Chapter Ten

Charging into view, Dragon and the rest of his crew reached the top of the sand dune, their longblasters sweeping for the hidden sniper. But nobody was there anymore, only some empty brass glinting in the sunlight along with a lot of footprints.

“Son of a bitch got away!” Dragon snarled.

“And there they go,” Pig growled, pointing to the north.

Holding a hand to his forehead to shade his eyes, Dragon stared hatefully at the moving dust cloud kicked up by the heavy war wag. The bastards seemed to be heading for the dried riverbed, which was both good news and bad, he thought. If the outlanders went south, the banks were much too steep for the wag to get out again until reaching the Great Salt, and if they went north…

“Gone,” Big Suzy muttered, lowering her handcannon and ax. The nicked blade was smeared with blood, with tufts of hair sticking out. “The fragging Cyclops is gone! Black dust, we spent years putting the thing together, jacking tires, learning how to make shine, fixing the radiator…”

With a sputtering roar, the fat blonde raised both fists and shook them at the sky. “Shitfire!” Savagely, she turned on Dragon. “You! You said this was gonna be a peach! Easy pickings! Now we’re stuck on foot in the middle of mutie country!”

“Shut up,” Dragon muttered in a dangerous voice. “Shut up right now, bitch.”

Defiantly, Big Suzy snarled at the cannie and took a step forward, her hand raising the ax slightly, then she met his cold gaze and went pale. “Hey, ya know,” she muttered, lowering the blade, “I was just talking….”

The man turned away from her and looked again at the vanishing dust cloud. Yep, he thought, they were heading north. Shit.

“Hey, what’re those?” Hammer asked suspiciously, his big hands twisting on a longblaster.

Walking over the crest of the dune, the cannies looked down the other side. Parked at the bottom of the dune were half a dozen strange wags. The stripped-down speedsters had a metal cage around them for some reason, and seemed to be completely undamaged.

“Why the frag would they leave those behind?” Ratter asked, sucking thoughtfully between his prominent front teeth.

“Let’s find out,” Dragon said cautiously, starting down the sandy slope. “And watch for boobies! These mutie lovers are tricky!”

Reaching the ground, the cannies spread out so that any mines or pit wouldn’t catch all of them. Circling around the speedsters, they found nothing that seemed dangerous, and finally Dragon walked up to one and gave it a kick. Nothing happened.

Through the gridwork cage, he closely inspected the workings of the speedster, from the raised engine to the collection of nuke batteries. There were splotches of dried blood on the floor and dashboard, along with tufts of charred hair and some leafy vines. These had recently been in a fight with something large and hairy.

“Nuke me, they came from the north,” Dragon muttered in surprise.

“Green Hell?” Hammer squeaked. “But that’s full of those four-arm muties!”

“Which explains the cage,” Pig added, rubbing the back of his neck. “They drove through the jungle in these things?”

“Seems like,” Dragon said, easing open a hatch. The cannie froze at the sight of the wiring going to the nuke batteries, then relaxed with the realization that if the bars were live, he’d be a pile of smoking ash by now.

Sliding behind the wheel, the cannie looked over the controls, and soon found a newly installed button on the dashboard. That had to trigger the batteries. Smart. A sizzle cage. Trip smart.

Experimentally, Dragon checked the gears, then turned the ignition switch. The engine started immediately, then died with a sputter. He tried a few more times, but there was no response.

“These things are simply out of juice!” Dragon cried in delight. “Shitfire and honeycakes, boys, we’re back in biz!”

Stepping from the speedster, the man grinned at his crew. “Pig, Suzy, check over the stiffs and scav every weapon you can, especially any grens or firebombs!”

“What about the meat?” Ratter asked, running blunt fingers through his greasy, unkempt hair.

“That’s your job,” Dragon ordered. “Take only arms and legs, and stack ’em in the rear. Lots of room back there with the batteries.”

The man shrugged. “Sure, no prob.”

“What about me?” Hammer asked timidly, shifting his boots in the loose sand.

Placing a hand on the shoulder of the tall man, Dragon beamed a smile. “You get to dig up those extra cans of juice we buried in the blast crater. Haul ’em over and fill the tanks.”

“Sure, I can do that,” Hammer said eagerly. He really didn’t mind doing most of the heavy lifting, because he was the biggest and the strongest. That was only fair.

“As for me…” Dragon looked upward. “I’ll stay on top of the dune and watch for muties.”

Nervously, the other cannies glanced toward the sky. Already vultures were circling high above the valley, attracted by the smell of blood. Soon the screamwings would arrive, and then the stickies.

“After we get these rolling, what should we do next?” Suzy asked, scratching under a fat breast. “Head back to the caves to start smoking the meat, or haul ass to Waterton and sell the flints?”

Head back to the cave…What was she, an idjit? Dragon thought. “Frag that noise!” he snarled, casting a hard look to the north again. “We’re going after the coldhearts that jacked our damn war wag and get it back!”

Just then, the faint sound of hooting was carried to them on the desert wind. As it faded away, the cannies rushed to their assigned tasks, Dragon clicking back the hammer on his stolen musket as he started up the dune once more. He knew a trick or two with nuke batteries that would make the thieves wish they had never been nuking born. He could almost hear their pleadings for death already.

THE DESERT GOT ROUGHER as Cyclops approached the bank of the riverbed, the land rising and falling in low curves like waves at sea. Nukescaping, Ryan realized, and checked the rad counter on his lapel, but the device registered only the usual background level.

“Okay, hold on to your ass!” J.B. shouted out the broken window.

As the war wag reached the irregular bank, the Armorer twisted the steering wheel sharply, trying to angle in for an easier descent. But the sun-baked mud crumbled under their weight and the lumbering eighteen-wheeler tilted dangerously, almost tipping over.

Shifting gears, J.B. alternated between the gas and the brakes, trying to get the Cyclops under control.

The wheels spun freely in the air, the engine roaring with power. Then the other tires got purchase and the war wag lurched forward to go over the bank and fall a couple of feet on the dried mud with the force of a meteor. Everything loose went flying, the windshield cracked, the shutters hanging over the tires flipping up to smack against the splintery planks with a deafening crash. Then the war wag went lolling from side to side, rapidly building speed as it raced along the smooth riverbed.

“So that’s what skydark felt like,” Ryan said out of the corner of his mouth. “No wonder so few of us survived.”

“We’ve gone through worse,” J.B. muttered, ignoring the pain in his leg to shift gears. The dried mud was smooth and even, perfect for high-speed driving.

In the rear section of the fortified Mack, the rest of the companions dragged themselves off the floor and started putting everything back into place. Backpacks and bedrolls were scattered around, one of them missing entirely, and the nuke batteries had slid straight to the rear of the wag, hitting the wood so hard they made impressions into the planks. A headlight was also smashed and a couple of small kegs had broken open, covering the floor with loose black powder and lead balls that rolled dangerously underfoot. Plus, several crates had flipped over, disgorging mounds of broken flints, musket parts, spare motorcycle parts and a staggering collection of dried human remains, mostly fingers and sexual organs.

“Cannies,” Mildred muttered in disgust.

“Aced now,” Jak replied, taking a box of body parts and emptying it over the side of the war wag. Then he changed his mind and also tossed away the box.

“Most of them, anyway.” The physician sighed, rolling up a sleeve. “Come on, let’s clean this rolling abattoir before we catch the plague.”

Finding some old clothing in a plastic box, the companions used the rags as brooms and swept the floor clean of powder and shot, shoving it out the rear hatch. Once they could safely walk again, the companions did a thorough search of every box, barrel and crate, finding a fair assortment of empty brass, a dozen Molotovs, a hammer and spikes for repairing the wooden armor and more trophies. In short order the companions cleared away all of the grisly items, including a rope of what seemed to be horsehair, but nobody could tell for sure, so over the side it went.

“Ashes to ashes, dust to dust,” Doc stated, throwing away the last box of horrible dried things.

“Amen,” Mildred added solemnly.

Opening the Molotovs, the companions checked to make sure the bottles were full of shine, not fuel, then used it to liberally clean their hands and to wash the badly stained floor. Some of the cannies had been aced hard, and left behind more than their fair share of bodily fluids, not all of it blood.

Settling down to let the thick fumes evaporate, the companions dutifully checked over their blasters, then started carving small blasterports into the thick planks. By the time that was accomplished, the air was refreshingly clean and the companions literally breathed a deep sigh of relief.

“At least we have a lot of spare arrows,” Mildred said with a touch of satisfaction. “That’s something, after losing all of that black powder.”

“Those are not arrows, madam, but quarrels,” Doc corrected, raising a finger as if about to point to the blackboard. “A crossbow uses quarrels, not arrows.”

“What dif?” Jak asked, arching a snowy eyebrow.

“An arrow has a smooth shaft, but a quarrel is notched to fit the guide of a crossbow and stay in place.”

Mildred snorted a laugh. “Well, thank you, Fred T. Janes.”

“Who, madam?” Doc asked, puzzled.

That brought the physician up short, and she tried to think of some way to explain about the creator of various military guides, but finally decided that the concept was just too complex. “Never mind,” Mildred said, hiding a little smile. “Not important.”

Slowly, the long hours passed, and the sun was dipping toward the horizon when Jak proposed making dinner, the suggestion greeted with a resounding lack of interest. The memory of the trophies was still sharp in their minds, and that ruthlessly killed the others’ appetites. With a shrug, the unflappable albino teen went to a corner of the flatbed, opened an MRE envelope and dug into the hundred-year-old spaghetti with gusto.

Twilight was beginning to claim the world when the end of the riverbed came into view. Gingerly using his throbbing leg, J.B. slowed the wag as they came to a marshy field filled with what appeared to be wheat or some other kind of cultivated grain. Easing the Cyclops into the flooded cropland, J.B. was relieved to find the water only a couple of inches deep. However, the plants grew so close together, his view was reduced to less than a few feet ahead. If they were still following the riverbed, it was impossible to say.

“Fireblast, we’re driving blind,” Ryan muttered, glaring at the waving wild abundance around them.

“There could be stickies, or a bastard cliff, only a couple of yards away and we’d never know about it until too late.”

“At this rate we’ll be in here until we run out of juice,” J.B. replied with a scowl, his hands tight on the wheel. “How big was the size of the average predark farm? Couple of miles?”

“More like ten or twenty. Sometimes a lot more.”

Scowling, the Armorer’s muttered reply consisted entirely of vulgarity.

Standing in the rear of the war wag, the rest of the companions were resting their arms on top of the spiked wood and using their vantage point to scan the rustling vista of waving plants. None of them could see any order to the plants, let alone predark ruins, abandoned grain silos, bridges, homes, barns or any other sign of the prior owners. Just endless acres of the gently waving plants. There were some mountains on the western horizon, but where the cropland ended and the rocks began, nobody could say for sure.

“Reach to foothills?” Jak asked uneasily, clearly hoping that somebody would disagree.

“Mayhap it does, my young friend,” Doc rumbled in consternation, the LeMat gripped tightly in one hand as if he was drawing comfort from the Civil War blaster. “We should be thankful this is not Australia. I have read where some of their larger farms extend for hundreds of miles without a break.”

“What is anyway, wheat?” Jak asked curiously, reaching out to grab a plant, but staying his hand at the last moment.

“Millet,” Krysty replied, resting her arms on top of the wooden planks. “Makes good bread once it’s been cracked.” Then she frowned. “Funny, I didn’t think it could grow in wetlands like a marsh.”

“Must be a mutie strain,” Mildred guessed. “So I wouldn’t try eating any until I have run some tests.

There are grains that get an ersatz kind of mold that contains a natural form of LSD, a powerful hallucinogenic, ten times worse than wolfweed.”

“Worse?” Jak repeated. “Nasty.”

“Any chance it might affect us by breathing?” Krysty asked, covering her mouth and nose with a hand.

The millet had a rich earthy aroma that was very pleasant, but the woman had encountered perfumed flowers before that tried their best to eat her alive. In the Deathlands, the only place you were safe was the grave.

“No, impossible. You have to eat it,” Mildred replied after a minute. “The mold was much too heavy to be airborne.”

“Hey, back there!” Ryan called out the window, craning his neck. “Any sign of this field ending?”

“Not until we reach the mountains!” Krysty answered promptly.

“Well, let us know if anything comes into sight!”

“Will do!”

Soon the plants were so thick around the Cyclops the muddy earth below was impossible to see anymore.

“Dark night, there’s no way we’re ever going to find any tire tracks in this,” J.B. declared, downshifting to a crawl. “Mebbe we out to stop and—” But the man was interrupted by strident whistling, closely followed by an explosion of steam from under the hood. The dashboard engine gauge swung fast into the red.

“Thick we blew a hose?” Ryan snarled, throwing open the door.

“Only one way to find out.” J.B. sighed, turning off the engine. He waited a few moments, but the gauge stayed in the red. Yes, it had to be a hose. Then he thought, Or the water pump, or the thermostat, or a dozen other things. Who knew if the cannies knew the difference between a socket wrench and a sock?

“I’ll check for the box,” Ryan said, climbing out of the cab. Staying on the corrugated metal step a good foot above the murky water, he pushed the seat forward. Most predark trucks had spare storage there for small items, flares, shovels, tow ropes and the like. But the man found only some predark candy-bar wrappers, a crumbling yellow sex mag, a road flare reduced to waxy residue and a few rusty tools eaten through with corrosion. Clearly, the cannies had not even been aware that the seat moved, or else they would have taken the mag.

“Nothing useful in there!” Ryan called, pushing the hinged seat back into position. “I’ll get the tools and gray tape.” The Trader called it duck tape, but Mildred always said “duct.” Weird.

“And a bucket!” J.B. snorted, sloshing around to the front of the war wag. Steam was rushing out from around the hood. If it was just a hose, they’d be moving again in less than an hour.

As Ryan pushed some plants aside to slosh away, J.B. tugged on his fingerless gloves and checked for traps. Sure enough, there was a boobie, a spring-loaded blade set to chop off questing fingers. Using a lock pick, the Armorer easily disarmed it and cast the pieces aside. Bastard amateurs.

Tromping around the hulking flatbed, Ryan noticed some furtive movements among the muddy roots of the millet. Had that been a rat? Most likely, considering the combination of shallow water and abundant food. But that would be in their favor. Rats attacked people when they were starving, but with all of this millet around these rats looked fatter than the ass of a baron’s favorite gaudy slut.

Bunching up a handkerchief for protection, the man raised the hood and a wave of steam wafted out. It was definitely a split hose, J.B. noted, waving a hand in front of his face. His glasses were misty from the moist heat, but he could see the rent through the billowing cloud. The war wag had to have picked up some lead back in the valley. Stepping away, he used the handkerchief to wipe his glasses. There was nothing he could do but wait until the engine cooled enough to wrap some tape and twine around the split, then refill the radiator.

Going back into the cab, J.B. turned on the heater. The power gauge flickered as the batteries engaged, then waves of hot air blasted from the vents under the dashboard. This was a trick the Trader had taught him long ago. If you were short on time and a radiator was boiling over, then just turn on the damn heater. They used the hot water cycling through the engine block to warm the interior of the wag. It sounded craz, but turning on the heater helped cool down an engine. That could buy you extra minutes of driving, which sometimes was all the difference between sucking air or feeding the worms.

Reaching the back of the Cyclops, Ryan thumped a fist on the hatch, and it was opened by Krysty, holding the tool kit and a bucket.

“Figured you’d need this.” The woman smiled as she stepped down into the marsh. The dark water crested high on her blue cowboy boots, obscuring the embroidered spread-winged falcon design.

“Don’t forget these,” Mildred added, offering a fistful of relatively clean rags. “They’ll do for filtering the marsh water.”

“Thanks,” Ryan said, taking the rags.

Just then, a plump creature scurried between the man and woman, then darted under the war wag.

“Damn, that was a big rat,” Krysty said, touching the strap of the AK-47 slung over her shoulder.

“Mother of God…That’s a rat,” Mildred whispered, going pale. “Don’t move! Everybody stay perfectly still!”

Starting to turn away from the hatch, Ryan and Krysty froze motionless at the physician’s whipcrack tone. Warily, they glanced around at the thick rows of millet, their hands creeping toward their blasters.

There was nothing in sight but the millet and the rats.

“Easy now,” Mildred said, slowly moving the scattergun forward and gently working the pump-action.

“Back in the wag, and close the hatch. Easy! No sudden moves!”

As if encased in solid ice, Ryan and Krysty turned and stepped back into the Cyclops. The instant the jamb was clear, Mildred slammed the wooden portal shut and worked the bolt.

“John, get the fuck out of the water!” the physician bellowed at the top of her lungs, spinning and running to the front. Climbing onto a wooden box bolted to the planks as a firing step, she rose above the wall and pointed the S&W M-4000 at the hairy lumps waddling among the muddy stems of the millet.

“John!” she screamed, a touch of panic tightening her throat. “John Barrymore Dix, where the hell are you!”

“Right here, Millie,” J.B. said calmly, climbing into view on the roof of the cab. “Damn near lost my hat when I heard you shout like that.”

“Thank goodness.” Mildred looked over the man intently. The cuffs of his pants were damp, but it only looked like dirty water. “Did any of them bite you? Or scratch? Even a small bite could be fatal!”

Fatal? Now, the other companions scrambled onto the firing steps and prepared their blasters, gazing at the sea of rustling millet with newfound caution. What had the physician seen that none of them had noticed? Snakes? Millipedes? They had fought the big insects before, and that one time had proved to be more than enough.

“No, Millie, I’m fine,” J.B. replied, sitting cross-legged on the roof. Scowling at the waving cropland, the man swung up his Uzi and worked the arming bolt. “Okay, what’s the prob? Are there stickies here?

Swampies?”

“Gator?” Jak asked, scowling at the swampy ground. The plants grew too close together for a gator to move around easily, but the teenager could not think of anything else that could have frightened the woman.

“By the Three Kennedys, I wish it was a gator,” Doc rumbled, his face registering alarm. “Good call, madam. I might never have recognized the rodents fast enough before they had swarmed through the hatch and into the war wag. I have only seen an illustration of them in the newspaper.” Keeping the rapid-fire in hand, the man also drew the LeMat. “Now, we at least have a fighting chance at life!”

“What mean? Just rats.” Jak sniffed in disdain, easing his grip on a Kalashnikov.

“Worse than that,” Mildred said grimly, the gentle wind riffling through her beaded locks. “These aren’t rats, but solenodons!” At their puzzled expressions, the physician explained.

Indigenous to Cuba, the tiny rodent was acknowledged by many as one of the most deadly animals on the planet. In Mildred’s day, solenodons had been hunted to the brink of extinction.

“The bite of a solenodon is toxic,” the physician added tersely, studying the small animals scurrying through the greenery. So peaceful and tranquil before, now the field of millet seemed a buzzing deathtrap.

How many of the deadly little creatures were moving around the trapped companions? Hundreds, maybe thousands. She swallowed hard. They wouldn’t have enough bullets to stop them all if the rodents attacked.

“Is there an antidote to their bite?” Ryan asked, furrowing his brow. “Cut the bite, suck out the poison?

Burn it with black powder?”

“No.”

The one-word answer sent a chill through the companions. A single bite from a predark solenodon meant unstoppable death, and these muties were ten times larger.

“Solenodons,” Doc repeated. “Even the pharaohs of Egypt never faced such a plague as this!”

“It was their size that almost threw me,” Mildred confessed to the man. “They’re just so damn big! But once I saw that head…” She shivered.

“How soon till we can move again?” Ryan asked

“Half hour, mebbe more,” J.B. answered, shifting his position on the roof. “And I still have to patch the hose and refill the radiator!”

“Do we also have to fill the tanks or do we have enough juice to leave?” Krysty asked in real concern.

“No prob. We’re good for at least a couple of miles,” J.B. said without much enthusiasm. “It’s getting the water that concerns me. How much is in the canteens?”

Walking over to the bedrolls, Mildred lifted the containers and shook. “Six canteens, each about half-full.

Say, three quarts.”

“Barely enough,” the Armorer replied. “Nothing from the prior owners?”

“Sorry, no. They must have kept their canteen of water on their bikes.”

“Shit!” the man cursed.

“No, you mean, piss,” Ryan countered. Taking two canteens, he unscrewed the tops and poured the contents of one into the other. “Okay, people, fill ’er up. Every drop will help.”

“Shine, too,” Jak added. “Small amount won’t hurt much.”

“Any chance it’ll ace the smell of boiling urine?” Mildred asked hopefully, tying not to grimace.

“Nope. Make worse.”

“Swell.”

“Mayhap providence shines upon us and this new breed of solenodon has no venom,” Doc said hesitantly.

“Could be, but I’d hate to be the one to find out,” the physician returned. “Look, we’re probably safe inside the Cyclops, as long we don’t annoy them. Stay quiet, and make no noise. Let the engine cool, do the repairs and drive out of here nice and slow. Everything will be fine once we’re far enough away from here.”

Jerking her head toward the south, Krysty frowned. “Don’t think we have that option anymore,” she said, listening intently. “Engines are coming this way. A lot of them.”

Rushing to the other side of the war wag, Ryan pulled out his Navy telescope. Sweeping along the riverbed, he easily found a large dust cloud coming their way. Adjusting the focus, he saw the six caged speedsters they had left by the sand dune.

“Fireblast, it’s the cannies,” Ryan stated, compacting the scope. “Bastards must have had a cache of juice somewhere for those bikes, and they’ve come to get their war wag back.” The one-eyed man spoke calmly, but he was furious inside for not having considered the possibility and smashing the speedsters before leaving. Now the companions were trapped in a chilled wag, surrounded by a field full of poisonous muties.

His mistake might chill them all.