effluvia from the old world. Even the tools on the Peg-Board were only rusty ghosts, rendered into outlines from the sheer passage of implacable time. The garage was clear of anything dangerous or useful.

Gathering in the corner farthest from the blocked door, the companions gratefully undid the caked strips of cloth from around their faces, then loosened the ropes holding the blankets in place and gratefully dropped them to the floor.

“Never saw a bastard storm hit this fast before,” Ryan growled, stretching his tired muscles. “If we hadn’t found this place, we’d all have been on the last train west by now.”

Tall and heavily muscled, the big man had a deeply scarred face, with a leather patch covering the puckered hole of his left eye. A bolt-action Steyr SSG-70 was strapped across his lumpy backpack, and a 9 mm SIG-Sauer blaster was holstered at his hip, right next to the curved sheath of a panga.

“Got that right, lover,” Krysty agreed, listening to the thunder booming outside. A split second later lightning flashed outside the windows, casting the people in the garage into stark relief. “However, when I saw that concrete eagle outside, I knew we’d be okay.”

A strikingly beautiful woman, Krysty was tall with ample curves and bright emerald eyes. Long crimson hair hung past her shoulders, the animated filaments flexing and moving around with a life of their own. A canvas-web belt of ammo pouches circled her waist, the checkered grip of an S&W .38 revolver jutting from a holster on her right hip. A large Bowie knife was sheathed on the left. Her worn blue cowboy boots were embroidered with the silvery outline of falcons, and a tattered bearskin coat hung over her shoulders.

“Yeah, me, too,” Ryan said, almost smiling. “National Guard bases are always good boltholes. I read once they were designed to hold back rioting mobs of people. The ones Trader found were usually in good condition.” He paused. “Not always, but usually.”

“Gaia must have been guiding our steps,” Krysty said, removing the cap from her canteen. She took a small sip, sloshing the water in her mouth before spitting it into the grease pit, and then took a long draft from the container. The water was tepid, flat, but tasted like ambrosia.

“Gaia, eh? Mebbe she did help at that,” J.B. added, removing the glasses from his pocket and sliding them into place. “Because I sure couldn’t see the compass, or sextant. We could easily have gone deeper into the desert and ended up as bones in the Great Salt.”

Short and wiry, J.B. was wearing loose neutral-colored fatigue pants, U.S. Army boots, a brown leather jacket and fingerless gloves. An Uzi submachine gun hung off his left shoulder, an S&W M-4000 shotgun was slung across his shoulders and at his side was a munitions bag bulging with assorted explosives. Their old teacher, the Trader, had nicknamed him “the Armorer” long ago, and the title fit John Barrymore Dix perfectly. There wasn’t a weapon in existence the deadly man could not fix, or repair, in his sleep.

“Nonsense, John Barrymore, luck favors the ready,” Doc said, trying to brush the loose grit from his clothing. However, he only seemed to be making it worse, so the man abandoned the effort. “Indeed, observe our current locale! This is a perfect sanctuary from the Dantean fimbulvetr rampaging outside!”

Lean and muscular as a racing whippet, Professor Theophilus Algernon Tanner seemed incongruous in his frock coat and frilly white shirt, clothing from a time when the style of a man’s clothing was vitally important. A huge .44 LeMat pistol was tucked into a wide gunbelt, the canvas ammo pouches full of black powder, lead and cotton wads for the massive Civil War handcannon. An ebony walking stick was thrust into his belt like a medieval sword, and his backpack hung empty and flat across his back.

“Stop mixing mythologies, you crazy old coot,” Dr. Mildred Wyeth shot back irritably, stomping the dust off her combat boots. “Dante’s hell was blazing hot, while the Norse legend of the fimbulvetr said it was freezing cold!”

Short and stocky, the physician was wearing a red flannel shirt and camou-colored fatigue pants, her ebony hair braided into beaded plaits. A Czech-made ZKR target revolver was snugly holstered low on her hip, and a patched canvas bag hung from her shoulder bearing the faded word M*A*S*H. It held the bare essentials: boiled water sealed in plastic bottles, sterilized cloth in plastic bags, two sharp knives, sulfur to dust wounds, flea powder from an animal clinic, eyebrow tweezers from a hair salon, pliers from a dentist, long fingers recovered from an autobody shop and some tampons reserved for deep bullet wounds. It wasn’t much, barely the basics, but it was a start.

“Indeed, madam, but Dante’s hell was also frozen in the center,” Doc countered, raising a finger. “So who is to say the two frigid dreamscapes were not connected somehow in a sort of cosmic abettor?”

Scowling, Mildred started a reply then merely snorted instead, simply too exhausted to argue with the scholar. Besides, she thought, maybe he was correct.

“Hot, cold, not care,” Jak Lauren noted pragmatically, taking a long pull at his canteen before closing it tight. “Long as we inside and storm out.”

A true albino, the teenager was the color of snow, hair and skin alike. He wore loose fatigue pants that had seen better days, a T-shirt that bore a picture of a wolf and a battered jacket covered with bits of metal, glass and feathers. Sewn into the collar were a dozen razor blades, a terrible surprise for any enemy who tried to grab the youth by the neck. A huge Colt .357 Magnum Python rested in a policeman’s gunbelt. At least a dozen leaf-bladed throwing knives were secreted in his jacket. A combat knife was sheathed at his left hip, and the handle of a dagger jutted from the top of his right boot.

“You can load that into a blaster and fire it,” Ryan growled, fisting the leather patch that covered his missing eye. Some of the bastard sand and salt had gotten through the wrapping and were making the empty hole itch like crazy. Turning away from the others, he lifted the patch and carefully poured some water onto his face until the sensation ceased.

Outside the garage, the howling wind increased in volume, the hard-driven grit sounding like winter hail on the roof. Then something heavy slammed into the side of the garage, the impact shaking loose a light rain of dust from the steel beams supporting the ceiling.

“The storm seems to actually be getting worse, if that’s possible.” Krysty frowned, casting an anxious glance at the barricaded door. “We must be near a rad pit, and a really mucking big one.” She did not fully understand the science behind the atmospheric phenomenon the way Mildred and Doc said they did, but the woman knew from experience that the rising heat from a nuke crater could change the local weather in any manner of odd ways; burn a forest into a desert or turn a desert into a swamp. Skydark did more than simply destroy people and cities, it altered the world in ways the whitecoats couldn’t have predicted.

Instantly both Ryan and J.B. checked the rad counters clipped to their lapels, but each of the devices registered only the usual background levels.

“We’re clear,” J.B. announced in obvious relief. “No rads worth mentioning.”

Just then sheet lightning flashed outside in a continuous barrage and thunder rolled for several minutes, making speech impossible.

“Well, we’re not going anywhere until this ends,” Ryan stated, rubbing his unshaved jaw. “Might as well settle in for the night. The ceiling is high enough for us to start a fire, and we can use the desk for kindling. What’s the food situation?”

Taking a seat on a wooden bench, Mildred answered without even looking in her backpack. “We lost a lot of it in the storm,” she said with a sigh. “But I managed to keep about three pounds of dried beans, four self-heats of mushroom soup, some beef jerky that probably won’t crack our teeth too badly, and six cans of…uh, dinosaur.”

The physician tried not to blush at the word. Dinosaur was her private term for cans of dog food. She wanted to call it beef stew, goulash, any damn thing else, but the companions could read and knew better. They didn’t care, food was food, and as a physician she had to grudgingly admit that the…dinosaur…was perfectly edible, tender meat, rich vegetables and a thick gravy fortified with vitamins. Very healthy stuff these blighted days. But until she had removed the labels and started calling it something else, Mildred had simply never been able to stomach the stuff. She tried not to shudder. Dinosaur stew.

Understanding, J.B. patted her on the arm. “Well, at least it’s not boot soup,” he said in consolation. Once, the companions had been trapped underground and were forced to eat their leather footwear to stay alive. It had worked, but the unique flavor was something none of them would ever forget.

In spite of herself, Mildred had to smile at the memory. “You’re right, John, anything is better than that.” She chuckled.

“Not one MRE?” Jak asked hopefully.

“Sorry.” Mildred shrugged. “We had the last one yesterday.”

The teen frowned. “Damn.” Those were his favorite.

The letters MRE were military speak for Meal Ready to Eat, predark army rations. Each envelope was a complete meal, and the pack included a main course, snack, cigarettes, candy bar, dessert, coffee, sugar, moist towelette, chewing gum and even a small packet of toilet tissue for use afterward. The food was incredible: spaghetti with meatballs, veal Parmesan, beef Stroganoff, chicken and dumplings, eggs and bacon, even pancakes and waffles. The meals were fit for a baron. Best he’d ever had! Well, aside from possum, Jak acknowledged. The MRE packs were worth their weight in ammo, and harder to find than a friendly stickie.

“Well, it’s my turn to get the wood,” Krysty said, picking up a heavy wrench from a toolbox on the floor and starting for the desk.

“Rest first,” Ryan ordered brusquely, then softened his tone. “We’re not going anywhere soon, lover.”

With a nod, the tired woman sat again and placed the wrench aside for later.

“Well, if we have naught to do until the anger of Thor is appeased,” Doc said lugubriously, pulling a worn deck of cards from a pocket of his frock coat, “would anyone be interested in a nice game of Whist?”

“Mebbe later, thanks,” Ryan said, going to the workbench.

Taking a seat, he cleared an area, then drew the SIG-Sauer and dropped the clip as a prelude to thoroughly cleaning the dirty weapon. Joining his friend, J.B. laid down the Uzi and started pulling tools from his munitions bag, along with a small bottle of homogenized gun oil.

“Whist?” Mildred scowled.

“Fair enough, then. How about Canasta?” he asked hopefully. “Or mayhap pinochle?”

Crossing her arms, Krysty looked at the tall man and said nothing.

Seeing it was hopeless, Doc sighed in resignation. “All right, poker again.”

“Now talking!” Jak grinned, cracking his knuckles.

Moving their candles to the sandy floor, the companions sat in a circle and Doc started neatly shuffling the plastic-coated playing cards when the thump sounded again, even louder this time. Then it came three more times in rapid succession. In sudden comprehension, the startled companions realized that the noise was not coming from the sandstorm outside, but from a blank section of the cinder-block wall near the refrigerator.

Scowling darkly, Ryan began to rise from the workbench when the wall visibly moved, a spiderweb of cracks radiating across the rows of cinder blocks as several of them broke into pieces and fell away, leaving a ragged hole. But instead of the howling storm, there was only cool blackness on the other side.

Then something large shifted position in the Stygian dark, the reflection of polished metal gleaming in the dim candlelight.

Chapter Two

“Get razor, people!” Ryan snarled, pulling the Steyr SSG-70 off his back and working the bolt to chamber a 7.62 mm round for immediate action. “We’re about to have company!”

Muttering curses, J.B. started to reach for the Uzi, then turned away and swung the S&W M-4000 around. Working the pump, the Armorer kicked out the first cartridge, then quickly thumbed it right back into the receiver to help break apart any clumps of sand that might clog in the mechanism. The scattergun would probably have worked just fine anyway, but better safe than aced, as the Trader always used to say.

Moving fast, the rest of the companions spread out to not offer an enemy a group target. Setting their candles high and out of the way to not reveal their positions, the companions took cover behind a lathe, drill press and other pieces of heavy equipment just as the cinder blocks violently shook, the cracks spreading wider, and a host of small tools falling off the Peg-Board landed in a ringing clatter.

“Shit,” Jak drawled, turning the word into two syllables as he thumbed back the hammer on his Colt Python. “Big ’un. What be, mutie?”

“I most assuredly hope so,” Doc replied, tightening a finger on the trigger of the LeMat, his free hand poised over the weapon to fan the hammer. “Because if not—”

But the scholar was interrupted by the unexpected sound of working hydraulics. The wall bulged in the middle, the blocks shattering to spray loose debris across the garage. Even before the broken pieces of masonry hit the floor, the companions bitterly cursed and opened fire at the shadowy figure standing in the irregular gap.

The cylindrical body of the machine was shiny and smooth, the low head only a rounded dome sporting two red crystal lenses that never stopped rotating. The flexing arms were thick ferruled cables, one equipped with a pounding pneumatic airhammer, and the other tipped with a spinning buzzsaw, the razor-sharp disk only a whining blur, the noise oddly reminiscent of a predark dentist drill.

“Sec hunter droid!” Krysty growled, using both hands to steady her S&W Model 640 revolver.

In a ragged barrage, the companions cut loose with their blasters, but the soft-lead rounds only ricocheted harmlessly off the armored body of the droid as it continued to enlarge the hole in the wall. Then the shotgun boomed, and one of the red eyes shattered into a million pieces.

Instantly turning in that direction, the droid extended the buzzsaw arm. Already in motion, J.B. got out of the way just in time, and the spinning blade slammed into the workbench instead, dislodging dozens of tools. Ducking under a lathe, J.B. turned and fired again just as the buzzsaw hit the machine, throwing off a corona of sparks. Stepping in close, Ryan fired point-blank at the robotic limb, the barrel of the longblaster actually touching the rotating blade. As expected, the copper-jacketed round rebounded, but the buzzsaw was momentarily thrown out of alignment, jammed in the yoke and violently shattered, the steel slivers going everywhere.

With a cry, Mildred dropped the ZKR target pistol and clutched her right arm.

“Have at thee, Visigoth!” Doc bellowed, fanning the LeMat like a Wild West gunslinger. The .44 miniballs hit the droid like flying sledgehammers, badly denting the domed head. Hydraulic fluid started leaking from one of the depressions in the manner of watery blood.

Flailing its damaged limb madly, the droid smashed chunks out of the wooden workbench. Dodging out of the way, Ryan fired twice at the machine, then stepped behind a cluster of hanging chains. The limb started that way, paused and then retreated, unwilling to risk getting tangled in the steel lengths.

Working the bolt on the Steyr, Ryan grunted at the sight. Fireblast, just how smart was this tin can?

Crawling behind a pile of rotting tires, Mildred fumbled in her med kit for a length of boiled cloth to tie a tourniquet around the wound as a temporary field dressing. The blood was coming fast, but not spurting, which meant there was no damage to a major artery. Plus, it hurt like hell, which was also a good sign. Life-threatening wounds almost always went numb to protect the body from shock. This felt like a nice, clean, flesh wound.

Moving like a ghost in the darkness, Jak concentrated his Colt Python on the ruined eye of the droid, the .357 Magnum rounds denting the dome. But the machine rotated the weakened section safely out of harm’s way.

Reloading while on the run, J.B. aimed and fired, always keeping in motion. The 12-gauge didn’t have the range of the Uzi and he had to get closer to do maximum damage. There was a pipe bomb in his munitions bag that should reduce the droid to smoking wreckage. Unfortunately the garage was too small to use explosives. The concussion would also ace the companions. They would have to take this nukesucker down the hard way.

Going for the remaining eye, Ryan fired his longblaster as fast as he could work the bolt. When the clip was empty, he dropped into a crouch to hastily insert a fresh one. This was a triple-bad place for a prolonged fight, and he cast a furtive glance at the blocked fire exit. They may have nailed the lid on their own bastard coffin with that barricade, but there was nothing he could do about it now.

Holding the end of the crude bandage in her teeth, Mildred ignored the pain as she cinched the tourniquet tight. She watched for any leakage, and when no fresh blood appeared, she fumbled for the ZKR with her left hand and grimly stood to begin snapping off rounds at the droid. The first few bullets went wild, then she grew calm as if performing surgery, and once more started to hit the machine with deadly accuracy. However, the sec hunter droid seemed to be ignoring the companions now, and was using both arms to batter down the last section of the cinder-block wall.

Feeling her blood run cold at the sight, Krysty snapped shut the reloaded cylinder of her S&W Model 640 and started to fire again. Gaia, she thought, if the machine got into the garage it could move freely among them and this fight would be over in only a few minutes. The companions had to keep the droid from getting through the wall at any cost! Spotting a welding tank near the breach, she took a gamble and shot it twice. But both of the pressurized tanks only weakly hissed for a few moments before going silent, the explosive mixture of oxygen and acetylene having leaked away completely over the long decades.

Firing in unison, Doc and Jak battered the machine with their big-bore handcannons as the last few cinder blocks fell away and the droid triumphantly entered the garage.

Cursing vehemently, J.B. dropped the shotgun, a misfired cartridge jammed in the ejector port. Grabbing a sledgehammer, he awkwardly swung it around in a circle over his head and let go, but the droid dodged the clumsy missile and lashed out with both limbs to crush four of the flickering candles set on top of the old machinery.

Instantly the garage darkened noticeably, and the companions slowed their attack, no longer able to clearly aim at their inhuman enemy.

Realizing what the droid had in mind, Ryan knew they were out of options and made a fast decision.

“Gren!” the Deathlands warrior bellowed, dropping the longblaster and insanely charging at the droid.

Pivoting, the machine lanced out with the pneumatic hammer. Diving under the snaking limb, Ryan reached the droid and drove his shoulder into the metal chassis, actually lifting it off the ground a little as he exerted all of his strength to drive the machine back a yard until it went over the edge of the floor and dropped into the grease pit.

Hitting the concrete, Ryan rolled away quickly as the droid lashed its telescoping arms around to try to right itself and J.B. tossed the hissing pipe bomb into the pit.

The companions took cover and braced themselves for the blast, and just as the domed head of the sec hunter droid rose into view, the one red crystal eye spinning insanely, the metal arms reaching out, the bomb detonated.

The confined explosion was deafening, and the entire building shook from the violent force of the blast. Channeled by the concrete sides of the grease pit, flames and smoke formed a volcano straight upward, carrying along numerous broken pieces of the droid. Several of the windows noisily shattered, and the raging sandstorm poured into the smoky garage with unbridled fury as the thundering column of destruction slammed into the roof. Down came a rain of wiring, gears, solenoids, assorted junk and hydraulic fluid. A robotic arm smacked onto the refrigerator and the crumpled head hit the desk, splintering the ancient wood.

All of the companions were peppered with refuse, but they resolutely stayed in place, hands covering their ears, as they waited for the ringing force of the concussion to dissipate. Sand and windblown grit began to sprinkle down from the smashed windows before they finally rose, stiff and sore, to check their weapons and stumble toward the hole in the wall. Where there was one droid, there were often two, and sometimes more. A lot more.

Judiciously, Ryan worked the bolt on the longblaster and checked the clear plastic clip in the breech of the Steyr. Four shots remained. Removing the partially loaded cylinder, Ryan slipped in a full clip and worked the bolt again to chamber a round for immediate use. In a fight, a single round often made the difference between walking on the dirt or wearing it as a blanket.

Gathering in front of the dark opening, the companions waited, fingers on triggers, their clothing riffling from the salt wind. The candles were extinguished, so Jak and Doc flicked butane lighters into life, the small blue flames throwing out weak nimbi of illumination that barely penetrated the darkness.

Reaching into her med kit, Mildred pulled out a small survivalist flashlight and pumped the cracked handle a few times to charge the old batteries. The device had been a gift to the physician from the captain of a steamboat for saving the life of his only child. It had served her well, but these days the weakening batteries took more and more pumping to charge, and the beam was becoming less pronounced. Soon it would be useless and she would be reduced to tallow candles and rope torches once more.

Thumbing the switch, Mildred aimed the pale yellow beam at the irregular gap. Swirling sand and salt sparkled in the air like fireflies, and she could only see a bare concrete floor on the other side. Nothing more.

With blasters at the ready, the companions waited for a reaction from the other side of the wall. But there was no sign of movement, only darkness, the stillness almost palpable.

When nothing happened after a few minutes, Ryan leveled his longblaster and assumed the point position, easing through the break, his head moving steadily back and forth so that nothing could approach from his blind side. The 12-gauge primed, J.B. followed close by, flanking his friend, one covering the other until they were in the next room. The sound and fury of the storm was less pronounced in this new section of the National Guard base. Assuming defensive positions, the two men stood guard while the others crossed over, butane lighters held high, blasters leading the way.

“If anything moves, anything at all, take no chances,” Ryan ordered gruffly. “Just spend the brass and save your ass.”

The others nodded their agreement. The companions did not have an official leader, but they usually followed the lead of the big one-eyed man, as he was right nine times out of ten.

In the feeble yellow beam, they could see that this was another garage. Bigger, but not much different than the other one—tools on the Peg-Board, more chains, another grease pit. From the size of the equipment and tools, this garage was clearly designed to handle military wags, 4x4 trucks, armored personnel carriers and such. But that was not what riveted their attention. There were more sec hunter droids. Dozens upon dozens of them.

The army of machines was scattered across the floor, extending far beyond the feeble glow of the flashlight. Loose wires and burned circuit boards lay everywhere, the piles of smashed wreckage reaching over a yard high in some spots, the bent and twisted metal reflecting the yellow beam like a golden treasure. Dried puddles of hydraulic fluid dotted the graveyard, as if the machines had been savaged by wolves. But the droids were not alone.

Still defiantly standing over the field of destruction were a couple of robotic spiders. At the sight, Ryan almost instinctively fired, then realized it wasn’t necessary. The flickering butane light had simply given them the momentary illusion of life. These droids would never harm anybody ever again.

Most of the spiders were reduced to only three or four legs, instead of the usual eight, and every one had its guts ripped out, the computerized workings dangling loosely like metallic intestines. Even the dreaded belly-mounted lasers drooped impotently, the slim barrels bent or hammered flat.

The companions had encountered the spiders before and aside from a single belly-mounted weapon, the machines had no other offensive capabilities. They were one-hit wonders, as Mildred liked to say—unlike the sec hunter droids, which seemed to be made out of weapons.

“Droids fighting droids,” Ryan muttered uneasily, testing the words as if they were rotting floorboards to see if they would hold his weight. “Must have been a nukestorm of a fight.” The warrior tried to reconstruct the battle in his mind. There seemed to have been pockets of resistance, as if the machines were holding positions to guard something, or somebody, in their midst.

“Looks like draw,” Jak snorted, easing down the hammer of his Colt. There was nothing dangerous here anymore. Only ghosts of the past.

“Most assuredly, my young friend, a genuine Pyrrhic victory,” Doc agreed, holstering the LeMat. “Although I would theorize that our earlier, ahem, guest, was in fact the sole survivor of this internecine conflict.”

“And it broke through the wall to attack us the moment it heard voices,” J.B. said slowly, using the shotgun to tilt back his fedora. “Yeah, that makes sense, in a droid sort of way.”

Mildred shook her head in disbelief, her beaded plaits clacking. “It stayed on guard, alone, in a black room, for a hundred years.”

“Just droid,” Jak replied, dismissing the matter.

“Wonder what they were fighting over,” Ryan said cagily. “Could be something useful.” The companions were low on food, almost out of water and on foot. Almost anything would be helpful at this point. The only thing in their favor was that the group did have plenty of ammo for once. But that was dwindling fast.

“Probably just wanted control of the base,” J.B. said with a shrug. “Who can figure out the logic of a droid?”

“Actually, I think the answer is over there,” Krysty said in a deceptively soft voice. She was looking into the far darkness, her long red hair flexing wildly.

Swinging the flashlight in that direction, Mildred revealed a cluster of Hummers parked in a protective circle around something really big that was covered with a sheet of canvas. The Hummers were carrying M-60 machine guns, and were literally torn to pieces from laser fire. Two of them had obviously caught fire and burned to the floor. Even worse, the white bones of human skeletons were strewed about the wags, many of them missing arms or heads. Rusty longblasters gleamed dully in the pale light, and spent brass was everywhere. These had clearly not been innocent bystanders, but participants in the battle. A few pieces of their aged uniforms were visible among the burned boots, torn body armor and cracked helmets. The troopers seemed to be from every branch of the armed services: army, navy, air force and marines. Only their patent leather belts seemed completely unaffected by the long passage of time.

“A pickup squad,” Doc said, resting a hand on the silver lion’s head of his ebony walking stick. “Forced recruits taken from whoever was handy when the convoy was formed.”

“What think is?” Jak asked suspiciously.

“In a predark convoy? Could be anything,” Mildred replied with a sigh. “Top-secret documents, high-ranking politicians, all sorts of useless things.”

“Or it could be a convoy of supplies for the Ohio redoubt,” Krysty said in subdued excitement. “Thousands of MRE food packs, tons of live brass, med kits…”

“Boot polish, toothpaste, laundry detergent,” Mildred continued unabated. “Uniform insignia, letterhead stationery…”

“Only one way to find out,” Krysty countered.

“Agreed. Watch for traps,” Ryan said, kicking the dome of a sec hunter droid out of the way with his combat boot as he headed for the vehicles. From long experience, he knew that some folks died hard, clutching a primed gren in their hand in a desperate hope of taking out their killers. Death kept their fingers on the arming lever, but a careless boot could knock that loose and chill the lot of them faster than a live droid.

Staying sharp, the companions watched the shadows for any suspicious movements. Unfortunately the blue flame of the butane lighters made everything seem alive in motion.

Reaching into his jacket, Jak pulled out his only flare. Thumping the end on a raised knee, the top sputtered and a sizzling dagger of flame formed, the brilliant white light banishing most of the gloom. Holding the flare high to avoid the reeking clouds of bitter smoke, Jak took the lead with Ryan and J.B. on his flanks.

Moving easily through the assorted destruction, the companions watched where they stepped, wary of the jagged metal sticking up from the wreckage like thorny brambles. Now they could see that some of the spiders had been equipped with needlers, the bodies of the sec hunter droids riddled to pieces from the superfast 1 mm fléchettes. They found the weapon cut in two by a buzzsaw, the spinning blade buried deep in the sleek machine. Pity. Sometimes those were found in working condition.

“How’s the arm?” J.B. asked, glancing at Mildred.

“Just a flesh wound, nothing serious,” the physician replied, hefting the ZKR. “When we get the chance, I’ll bandage it. I can still shoot just fine.”

“Sure, sure.” The wiry man heard the words, but looked at her hard to see if they were true. Noticing his concern, Mildred gave a game smile and bumped him with a hip. J.B. smiled in return, and they walked alongside each other until reaching the Hummers.

The military wags were wrecks, tires flat, windshields shattered, the chassis deeply scored by the lasers, the engines hammered into crumpled wads of metal.

Sidling past the aced transports, Ryan used the barrel of the Steyr to carefully lift the canvas sheet to take a gander underneath. At first he scowled, then grabbed the material and hauled it down in a single motion.

A cloud of dust rose from the canvas, obscuring whatever it had covered, but the salt breeze from the other garage thinned that out quickly, and the companions found themselves looking at a titanic wag of a type they had never seen before.

More than twenty feet long, and about half that wide, the colossal machine was clearly a transport of some kind, with eight tires that stood an easy six feet high. The angular chassis was composed of a smooth armor painted a dull tan, and the symbol of the U.S. Marine Corps was painted on the side. Large windows ringed the passenger section, each one equipped with a blasterport. Strangest of all, there were large hydraulic lifters set on each side attached to a sort of hinged fork; each of the tines was a foot wide and ended in sharp tips.

“Holy mackerel, that’s one of those urban combat vehicles!” Mildred gasped in astonishment, reaching out to touch the machine as if it were about to vanish in a cloud of fairy dust. “I saw a TV report on them just before I went in for my surgery!”

The others knew the rest of that story. The predark physician had gone under the knife for a simple operation, but there had been serious complications, and the attending physicians had had no choice but to cryogenically freeze Mildred in a desperate attempt to save her life. A hundred years later, Ryan and the companions freed Mildred from her icy prison, and she had been with them ever since. Her illness was mysteriously in remission, but she lived in growing fear that one day it would return to finish the job started so very long ago.

“I’d heard that the UCV program was only in the testing phase,” Mildred continued, walking around the massive wag. On the side was a brass plaque that read, Mark II. “This must be the next model!”

“Looks like tank, without gun,” Jak said, neither impressed nor disappointed.

“That’s pretty damn close.” Mildred smiled. “Looks like these things could literally drive through a brick building without slowing down. Aside from not having a cannon, this is a tank, it even has the same size motors, Allision transmission, everything!”

“Why no blaster?” the teen asked quizzically.

“Money, probably,” Mildred said.

“Those windows some sort of Plexiglas?” Ryan queried.

“Lexan plastic, tough as cast iron, and it looks like the blasterports are arranged so that you can actually see what you’re shooting at, unlike a LAV-25, T-80 or Bradley Fighting Vehicle.”

“So there was no need to expose yourself to enemy blasters to fight back,” J.B. said, stroking his jaw. “Pretty sweet. Those blades in front for stabbing folks or carrying supplies like a forklift?”

“Oh no, the program said they were for digging up buried land mines. And see the bottom? The armor is shaped to deflect the force of the blast outward, instead of taking it flat. Even the tires could take a 40 mm gren without going flat.”

“Madam, please,” Doc said skeptically. “Are we also to believe that it can fly to the moon on gossamer wings?”

“No, honestly,” Mildred continued. “This thing has got so much reinforced armor, packed on top of armor, that most of the wag is engine and fuel tanks. It only holds a crew of eight.”

“Eight?” Krysty asked, craning her neck to try to see inside. But the windows were a good six feet off the floor. “This thing should hold thirty troopers easy.”

“Nope, only eight. See for yourself!” Reaching out, Mildred tried a door handle, but it was locked solid. Damn!

“Let me try,” J.B. said, passing Doc the flare and pulling out some tools. A few minutes later the Armorer had to admit defeat. None of the armored doors could be picked or forced open. The military vehicles did not have mechanical locks, but alphanumeric keypads hidden under sliding steel plates, very similar to the ones the companions used to gain entry into a redoubt. There were millions of possible combinations, and it would take them years to try every one and any attempt to rig a short circuit or to hack the lock would probably trip a self-defense charge and weld the doors closed forever. On a whim, he tried the access code to enter a redoubt, but nothing happened.

“Forget it. This baby is sealed tighter than a crab’s ass at a bean-eating contest,” J.B. reported, tucking away his equipment.

“Pity,” Doc said. “It would have been nice to ride to the next redoubt in comfort.”

“Really think still function?” Jak asked incredulously. The companions sometimes found working predark vehicles stored inside a redoubt, but those were sealed deep underground, far from the rads, acid rain and thieving coldhearts.

“Probably not,” Ryan started, but then changed his mind. The canvas sheet that had been covering the vehicle was filled with holes from blasterfire, needlers and the laser weapons of the droids. Yet the wag didn’t have a scratch, and shone as if freshly polished. Could it be self-repairing like a redoubt? Fireblast, what a find that would be!

“Then again, it never hurts to do a recce,” Ryan said, shouldering the Steyr. Going over to the nearest Hummer, the Deathlands warrior climbed on top of the tilted wreck and found that he was now high enough to see directly into the urban combat vehicle.

“Well, I’ll be a son of a bitch,” Ryan muttered, scowling.

“Trouble?” Jak asked, a pale hand going to his blaster.

“Come see for yourself!”

In short order, the others soon joined the big man on top of the aced Hummer. The flare threw strange shadows inside the UCV, but they could still see that there were no bodies or skeletons inside the vehicle, no mounds of supplies or crates of weapons. However, lying nestled between the back row of jumpseats were three large white containers, the exposed control panels twinkling with colored lights, alive with power.

“Cryo units,” Mildred whispered, clutching her med kit. So this was what the droids had battled over, ownership of the cryogenic units! They had to contain people from her own time, fellow scientists, or even the technicians who had helped build the redoubts!

“John, we must get inside and rescue them!” she said excitedly.

“Don’t see why, they’re sure not in any danger,” J.B. stated callously, adjusting his glasses. “However, I can clearly see U.S. Army backpacks tucked under the front seats, and those always contain MRE packs, spare ammo, medical supplies, lots of good stuff.”

“Food…” Jak said, putting a wealth of emotion into the single word.

“Not to mention the fact that we have some serious mutie territory between us and the next redoubt,” Ryan added, feeling his own stomach rumble at the notion of eating. “Sure be nice to have some steel around us for a change.”

“Indubitably, sir!” Doc said, inhaling as if to say more when the flare sputtered and died.

In the wan glow of Mildred’s old flashlight, the companions dug out some spare candles and got them working. Outside, the storm continued to rage, but the sounds were softened and less threatening this deep in the base.

“Okay, any ideas on how to get inside the wag?” Ryan asked pointedly, tucking away his butane lighter.

“Well,” Krysty said slowly, her hair flexing thoughtfully. “Mebbe we can use the droids to get inside.”

“They busted to drek!” Jak stated. “How use?”

The redhead smiled and started walking. “Come on, I’ll show you.”

Chapter Three

Weakly, the dull red sun shone down upon the frozen landscape of western Pennsylvania, the tainted light reflecting off the blanket of snow covering the ground to almost blinding levels.

Tall mountains rose in the far distance, the jagged peaks lost in listless clouds of toxic chems and radioactive isotopes. Softly, a low breeze whispered across the arctic landscape, rustling the needles of the pine trees and kicking up some flakes that swirled around the U.S. Navy battleship lying on its side on top of the mesa. Icicles hung off the long barrels of the cannons, the decks thickly coated with frost, and bird nests festooned what little rigging remained. Inside the bridge, several corpses lay in a pile jammed against one corner of the sideways room; nearly every bone visible was cracked into a jigsaw puzzle. The complex bank of controls was dark and lifeless, only the gauges for the nuclear power plant buried in the hold still registered any activity. The massive navy powerplant was still dutifully generating electricity for a crew, machines and engines no longer in working condition.

Caught in an offshore nuclear blast, the crew had perished instantly as the huge vessel was sent hurtling through the sky to finally crash into the western woods, leaving the vessel lying in a crude patch of bedrock.

A low rumble shook the forest, disturbing the serene tranquility like a stone dropped into a lake. The sleeping birds were roused, conies popped their heads into view, elk raised their antlers high, and something stirred in one of the lifeboats of the great ship. A human eye was pressed to a hole in the canvas covering the sideways boat, and it glared with hostile intent.

Just then, throwing out a wide contrail of black smoke and loose snow, a convoy of armored war wags thundered over the horizon.

The flanking vehicles were modified Mack trucks, the bodies made of overlapping sheets of iron, steel, aluminum, tin, whatever could be scavenged in the ruins of Deathlands. A dozen blasters jutted from blasterports, and each vehicle was topped with a pneumatic catapult, a brace of .308 machine guns and edged with coils of barbed wire. They were war wags, death machines, armed escorts.

However, they looked like toys compared to the massive lead vehicle. It was longer than an express train engine, and equipped with a dozen oversize tires, the burnished metal hubcaps edged with razor-sharp spikes to keep people and muties away from the vulnerable rubber. The angular chassis was smooth steel, scored, scraped and dented from countless fights, but never penetrated.

The sides of the rolling fortress bristled with the long vented barrels of .50-caliber machine guns, along with the stubby barrels of 40 mm grenade launchers. The curved roof of the military wag was studded with rows of spikes, and festooned with multiple coils of concertina wire. At the front was a fat cylinder of unknown function, the end capped with an insulated lid held in place by hydraulic lifters. At the rear of the machine was the more conventional metal box of a U.S. Army rocket launcher, the honeycomb of tubes full of deadly warbirds, the louvered rear vents deeply scorched by chemical fire. Claymore mines ringed the entire chassis, along with halogen spotlights and loudspeakers.

A sturdy cage of welded iron bars covered the front of the Herculean wag like the barbican of a medieval castle, the gridwork edged with more concertina wire. Behind the protective barrier was a wide sheet of Plexiglas. There were several deep gouges in the window, along with a score of small-caliber bullets and arrowheads deeply embedded into the resilient material like flies in amber. Behind the windshield, the interior lights were turned off, effectively making the window a one-way mirror. The Plexiglas reflected the moonlit snow and trees, and it was impossible to see who, or what, was in control of the horribly beweaponed behemoth.

On top of each vehicle was a flexible pole crested with the white flag of peace adorned with a large letter S with two vertical lines running through it, the universal symbol of a trader. Although, nobody knew the origin of the ancient symbol these days.

At the sight, a scream of rage came from the lifeboat, and the insane hermit living there scrambled from his filthy nest of human scalps to scamper like a monkey across the vertical deck to reach a depth-charge catapult. He checked the homemade charges—made from the massive stock of fulminating guncotton in the ship’s armory—then hastily spun a small wheel, setting into motion a complex series of gears, and the catapult began to smoothly rotate.

“Mine! All mine!” he screamed, his eyes wild, the unkempt lengths of greasy hair matted in his own filth. “Nobody can cross Thunder Valley! Nobody!”

The crazy wrinklie was dressed in a bearskin, held closed with toggles of carved bones, and around his throat was a grotesque necklace of dried ears: norm, animal and mutie.

Checking the angle and direction through a built-in telescope, the cackling hermit tracked the approaching trio of vehicles invading his private domain.

“Just a little bit more, fools…” he whispered in excitement. “Come on, just a little more…yes!”

Yanking in the lanyard, he fired the catapult. With a dull thud, the device sent a depth charge arching high into the crisp moonlight, and then down it hurtled straight to the convoy of wags.

Instantly, the vehicles became covered with stuttering flames as dozens of rapidfires cut loose, filling the air with hot lead. Then the M-60 started to chug, and the Fifties spoke in short burst.

Riddled to pieces, the depth charge exploded in midair, the blast shaking the entire valley and knocking snow off the pine trees.

“No!” the hermit screamed, clawing gouges in both cheeks with his ragged fingernails. “No, this ain’t happen! Ain’t!”

Going to the catapult, he quickly reset the machine and fired again, but the results were the same, and by now the convoy was dangerously close to the dead battleship, the headlights starting to catch details of the hull and deck.

Once more a depth charge flew, and this time it was destroyed so close to the battleship that the hot wind of the explosion buffeted the hermit and shrapnel tinkled on the metal deck.

Shrieking insanely, the hermit abandoned the launcher and raced to another lifeboat, one that he rarely entered. Ripping aside the protective canvas sheet, he unearthed a bulky Vulcan minigun, the deadly tribarrel rapidfire covered with animal hides as protection from the evening chill. Throwing switches and pressing buttons, he fed the machine power, and the triple-barrels swung up smoothly, responding to fingertip pressure. The hermit then climbed into the sideways seat he had carved from human bones, and engaged the last belt of 40 mm shells into the superblaster.

“Gonna get aced now!” he screamed, flecks of white foam dotting his chapped lips. “Thunder Valley belongs to me! Do you hear that? It’s mine, mine-mine-mine!”

“Yes…” The word floated up from the loudspeakers of the lead war wag, rolling across the snowy fields like the moan of a ghost. “We finally do hear you, and now know exactly where you are.” There was a pause. “Goodbye.”

A scintillating ray of starkly unimaginable power lanced out from the top of the lead war wag. It hit the frosty deck, instantly vaporizing the snow and ice to the sound of a million windows cracking. The steel warped, buckled and then exploded into steaming plasma, throwing out white-hot gobbets of molten steel.

The entire battleship groaned from the uneven heat expansion. The hermit screamed in terror as the laser moved along the vessel, igniting the ancient rigging, setting fire to the lifeboats, detonating the depth charges before it swept across him, the massive stores of 40 mm shells all cooking off at once.

The predark ship bucked like a wounded animal, pieces of wreckage forming a geyser over the shaking trees. Something inside the ship ignited and secondary explosions began hammering the craft from within, tearing off chunks of deck and stairwells in wild profusion. Streamers of flame lanced out in every direction, then the main ammunition stores detonated and the battleship vanished in a silent explosion of white light.

Seconds later, hearing returned to the men and women in the convoy and the concussion arrived, brutally rattling the vehicles. Blasters fired indiscriminately, dishes broke in the galley, a toilet surged, windows cracked and a man cried out as a swinging door slammed him in the face. Loose ammo spilled dangerously across the trembling floorboards, a spray of electrical sparks erupted from a bank of comps, the radar screen winked out, a missile launched from the aft pod all by itself.

“Haul ass!” a man commanded into a hand mike, his voice repeating in every vehicle. “Get the frag out of here!”

Lurching into motion, the war wags charged backward from the writhing fireball filling the valley. They barely made it to the treeline when an avalanche of snow arrived, mixed with hundreds of small woodland animals. Birds, conies and squirrels pelted the escaping armored vehicles like a shotgun blast of life. Then came the wreckage from all of the other vehicles destroyed by the madman, wooden cart wheels, tank treads, rubber tires, engines, bicycles, car hoods, motorcycles, horse saddles, everything and anything imaginable, along with a graveyard collection of gnawed human bones and horribly decomposing body parts.

Rolling below the crest, the wags dropped out of the hellstorm but kept going until the roiling force of the detonation eventually began to diminish and then fade away.

With ringing ears, the crew of the lead war wag stared blankly at the blood-smeared windshield, each of them lost in private thoughts.

Unbuckling his seat belt, Roberto Eagleson stood, then grabbed a ceiling stanchion to sway for a moment before regaining his balance. The big man was heavily muscled, but his long arms hung loosely at his sides as if taken from another body. Wearing blue jeans and a leather jacket, his clothing was spotlessly clean and without patches, an unheard-of condition these days. But the trader believed in the power of advertising. Look tough and a lot of coldhearts would simply step aside and leave the convoy alone. And for the coldhearts not impressed, Roberto carried an S&W .357 Magnum blaster in a fancy shoulder holster, and a sawed-off shotgun rode at his hip, his shirt pockets sewn into cartridge loops for the deadly alley sweeper.

Reaching up for a mike clipped to a ceiling stanchion, Roberto thumbed the switch. “Goog…” He paused to cough and clear his throat. “Good shooting, Tex,” he said, the words echoing slightly along the metal hallway. There was the faint trace of an accent in the words, a whisper of his Spanish ancestry. “Quinn, I want a damage report in ten. Abduhl, check the tanks to make sure we don’t have any leaks. Eric, Suzette, check over the comps and get us up and running again pronto. Jimmy, check the laser for any cracks in the lens, and you better bring a rag and a bucket, it’s pretty messy out there.”

The control room crew chuckled weakly at the joke, their hands moving across the array of controls, checking electrical systems, water, air, fuel, tires, motors and the all-important blasters.

“Well, that was fun,” Jake Hutching said, forcing his hands to release the steering wheel. The pulped remains of small animals covered the front windshield to mix with the melting snow to form a ghastly pink sludge that oddly resembled human brains.

“Kind of nice to know what skydark looked like, eh, boys?” Jessica Colt said, trying not to grimace, both arms wrapped tight across her chest. The pretty woman barely reached five feet tall. Dressed in tanned buckskin, her long blond hair was tied back in a loose ponytail. Knives jutted from the top of each of her boots, and a hulking big Russian T-Rex .44 revolver rested on a shapely hip.

“What’s wrong?” Roberto demanded, noticing her odd posture.

His second in command might be small, but she had generous breasts, and they bunched up like a gaudy slut on the prowl for business with her arms in that position.

“Nothing, just a bruise…” Jessica started, then saw his stern expression. “I busted a rib.”

“Healer to CNC,” Roberto said, thumbing the mike again. “Shelly, on the jump, we have injuries!”

“I’ll be there as soon as somebody removes whatever the frag is blocking my door from opening,” a woman replied from the intercom on the wall. “I swear that this…Okay, I’m free. On the way, Chief!”

“Acknowledged,” Roberto said.

“Nuke that drek,” Jessica shot back, hobbling to the corridor door. “I can still walk.”

Roberto glared at the woman, but she just glared right back defiantly, and he dismissed her with a curt wave. The man had never met a woman more aptly named. She resembled a Colt blaster in every way: small, cold and deadly, yet smooth to the touch of the right man. She was even a pistol in bed, too.

Shying his mind away from those kinds of thoughts, Roberto hung up the mike and pulled a walkie-talkie from a recharging unit set into the metal wall. “Scorpion to Big Joe, what’s your status?”

“Alive and undamaged,” Scott Gordon replied from War Wag Two. “We just have to clean what used to be a moose off the windshield and we’re good to go.”

“Acknowledged,” Roberto replied, feeling a knot of tension ease in his guts. He took every conceivable safeguard to protect his crew. They were like kin. The one time he had been reckless, Kathleen got aced. He would never forgive Ryan Cawdor for his part in the loss of the Lady Trader, even if it was accidental.

Just then, the ceiling speaker crackled.

“This is Tiger Lily to Scorpion,” Diana Dunn said in a thick Southern accent. “We’re undamaged and hot to trot. Say the word and we’re good to go!”

“Roger that, Tiger Lily, we just have to patch some ribs,” Roberto replied, sitting again to ease the pain in his stiff leg. “We should be back on the move in an hour.”

In less than half that time, the three war wags rumbled into motion and started carefully forward, zigzagging through the steaming wreckage filling the valley. The explosion had toppled over trees and uprooted boulders, which was not really surprising, but mixed with the gigantic chunks of the battleship, the combination made for difficult and treacherous passage. Several times, crews had to plant explosives to blow clear a path, and once, Roberto was forced to unleash the laser again. At such a short range, the beam didn’t just punch through a target, it damn near vaporized the steel, and then the convoy had to wait for the pool of bubbling metal to cool enough for them to cross without risking the tires. This was going to take longer than expected. But the prize on the other side was worth any effort. Civilization.

Chapter Four

Hopping to the floor, Krysty started looking among the piles of wreckage, turning over this and that. The others joined her and tried to stay out of the way.

“What exactly are we looking for, dear lady?” Doc asked, using his ebony stick to nudge a partially melted hunk of droid.

“This,” Krysty said, lifting a laser from the piles of loose rubble. The weapon was in good shape, with only a few scratches on the barrel, but the lens at the end reflected the candlelight like a mirror. “Now all we need is some wiring and a live battery!”

“Burn through mil armor?” J.B. cried out. “Unless we find a nuke battery, I don’t think we’ll have that kind of power. Mebbe a shot or two, but not much more.”

“That might just be enough,” Ryan muttered, studying the UCV. “Not on the doors, but on the roof hatch. The lock is probably made of regular steel, nothing special. If they were trying to save jack, why armor something nobody is ever going to reach?”

“Makes sense,” Jak said hesitantly. “But how shoot something inside locked wag?”

Mildred burst into laughter. “How? We shoot it through the window!”

“Exactly,” Krysty declared, hugging the laser.

Long ago, when the companions were battling a robotic tank armed with a laser cannon, Mildred had told them how a laser worked on light absorption. A green-colored laser did very little damage to a green target, or a blue laser to a blue target, and so on, which was why most military lasers were polycyclic, able to shift through the entire spectrum every second. That way they always did maximum damage. Back in high school, Mildred had seen a demonstration of the principle. Her teacher had inflated a blue balloon inside a clear one, then zapped it with a blue-colored laser. The blue balloon popped, but the clear one was unharmed.

If the Lexan plastic was clean enough and could take the heat expansion, Mildred thought, then the energy beam should go through the window as if it were empty air. It had been an interesting demonstration, one of her favorites, and now it was coming in handy to unlock a tank.

Placing the laser on the flattened hood of a Hummer, J.B. and Mildred checked the weapon to make sure it was in working condition. The rest of the companions scavenged through the assorted wreckage and hauled out a wide variety of batteries and power couplers. Each droid seemed to have a unique power source, almost as if they had been individually constructed. It was a ridiculous concept, but nothing else made any sense.

Wrapping his hands in some dry cloth, Ryan went through the batteries, checking the power level by touching the terminals with a piece of wire and studying the resulting spark. Most simply gave a weak crackle, but one flashed like a miniature lightning bolt.

“All right, this one will do,” Ryan said, unwrapping his hands. “It’s full of juice.”

“Nuke?” Jak asked curiously.

“Don’t think so, more likely it’s just an accumulator, with a limited amount of stored power.”

“Which means only a brief test shot before we try to burn the lock,” J.B. muttered, attaching dif gauges of wire together to try to regulate the voltage. “This may take a while…Nope, we’re ready. Okay, here goes nothing. Fire in the hole!”

When the others were out of the line of fire, J.B. touched the ground wire to the main terminal of the droid battery. At first nothing seemed to happen, then the laser began to softly hum, rapidly building in volume and strength. A scintillating beam shot from the end across the truck garage to hit the far wall. The cinder blocks exploded from the thermal expansion, then the already weakened section tumbled down in a cloudy avalanche of powdered concrete, sand and salt.

“Excelsior!” Doc grinned, brandishing a raised fist. “A weapon fit for Ra himself!”

“How aim?” Jak asked, kneeling to squint along the device. Instead of a smooth barrel like a blaster, there were rings, metal fins and all sorts of odd stuff to block a clear view.

“Couldn’t aim, not really,” J.B. replied, laying aside the wires. “I had to shoot from the hip. How’s the arm, Millie?”

“Still pretty sore,” she said suspiciously. “Why? You…you don’t want me to fire this Frankenstein monster, do you?”

“Sure. Aside from me, you’re the best shot,” Ryan said in blunt honesty. “And you’ve had a bastard lot more experience with lasers.”

“Plus, madam, with such limited resources,” Doc continued, displaying his oddly perfect teeth, “the task may require, if you will excuse the pun, surgical precision.”

“True enough,” Mildred said, hefting the weapon to guess the weight. “There’s not much play on this power cable. Can you make it any longer?”

“No prob,” J.B. said, reaching down to rip a handful of high-voltage cable from the guts of a spider.

Going to the UCV, Mildred found the roof hatch, and with the assistance of Krysty and Doc built a low mound of debris to stand on. Then taking supplies out of her med kit, the physician cleaned a section of the Lexan plastic until it sparkled. Sadly, there was nothing she could do about the inside surface, other than hope that the laser would burn away any fingerprints or smudges. If not, the beam might reflect and go wild, possibly even coming right back into her face. It was a chilling possibility.

Just then, Ryan appeared on top of the vehicle. “Anytime you’re ready,” he said, waving a pry bar.

Nodding, Mildred went back to J.B. and got the laser. It now had several yards of wire attached, and she could move the cable freely.

Returning to the UCV, Mildred stood on the mound of debris and raised the laser, aiming carefully at the ceiling hatch. Briefly the woman wished that she had a laser pointer to check the angle. Then again, I might as well just wish for the door combination, Mildred thought.

“Everybody better get back in case of a ricochet,” Mildred warned, raising the laser. It felt light, not bulky enough to be a proper weapon. A gun had heft; you knew you were holding something deadly. This felt more like a toy, which was a good thing as her arm was kind of weak. But she could handle this small weight without undue effort.

“All clear!” J.B. shouted from far behind.

Centering herself, Mildred banished any distractions and felt herself slipping into the mind-set for surgery. There was no outside world, nothing else existed except her hands, the scalpel and the patient. Easy now…gently. Taking a deep breath, she held it for a few seconds, then exhaled and fired.

The rainbow beam shot through the window, and there was a brief flash as something was burned off the inside surface. Oddly, the Lexan plastic darkened slightly, as if trying to repel the beam, but it only lasted for a second, then the laser hit the roof hatch, missing the locking bar by an inch. Changing the angle, Mildred smoothly moved the beam back and forth along the slab of metal, breathing steadily as it turned bright red, then began to melt, white drops of molten steel dripping onto one of the cryo units. That almost made her falter, but the physician did not allow herself to react, and kept at the job. The Lexan plastic window was beginning to move, warping from the heat of the beam passing through, and she could feel the power cables growing uncomfortably warm against the back of her hand, but she was almost through the resilient handle when the beam abruptly died.

“Now, lover!” Krysty shouted.

On the roof, Ryan stepped to the hatch, shoved the pry bar into the thin crevice edging the smooth hatch and heaved with all of his might. For a long second, it seemed as if nothing was going to happen, then the muscles on his neck and arms started to distend, the bar started to bend slightly…and with a loud crack, the hatch flipped back to crash onto the roof.

Caught off balance, Ryan stumbled and nearly fell, but caught himself just in time.

“You did it, Millie!” J.B. laughed. “We’re in!”

“Hallelujah!” Doc cried, and Jak gave a whoop.

“Don’t go inside yet!” Mildred commanded, forcing her hands to release the laser. There was smoke trickling from the heat vents, and a silvery metal was dribbling from a melted hole in the side. The laser was aced beyond any conceivable repair, but it had done the job. “It’s been decades since this wag was open! Let the old air out first!”

“Way ahead of you,” Ryan said, dropping a burning piece of cloth through the open hatch. The fire went out before the fabric reached the floor, but the next one landed intact, the flames steady.

Satisfied, Ryan crawled through the hatch and landed inside the vehicle, his boots oddly silent on the cushioned flooring. Now he could see that everything seemed to be cushioned, floor, walls and ceiling. Even the jumpseats. Having once been inside a damaged APC as it rolled sideways down a hill, the man appreciated the need for the cushioning. Whoever built this thing knew about combat, that seemed for damn sure.

Lightning flashed past the milky windows of the garage and thunder softly rumbled as Ryan sidestepped past the softly humming cryogenic freezers to reach the rear of the wag. Undoing the restraining bolts, he pushed both of the armored doors open wide. Holding candles, the rest of the companions were already waiting there, and everybody clambered inside.

But as they did, something in the ceiling of the wag flickered, and the UCV became brightly illuminated. Thankfully blowing out the candles, the companions could now see that the interior of the wag was spotlessly clean, as if it had never been used before. There was an area in the back for cargo, with rings set in the walls for restraining straps. Just past the cryo units, both walls were lined with cushioned jumpseats, spacious gaps between them allowing for access to the numerous blasterports set in the wide windows. Each jumpseat was equipped with a safety harness, and a hinged bodybar that could be brought down from above.

Bypassing the cryo units, Krysty and Jak went straight to the front of the vehicle. As she slipped behind the wheel, the teen began digging under the gunnery seat.

Studying the dashboard, Krysty found a row of meters and indicators showing the ready status of the engines. She had to check again to make sure it was correct. Mother Gaia, there were two engines! A tandem set of power plants. This monster had to consume fuel like it fell free from the sky! Mebbe they could only use one engine at a time. Leaning closer, she found the appropriate controls, but touched nothing. First and foremost, they had to decide what to do with those cryogenic units. Her curiosity wanted to see them open, but she was getting an uneasy feeling. Had the droids been fighting to gain possession of the units, or to try to destroy them?

“Well?” Ryan demanded from the rear.

“She’s hot,” Krysty replied, swiveling around in the mobile chair. “Plenty of power, and juice.”

“Excellent!”

With a cry, Jak triumphantly unearthed a pair of military backpacks and opened them on the spot, pulling out a ball of socks, mosquito netting, a cloth cap, a paperback book and finally an MRE food pack.

“Got dozen!” the teenager cried happily.

But there was no reaction from the people clustered around the bulky devices filling the rear of the war wag. The devices were roughly shaped like coffins, but each stood over three feet tall. The units were connected to power outlets set in the base of the jumpseats, obviously still drawing nuke power after all these decades. On the side of each was painted the bar-’n’-star of the U.S. Air Force. Nobody considered it odd that the marines were hauling air force equipment.

“Fascinating,” Doc said, both hands on the head of his ebony walking stick. “I wonder who is inside. Another civilian like our dear physician?”

“Not with this sort of protection,” J.B. answered, tilting back his fedora. “More likely some big-time politician, mebbe even the president.”

“If it is, I shall have strong words with the man,” Doc muttered, twisting the handle on the stick to withdraw a few inches of the Spanish steel hidden inside, then slamming it shut again.

“Gonna kick his ass?” J.B. smiled tolerantly.

Doc pursed his lips. “Mayhap just a little.”

Silently running her hands over the complex controls, Mildred inspected the indicators showing the vital signs of the occupant. However, the readings were coded, the numbers meaningless to her.

“Wonder how we figure out what to do,” Mildred said.

“How about this.” Ryan rammed the stock of his longblaster directly onto the control panel.

There was a shower of sparks and the displays scrolled wildly. Then everything flashed brightly, and there came a hard series of sharp clicks, followed by a low hiss. The interior of the urban combat vehicle got cold as the gases vented, a white mist crawling across the soft floor. Then the lights began to strobe, rapidly increasing in tempo as a second control panel came online. The quivering needles of digital gauges swung into the red zone, then winked out of existence, closely followed by a fast series of hard clunks. The lid rose slightly, paused, then swung open all the way, revealing only a swirling cloud of icy fumes.

Rushing over, Krysty and Jak joined their friends as the inert gases slowly thinned away to expose an inhuman figure. Roughly the size of a man, the creature was a bizarre mixture of feline and canine characteristics, a doglike body topped with a cat head sporting two saberlike fangs over black lips. There was a hump on the shoulders, and the thing possessed a pair of long tails, each of them tipped with barbed hooks. The paws had claws on the front and spurs on the back.

“Hellhound…” Jak whispered in shock.

At the word, the supine creature trembled and slowly opened its yellow eyes.

Instantly the companions drew their blasters and fired nonstop into the beast. Still sluggish, the hellhound feebly tried to crawl out of the cryo unit, but it was hopeless, and soon the monstrous creature was torn to pieces by the hail of hot lead.

“Fragging mutie bastard!” J.B. snarled, wiping yellow blood from his cheek.

“Not mutie, biowep!” Jak retorted.

Yeah, he knew what those were. The predark government hadn’t been content to just unleash nukes upon the world, they had been developing various bioweps, living biological weapons genetically designed to terrify the enemy and keep fighting through the hard rads of skydark. Only the bioweps were tougher, and smarter, than the whitecoats figured. They got free, went feral, and began feasting on anybody they could find. In a world gone mad, they were living nightmares.

“What about other two?” Jak asked, thumbing fresh brass into the smoking Colt Python.

“Could be other hellhounds,” Mildred admitted grimly. “Or merely the handlers, the folks in charge of the things.”

“Or something even worse,” J.B. suggested.

“I say we let these sleeping dogs lie,” Doc added, waving the LeMat to disperse the thick fumes wafting from the muzzle.

“But if the handlers know how to control the hellhounds…” Krysty began hesitantly.

“Frag ’em. We can’t take the chance,” Ryan declared roughly, tucking the spent clip from the Steyr into a shirt pocket. “Doc and Jak, you two stand guard. If either of these control panels change color, start blasting.”

“Consider us Gog and Magog, sir!” Doc replied, blaster in one hand, bare sword in the other. “No mortal shall reach the golden shore!”

“Fucking A,” Jak added with feeling.

Ryan merely grunted at the literary allusion. “J.B., check the engines and see if this wag can still roll. Mildred, take care of your arm! We might need you soon. Krysty and I will check the Hummers for anything useful, juice in the tanks, oil, whatever. We meet back here in five. Now, haul ass!”

Heading off in different directions, everybody moved with a purpose.

“Need a hand, Millie?” J.B. asked, partially turned toward the front of the wag. “The angle is kind of hard to reach.”

“I’ve done worse, John,” she said, smiling gently, taking a seat far away from the open cryogenic freezer and its ghastly inhabitant. “But thanks for asking.” Everybody could patch a minor bullet wound these days, the skill was as common as the ability to change a car tire from her time.

“No problem,” J.B. said with a nod, and took the driver’s seat to start examining the controls.

The man was unfamiliar with this type of vehicle, but like all military wags, the controls were simple and straightforward, designed for soldiers to operate quickly in the thick of battle, or when wounded and confused. Setting the gearshift into neutral, he pumped the gas pedal a few times to prime the fuel lines, and pressed the ignition button. There immediately came a low whine, several muffled explosions, then a loud backfire, and the tandem engines revved wildly almost out of control. Quickly, he managed to turn one of them off, and the urban combat vehicle settled down to a low purr of controlled power.

“What’s the fuel situation?” Mildred asked through gritted teeth, her hand moving slowly as she sewed the slash in her arm shut. The curved needle had come from an upholstery store, and the line thread was lightweight fishing line. Soaked in alcohol and used with care, the combo always did a fine job. Most of the companions had some of her fine stitching in their skin.

“We have plenty of juice,” J.B. answered, tapping the fluttering gauge with a finger. “Nearly half full.”

“That much?”

“Yep.”

“Must be condensed fuel,” Mildred grunted, using a knife to cut the fishing line. It hurt, but pain was life. Only the dead felt nothing.

“That’d be my guess,” J.B. agreed, cutting the engine to save juice. Obviously the vehicle had nuke batteries, and those could generate power virtually forever. The tanks had to hold that weird condensed fuel they had found in the redoubts. The stuff worked equally well in gasoline or diesel engines, and it flatly refused to evaporate. Incredible. Some amazing major scientific advances had been made just before the world blew up.

Experimentally, the man tried the radio, but it only crackled with background static. Then J.B. switched on the radar, and it gave a steady monotone that puzzled him until he realized it was registering the ring of wrecked Hummers around them. Snorting a laugh, he turned it off. Well, at least it worked. There also was a joystick and video monitor set directly into the dashboard in front of the gunnery seat. Had to be for something mounted on the roof. The Fifty? Fragging excellent, J.B. thought.

A few minutes later, Ryan and Krysty arrived with their arms full and laid the items on the soft floor.

“What this?” Jak asked, kicking a large lump wrapped in canvas. The edges were ragged, and it took him only a moment to figure out that the swatch had been cut from the giant sheet used to cover the UCV.

“That is a .50-caliber machine gun,” Ryan said. “I saw the stanchion when I was on the roof, and knew that one of the Hummers had to be carrying the rapidfire. The soldiers probably took it down when driving through town to not frighten the civilians.”

“And brass?”

“Not for the Fifty,” Krysty answered, setting the toe of her cowboy boot into a recess set in the door and using it to climb into the wag. “But we have a dozen rounds of 5.56 mm for an M-16 rapidfire, and a couple of 9 mm rounds for the Uzi. Plus some rope, couple of maps and some magnesium road flares not too badly corroded.”

“No grens?”

“I think they used all they had,” Krysty said stoically, looking over the panorama of the chilled.

“Here, take this,” Ryan directed, proffering the end of a thick rope.

Jak started to ask what it was for, then smiled and dragged the heavy rope to the nearest cryogenic freezer and looped it around the box.

“Tough break for the folks inside,” Mildred added. “If they are people, and not muties, or, well, something.”

“But, madam, will they not perish without power?” Doc asked in pensive concern, then he relented. “No, forgive me, we have seen such things before. Disconnected from their power source, the units will automatically open.”

“Exactly,” Ryan said, climbing inside now that he was free from the weight of the rope. “Only we want to be far, far away when that happens.”

“Just in case they are norms,” Krysty added, “we’ve left them some army boots, a candle, a butane lighter and a knife. After that, it’s up to them. We can’t spare any food or water.”

“What mean?” Jak asked, taking the rope and looping it around the busted handle of the roof hatch, then lashing it to a cargo ring on the floor. “Left behind hellhound. Good eating!”

“If you say so,” Ryan muttered, wondering just how hungry a person would have to become to eat one of the things raw. And right out of the box, too.

“So, what’s the plan?” J.B. asked from the front. “We drop off the sleeping beauties and haul ass?”

Taking a jumpseat, Ryan buckled on the safety harness. “Now that we’re no longer at the mercy of the bastard winds, we can head due north, straight to the next redoubt.”

“Works for me!” J.B. said, hunching forward slightly and turning on the engine. The ceiling lights brightened slightly and the dashboard came to throbbing life.

“By Gadfrey, I dislike going back into the storm,” Doc said, pulling out a bodybar and locking it firmly into place. “But if another sec hunter droid shows up now, or worse, a spider with a working laser, we would be the proverbial sitting ducks.”

“Spam in can,” Jak corrected politely, taking the gunnery seat alongside the driver.

“Don’t worry about the vehicle,” Mildred said confidently, patting the chassis as if it were a well-trained horse. “I heard that these things are rad proof, bomb proof and were built to drive though nerve gas and napalm. I think she’ll do fine against sand.”

“Only one way to find out,” J.B. said, shifting into gear. “You folks ready back there?” There came an answering chorus of assent. “Okay, here we go!”

Letting the engine idle for a few moments to warm the seals, J.B. slowly eased the UCV forward. Behind them, the rope wrapped around the top cryo unit grew taut, stretching straight to a hoist on the front of a wrecked Hummer. Moving at a crawl, J.B. straightened the vehicle slightly as the unit began to be dragged out of the war wag, pushing the other two units ahead of it. As they got close, Ryan unplugged one freezer, Krysty did the other, and the units were pulled out of the wag to crash onto the floor of the garage. Instantly, the control panels started strobing brightly, and there came the telltale sound of hissing.

Reaching out, Ryan and Krysty grabbed the handles on the aft doors and slammed them shut.

Watching in the rearview mirror, J.B. needed no further prompting to stomp on the gas. Shoving aside a wrecked Hummer, the man drove directly to the nearest louvered door. Switching on the second engine, J.B. lowered the fork until it was scraping along the floor, throwing off bright sparks. It slid neatly under the door, and J.B. flipped another switch. Nothing happened for a moment, then the fork began to rise to the sound of crunching metal. In squealing protest, the garage doors were pushed upward, the louvered steel bending and folding like an accordion, until ripping free from the guides in the cinder-block wall with a crash. Instantly, the storm flooded the truck garage and the windshield darkened to a blue color.

“How do?” Jak asked, sitting upright.

“Not me,” J.B. replied, throwing switches. “The damn wag did that by itself!”

“The windshield is polarized,” Mildred explained, unable to take her eyes off the three cryogenic freezers. “It’s a chem reaction, nothing mechanical involved.” One of the units had fallen sideways, the aced hellhound spilling onto the floor. But the other two freezers were still right-side up, the control panels blinking wildly, the vents issuing white clouds.

As the vehicle trundled into the sandstorm, she lost sight of the units and felt something tug inside her chest as if they were emotionally attached to each other. Men or monsters, the occupants were from her time period, and she felt a strange connection to them that she could not really explain. Just a touch of homesickness, that’s all, she rationalized, turning away. Nothing more.

In sympathy, Doc patted her knee. “I also miss my home,” he whispered, the words meant only for her.

Mildred took his hand and gave it a squeeze in understanding and thanks.

Outside the wag, the companions could see the storm raging, but there was only a faint whisper of the sand hitting the roof hatch. The rope was taut, but apparently the seal was not hard anymore. But no grit or salt was coming inside, and that was good enough for now. Once they reached a redoubt, Ryan and J.B. could weld the lock into place, sealing the hatch airtight once more.

J.B. turned on the wipers, then tried the headlights, but if they worked, the beams were not strong enough to penetrate the clouds of dirty sand. “Dark night!” the man cursed. “This sure as hell is one nuke storm of a—”

“Dark night?” Jak supplied.

The two men exchanged glances and broke into laughter as the trundling vehicle moved past a dune and was hit by the full force of the maelstrom. The wag began to slide sideways from the sheer force of the wind, but the eight huge tires dug in hard, throwing tall arches of sand into the air. With a lurch, the vehicle gained a purchase and began lumbering along once more.

“Keep the radar working,” Ryan suggested, pulling out the SIG-Sauer to start the cleaning process again. “If a droid comes this way, that’ll give us enough of a warning to get away.”

“No prob,” Jak answered, and flicked a switch. Born and raised in the backwoods of the bayou, the teen hadn’t known much about tech until traveling with the companions. Now he was an old hand at such things. The radar swept around on the luminescent screen, showing nothing dense enough to register.

“National Guard bases are always near a city, so there should be something nearby,” Krysty said, looking over the ruins. Aside from the garage, the rest of the complex was only broken walls, open to the acid rain and wind. “We came from the south, and there is only desert to the west, so do we go north or east?”

“Nor’east,” Ryan decided. It was just like using a blaster that you were unfamiliar with. Never try for any sharpshooting the first time, just go for the heart. That way, if you’re too low and you hit the belly, or too high and hit the face, either way, the other guy is eating dirt.

“Fair enough,” J.B. said, shifting gear and giving the engines more juice. They obediently revved with power.

“Hummers, armed troops, sec hunter droids,” Krysty said, her hair coiling around her face. “I wonder if those were safeguarding the occupants of the three cases or escorting them somewhere special to be safely disposed.”

“Like the National Guard base?” Ryan asked, suddenly alert.

“Could be.”

Nobody had an answer to that, so the companions began to tend to the mundane aspects of travel, first cleaning their weapons, then preparing a meal of MRE packs. Impervious to the storm, the UCV rolled through the tempest, rising and falling like a ship at sea, the brutal winds hammering against the armored wag far into the long dark night.

AS THE UCV CRESTED THE HORIZON, it passed the mandatory safety zone. The two cryogenic units in the National Guard base activated, the lids smoothly rising as thick clouds of swirling mist rose into view. The slumbering occupants took their first breath as they sluggishly began to awaken.

Chapter Five

Once past the wreckage in the snowy mountain pass, the convoy of war wags moved swiftly through an array of jagged tors, the irregular spears of cooled lava brutal reminders of a nuke-volcano.

As the traders left the region and headed south, crystal shards rose from the ground like a forest of mirrors, so War Wag One took the lead, the armored prow creating a trail for the smaller war wags by simply smashing through the delicate formations to the never-ending sound of shattering glass.

In the control room of War Wag One, the crew stayed alert for any further dangers. They were approaching difficult territory. No convoy had gotten past the Hermit on the Hill, only individuals who crept past in the thick of the night. And even then, some of them didn’t escape from the high-explosive death of the crazy wrinklie.

Inside the cramped control room, Jake was at the wheel dodging obstructions with consummate skill, Quinn watched the radar and Jimmy listened intensely to the Ear, a patched set of headphones attached to a dish microphone mounted on the roof. When the conditions were right, the Ear could listen in on conversations more than a thousand yards away, although it usually was only good for a couple of hundred yards, and even less if there was a lot of ambient noise, like a waterfall.

Over by the periscope, Jessica watched the horizon for anything suspicious while Roberto sat in the command chair, checking over some predark maps and keeping weight off his bad leg. The cold was making it ache more than he wanted to admit, but keeping off his feet helped.

Softly, the radio crackled with static as the tires rumbled over the loose shale covering the ground like oily dinner plates. Down the hallway leading to the engine room, gunners were alert at the .50-caliber machine guns, hands on triggers. The evening guards were asleep in their bunks, somebody was singing in the shower, and Matilda was in the galley frying onions and something spicy for the evening meal, the delicious aroma mixing with the tang of ozone from the humming comps and the smell of diesel exhaust from the engines.

“Mmm, smells like rattlesnake surprise,” a crewman said, sniffing happily. Nobody made a comment. “Surprise, it’s rattlesnake again!” he said, waiting for a laugh. When none came, the crewman sighed and went back to sharpening the bayonet on the end of his AK-47 rapidfire. Some folks simply had no damn sense of humor, he thought. It was a real ass-kicking joke, so he only told it ten, mebbe twelve times a week, to keep it fresh.

Off in the corner of the control room, a tall man was sitting on the floor with his legs crossed, humming a wordless tune. His skin was dark black, but his long hair and beard were silver, the same as his strange eyes. In spite of the cold mountain air coming in through the vents, he was dressed in only light clothing, his shirt open to expose a muscular chest covered with the scars of a hundred knife fights, along with an irregular pattern of circles that boasted of surviving a stickie attack, an event so rare it bordered on the miraculous.

Glancing at the doomie, Roberto remembered seeing Yates once stop a bar fight by merely revealing his chest and letting everybody see the incredible scars. The drunken rage of the ville sec men turned to awe, and Yates spent the rest of the night telling his tales of survival over and over again, as the crowd poured endless glasses of shine until dawn arrived. The damn scar was almost a protective charm, as if escaping from the last train west, Yates could no longer be a passenger. Pure shit, but still, Roberto felt better when Yates was around to guard his flank. Not his six, of course. He only trusted Jessica that much.

Just then, the radar beeped, as if detecting another unit somewhere, then it went silent, so the crew ignored it and continued in their assorted tasks. It had to have just been some static from the background hash, nothing more.

Over the long miles, the shale-covered ground began to slope more and more steeply, and the speed of the convoy sharply accelerated until the vehicles were almost careering down the steep slope.

“Easy now,” Roberto warned, neatly folding the useless map. According to it, they should be in the middle of a fragging lake. “Take your time, we’re in no hurry…”

“Tell that to the fragging tires!” Jake shot back, working the brakes and shifting gears steadily. “There’s so much loose rock covering the ground we’re losing traction and starting to slide.”

“I sense danger…” Yates intoned, his eyes closed, his head turned toward the windshield as if he could still see.

“Tell me something I don’t know, ya fleeb!” Jake shot back petulantly.

“The wall approaches!” the doomie cried, raising both arms.

Suddenly the radar started to beep, the tones coming faster every second.

“Son of a bitch, there’s something dead ahead!” Jake shouted over the noise of the device. He tried the brakes and the war wag started to slip sideways. Knowing that would only make them flip over, the driver eased off the pedal and fed the engines more juice, accelerating their speed, but straightening the vehicle. “If we crash into something, at least it’ll be head-on!”

“Should I toss out the anchor, chief?” Jessica asked, going to a corner and resting a hand on a large lever.

“We’re going too fast,” Roberto growled, studying the landscape rushing past the wag. “It’ll only snap off, or worse, rip us in two!”

Breathing hard, the woman removed her hand from the lever. “Then what are your orders, sir?” she demanded.

Roberto caught the honorific and understood that was her way of saying she had no idea what to do next. But that was okay, because he did. Reaching over, he tapped a button on the intercom. “Eric, are you ready?”

“As ever, Chief,” came the smooth reply. “Just say the word.”

The radar pinged away, the noise almost a continuous tone by now. Speeding over a low swell in the ground, there was suddenly a rocky cliff directly ahead of the charging wag. A dark rill of cooled lava, studded and jagged. A wall of death.

“Wait for it…” Roberto commanded, listening to the radar and watching the rill rapidly approach. It if was thicker than a yard, their journey ended here and now. “Steady…no rush, plenty of time…and fire!”

There came the thud of the missile pod opening, then the crunching-paper sound of a rocket building power, immediately followed by the whoosh of a launch. Something flashed ahead of the wag, trailing smoke and fire. Then a tremendous explosion rocked the world and the radar stopped beeping.

Everybody tried not to hold their breath as the war wag plowed into a cloud of dark smoke, and they could dimly see the shattered remains of the thin rock wall on either side for less than a second, before they were through!

Jouncing over some uneven ground, the wag seemed to go airborne for a few seconds before crashing back down. The entire vehicle shuddered, loose items flying free, then there was the sound of shattering glass, a muffled cry of pain.

The war wag leveled out smooth and true once more, and there came the low hum of tires rolling along on a paved road!

“A road!” Jessica exhaled, one arm hugging her chest, the other wrapped tight around the periscope. “We’re on a predark road!”

“Just like Yates predicted!” Jimmy shouted in delight, beaming a smile at him.

Wordlessly, the big doomie nodded as if all was right in the world.

“That’s gotta mean we’re near the Nowhere Bridge,” Roberto said confidently, reaching out a shaking hand to retrieve a ceramic cup from a recess in the wall. The contents had slopped about some, but he didn’t give a damn. They had made it through and were still sucking air.

“Request permission to piss in my pants, sir,” Quinn said with a rueful grin. “Aw, too late, again.”

The tension broke in the room, and everybody laughed, bodies relaxing now that the worst of the trip down Hellfire Mountain was behind them.

“Get that man a mop!” Roberto commanded with a grin, taking a sip from the mug. Blind Norad, it was awful, but he swallowed the stuff anyway. He wished to hell there was coffee sub, but the convoy had run out of that months ago, and there’d be no more until they reached the stockpile near Tumbledown.

This muck was just some of the homemade brew that Matilda concocted back in the kitchen out of burned bread-crumbs, chicory and who knew what else. It smelled like coffee, and tasted sort of similar. Okay, it tasted nothing like the real stuff. However, it was hot and eased the chill on his leg, which was all that really mattered. Locked inside the safe under his bunk was a sealed can of the real stuff, predark Colombian dark roast, but that was being saved for a special occasion. Like finding Cascade.

“You sure we’ll find it there?” Jessica demanded, returning to her chair near the blaster rack. She slung a leg over the arms and sat sideways. “This is a hell of a gamble we’re taking.”

“It’d be a much bigger gamble to try for Cascade without any fragging proof,” Roberto replied, sipping the tepid brew.

“The proof exists.” Yates spoke in a hollow voice, making a vague gesture. “The box is red, and near a stone of fire.”

“Does that mean lava, or coal?” Jessica demanded, but the doomie would not, or could not, say any more.

Easing the velocity of the war wag to a more manageable level, War Wag One took the lead, and the other convoy vehicles assumed a standard triangular formation as it rolled along the ancient roadway. The median was full of tall weeds, and they passed a car on the side of the berm, the wreck alive with bees. Several miles down the road, the wags had to go around a toll station choked solid with cars, trucks, buses and army tanks smashed together, forming an impassable barrier of rust, weeds and old bones.

The countryside was gradually leveling out, the steep foothills becoming rolling hillocks. Made of concrete instead of asphalt, the highway was in much better shape than expected.

However, a murky shadow began to creep across the world as the red sun slowly moved behind Firestorm Mountain. Suddenly darkness covered the land, yet the cloudy sky was still bright with the orange and purple of toxic chems. It was as if the convoy had gone underwater. Jessica turned on the halogen headlights, and the beams cut bright swatches through the gloom.

“Hold!” Yates said, raising a hand. “It is near!”

Pneumatic brakes hissing, gears grinding, Jake slowed the war wag, and soon it crawled to a gentle stop. The artificial night enveloped the convoy, the only sounds coming from the big diesel engines. With the warmth of the day gone, a phosphorescent mist rose from the ground, moving across the cracked expanse of highway, seeming almost alive.

“Report,” Roberto demanded.

Going to a rad counter, Jessica checked the background levels. “Clear,” she announced. “It’s just mist.”

“Glad to hear it,” Roberto muttered. “Quinn, work the arc.”

Flipping several switches on the control board, the bald man eased the power up on the arc lamp until a searing beam of light stretched ahead of the wag for hundreds of yards. They had discovered the hard way that the electricity had to be increased gradually on the arc lamp, or else the carbon elements blew, and it took days to whittle out new ones. Even then, the lamp had a short life, but there was nothing brighter. The electric arc made the vaunted halogens seem weak as tallow candles.

Using a joystick, Quinn moved the brilliant beam across the wags in a circle, then started exploring farther and farther away, until a pair of massive concrete pylons came into view. Angling upward, the lamp revealed what they had come for—the Bridge to Nowhere.

“Jesus, Buddha and Zeus,” Jimmy whispered, making an ancient protective gesture.

Whatever the bridge had been connected to in predark was long vanished. Now, the colossal structure stood in the middle of a grassy field, the four concrete-and-steel towers supporting a half mile of roadway some fifty feet off the misty ground. Whatever was on top could not be seen, but if the doomseer was correct, that was where the key to the future was hidden, a map to the greatest treasure of the predark world.

Hunching forward, Roberto clenched and unclenched his fists. “Black dust, we can’t see a damn thing from this angle,” the trader growled. “We’re gonna have to do a recce on foot.”

“My boys are ready,” Jimmy said, standing and taking an AK-47 assault rifle from a wall rack. The barrel was actually from an AK-101, the magazine from a Chinese QBZ longblaster, and the stock was hand carved, but the mismatched rapidfire worked fine.

“Everybody take extra brass,” Jessica directed, opening a small box and extracting a flare pistol. The woman passed it to the crewman, along with a couple of waxy cartridges.

“If you see red…” Jimmy began, tucking the items into his pocket.

Interrupting the man, the radio moaned with modulation, and then briefly cleared.

“Tiger Lily to Scorpion,” the ceiling speaker crackled. “Tiger Lily to Scorpion.”

Taking down the mike, Roberto thumbed the transmit switch. “Scorpion, here, Tiger Lily,” he replied. “Spot something moving?” The codes were not necessary in this desolate area as there were probably no other working radios for a hundred miles, but practice made perfect. In a firefight, a single wrong word could ace everybody.

“Nothing important, just wanted to remind you hotdogs that according to the duty roster, this recce is mine,” Diana stated. “And my boys are itching to find out if what the doomie says is true.”

Yeah, mine, too. Privately, Roberto wanted to countermand the woman, but that would only make her lose face in front of the crew. No choice, then. “Confirm, Tiger, the job is yours,” Roberto said, a narrowing of his eyes the only sign of what he was feeling.

Rubbing his chin, Jimmy started to object, and Jessica shut him down with a stern look. Rules were rules, and Roberto was the leader here, end of discussion.

“Move slow, and stay low,” the trader said into the mike. “Anything twisted, have your people run like their pants are on fire. And that’s an order. You savvy?”

“No prob, Chief,” the commander of War Wag Three replied with a laugh. “I even took away their combat boots, and issued ’em sneakers.” There was a brief pause before the woman added, “Any idea what they’ll really find up there?”

Salvation.

“You tell me, Tiger Lily,” Roberto said. “Look for the box, but come back alive.”

“Roger that, Scorpion. Tiger Lily out.”

Releasing the button, Roberto kept the mike in his grip, ready to relay instructions. Then he reluctantly returned it to the wall hook. He either trusted his people or he did not. There was no third option.

“All right, you lucky bastards, Diana is taking care of this one,” Jessica said loudly, looking around the control room. “So you apes stand down.”

Unhappy grumbling filled the room, and several members of the crew shifted their shoulders to glance at the hallway door as if they were going to go outside anyway. Then they relented, flicked the safeties back on and started dropping clips as a prelude to returning the rapidfires to the wall racks.

“And what the frag are you assholes doing?” Jimmy replied, placing his fists on his hips. “Keep that iron in your mitts in case Three needs cover fire!”

The frowns became grins, and the crew rushed to the blasterports. If there was any trouble, Two and Three would do what they could, but any serious chilling would be handled by War Wag One and its heavy weaponry.

Roberto touched the intercom. “Eric, get the L-Gun hot in case Tex has to burn some crystal.”

“Will do, Chief,” Suzette replied. “The comps are running five by five, no glitches or hitches. We’re good to go.”

“Nice to know. Where the frag is your husband?”

“Checking the flamethrower on Two. Just in case.”

The trader had to smile at that. There was a predark word he had heard once in Two-Son ville, para-something…What was it again? Oh yeah, para-annoyed. It meant you suspected everything of doing anything. That was Eric. The only thing that kept the twitchy little tech sane was Suzette. “Fair enough. Just let me know when he’s back.”

“Will do!”

“Scorpion out,” Roberto said, and clicked off the device.

“And there they go,” Jake announced, his hands folded over the steering wheel, both boots flat on the floor mat. The disappointment was clear in his voice.

A group of people climbed out of War Wag Three and walked into the chilly mist. Their shapes were lumpy with backpacks and shoulder bags, their hands cradling longblasters and torches.

Roberto nodded at that. Smart move. Even the arc lamp couldn’t shine a beam around corners.

It took them only a few minutes to reach the bridge. Trudging to the nearest end, they stabbed the torches into the soft ground, then aimed crossbows upward and fired. The hooked quarrels arched high and sailed over the edge of the elevated roadway, only to slide off and come tumbling back. It took several tries before one of the hooks snagged something, but it was only a tire rim. A dozen tries later, the members of the crew hooked something strong enough to support their weight.

Divesting themselves of everything but rapidfires, they slowly climbed hand over hand to reach the top, and disappeared from sight.

“Okay, people, what do you see?” Roberto said into his mike. There was only static for an answer, and he increased the power to maximum.

“…epeat, can you hear us?”

“Now, we can. Proceed.”

“Okay, it’s a right mare’s nest up here, Chief,” a man replied, the radio crackling with static. The range was less than a hundred feet, and the megatons of nuke trash in the air still garbled the communications slightly. Anything over a mile and even the most powerful radio was useless these days.

“We’ve got cars and trucks piled three, four layers high,” the crewman continued. “And everything is covered with bird shit, and ivy, loose leaves and…wait a sec…”

A minute passed, then another.

“Nuking hell, the doomie was right!” the voice on the radio called. “We found a truck crashed into an ambulance, making a sort of natural shelter. Somebody used it as a campsite, there’s the remains of a fire, empty tin cans and the whole shebang.”

“What about the box?” Roberto asked, unable to keep the eagerness out of his voice.

“It was right near a rusted-out old Caddy, and guess what? The name on the tires was Firestone.”

“Son of a bitch,” Quinn muttered, casting a furtive look at the doomie. But if Yates heard, or cared, there was no indication.

“What’s inside?” Jessica demanded into her own mike.

“Tell you soon,” the crewman replied. There was a brief crackle of static and the words were lost.

“Say again, what did you find?” Roberto demanded.

“Well, hang me for a mutie, Chief,” the man replied excitedly. “I’m holding the damn thing in my hand! It’s true. The legends are all true!”

“Well, get your butts back down here,” Roberto said, grinning widely. “I wanna see for myself!”

“Break out the good shine, we’re on the way…What the frag?”

There was no noise from the radio, but tiny flashes of light could be seen coming from on top of the bridge. Blaster fire!

“What the frag is going on up there?” Diana demanded loudly over the radio. “Jefferson, report, goddamn it! Have you been jacked?” But there was only a thick silence.

Then there came the dull thud of a gren, and a body tumbled over the edge to hit the misty ground with a hard thump.

“Holy shit, that was Jefferson!” Quinn cried out, standing at his station.

“All right, let’s go!” Jessica directed, grabbing an AK-47 and stumbling for the hallway.

“You stay!” Roberto boomed, gesturing with the hand holding the mike. “Jimmy, go get our people!”

Paused alongside the exit door, the woman radiated a controlled fury as the other crew members grimly streamed outside. Silently, the trader and his second in command held a private conversation, and she grudgingly limped back to her chair, an arm cradling her bandaged ribs. Just because he was right, didn’t mean she had to like sitting on her ass.

As the crews from War Wags One, Two and Three rushed toward the ropes dangling off the bridge, they could see more flashes on top and heard the telltale boom of another gren. The recce squad appeared, scrambling along the outside edge of the bridge, firing their rapidfires at something unseen above and behind them. The crewmen on the ground raised their longblasters, but there was nothing in sight. What the frags were the others shooting at, thin air?

Reaching the rope, the recce squad grabbed it one after the other and insanely dived off the structure, swinging wildly as they slid down the nylon length with smoke rising from their gloved fists.

As they got close to the ground, the first crewman released the rope and jumped away, the others arriving only moments later. Most landed hard, but came up running. However, one crewman went sprawling and there was an audible crack of breaking bone. Grimacing in pain, he rolled onto his stomach and started crawling for the wags. Pausing in their flight, two of his companions went back, grabbed the wounded man under the arms and hauled him along, their faces pale with fright.

“Vine puppets!” a running crewman yelled, his shirt covered with blood. “The whole fragging bridge is infested with vine puppets!”

The words sent cold knives into the guts of everybody present, and they looked up just in time to see a row of naked people appear along the edge of the bridge. Incredibly, the men and women simply stepped off the edge. But they did not fall. Instead, they gracefully eased downward as if gliding on invisible wings.

However, as they got closer, the crewmen on the ground could see the leafy vines embedded throughout their nude forms, the mouths slack and drooling, the wide eyes horribly alive and shrieking in wordless torment.

Snarling curses, the crew cut loose with concentrated blasterfire from the Kalashnikovs, the 7.62 mm rounds tearing the naked people apart. But instead of red blood, a thin green sap oozed from the gaping wounds, along with hair-thin tendrils resembling pale roots.

Then the puppets landed, and the tattered corpses began walking toward the norms, the flexing ivy still connected to the animated corpses.

As the crew hastily dropped back, the M-60 machine guns of Two and Three cut loose, the big .308 rounds chewing the bodies into pieces. Shaking off the lumps of flesh, the green vines snaked out after the fleeing norms, catching the crippled crewman in the back. Instantly he went stiff, his eyes rolling in unimaginable agony.

Releasing his arms, the other crewmen fired point-blank, blowing out the back of his head, the pink brain already full of wiggling tendrils.

Not bothering to open the backpacks on the misty ground, the panting crewmen peppered the canvas bags with blasterfire until the Molotov cocktails inside ignited. Engulfed in flames, the puppets kept walking onward until the ivy blackened and jerked out of the bodies to lash around madly. Throwing off charred leaves, the greenery began to shrivel, then the vines snapped in two, the undamaged sections retreating to the bridge, the rest of the hellish plant consigned to deadly flames.

Only now more vines came snaking down from the bridge from every side, some with puppets attached and some without, obviously on the hunt for new slaves.

“Fucking mutie!” Jefferson screamed, blowing thunder at the moving greenery.

Throwing down more Molotovs, the crew tried to form a wall between them and the vines, and the plants disappeared. But then vines erupted from the ground well past the conflagration and surged forward.

Any semblance of organized resistance disappeared at that, and everybody took off, firing and running in a near panic.

Pausing to pull the arming ring from a gren, a crew member dropped her explosive charge as a vine whipped around her throat and entered her cursing mouth. Gagging, she tried to chew it out, then went oddly stiff and turned to face the other norm fumbling to work the gren in his clumsy hands.

Ruthlessly, the others cut her down, then ran for their lives.

Charging out of War Wag One, Abduhl strode into view, the pressurized canisters of a portable flamethrower strapped to his back.

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