End Program Read online

  “Ricky?” Mildred called. “Where are we heading?”

  “This way,” Ricky said, trying to sound confident. He wished Ryan or J.B. were here. The companions all had their roles, and those guys were leaders. As for Ricky, he was just backup, the guy who held an extra blaster when they needed it, not the guy who made the decisions. But here he was, making decisions that might get people chilled.

  They reached a clearing in the wheat field, like a crop circle, where people had been working. Five people lay dead in that clearing, and as the lead farmer pushed through the wheat curtain to follow he saw the bodies and gasped.

  Two people had been shot in the back of the head and were slumped together on the ground. One more had been shot several times. It was hard to see how many but there was blood on the man’s face and a vacant expression in his open eyes. The other two looked human, but Ricky realized they weren’t—they were some kind of mechanicals, human in shape and size and dress, but beneath their clothes their skin was sleek metal. One was missing its head.

  The lead farmer scrambled over to the man with the vacant eyes. “Lionel? What happened?”

  The man with the vacant eyes said nothing, just a bubble of blood popping between his pursed lips.

  Ricky looked frantically around, searching for somewhere to hide or to get away. Up ahead, he spotted a great metal structure towering above the golden wheat. The thing looked like a tank or a war wag, great treads running along its side, but set at an angle, not as wheels but as a kind of conveyor belt. Ricky whistled as he took it in, wondering what the machine did. Some kind of processing unit, he guessed. The thing idled now, unused.

  He turned back to the farmer, who still crouched over the voiceless Lionel. The others were through the clearing now, watching solemnly. “He’s dead, man,” Ricky said.

  The bearded farmer looked up at Ricky, an expression of barely endurable pain on his face. “He’s my cousin,” he said. “Three months older than—” He stopped, choking back tears, and one of the women in the group trotted forward and put her arm on his, whispering words of consolation.

  “All dead if stay,” Jak reminded the group as he shifted his position under Krysty. She was out of it, her head rolling about on her shoulders, her eyelids flickering between consciousness and sleep.

  “Jak’s right,” Mildred said. “We’ve got to keep moving. I know it’s hard, but I guess your cousin wouldn’t want you to be dead just because he is.”

  The bearded farmer nodded grimly. “I want to bury him.”

  “No time,” Mildred said in a firm tone.

  They ran on, scrambling past the idling hunk of machinery that dominated the wheat field, crossing a drainage ditch that ran parallel.

  * * *

  J.B. AND DOC ran deeper into the fields, regularly checking over their shoulders to make sure they were not being followed. They did not have an ultimate destination in mind just yet—all they knew was that to keep running was to stay alive.

  Behind them, the barn continued to burn, its skeletal wreckage billowing dark smoke as the fire tore through whatever remained. Had they been able to hear, Doc and J.B. might have heard the sound of revving engines as a few of the bikers began to struggle back to consciousness and try their bikes, but for the most part the only sound was the tick-tick-tick of fire tongues licking at everything they could reach.

  * * *

  RYAN TOOK DEEP breaths as he raced through the field, batting aside stalks of wheat as he chased after his allies. Behind him, the drone of the bike engines continued relentlessly.

  Five bikes were still active after Ryan’s assault. Three of them raced to the farmhouse inferno, while the other two bumped off the track and began to tear through the fields, running at speed over the bumpy terrain, searching for stragglers.

  Ryan glanced back over his shoulder, heard the engines getting closer. They weren’t on him yet. He still had time if he acted swiftly.

  Ryan ducked, almost throwing himself at the ground, and rolled until he was in a low crouch facing the direction he had come from. He had the SIG Sauer in his hands in a second. It was hard to see the bikers—they were close, no doubt, but the wheat was thick and the sound of their engines was disorienting, could come from any of three or four different places.

  Ryan turned his head slowly, scanning the field. There was a dead body not a dozen paces from where he lay, a farmhand, a young woman in a ragged summer dress—now sporting a sickle at the top of her spine. Ryan continued to search, spotted movement and focused with his artificial eye.

  The eye magnified and enhanced the scene. A moment before, all Ryan could make out was a dark blur moving among the golden stalks. With the eye’s capabilities, he could now make out the figures, two of them, riding parallel to him, twenty feet from his hiding place among the crops.

  One of the bikers wore a strap of grens over his chest and had a metal limb in place of his left arm, a mechanical monstrosity as thick as a child’s torso. The mechanical arm stretched right up to his shoulder, where threads of metal lashed farther up like a spiderweb, threading under his skin right up through the corded muscles of his neck. The other rider wore a visor over his face that covered his eyes and hung down over his mouth in a grille. The eyepiece glowed with amber light as he scanned the field, feeding him information.

  Ryan raised the SIG Sauer, timing the shots in his head to ensure he could take out both men. Two figures—no, three...four...ten... The image blurred before him and suddenly he found himself reeling with the sense of motion, a mirage across his vision as he tried to take the shot.

  Compromised, Ryan eased his finger from the trigger and ducked lower to the ground, closing his eyes. His vision kept racing even after that, and for a moment Ryan had a strange sense of seasickness as motion continued to flicker past his senses even though he was still.

  Twenty feet away, the bikes roared past, missing Ryan by the slimmest of margins, bumping past the female farmhand with the protruding sickle.

  * * *

  “LIVE ONES UP AHEAD,” the biker with the visor shouted, raising his hand and pointing.

  His companion with the metal arm smiled, a nasty slice of teeth in his scarred and beaten face. “I see them, Rusty. Let’s finish them.”

  The bikes tore through the field, chasing after the group of survivors, oblivious to Ryan’s fallen figure hidden in the tall wheat.

  * * *

  THE RESCUED FARMERS continued to follow Ricky through the field along with Mildred, Krysty and Jak. Some distance away, flames licked at the edge of the field. They would not have long to get out of there.

  The heads of the riders bobbed up over the tall wheat like flotsam cresting an ocean wave. “They’re getting closer,” Mildred said as she dared a glance over her shoulder.

  “Keep going,” Ricky said, making a decision. He turned back.

  There was no time to argue. The companions survived on trust—trust in each other’s abilities and their own. As their newest member, Ricky could be unpredictable, but Mildred had seen him hold his own against incredible odds.

  “You heard him,” Mildred said to the others. “Keep moving! Get to the edge of the field.”

  * * *

  AS MILDRED DIRECTED the survivors, Ricky scampered back to the hunk of machinery he had seen dominating the field. He didn’t know what it was—some kind of harvester maybe—but he hoped it could provide the shelter he needed to set an ambush.

  The bikes hurried on, bumping over the rough terrain, struggling to gain purchase as they dipped and bobbed over the ground. The bikes were durable, but they had not been designed for this kind of riding. The tires slipped and the terrain seemed to be fighting them at every turn.

  * * *

  RYAN LAY ON his back, taking deep breaths. He felt sick. Reluctantly, he opened his eyes, winced as he saw the b
right blue sky above.

  “What the hell just happened?” Ryan whispered.

  It could be some side effect of the heat. He had gotten pretty close to that fire when he had picked off the approaching bikers, doubtlessly inhaled smoke as he waited there. Smoke inhalation? He felt light-headed, that was true. It all kind of made sense.

  But he had missed the shot. He sat up, looking down the lines of wheat, trying to locate the bikers. His head was still reeling; it wasn’t good sitting up. For now, all Ryan could do was hope Ricky had gotten the others to safety.

  * * *

  RICKY WAS BACK at the hunk of machinery that loomed amid the crops. Up close he could see it was a static harvester, the kind you needed to feed with crops that you brought to it. It had four huge wheels set at its corners though, and Ricky wondered if maybe he could get it moving and use it to barge the bikers out of the field. No, there wouldn’t be time for that.

  The two bikers were really close now. Only thirty yards remained between them and Ricky. He slipped behind the harvester and pulled his De Lisle carbine from its strap across his back. The blaster used .45 ACP ammo, and Ricky made sure that the magazine was in place and secure. Then, with the towering harvester as cover, Ricky began to fire, targeting the closest of the bobbing heads that appeared over the line of golden wheat.

  Shots cut through the air, and the lead biker—visor over his face—ducked lower to the crossbar and began to weave. “We’re under attack!” he warned his companion.

  Both men gunned their engines, urging more speed from them as they tried to find their latest attacker.

  Ricky continued firing. There was no point in shooting at both—that just split his target and made it less certain he would hit either, so he aimed for the first, sending a burst of rapid fire at the figure. He gained confidence as the man went down, disappearing behind the curtain of wheat, accompanied by the sound of his engine suddenly hitting a higher pitch as he lost balance and the wheels lost traction.

  The second rider was still coming, bearing down low to the frame of his bike so that he could hardly be seen above the tall stalks of wheat. Ricky was keenly aware that the inferno ravaging parts of the field was getting closer, and he cursed himself into action, waiting for the biker to reappear.

  Suddenly, there was a flash from the area where Ricky was looking and a projectile raced through the air toward him. There was no time to process what it was—a rocket maybe or a shell? Ricky leaped, diving back behind the harvester even as the blast hit.

  The harvester shook as the projectile impacted, and Ricky found himself knocked three steps forward from the aftershock. He recovered immediately, bringing the De Lisle around and searching desperately for the last assailant.

  For a moment: nothing.

  Then he saw a flash of black as the biker’s head whizzed between a gap in the wheat, enough that Ricky could follow his path.

  Ricky waited, his finger on the trigger, watching for another hint of the biker’s movement. This close he could smell him coming, the distillery reek of the bike’s alcohol engine.

  He fired almost before he had consciously spotted the biker, then drew back as the biker fired something in his direction. He saw it this time, the familiar pineapple-shape of the projectile—a hand gren—not thrown but launched from something the biker held in his left hand.

  The gren butted against the ground with a boom of explosive. Ricky was already scrambling, running backward.

  The biker followed, reloading the strange attachment that took the place of his arm. He had four homemade grens kept on a strap across his chest. That wasn’t the limit of his armament—two blasters were strapped to the back of the bike, a stubby shotgun with abbreviated barrel and a modified Smith & Wesson Sigma with no trigger guard.

  The biker pulled to a halt, letting the engine idle a moment while he reloaded his mechanical arm cannon, peering through the wheat to catch a glimpse of his target. He saw him a moment later, Ricky’s adolescent figure scrambling away on swift legs. The biker laughed. “Legs’re no match for wheels,” he said, sneering.

  Then he revved the engine again, released the brake and powered toward Ricky. He was seven seconds away...six...five. The biker snatched the shotgun from its saddle strap and brought it around to take a shot on the fly, framing Ricky’s back in his sights.

  But before the biker could squeeze the trigger, the bike dipped and suddenly he was reeling, losing balance as he went caroming into the drainage ditch that ran parallel to the harvester. Ricky had been ready for that. The biker’s shotgun went off as he lost control, sending a burst of buckshot uselessly into the dirt.

  Ricky turned and brought the De Lisle around, taking his time to get the aim right. The blaster fired, sending .45-caliber death into the biker’s chest, drilling a second shot into his face.

  Ricky stood over the drainage ditch a moment, watching the man die as the bike’s engine continued to whine in protest, wheels struggling against the muddy sides of the ditch.

  Then he hurried away, leaving the cyborg rider to die alone.

  Chapter Nineteen

  Ryan caught up with Ricky’s group a mile out from the farm’s edge. The youth had encouraged everyone to keep moving, but they were slow and tired and the ground was too rugged to make good progress. Ryan found them as they ascended a dirt wall that ran on the far side of an irrigation ditch that had dried up some time before. The lead farmer—Trevor—explained that he and his neighbors, the Dodsons, had shared this border and had built this ditch to water their crops. Something had happened recently though to change that, but Trevor remained quiet as to what.

  Ryan looked exhausted when he caught up to the group.

  “What happened back there?” Mildred asked.

  Ryan shook his head. “Took out as many as I could,” he said evasively. “I saw that you people chilled the others.”

  “Ricky did that,” Mildred told him. “The kid’s a one-man war zone when he needs to be.”

  Ryan nodded grimly.

  As they continued the trek away from the burning fields, Ryan checked on Krysty while Mildred asked about J.B. and Doc.

  “Any sign of them?”

  Ryan grimaced. “I couldn’t go back to check. It was too dangerous by then,” he admitted. “We’ll start leaving them a trail and hope they can catch up with us. If not, we’ll come back when the way is clear.”

  “Hope.” Mildred repeated the word like a curse. “Seems that’s sometimes all we have.”

  “It’s all any of us have,” Ryan told her with a fixed expression.

  The black plume of smoke would be visible from miles away. It wouldn’t do to stay here now, not with so many casualties on the other side.

  With Ricky and Jak moving ahead to scout for danger, Ryan led the rest of the group out into the wilderness, following but remaining parallel to a road leading from the farm, away from the burning fields. The land here was ashy, like the aftermath of a volcano, and the companions could not help but notice that it appeared unnatural.

  Krysty still looked exhausted, and she paled as they trekked through the ashy ground.

  “Something bad happened here,” she told the others.

  “Bikers,” Trevor the farmer said grimly.

  Fire was the weapon of the bike gang—no, not a gang, Ryan corrected—an army. An army sent out to destroy everything that had been done to make life bearable in this remote corner of the Deathlands.

  It was clear that Trevor already knew, but for whatever reason he had tried to cling on to his own little corner of Hell, even as the gang circled his property, systematically destroying everything around it.

  Mildred helped Krysty to walk, but she had mostly regained her strength by now. She just looked tired and washed-out.

  Two of the locals complained about leaving their home an
d possessions behind, argued about returning now if the bikers had gone—which was a very big if—but the others quieted them. They had already lost everything in the fire, including many of their own. Farmhands lay dead in the fields, each chilled by a single bullet to the back of the head, and the robots who assisted them had been destroyed. Arguing now would only put the survivors in more danger. Ryan let them settle their differences among themselves, and he asked Mildred to give each survivor a quick medical checkup while they remained on the move. Ryan didn’t want to argue with the locals, didn’t want to argue with anyone. He had lost it back there, with the bike gang bearing down on him, and he had been lucky to survive.

  A girl had died in the farmhouse, weeks shy of becoming a teenager. The group of farmers wanted to hold a vigil for her while they were still in sight of the farm. While it would slow them, Ryan had lost a son too, albeit under different circumstances. He was tough and battle hardened, but he would not be heartless enough to tell parents not to mourn the child. He urged them to move swiftly and say their goodbyes on the road.

  “Soon as we get the chance, we move away from this track and find ourselves some shelter, a place we can protect,” Ryan told everyone. “You folks can make new lives, but only if you still have lives to make.”

  The ginger-haired farmer with the goatee beard nodded solemnly at that. “Wise advice, friend,” he said. “I’m Trevor. You have a name you’d care to share?”

  “Ryan,” he answered, and he took the man’s offered hand, shaking it firmly. Trevor had the strong grip of an outdoorsman, someone used to working the land with his bare hands. “You know of a place around here where we can go?”

  “There’s a ville twenty-five...mebbe thirty miles from here,” the farmer replied. “Place goes by the name of Heartsville. We trade with them—or we used to, I guess that life’s over now.”

  Ryan nodded. “Guess it is.”

  “They’re fortified,” Trevor explained. “Got walls and some old military hardware. Big trading post like that needs it, ya know?”