Chapter Thirteen
Standing on the edge of a cliff, Delphi was admiring the scenic view on the other side of the chasm.
Nevada was such a beautiful state with all of the white-water rivers, soaring hills and jagged mountains.
Even the nuclear war had done little to damage the majestic landscape.
Oh, a few of the hills were missing, and a couple of the mountains were a lot smaller, the cyborg admitted to himself. But such minor alterations were trivial compared to what had been done to the rest of the world. Washington, D.C.; Paris; Berlin; Tokyo…dear heavens, there were sections of Europe so devastated that they would never recover. But the colossal defenses of Cheyenne Mountain, the supreme headquarters for NORAD, had spared most of the West from the atomic ravishing of the war, even if Cheyenne Mountain itself was a glowing hellzone of tortured strontium nuclei and cesium-rich lava fields.
But this was why he had chosen the Lehman Caves of Nevada as his base of operations. There was little nuke damage and numerous predark ruins to scav for supplies if necessary. And it had proved necessary.
Glancing over a shoulder, Delphi checked to see how the work was progressing. A short distance away, the four war wags of his convoy were parked near the main entrance to caves. A squad of his troopers was attaching tow chains to the boulders blocking the entrance, while Cotton and the others stood guard with the Kalashnikovs.
Delphi smiled at that. This was the only way in, or out, of the labyrinthine maze of the Lehman Caves.
Locks could be smashed, guards dogs slain, sec men bribed and land mines tripped. Ah, but simple boulders could only be removed by heavy machinery. High explosives would only make the front entrance to the caves collapse. True, the use of granite boulders was cumbersome and crude, but aside from moving to a redoubt, this was the only way to be sure that his home was completely undisturbed.
And more important, undiscovered by any agents from TITAN or Coldfire.
Long ago, the cyborg had established numerous such disguised locales throughout the Deathlands as rewards for the coldhearts he hired to do special tasks. Now the caches were his lifeline, a few precious depots of ammo, fuel and tech.
If only I had thought of adding some spare parts for myself, Delphi thought. That would have saved me from traveling the so-called Deathlands to dig up a chip here and a circuit board there, on top of using the jungle redoubt to raid the laboratories of Coldfire and TITAN.
But at least he now had enough supplies to finish his original mission: find Doc Tanner. That would get him reinstated with Coldfire, and then his real work could continue from this deplorable interruption of…How long had it been? He really didn’t like to think about it too much. The facts only depressed him.
Glaring hostilely into the windy cavern below, Delphi felt the call of nature and loosened his clothing and began to relieve himself into the wind. The cyborg was mostly mechanical parts these days, even more so after tangling with Doc Tanner, but a few pieces of him were still quite organic, especially the one part held in his hand. There were cybernetic replacements for both males and females, but none of them functioned quite as well as the original equipment.
Softly, there came the sound of a footstep from behind.
Unable to decide if he should zip up first or turn around, Delphi paused for a moment, and froze motionless as he felt the cold sting of sharp steel pressed to his bare throat.
“Don’t move, outlander,” the huge man muttered, his breath reeking of ketones, diseases and shine. “I been watching this cliff for weeks, waiting for you to come back. And now you have, wags and bags and all, sweet as a gaudy slut to her bed.” The gigantic man cackled insanely. “Now give me your blaster or I’ll cut you like a mutie dog!”
“My troopers…” Delphi began.
“Are a hundred yards away! And if those big blasters turn in our direction…” With unnatural strength, the man pushed Delphi closer to the edge of the cliff until the deep chasm yawned only inches from his shoes.
The cyborg was impressed. To possess such colossal strength, the coldheart clearly had more than a touch of mutie in his blood.
“One nudge, and you’re flying, feeb!” the giant whispered hoarsely. “Now, give me those blasters!”
“No, I don’t think so.” Delphi snarled, mentally activating his new force field. As if moved by a wall of invisible steel, the man was shoved away from the cyborg to go straight over the edge of the cliff and tumble away screaming.
Finished emptying his bladder, the cyborg rearranged his clothing and walked away from the cliff toward the waiting convoy. His sensors said there were no more hidden coldhearts in the rocks. It was silly of him not to check more regularly, but it didn’t seem to be necessary anymore. Even after Tanner had nearly slain him, and half of his systems were damaged, such primitive attacks had not been a real danger.
Now, he was stronger than ever.
Walking around a boulder, Delphi found himself confronted by a dozen of his troopers from the convoy, with Cotton Davenport in lead. They looked concerned, and the Kalashnikovs in their hands were poised for combat. The rapid-fires seemed rather bulky and ungainly from the addition of a 30 mm gren launcher under the main barrel, but the man held the big-bore blasters with confident ease.
“We heard a scream, Chief,” Cotton said as a question, glancing around. “Is there trouble?”
“No,” the cyborg replied coolly. “No trouble. I aced a screamwing. Is everything loaded?”
“Yeah, sure,” Davenport answered hesitantly, slowly easing her stance to rest the AK-47 on a broad shoulder. “The boulders are ready to move on your word. A screamwing, you say?”
“Well, it certainly looked like one.” Delphi chuckled, strolling away. “Let’s get inside and load up for another trip, a very long one this time. Weeks, possibly months.”
The group of troopers registered surprise at the pronouncement.
“Months?” Cotton asked. “Shitfire, Chief, we could cross the world in that. Where we going?”
“A place called Front Royal in Virginia,” Delphi said with a frown, starting for the caves. “We’re going to find a certain…cannie by the name of Doc Tanner.” That last part had been off the cuff, but the lie sounded good. “He aced a lot of my friends, and now it’s payback time.”
“Fuckin’ hate cannies,” a trooper growled. Several of the other troopers grimly nodded in agreement. All of them had lost kin to the cooking pots of the stinking cannies, and more than a few of them carried deep scars from viciously fighting the flesh-eating devils.
“Cannies gotta get chilled, that’s the nuking truth,” Cotton agreed wholeheartedly. “You sure this Tanner is at, ah, Fort Royal?”
“Front Royal,” Delphi corrected. “And no, I’m not sure. It’s simply the best place to start.” Then the cyborg made a snap decision. “However, if we don’t find him in Virginia, then we’ll hunt for him elsewhere. Underground.”
“Underground,” Cotton repeated slowly, then glanced at the boulders blocking the entrance to the cave.
“You mean, in some sort of cavern like we have?”
“Oh, much better than this.” Delphi snorted, and started to tell them about the redoubts, but stopped just in time. That knowledge would come later. First, he had to get Tanner, and when he was accepted back into Coldfire, then, and only then, could the cyborg unleash his army of primitives into the mat-trans system and openly declare war on his masters!
They abandoned me, Delphi raged internally. Left me to perish among the primitives as if I was a failed experiment, a mutie with too many legs, or a bioweapon that refused to kill. Well, never again would the cyborg allow others to hold such power over his life!
But first the cyborg would have to creature Tanner. He was the key to everything! Victory, revenge…and salvation.
SUDDENLY THE PLANTS WERE gone in front of the lumbering wag and J.B. hit the brakes, squinting into the night to see if there was more ground ahead or only empty air. Sharp cliffs rose around them in jagged profusion, and for past few miles the low rumble of a waterfall grew steadily louder.
Illuminated by the flickering yellow beam of the sole remaining headlight was a hard, flat scrubland with only a few tufts and clumps of the millet growing sporadically amid the uneven barrens. In the distance, mist ruled the night, and the waterfall could be heard from somewhere nearby.
“Dirt never looked so good.” Ryan exhaled, sitting up straighter in the seat. “This might be a good place to fix the bastard tire.”
“I hear that,” J.B. growled, flexing his cramped fingers. His arms ached from trying to maintain control of the shuddering wag, and his shoulders felt like a solid knot of congealed muscle. “Okay, let us—Son of a bitch!”
Glancing in the sideview mirror, Ryan grimaced at the sight of a dozen solies coming out of the tall millet and into the wan moonlight. Fireblast, he’d never seen anything like it before in his life.
“Wait here,” Ryan commanded, throwing open the door and hopping down to the ground.
Approaching the handful of solies, Ryan armed the AK-47 and skillfully put a single round into each fat mutie. Standing in the chill night air, he warily studied the field of millet for any more of the little bastards.
Then a whistle sounded from the rear of the wag.
“That looks like the last of them,” Mildred said, her ZKR blaster held in a two-handed grip. “Persistent little things, aren’t they?”
“Indeed, madam,” Doc agreed, a hurricane lantern held in one hand and the LeMat in the other. “King Sisyphus was a slugabed in comparison to these arduously diligent solenodons.”
Cocking an eyebrow, Mildred stared at the man in unabashed amusement. “Refresh my memory,” she said. “Exactly what the hell did you teach in school again?”
“English literature, but I was a most voracious reader of, well, everything.”
“I guess so.” She chuckled, shaking her head.
There came the sound of wood scraping against wood, and Ryan looked up to see Jak peering over the plank wall, also holding a lantern and Kalashnikov.
“Solies might be circling,” Jak suggested uneasily. “Catch from side.”
“No, impossible. They’re too stupid for such complex thinking,” Mildred stated firmly, holstering her blaster. “I don’t care how many folds their cerebral cortex may have, the heads are simply too small for them to be intelligent.”
“Runts smart,” the teen insisted, referring to a race of humanoid muties they had encountered once. The underground dwellers had been scarcely three feet tall, but with full human intelligence. The companions survived tangling with the little warriors only because of superior firepower.
“And they were human muties with heads twice the size of these rodents,” Mildred replied. “Or whatever a solenodon technically is. I don’t know what genus, or class, they belong to.”
“Genus, pain. Class, in the arse,” Doc muttered in dark humor, resting the longblaster on a muddy shoulder. The weary companions looked like zombies fresh from the grave, their muddy clothing ripped and splattered with solie blood. All of their boots bore deep scratches from the fat muties, only the anti-landmine steel plates in the U.S. Army footwear saving them from being poisoned by the green venom of the resilient rodents.
“Hey, J.B., ace the engine!” Ryan shouted over a shoulder.
“No prob!” the man answered from the cab. The rumbling diesel died away.
Several minutes passed as Ryan listened closely to the sounds of the night, but the big man could only hear the ticking of the hot engine and the pervasive rustle of the wind-stirred millet.
“All right, that was the last of them,” Ryan declared, easing off the bolt on the Kalashnikov and draping the rapid-fire over a shoulder. “Might as well fix the fragging tire before we go any farther. Jak, stay on guard. Mildred and Doc, rustle everybody up some chow. J.B. and I will…” He frowned, feeling his gut tighten. “Where’s Krysty?”
“Asleep,” Mildred answered quickly. “She’s sleeping in one of the bedrolls. That bullet she took through her hair drained her. She needs to rest.”
“Yeah, let her sleep,” he said with surprising gentleness. “J.B. and I can fix the wag by ourselves.”
“Although we’ll probably wake her anyway with the repairs,” the Armorer said gruffly, walking into the glow of the lantern and wiping his hands on a rag. “There’s a spare tire, but no spare rim, and the one we have is more warped than a boiled boomerang.”
“Any chance you can fix it?” Mildred asked hopefully. “Hammer the rim back into shape?” She had tremendous confidence in John’s ability to repair damn near anything made of metal.
“Good enough for it to hold a seal? No way. If we were back at the redoubt, I could probably do something, but not out here.” J.B. scratched under his hat. “Now I might be able to shift a couple of tires from the back and put them on the front, but that all depends on how many we have left.”
“Why two?” Jak demanded, brushing back his snowy hair. “Only one flat.”
“Because the front tires are totally different from the rear,” J.B. explained patiently. “They’re for steering the cab, while the ones in the flatbed are for supporting the cargo. They don’t turn like the ones up front, and we need a match pair to make the cab steer smoothly. Dark night, the front suspension is banged up enough from our ride through that damn marsh! On top of which, the rear tires are bigger than the others, so we’ll have to trim the damn planks, too.”
“Fair enough,” Jak said in acceptance. “Radiator fixed.”
“Yeah.” J.B. shrugged. “That’s something at least.”
Just then, there came a high-pitched whistling from under the hood and white steam blasted onto the ground under the engine, quickly slowing to a bubbling dribble of hot water.
Casting an angry look at the teen, J.B. tugged his fedora on tighter and tramped toward the cab, muttering nuke-hot curses.
It was dawn before the companions got the Cyclops back under way again. Transferring the tires had been hard work, but the flatbed had built-in jacks for disengaging the locking mechanism of the cab, and the toolboxes had contained a wide assortment of wrenches, hammers and crowbars. This time, J.B.
used a leather belt and some pieces of wood to reinforce the damage hose, with Mildred helping by treating the busted hose like a broken leg. Doing a recce, Doc had located the waterfalls and used the canteens to fill the radiator, plus make a pot of black coffee. The mil brew was strong and bitter, but it banished their exhaustion, at least for a little while. When the work was finally done, everybody had a meal and caught a couple of hours of sleep. Their clothing was filthy, stiff with dried blood, but the companions were awake and rested.
Starting the engine, Ryan listened to the machinery for several minutes before revving the diesel, trying to blow the repair. But the pressure stayed steady, the engine temp keeping well within the operational limits. Satisfied, he shifted into gear and the Mack moved smoothly forward, the replacement tires seeming to work just fine.
With an exhausted J.B. catching some additional sleep in the back, Krysty was riding in the cab. Resting an elbow out the window, the redhead was chewing a stick of hundred-year-old gum from an MRE
pack, seemingly her old self again. A Kalashnikov rested across her lap, and a cannie throwing ax lay on the seat between her and Ryan, along with a canteen of lukewarm coffee.
After some discussion, the companions had decided to try for Two-Son ville in the Zone. There had been no trace of Delphi after the watery marsh, but since the friendly ville was roughly in this direction, it seemed the logical place to go. With the accursed cyborg on the move again, they’d need someplace to use as a base of operations, and they were sure of a friendly reception from Baron O’Connor, as well as Sec Chief Stirling. On the downside, there was no way they had enough juice to reach the ville, but the reserve barrels of diesel in the flatbed would take them most of the way. That was good enough. With luck they could find a ville and trade the war wag for some horses, or buy more juice. Aside from the dried human trophies, the cannies had kept a lot of the personal possessions of their victims. There were boxes of boots, pocket combs, harmonicas and such in the back. Along with several kegs of black powder, a bag of sharpened flints, a box of assorted knives, several axes and a dozen flintlock blasters.
As long as nobody recognized the war wag of the cannies, they were in good shape. Jak had tried to use some shine to remove the painting on the front planks, but it was made of some predark stuff that stubbornly resisted being erased, so the teen had settled on hacking up the giant eye with an ax.
“Mayhap we should call the wag Justice,” Doc said, chuckling. “Because now we are blind.”
“Or the Stygian Witch,” Mildred shot back amiably.
“Singular? Most inappropriate.”
“How about Norad?” Jak suggested, trying to join the conversation. “They blind.”
Mildred dutifully considered that. She had been puzzled hearing that curse for the first time, but it made sense, too, seeing how the North American Air Defense had really dropped the ball in protecting the nation. Blind Norad was one of the most vulgar phrases that existed in the Deathlands. Yeah, it fit, all right, but just seemed too disrespectful to the military personnel who had died standing their posts in Cheyenne Mountain. Their regrettable sin of omission had been paid for a thousand times over in a thundering moment of nuclear fury.
“Okay, what about—” she began when there was a crackle of lightning, a low rumble of thunder, and it stared to rain.
Horrified, the companions darted for cover under tarpaulins and plastic sheets. But after a few minutes, there was no reek of sulfur, and they were delighted to discover it was merely water coming down instead of deadly acid rain. Taking advantage of the storm, they used the tiny bars of complimentary soap that came with the MRE food packs to scrub their clothes while still wearing them, and washed as much of the bloody mud out of their hair as possible. Feeling greatly refreshed, the companions continued the lumbering overland journey in the no-name wag, expertly catching the fresh rain to refill the canteens once more.
“I still like Justice.” Doc gamely tried once more, screwing the cap on a sloshing canteen.
Her sodden array of beaded locks hanging down like a drowned tarantula, Mildred irritably snorted.
“Oh, shut up, ya old coot.”
Slowly the long miles rolled by and eventually the scrubland changed into a pine barrens, the stunted trees becoming larger and growing closer together until forming a thick forest that was impossible for the rig to traverse.
Braking to a halt, the companions waited for the rain to cease, then J.B. used his minisextant to pinpoint their location and check a map. They were very close to the Utah border, pretty much in the middle of nowhere, but he located a predark highway to the south only a couple of miles away. If it still existed, it should take them past the forest and more than halfway to Two-Son ville.
Heading to the south, Ryan soon found the remains of the highway. The gray asphalt was badly cracked, weeds growing out of every crevice, and there were a lot of potholes. But it was still passable and went in the correct direction.
Crossing a granite bridge, Ryan saw the sprawling ruin of a predark city at the bottom of the gorge. A partially melted skyscraper rose above the flattened stores and burned homes, and a lay on its side amid the neat rows of parked civilian cars at a shopping mall. Ryan gave the ruins only a glance. He had seen similar things. When the nuke war came, the titanic explosions annihilated anything near them, but everything else just a little farther away was sent tumbling. Once he’d found an intact iron bridge smack in the middle of a grassy field, the closest water a hundred miles away.
The rad counter on his lapel began to move into the red, and Ryan shifted to a higher gear to leave the vicinity fast, not slowing down until the bridge was far behind them.
Fragrant pine trees grew thick along the ancient highway, a brown carpet of dead nettles so thick on the ground that it sometimes hid the asphalt. There was a lot of wildlife in the area, and Ryan saw several wolves racing through the trees, but then they were gone.
Willow and birch trees began appearing among the stately pines, along with something that resembled oak, and then a new variety of tree came into view.
Climbing on a firing step, Doc grinned, showing his eerily perfect teeth. “Maple trees!” he cried, beaming in pleasure. “Those are maple trees! The same as we had back in Vermont.”
Viewing the trees made the man think of home, and Doc briefly considered asking Ryan to stop so that he could harvest some of the wonderful sap. They had axes and buckets, what else was really needed?
But then he remembered it took hours to gather the sap, after which it had to be thoroughly boiled and then reduced. A full bucket of raw sap yielded only a cup of syrup.
Without a proper thermometer, he’d need some white vinegar to cut the froth in case of overboiling.
Egad, I might as well wish for the moon on a string. And besides, it was the wrong time of year.
“Maple syrup.” Mildred sighed, smacking her lips. “It’s been a long time since I have even thought about pancakes.” Once in a redoubt, she had found an MRE pack claiming to contain pancakes and syrup, but the hard crunchy stuff inside had seemed more fitting to repair busted tank armor than as breakfast fare.
Pancakes were no longer part of her life, any more than traffic jams and cable TV. Gone, and better forgotten.
“Pancakes?” Doc said as if he had never heard the word before. “Waffles, madam! Those are the only proper milieu for maple syrup!”
“Fair enough.” She chuckled. “Shall we stop off at a waffle house for the breakfast special?”
“If you find one that’s open, I’ll pay.”
“Deal!” She laughed.
Lying curled in a corner, J.B. grunted. “Will you two please shut up?” he demanded from under his fedora. “I’m trying to fragging sleep!”
“Of course, John, sorry,” Mildred apologized.
Reclaiming his seat, Doc sighed. “Waffles,” he whispered longingly.
“Pancakes,” Mildred replied softly with a grin.
“Gumbo,” Jak added, lost in his own thoughts of home.
In the cab, Krysty sharply jerked her head to the right as something flashed by in the distance. “Pass me your longeyes, will you, lover?” she asked, leaning out the window.
Keeping a firm grip on the steering wheel, Ryan did so and she extended the telescope to its full length, studying a woody hill on the right side of the highway. Looking in that direction, Ryan could only see the misty forest.
“Something wrong?” he demanded tersely, slowing slightly as the highway began to curve.
“There’s a ville up there,” she said, compacting the antique. “I wonder if…”
Snarling a curse, Ryan savagely slammed on the brakes and desperately downshifted. Bucking hard in response, the Mack tilted sharply and nearly flipped over as the wheels locked, then the tires began sliding freely across the thick layer of pine needles.
For a split second, Krysty saw a thick tree trunk lying across the highway, then they hit and there was only noise and chaos.