Chapter Twenty-four

 

 

The Trader had been a man of many quotes, most of them dealing with the practical problems of surviving in the lethal boiling pit of Deathlands. What most of them came down to was simply a matter of getting in firstest with the mostest.

 

The collection of rednecks in the Harmony Bar in Country Row were mostly tough men who earned their livings by hard physical labor. And when it came to roughhousing, they would all have chosen themselves as winners against a group of outlanders composed of a one-eyed man, a good-looking redhead, a little guy with glasses and a faggot hat, an old man with a stick, a black woman and a freak kid with white hair.

 

Elmore and Albert were delighted when they saw that they'd managed to provoke the strangers into some kind of reaction. It would give them the icing on what had so far been a pleasant enough evening of drinking and whoring.

 

They both drew their Brownings, waving them around like old-time shooters, grinning with gap-toothed delight at the exquisite violence and chaos to come.

 

Ryan shot Elmore once through the throat, the bullet splintering and fragmenting against the cervical vertebrae, blowing an exit hole so large it very nearly took the head off his shoulders. The peckerwood never even had time to squeeze the triggers on his treasured blasters, dropping them with a clatter on the hardwood floor, going over backward in a spray of blood and a choked scream.

 

Mildred had been itching for Ryan's word to draw her ZKR 551, aiming and firing the Smith amp; Wesson .38 round in a single, smooth action.

 

But Ryan's speed and the instant destruction of Elmore started a chain of confusion. The blond racist's upright corpse staggered into Albert as it went down, knocking him off balance, so that Mildred's bullet hit him in the left shoulder instead of full through the middle of his face.

 

He let one of the Brownings drop from nerveless fingers, but began shooting with the other automatic, spraying a burst of lead around the small bar.

 

Ryan dived for the sawdust floor, followed moments later by the others, but the drinkers were slower, most of them rising to their feet, reaching for whatever weapons they were carrying. Albert's crazed volley took out three of them, killing one instantly with a bullet through the skull, hitting two others through the stomach and chest.

 

The bartender made the terminal error of not ducking. Standing still, she yelled for the shooting to stop as bottles exploded around her in shards of razored splinters. Albert shot her through the side of the neck, lipping out the big artery, sending her down in a welter of crimson, hands desperately trying to check the flow.

 

The air was filled with shouting, screams and the smell of gunfire and hot, fresh blood.

 

It was Krysty who finally took out Albert, rolling on one side from under the table and shooting him with her short-barreled Smith amp; Wesson double-action 640, the big bullets tearing into the man through his sweating, bare chest, one of them hitting the ammo bandolier and exploding a couple of the rounds in a burst of flame and noise.

 

He dropped without a sound, lying facedown in the spreading pool of dark blood that was still seeping from Elmore's shattered skull.

 

Ryan was up on his feet, covering the shocked survivors of the massacre, calling out above the cries of the wounded, trying to restore some kind of order.

 

"It's over!" The barrel of the SIG-Sauer moved from side to side like the head of a rattler. "Chilling's done. They got what they wanted. Sorry others of you got to pay the butcher's bill for them. Now we're leaving. Give us five clear minutes or we shoot anyone who sticks a head out. Then get all the help you can. And remember we didn't start this."

 

"Sure fuckin' finished it, mister," one of the patrons breathed in a shocked whisper.

 

"Yeah." He gestured for the others, guns all drawn, to move away toward the main entrance, then changed his mind. "No. Go out the back. Along the alley."

 

He turned back to the huddled survivors of the brief firefight. "Remember what I said. Five clear minutes, and then you can get help."

 

The gut-shot man was huddled on hands and knees, weeping in quiet desperation, tears streaking his face, mouth working in pain. "Gotta help me, mister," he panted.

 

"Five minutes," Ryan repeated, watching as the others walked safely out of the bar before following them, pausing a moment to make sure there wasn't going to be any more trouble. He slipped out as J.B. held the padded door open for him.

 

"Quiet," the Armorer said. "Looks like nobody heard the shooting."

 

"Only be a matter of time. We need to get out of here. Right now. Let's get to the wags."

 

His first plan had been to either persuade or force Sullivan into letting them take one of the lumbering grain wags. But he suddenly realized that there was a potentially much better option available to them.

 

"Take Albert and Elmore's 4x4," he called to Jak. "Hot-wire it."

 

"Sure." The teenager ran ahead, vanishing around a corner toward the abandoned garage.

 

The farmer wasn't there when they finally arrived, but his men were all on careful watch, covering Ryan and the others as they raced back.

 

"No time for talk. Got bad trouble in a bar. Like we were warned. Some folks on the last train west. We got a few minutes, then every honest citizen of Country Row's goin' to be lookin' for us with a rope in his hand."

 

The foreman, a tall, laconic Iowan called Webster, looked at Ryan warily. "You weren't thinkin' of takin' any of our wags, were you now?"

 

"Don't be a stupe. Two of the dead own that flash 4x4." The engine of which burst into roaring life as Jak finished hot-wiring it. "We're off in that."

 

"Fuel?"

 

"How's fuel, Jak?"

 

"Full."

 

Ryan shook the foreman's leathery hand. "Thanks for everything. Our best to Sullivan. See you all around one day. Watch your asses here."

 

The man grinned slowly. "Don't you worry none about us, Ryan Cawdor. Get goin' now."

 

There was a swift round of handshakes, then they piled into the chromed and polished wag, J.B. taking the wheel.

 

"Good luck," someone called.

 

They drove out into the main street of Country Row, between tumbling gateposts, stopping for a moment to check both ways. Other than the merry little lights and an odd staggering drunk, the place looked and sounded normal. The nearest bar was thundering out raucous music as they turned to the right and headed west.

 

 

 

IT WAS THE MOST overornamented wag that Ryan had ever encountered, reminding him of the florid pimp-mobiles that he'd seen when riding with Trader in the gaudy sections of some of the larger pestholes.

 

The top of the windshield was festooned with all kinds of soft toys and junk fluorescent green dice covered in fur; a pair of dogs with nodding heads and rolling idiot eyes; a flesh-colored Madonna that seemed to glow in the moonlight; a naked black doll, with a pregnant belly, holding a spear. Mildred tugged that off and threw it out the side window before they'd even reached the town marker for Country Row.

 

The only useful aid was a large compass, floating on a gyro, set in the middle of the dash.

 

As they drove west, J.B. gradually ripped everything off, reducing the vehicle to something more serviceable.

 

"Hit lucky with this wag," he said after they'd gone about fifteen bouncing miles. He pulled off onto the weed-grown soft shoulder and let the powerful engine idle, getting out to stare behind them.

 

Ryan joined him. "Nothing?"

 

The Armorer wiped his glasses. "Reckon they'd think twice about setting up a lynch mob, once they realize how well-tooled we are and that we got clean away. No profit in chasing us. Not like we robbed their bank."

 

Ryan patted his old friend on the back. "If we'd had another half hour, we could have done that, as well."

 

Jak climbed out of the rear of the three rows of seats, where he'd been perched with Doc. "Need a leak," he said. "Smart wag."

 

While he was pissing in the dry brush off the side of the highway, there was a rumble of thunder far ahead of them and a flash of pinkish silver lightning, threatening a chem storm somewhere down the line.

 

Seeing that they were going to have a short break, the others all got out of the wag and stretched their legs in the warm moonlight.

 

"More lightning," Mildred said. "Looks like we might run into that in a couple of hours."

 

Ryan glanced at his wrist chron, seeing that the tiny liquid-crystal display showed it was a little after eleven o'clock.

 

"What kind of tank she got?"

 

Krysty had been checking under the hood while they waited, whistling in admiration. "Those good old boys might have been shit at human relations, but they sure made a fine job of their wag. It's in as good condition as anything I ever saw. Must have been a kind of hobby for them."

 

Ryan knew that most of the predark wags had small fuel tanks. An average family car might only carry a dozen gallons. Now, with the roughly processed fuel costing lives, it wasn't any surprise to find that the 4x4 had a triple tank fitted to it that would hold around sixty gallons of crude gasoline, giving them a rough distance of five or six hundred miles. It was enough to get them to Memphis, and then all the way back to the redoubt.

 

Jak finished and they all climbed back into the vehicle, luxuriating in the soft-padded upholstery, feeling the solid thunk as the doors slammed shut.

 

"Upon my soul, but this is the way to travel," Doc said, sighing. "I do believe that a fellow could become used to this kind of stylish traveling."

 

"Shame that it cost men's lives," Krysty said.

 

Mildred snorted angrily. "You kidding me, Krysty? Those pig-ignorant sons of bitches had it coming. Leave the world a better and cleaner place. That's what I say. Come on, John, let's hit the roadand not come back here no more, no more. Graceland next stop."

 

 

 

BUT GRACELAND AND MEMPHIS still lay some distance over the western horizon. Sullivan had described to them some of the more radical changes in the eco-structure of that part of Tennessee. The shifts in the tectonic plates after skydark altered the face of the state. The highway now snaked across two rivers and a new range of jagged hills. There was also an area of flat land, around two hundred square miles, that had turned in the past hundred years into a smaller version of the bayous of Louisiana.

 

Since there was no sign at all of any pursuit for the chillings back in Country Row, Ryan figured that it should soon be possible to find somewhere safe to camp to catch up on their rest.

 

But there were still many miles to go before they would finally sleep.

 

And a surprising meeting.