Chapter Twenty-Three

Doc Tanner sat chained by the ankle to one of the war wag’s driver’s compartment jump seats. Out the undogged front windows, the mountain range ahead loomed larger and larger. The wag’s driver, who was also a captive, a man with frizzy, thinning red hair and a matching beard, was being held at blasterpoint by the bit of slime that called itself Vernel. Doc looked at the snake brand on the back of his shaved head, angry red burn marks that had a kind of iridescent, unhealthy sheen to them, and decided they defamed the noble race of cobra, not because of the crudeness of the rendering, but because of the creature they adorned. Baron Lundquist Zeal sat in the copilot’s chair, his outlandish high heels propped up on the dashboard, which caused the lapels of his fur robe to slide wide apart, exposing a pair of pale, skinny legs, and other, even less attractive appendages.

On the road directly ahead of them, appearing and disappearing in the huge cloud of yellow dust it raised, was the flagship of the captured fleet. By far, it was the biggest armored vehicle Doc had ever seen. Its outward appearance reminded him of the machines in a short story he’d once read by H. G. Wells about futuristic land warfare, but for the life of him he couldn’t recall the title. A grim tale, he remembered, predictive of terrible and inhuman things to come. In hindsight, perhaps prophetic. But no written description could ever capture the raw power of the vehicle that broke trail for the war caravan. If you stood next to its engines at idle, you couldn’t feel your own heartbeat. Doc had no idea what their horsepower rating was; he knew only that at their lowest output, they made the ground shake underfoot.

The wag he rode in was much smaller, but similar in overall design. Doc had never been inside a military vehicle like this. Everything was strictly functional, without ornamentation. The walls and ceiling were painted olive drab. The upholstery was a lighter shade of the same color, except where it had been patched with strips of silver duct tape. Duct tape also held together the bundles of wiring that followed the I beams up the walls and over the compartment’s roof. Though it wasn’t a machine built for the comfort of those who rode in it, they had left their mark on it. It smelled of body odor, cigar butts and fried onions.

Doc’s conveyance, like the others in the convoy, was capable of a good head of speed. They had covered twenty miles in about three-quarters of an hour, this over a road that wasn’t a road in many places. It often looked more like a streambed, with small rocks, boulders and clumps of dead brush on its shoulders. The big wag in the lead crushed all such obstacles, cutting paths through islands of stunted trees, grinding steep banks to powder.

As Doc sat there, hands folded in his lap, he felt the return of a sense of terrible foreboding. He felt like a man traveling to his own execution. After a night of fitful sleep, he had awakened mentally exhausted and had discovered his bravado of the previous evening had evaporated. In the light of day, Doc was no longer able to rail at God for not protecting him from random evil. And he was no longer looking forward, with his fine teeth bared in defiance, to the empty peace of oblivion. He feared it. As grim and agonized as his life had been of late, it was, after all, better than nothing. And even now there were moments when he could recall the tenderness of Emily’s caress, the children’s laughter at some ridiculous joke. Moments when, even in the horror of this accursed landscape in which he was trapped, he could see something beautiful and be touched in the heart by it.

And there was always the hope, however slim, that if he could travel forward in time, he could also travel backward. If he could just find a way to make it happen

“A zealie for your thoughts,” the baron said to him.

Doc stiffened.

“You worried about the inbreds, Doc?” Vernel asked. “Afraid they’ll have your wigwag for lunch?”

Doc just blinked, feigning one of his spells.

“No, he’s not worried,” Zeal said. “Inbreds think he’s some kind of big shot, don’t they, Doc? Come on, give us the story of your breathless escape one more time. I want to hear it again.”

Doc shut his eyes and recited automatically. “I stepped out of the stockpile,” he said. “In the place where the fog with teeth and claws had always appeared to the savages. There were a few of them bent over on the road, employed in straightening a line of white rocks. Quartzite, I believe. They saw me at once, and I created quite a stir among their ranks. It seems that I was the only person to ever survive walking that part of the road. They did not know I had simply turned off Hell’s watchdog. Not that they could have understood such a thing, anyway. They dropped to their knees as I walked past, lowered their heads in respect and hid their eyes from my sight.”

“I do not remember the rest of it too clearly. I believe I had to have hit my head inside the stockpile at some point. I know as I walked I was bleeding from a gash on my right temple. I heard the savages jabbering back and forth at one another in a sort of pidgin English. Then they shouted for all the others to come up the road and see me. They said I had stepped from the lair of the Spirit in the Mist. Or lair of the Mist Spirit, something of the sort. They said that I was its favored one, as foretold by ancient legend. That I must not be harmed or hindered because I was on its mission. They parted ranks to let me pass down the road. They never touched a hair on my head. I do believe the brutes worship the fog as a god of some kind.”

“Triple stupes,” Vernel snorted in contempt, then he laughed. “We’re gonna take their god away from them.”

“Or better yet,” Zeal said, “feed them to it.”

Doc slumped back, momentarily exhausted, against the compartment wall.

“You don’t have a problem with that, do you, Doc?” the baron inquired.

“Either you will kill them, or they will kill you. How the events transpire is of little interest to me, personally. I will be alive or I will be dead, and either way, I will still be here where I do not belong.”

“You’re breaking my balls,” Vernel said.

“Have you ever seen the watchdog, this fog thing, take someone away?” Zeal asked.

“Honestly I can’t recall,” Doc told him. “I can only remember what my keepers said when they warned me about the fog and told me about the twin orbs. They said nothing could withstand it. They said no armor could keep it out, if it wanted in. And that nothing could stop it once it was in motion. Like a storm, it has to run its course.”

“So the stones won’t stop it? I thought the stones would stop it,” Zeal said with concern.

“I can keep it from being released,” Doc said. “I can keep it caged with them, and I can drive it back into its cage when it first appears. But I cannot make the beast retreat once it has smelled blood. It is in its nature to behave in a certain fashion, like a living creature. The whitecoats programmed it that way, you know.”

“Show me the stones, again,” Zeal demanded.

Doc opened his fist.

“Amazing,” the baron said. He looked as if he was almost ready to reach out and touch them, but then he thought better of it and drew back. “Don’t drop them. Your life depends on it.”

That wasn’t news to Doc.

Ahead, the huge wag had reached the foot of the entrance to the mountain pass. As it started to climb the grade, it slowed. Doc could see the vent hatches being closed and dogged.

Getting ready for war.

THE INSIDE of the MCP resounded with the clang of hatches slamming shut. The interior lights, combat red, came on automatically. When Trader looked aft, down the side corridor, he saw one of Shabazz’s men climb up into the machine-gun blister on that side. Along the middle of the connecting hallway, three others were getting in position at the armored blasterports. They each had M-16s that they had looted from War Wag One’s onboard armory. Also on the deck, set in the racks made expressly for that purpose, were open boxes of preloaded 30-round magazines. The pirate crew braced themselves as Shabazz lumbered up the grade, taking the first hard bend in the road.

No sooner had he rounded the bend than from somewhere outside, from somewhere above, came a rattle of heavy machine gun fire, and a flurry of unleashed slugs pelted the MCP’s driver compartment roof. The bullets either shattered against the armor plate or veered off, the ricochets whining into the distance.

“They’re gonna have to do better than that,” Shabazz said, turning the wag’s yoke back the other way to take the next turn in the road.

It was just a kiss hello, Trader thought. A peck on the cheek to let them know they were there.

Through the side viewports, he could see that the road was quickly narrowing, until it became for the MCP what amounted to one lane. There was a ribbon of pavement on either side of its wheel skirts, and the pavement ended in sheer rock walls.

Again, as Shabazz rounded the bend, they came under autofire. This time it was heavier, and it lasted a good thirty seconds. This time it was directed not only at the roof, but straight into the front end of the wag.

“Got a comm unit on this thing?” Shabazz asked him. “I need to go wag to wag. We got inbreds on the road ahead. They’re the ones blasting at us.”

Trader pointed it out. The microphone was hanging on a clip above the driver’s seat.

The bearded trader jerked it down and thumbed the transmit switch. “This is Shabazz in the lead wag,” he said. “Fire at will, you gunners. Don’t wait for a signal from me. Fire at will. You see any of the scumwads skulking around out there, you chill them dead.”

Almost at once, blasterfire rang out. It came from overhead, in the new machine-gun blister. The string of shots ran to twenty-five at least, and in less than three seconds.

“Burst length is way long,” J.B. grumbled at Trader’s side. “That triple stupe’s going to burn out the RPK’s barrel mighty quick.”

“Kind of gets your hackles up, doesn’t it, J.B.?”

The Armorer nodded.

“Yeah, mine, too,” Trader admitted.

Shabazz reached out with a grimy paw and pressed the red button on the dash. The twin 20 mm cannons responded by roaring instantly. Up the road, some seventy-five yards ahead, HE warheads exploded in a tight cluster. Bits of hot shrapnel sang off War Wag One’s bow.

“Man, I nailed three of the bastards!” Shabazz said as he pulled his face back from the ob slit. “You should’ve seen them fly, Trader. In chunks! Hah!”

The annoying rain of autofire continued, from both above and in front. Shabazz chose to ignore it, taking another S-turn in low gear. The road was creeping up the mountain, and so were they. So far, the guardians of the pass hadn’t done much of a job. Unless, of course, Trader thought, they hadn’t intended on defending the lower stretch of road. Unless they were just playing cat and mouse. Unless they had something real special planned for up ahead.

“Come here, Trader,” Shabazz said, “I want to show you something funny.”

When Trader leaned down next to the driver’s seat, Shabazz pointed out the ob slit. “See those cuts across the road way up the hill? Those are the ditches that stopped our wags before. Not gonna stop this monster, though. We’re gonna hop their ditches like they were nothing.” With that, Shabazz goosed the throttle.

Trader had to admit that the antitank traps looked too shallow to be much of a threat to any of the war wags.

Then there was a terrific groaning, cracking sound right under their feet. Everything suddenly shifted nose forward. Trader was slammed against the back of the driver’s seat; he had to cling to it to keep from being flipped over into Shabazz’s lap.

The front end of the MCP was dropping, and kept dropping.

“Oh, shit!” Shabazz cried, trying frantically to find reverse gear, and only making grinding noises as he repeatedly missed his target.

“Hang on,” Trader told Sam and J.B. as the earth continued to open up and the huge vehicle slid nose down into a truly monumental chasm.

The MCP came to a crunching halt that sent Trader to his knees. All the red lights dimmed for a second, then they came back up.

Trader estimated their downward angle to be about forty degrees, which told him the back half of War Wag One was still hanging on the edge of the collapsed roadway.

A hailstorm of bullets clanged and clattered against the outside of the hull, making it impossible to hear or to think. Shabazz acted like a man possessed, grinding the gears until he finally found reverse. Engines roaring, every drive axle torquing, the rear end of the MCP slipped around on the lip of the ditch but didn’t move backward so much as an inch.

Adding to the tumult and chaos, blasterfire erupted from the wag’s every blasterport and blister.

A lucky slug from one of the savages skipped through the copilot’s ob slit and sang through the compartment before cutting a silvery track along the olive drab of the far wall.

Shabazz tried again, revving the engines to redline before dropping the transmission into reverse. Trader could see that the man was close to panic. Shabazz knew just how desperate the situation was. The MCP’s weapons systems were unaimable, stuck either pointing down in the hole or up in the sky. Its vast bulk was immobile. It wouldn’t be long before the guardians had their way with them.

Despite his efforts, the big wag stayed right where it was.

The wag-to-wag-intercom blared down at them in a distorted screech. Someone was shouting over volleys of blasterfire. It took a few seconds to sort out the words, and the speaker. It was Baron Zeal. “Shabazz, get that piece of shit out of the way!” he yelled. “The bastards are going to overrun us!”

Shabazz reached up for the mike. “Zeal, we’re stuck in a tank trap. You’re gonna have to back out

back down the pass

“

“Let Trader drive!” came the shouted response.

Something big and heavy hit the roof of the wag.

The jarring impact made Trader stagger, and dropped dust and paint flakes down on them.

“Come on! Do it!” Shabazz said to his archrival as he vacated the chair. “Do it, you fucking bastard!”

In no particular hurry, Trader took the helm. He pointed at the stub of a cheroot stuck in the corner of his mouth and said to Shabazz, “First gimme a light.”

The outraged Shabazz fumbled with a match. As he got the cigar lit, another rocking impact struck the wag.

“What are they doing?” he said.

“Boulders,” Trader replied, puffing the cheroot until it was well ablaze. “They’re rolling boulders down on us.”

With that, he reached for the lever alongside the driver console, released the safety catch and pushed it away from him. From the back of the wag, there came the meshing of gears, then the already elevated MCP’s rear end lifted up slightly.

With the rear Cat tracks down, getting out of the ditch was a piece of cake. Trader revved the engines and just backed the big rig up, and as he did, the nose end lifted out of the trap and the front wheels rolled out onto the road.

After he’d reversed about fifteen feet from the edge, he stopped, looked over at Shabazz and said, “Now what?”

PALMER THE GUARDIAN was watching the huge armored vehicle from a fortified position on the edge of the cliff when it opened fire with its cannons. The war beast had a voice, after all, a terrifying voice and a tongue of flame. He ducked back behind the rock pile as shards of shattered stone and fragments of steel jacketing whined past his head. When he looked out again, he saw that the wag had blown a great smoking chunk out of the corner of the cliff opposite. He also saw his clansmen scattered like leaves over the roadway, their bodies sprawled in attitudes of death. He had never been witness to such ballistic power. Clearly the drawings in First Palmer’s diary didn’t do this wheeled thing justice.

His heart lifted when he realized that the wounded down on the road were still fighting. Legless, minus an arm, they still clutched their assault rifles and continued to pour fire at the oncoming machine until, one by one, they bled to death. This thanks to miraculous analgesic properties of the rad-mutated thorny plant.

It was said that if a warrior ate devil’s club the day before a battle, he could be nearly cut in two by enemy bullets or blades and still live long enough to dance a victory jig on his dead foe’s chest.

Palmer the Guardian laid down another 10-round burst from his M-60. Most of the clan was shooting at this point. As the war machine advanced the critical last few yards, it was stippled with bullet impacts, dust puffs and bright lead spalls. There was a terrible roar and a cloud of dust as the roadway split, then collapsed beneath it.

Palmer let out a whoop of joy. For a moment, the rattle of autofire ceased. On the other side of the pass, his fellow clansmen were likewise shouting their triumph.

Following First Palmer’s instructions, they had craftily undermined the road, digging from either shoulder toward the middle, shoring up the excavation with timbers as they progressed. When they were done, there were only three inches of tarmac and a foot of soil covering the huge trap. As First Palmer had predicted, the approaching enemy saw only the small ditches on the road ahead, and thought it was safe to advance.

Now the Palmer clan had the great, growling war beast facedown in the pit.

Autofire resumed, but the torrent of armor-piercing rounds didn’t seem to have any effect. They weren’t penetrating the thing’s steel hide. This, too, had been foreseen by First Palmer. He had described such armor and pointed out the futility of trying to breach it with conventional munitions. Only a specially designed cannon round could do the trick, one with a uniquely shaped explosive warhead, which, though it had little effect on the outside of the target hull, blasted off huge sections of the inside of the armor, turning the vehicle into an implosion gren.

Below Palmer, with a roar and a grinding of Cat tracks, the thing backed out of the pit. Once again, the clan leader rose from the rock bunker. He stood and waved First Palmer’s flag to the rest of his clan. It was the signal for the final trap to be sprung.

From four widely separate positions, two on either side of the cliff, clansmen using long wooden levers pried free the keystones that held massive cliff-edge rockfalls in place. It was enough rockfall to block the road from shoulder to shoulder, and to crush or cripple anything that stood upon it. The Palmers had spent many difficult days moving the heavy stones into place, balancing the piles just right.

Now, at almost the same instant, the piles were freed, and the resulting four-pronged avalanche made the ground shake. A massive cloud of dust rushed out and up from beneath the outfall and, as it boiled, it concealed the roadway from view.

When the wind from the peak swept the dust away, Palmer the Guardian could see that the trap had worked. The largest of the war wags, the lead wag, was hemmed in on all sides by giant boulders. They climbed its flanks and squatted on its breastworks. The smaller wags were less covered by rockfall, but equally trapped, either because of the load on the road or because the other vehicles blocked them in.

With another wave of his ragged red, white and blue pennant, Palmer ordered his clansmen to do the deed, according to their revered progenitor.

With smothering exhaust, with blasterfire. Now was time for the chilling.