Chapter Six

Dean turned in the direction of the wag engines, staring into the depths of the junkyard. The sketchy plan he and J.B. had made had just gone to hell.

Movement drew his eyes to the Jeep that burst out of hiding under a pile of smashed wags, flanked by two motorcycles. All of the vehicles looked as if they'd been cobbled together out of spare parts, stripped of any unnecessary cosmetic parts and reduced to skeletal remnants.

Gunners riding in the back of the Jeep and on back of the motorcycles cut loose at the two riders.

Pulling on the reins, Dean broke off the direct approach. But going back didn't offer any relief, either, because the baron's riders were closing in. A line of bullets chopped into the dirt near the horse's hooves, sliced through the air only inches from Dean's head.

He kicked the horse in the sides again, urging it back into a full gallop toward the oncoming riders. He rode low, presenting as small a target as he was able, and he got past them.

Blasterfire from the coldhearts lashed into the baron's men, emptying two of the saddles. A bullet cut through Dean's shirt, and he felt the heat of its passing. He spotted J.B. to his left. The Armorer exchanged shots with a mounted man, but neither of them appeared to be hit.

Cutting hard to the right, Dean guided the horse in a wide loop back to the fence surrounding the junkyard. One of the motorcycles pulled away from the Jeep and pursued him. Urging his mount to greater speed, the boy raced up a small promontory overlooking the fenced area.

"Go!" he urged the horse, lying low enough that he was screaming in the animal's ear.

On top of the incline, the horse found it had no way to go but forward. Dean felt the big animal's muscles bunch, then it hurled them into the air.

At first, Dean thought the horse was going to clear the fence. But its back hoof got caught in the strands of barbed wire at the top. Coming down off balance, the horse rolled on its side with a grunting snort of pain.

Dean cleared the saddle, rolling himself. He came up on his knees as the motorcyclists made the same jump he'd attempted with the horse. They had more power, though, and cleared the fence with feet to spare.

Spitting out dirt and blood from a busted lip, Dean targeted the motorcycle in the air. He aimed for the center of the men, and for the gas tank. He believed he hit both, but the sudden eruption of the gas tank let him know he'd gotten the fuel tank for certain.

The motorcycle turned into fireball that careened in a short arc, then smashed into the ground front wheel first. The coldheart who'd been driving screamed in hoarse fear and flapped at the flames licking at his crotch.

Dean ignored the man and turned his attention to his second adversary. The man landed in a heap, but he came up with his revolver in his hand, spitting lead. Coolly the younger Cawdor stroked the Browning's trigger and put a round into the man's face, sealing his fate.

Dean fired two more rounds into the burning man to put him down. Pushing himself up, he raced back toward the entrance to the junkyard. Another sonic boom of thunder cascaded over the area, trapped between the stacks of dead wags filling the junkyard.

Movement ahead and to Dean's left drew his attention. He barely kept his finger from squeezing the Browning's trigger as the dirty face of a blond-haired little girl looked up at him.

"Holy shit!" Dean's hand shook as he took the gun sight off her. "What do you think you're—?"

The man leaped at him, a lock-back knife bared in his fist and a look of desperate fear on his face.

"WHATS WRONG WITH HER ?" J.B. asked, nodding at Krysty. Her tied hands and feet drew the Armorer's eyes as he sat astride the lathered horse.

"Later," Ryan said, swinging Krysty up to his friend.

J.B. grabbed the woman's belt and heaved her over the saddle in front of him. The horse shied at the extra weight, stamping its feet.

"In the meantime," Ryan said, "don't listen to her whatever she says. Keep her tied." It bothered him to say that, but the instructions might keep Krysty and the Armorer alive. He glanced out at the open space in front of the junkyard. The baron's men and the Slaggers had declared all-out war on each other, and it was difficult to tell who was getting the better end of it. Horses and men lay scattered across the torn, bloody earth. "Where's Dean?"

"Saw him get across the fence," J.B. said. "Chilled two coldhearts and a motorcycle."

"Junkyard's the only chance we've got to remain mobile and get out of the rain."

J.B. nodded. "That's what Dean and I figured." He revealed the gren tucked inside his shirt. "We were going to soften them up, get them used to the idea, but they came at us before we were ready."

"We'll do it now," Ryan said. He put away the SIG-Sauer and slid the Steyr off his shoulder. Gazing across to the entrance of the junkyard, he knew it was still a lot of ground to cover. "Get Krysty across first. We'll follow."

The Armorer nodded, but his eyes cut to Mildred.

"It's okay, John," the woman said. "I'll be along."

"She'll make it," Ryan said.

"I'll be holding down the fort."

"Do that. But keep an eye peeled for those bastard dogs. I don't think we've killed them all out yet."

J.B. pulled on the reins and turned the horse. The animal's footing was no longer certain, but it had heart. He put his heels to its sides and charged across the open space.

"Let's go," Ryan ordered. "Jak, you've got point. Mildred, you're after him, then Doc. I'm walking slack, but if you slow down out there, I'm going to kick your skinny ass all the way to that junkyard."

"Friend Ryan, these legs may well be old, but I wager you shall be eating my dust," Doc retorted. "Fear lends this old heart a certain alacrity in nearly every happenstance."

IT PROVED IMPOSSIBLE to run in a straight line. Ryan cursed the luck as they had to dodge dead men and horses, then the combatants.

They were halfway to the junkyard when the Slagger leader, Halleck, pointed to the small group of companions and shouted orders to his men. The baron's horsemen had retreated into the rubble and started picking off some of the Slaggers on foot. The withering fire from the horsemen cut into the numbers of the coldhearts and drove them back to cover.

The Jeep roared off in pursuit, streaking for the companions. Gunners in the back fired at will, but luckily the weapons were semiautomatics and no real time was taken to properly aim.

Ryan knew the companions would never make it before the Jeep caught up to them. He stood and brought the Steyr up to his shoulder, felt the buttstock caress the side of his face. He put the crosshairs over the driver's side of the windshield and squeezed the trigger.

But the uneven ground and the worn springs of the Jeep made the target more elusive. Three shots missed killing the driver, though he felt certain at least one of them had hit the female passenger. Then the Jeep was bearing down on him, taking away all margin for error.

"Fireblast." Ryan turned and ran, watching bullets pock-mark the ground around him. The sour stink of the coming rain burned his nose with renewed vigor as he drew it deep into his lungs.

The Jeep bore down on him, and a pair of bullets ripped through his coat.

Ryan threw himself aside at the last moment. The wag's bumper slammed into him with bruising force, clipping him and driving him to the ground. He managed to hang on to the Steyr during his fall, but even as he reached his knees, his body protesting because the wind had been knocked out of him, he saw the wag bearing down on him again.

This time it wouldn't miss.

"STOP, YOU STUPE BASTARD, or I'll blast your triple-ugly face off!" Dean ducked under the man's knife arm and kicked his leg hard enough to topple him. Before the man could get back up, Dean screwed the barrel of the Hi-Power into the side of his neck.

"Don't kill my pa!" the little girl screamed. Tears fell from her blue eyes. "Don't kill my pa!"

If it hadn't been for the little girl's pleas, Dean thought he might have pulled the trigger. True, the man who'd jumped him didn't look like one of the coldhearts or the baron's horsemen, but the man had tried to chill him all the same.

He hesitated, then cursed at himself because he didn't think his father would have hesitated at all. Survival was self first, not the other guy.

Breathing hard, Dean looked square in the man's frightened eyes. "Your choice, mister. I chill you, I don't chill you, it's all the same to me. But you're going to leave her out here alone."

"You're not one of the Slaggers?" the man asked. He started to get up.

Dean leaned on the Browning more forcibly, making the point clearly. "Don't even know who the Slaggers are."

"They're the coldhearts," the little girl said. "They're the ones that brung us here."

Gunshots still echoed around them, mixed in with the thunder.

"If that's true," Dean told the man, "then mebbe we got a common problem."

"Mister, I just want to get my little girl out of here." Dirt stained the man's face, and it had been days since he'd shaved. His hair was long and his clothes were homespun. "We were on our way north. Got relatives up there. We lost Charity's mom a couple months ago, and I couldn't see a reason to hang around that Fiddler ville anymore. Thought mebbe things would be better back in the lands I knew best. We were following the river, same as some of these other folk, when those coldhearts jumped us and brought us here. That's the God's truth."

"How many are here?" Dean asked. His father had taught him the importance of getting as much information about a situation as he could. His eyes roamed the metallic caverns created by the dead wags.

"Coldhearts?"

"Yeah."

"Must be three, four dozen."

Dean knew it was considerably less than that now. He pulled the Browning's barrel out of the man's neck and glanced at the child. "I'm not going to kill your pa, little girl."

She continued to cry, wiping her face with the back of her hand. She carried a rag doll in the other.

"Okay if I get up now?" the man asked.

"Sure." Dean stepped back, giving himself room to move. He kicked the lock-back knife to the man with his boot toe.

The man pushed himself up and took the little girl in his arms. "I ain't no killer," the man said. "First time I ever drew a weapon on anybody."

"Every man's a killer," Dean said. "Sometimes he just doesn't meet his victim, that's all." He scanned the junkyard, spotting a mongrel hound slinking up beside a pile of wag parts. Moving the blaster, he shot the animal between the eyes, exploding its head. "Pick up your knife. You may need it." Then he hurried toward the entrance, watching J.B. come galloping through with Krysty across his saddle.

Dean's heart thudded in his chest.

RYAN DIVED, no longer able to twist away from the wag bearing down on him. He rolled over the dead horse in front of him, then scurried against the animal's back for shelter.

The wag didn't slow, smashing into the horse's huge corpse and rolling over it The horse's ribs broke with fierce snaps, and trapped air in its lungs and intestines broke with liquid gurgles.

The tires pushed roughly across Ryan, but the wag's full weight never settled on him because of the horse. He rose to his knees and pulled the Steyr up again. Glaring through the open sights beneath the scope so he could snap-fire, he put a round through the chests of the two coldhearts in the back of the wag before anyone knew he was still alive.

Halleck spun in the passenger's seat, wiping the blood from his face that sprayed from the dead man falling toward him. "The fucker's still alive!" the coldheart leader snarled. "Turn this wag around!"

The wag driver turned hard left, pulling the vehicle around in a tight circle.

Ryan let the man come, narrowly missing Halleck with a shot. Then the driver was full in his sights. He squeezed the trigger and shot the man through the forehead.

Out of control, the wag continued hurtling forward. Halleck grabbed for the dead driver, trying to dislodge him from behind the wheel. It took him a handful of seconds to push the corpse out.

By that time, Ryan had reached the entrance to the junkyard. Dean and the rest of the companions were engaged in a brief firefight with dogs and coldhearts, both of which seemed to be in short supply.

He glanced up at the stacks of crushed wags that reached thirty feet tall. They created a maze across the junkyard. In places, some of them had fallen, toppling like dominoes to bring other stacks down with them. One toppled stack lay across a small building to the right of the entranceway.

Built under the tumbled wreckage, the building had become an armored fortification. Crushed wags covered the top and all sides except the front. Pieces of other wags had been dragged into position in front of the building, creating an armored shell, as well as camouflage.

The companions were scattered, facing the small building with the junkyard entranceway behind them and to the right. Doc and Jak lay hidden behind a wag twenty feet from J.B. and Mildred's position to Ryan's right. Dean crouched over Krysty protectively, the dead horse only an arm's reach away.

"Dark night," J.B. said when Ryan joined them. "Didn't see that bastard fortification until I was almost on top of it. Bastard shot my horse out from under me."

Ryan glanced at Krysty, saw how pale she looked.

"She's okay, Dad," Dean said.

The wag engine approached at high speed, throwing out rooster tails of dust behind it. Grimly Ryan realized that Halleck had left the entrance to the junkyard open on purpose. The horsemen had come hunting him, and he'd evidently been expecting them. The plan had been to drive the attackers into the junkyard, allowing them to think they were getting refuge from the chem storm, while actually they'd be stepping into a cross fire.

It was a good plan.

J.B. finished putting 9 mm rounds in a clip, then shoved the clip into the Uzi. "We can try to slip by them," he said, "but they've got a good position. Some people over there tried to get loose, but the gunners inside the building cut them down before they could get away."

"We can't stay pinned down here," Ryan said. He glanced around, noticing the scattering of human bones around the front of the junkyard for the first time. Most of them were nearly covered by the drifting sand and the flowered weeds that crawled up from the earth. All of them had bite marks on them.

Maybe the dogs were the only ones that ate the victims that had been trapped in the cross fire before, but Ryan kept remembering the ghoulies.

"How many men inside the fort?" Ryan asked.

"Don't know for sure. A dozen mebbe." The Armorer looked up at him, then out at the wag where Halleck was calling to his men, gathering them to him. "They're not going to wait long out there. The chem storm doesn't give them much choice."

"Doesn't give us much choice, either," Ryan replied. He worked his way to the end of the broken wag, glancing briefly at Krysty. She slept, but her face showed tight lines, as if she was having a bad dream. "What about the people you said were in here?"

"Over there." J.B. nodded toward a recessed area on the other side of the space facing the fortified building. "Looks to be people the coldhearts captured."

"They are," Ryan replied. "Jak and I saw them earlier. Should be a woman among them. Name's Phlorin. I want her found."

"How do you know her?" Mildred asked.

"I don't," Ryan answered. "But she's what's wrong with Krysty."

"I'll find her, Dad," Dean said.

Ryan started to object, wanting Jak to do the search. But he saw the earnest look on his son's face.

"If she's the reason Krysty's tied up now, not being herself, then I'll make sure she's found quick," Dean promised.

"Do it, then," Ryan said. "But stay low."

Dean nodded and seemed to disappear into the ground near the overturned wag.

Ryan glanced back at the Jeep. Halleck was having problems of his own. The Slaggers weren't having much luck getting together without the baron's men shooting into them. The one-eyed man turned to the Armorer. "I'm going to need you to cover me."

"Kick in the door?" J.B. asked.

"I don't see another way." Ryan gestured to Jak, indicating that the albino should circle around the junkyard fort in the opposite direction. Ryan didn't have to tell him what they were going to do.

"If those other coldhearts attack while we're spread out," J.B. said, "we aren't going to be able to hold."

Ryan nodded tightly. "See you in a few." He moved out, finding cover where he could.