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  Moving fast, Jak and Krysty scrambled from the van. Ripping off their shirts, they brushed aside the carpeting of nails and broken pieces of glass. A shadow moved on a rooftop, and Doc stitched it with his rapid-fire. A window shutter eased slowly open, and J.B. violently slammed it closed with a blast from the Atchisson. However, the weapon was starting to feel light. He was almost out of shells.

  Just then, there was a clatter of hoofs. Charging around a corner, a sec man appeared, riding a horse and brandishing a rapid-fire.

  Swinging the massive longblaster around, Ryan shot the horse, and the rider went flying to hit the street with a sickening crunch. He tumbled along for several yards, his bones audibly breaking.

  “That was a blaster from our bikes!” Krysty snarled, knotting the torn shirt under her breasts before climbing back into the van. “If the sec men are coming to aid the ville people, we’re outmanned and outgunned.”

  “Not yet,” Ryan whispered tersely, aiming and firing.

  The longblaster boomed, and the alarm bell instantly stopped ringing.

  “Mildred, charge the front gate!” the one-eyed man commanded. “Doc, blow us an exit. Everybody else, hammer the top of the wall! Keep those sec men too bastard busy to try and stop us!”

  Throwing the van into gear, Mildred stomped on the pedal, and the wag surged forward. Giving a wide berth to the dead horse, the woman then stayed in the middle of the street to give Doc a stable firing platform. They would have only one chance, and if it failed, they wouldn’t leave this place alive.

  “Don’t miss, Theo!” Mildred shouted, both hands clenched on the steering wheel. Slowly, the speedometer climbed ever higher, the huts and shacks passing in a blur.

  “Cover your eyes!” Doc replied, wiggling forward between the two front seats and raising his rapid-fire.

  As Mildred and J.B. shielded their faces, Doc looked away himself before spraying the windshield with the 5.56-mm rounds. The safety glass resisted for only a split second, then shattered into a million pieces. As the tiny squares fell away, the old man took careful aim, preparing to fire the M-203 gren launcher.

  Up ahead, ville people and sec men were doing something at the sandbag nest. Beyond that was the front gate of the ville.

  Ignoring the people, Doc concentrated on the gate. It was an imposing barrier of railroad ties, bound with iron straps and thick steel chains. Off to the side was the predark generator rigged to a system of pulleys to haul the ponderous mass aside.

  Even as Doc registered the fact, he saw a sec man slash the ropes attached to the pulleys with a machete. Grinning in triumph, the sec man sprinted away, his other hand clutching the spark plugs for the gasoline engine.

  As the cargo van hurtled toward the gate, the companions raked the men at the sandbag nest with their assorted weapons, spending brass like it grew on trees. The sec men and ville men tumbled away in bloody ruination, their Molotovs crashing down beside them to set the wounded and the dying on fire.

  Pressing his legs against the front seats, Doc tried to sway in rhythm with the vehicle as he took careful aim and fired. But as the 40-mm gren launcher gave a hollow thump, the man instantly knew that the shell was a reload. If the bonemen had replaced the wad of C-4 plastic explosives in the warhead with black powder, the shell wouldn’t have anywhere near enough power to—

  Slamming onto the upper hinge of the gate, the U.S. Army shell detonated like the wrath of God, spraying out chunks of broken iron. With a high-pitched screech of twisting metal, the shuddering door began to tilt, the remaining hinge completely unable to handle the colossal weight alone. It snapped, and in slow majesty, the gate toppled over to slam onto the bedrock outside the ville, the crash sounding like a nuclear explosion.

  “Hold on!” Mildred shouted, bracing for the impact.

  At full speed, the armored van rammed into the quivering gate, careening off the wooden beams and shoving them slightly forward. Loudly grinding, the gate rotated and the van erupted into the night.

  “Armored outside, not inside.” Jak laughed, releasing his death grip on the side door.

  Charging into the darkness, Mildred squinted to try to see where the slab of bedrock stopped and the river began. Unable to do so, the physician took a wild guess and turned sharply to the right, her heart beating wildly.

  As cold water sprayed over the cargo van, Mildred quickly turned farther away from the white-water torrent.

  “Now what?” she shouted over the rushing wind.

  “Follow this for a while,” Ryan yelled back. “That’ll kill our scent in case the sec men have any hunting dogs!”

  “And then?” Mildred asked, trying not to look at the engine temperature gauge. It was fast moving into the danger zone, and the oil pressure was dropping.

  “Then we wait for them to come to us,” J.B. told her, thumbing a spare round into the hot Atchisson.

  With a crackle, the headlight winked out, and the companions raced onward in near total darkness, guided only by the sounds of the river.

  Chapter Twelve

  “Come now, get those nuking bags into position if you want to live through the night!” Dunbar bellowed.

  Moving in a steady hand-over-hand, a huge crowd of ville people were relaying the sandbags from the fire-base to the gaping hole in the ville wall. The makeshift barrier was already four feet high, but only halfway across the opening.

  A dozen armed sec men stood on the wall carrying longblasters and crossbows, while a score more clustered around the fallen gate, looking out into the night for any movement. An owl hooted in a tree, and a sec man fired from the hip. A stingwing flew by overhead, and in the far distance, a wendigo roared. Everybody tightened their grips on their blasters, and the people on the ground moved a little closer to the wall.

  “Mother always said we needed a third hinge,” the baron muttered, hugging the heavy bearskin robe draped over his shoulders. Standing off to the side, the boy stayed out of the way while the adults rushed about on grim tasks. “It would appear she was right, as usual, brother.”

  “That doesn’t help much at the moment!” Dunbar snarled, trying not to look at the blood splattered on the inside of the wall. Some of it was still damp, and a boot lay nearby with a foot still inside.

  “Nothing could help much, except the heads of the outlanders stacked in a nice pile for me to piss on,” the baron agreed with a hateful sneer. “Have the blacksmith start heating up the forge. We repair those hinges tonight. I want the gate hauled back in place by dawn!”

  “Brother, is that even possible?” Dunbar asked in a whisper.

  “We have enough horses and tack. Besides, I decree that it is not impossible,” the baron commanded, just for a moment sounding exactly like their father. “Now, tell me the bad news, brother. How many people did we lose tonight?”

  “At least twenty,” Dunbar answered, his face dark with shadows. “But we’re still finding them inside houses, and on the rooftops.” He grunted. “Must have been one nuke storm of a fight.”

  It seemed incredible that so many people could have been aced in such a short time. “Did we get any of them?”

  “Unknown, Baron, but my guess would be no. I heard them fight Big Joe, and they’re pure chilling machines.”

  “And you willingly brought them into my ville,” the baron said softly, a warm breeze from the desert ruffling his loose uniform.

  That caught Dunbar off guard, but before he could reply a group of panting sec men arrived carrying a canvas bundle. Placing it reverently on the street, they folded back the cloth to expose the disassembled Gatling gun found in one of the abandoned sidecars. The seven barrels gleamed with oil, and the sight of the colossal rapid-fire eased some of the fear in the faces of the ville people and the sec men.

  “Check for traps and blocked barrels!” Dunbar ordered. “What kind of brass does she take?”

  “Thirty-eight, sir!” a sec man replied.

  “Don’t have much of that caliber in the armory,” the baron
said unhappily, pulling his blaster and dumping out the .38 brass into a palm. “Better start scavenging for what we can find.”

  “No need, Baron. There was a container of brass with it in the sidecar!” a sec woman answered, placing a plastic box on the ground with a hard thump.

  A container of brass. The baron had never heard of such wealth before. “Better check to make sure it’s live and not packed with dirt,” he commanded.

  “Or plas-ex,” Dunbar warned. “You there, Shamus! Take a couple of random shells apart to check inside.”

  Pulling a knife, the sec man checked the brass on the spot, his hands moving carefully in the bluish light of the alcohol lanterns. Impatiently, everybody waited for the results.

  “They’re live, Chief!” he called out happily, inspecting the dark gray gunpowder in his palm.

  Smiling broadly, Dunbar let out the breath he had been holding. “Excellent! Get the thing put back together, and then we’ll run a couple of test shots before trying it at full speed.”

  “But the waste of brass…” A man gasped in horror.

  “We have to know the Gatling works before we can depend upon it to protect the ville,” the baron replied in a clear, loud voice for everyone to hear over their assorted work. “Gotta walk before you can run, eh?”

  A couple of the wrinklies merely grunted at the oblivious platitude, but everybody else slowly nodded in agreement. Wise, indeed, was their baron.

  “Okay, brother, now tell me the bad news.” The baron sighed, thumbing the rounds back into his blaster. “I know my people well. How many of the sec men jumped ship to chase after the outlanders?”

  “A dozen, sir, on their own horses,” Dunbar quickly added in their defense. “But they took a nuke load of brass and blasters from those saddlebags.”

  “Chill them with their own brass. I like the irony,” the baron said. “And since I don’t see Lieutenant Fenton anywhere…”

  “Yes, sir, he’s leading the hunting party.”

  “I wish them well,” the baron said. “And so should you.”

  “Sir?” Dunbar asked curiously.

  “Because if they’re not back by dawn, then I’m sending you after the coldhearts alone,” the baron said in a strained voice. “And this time, dear brother, you’re not coming back inside without their heads in a basket.”

  SPEEDING ALONG the edge of the river, the rattling cargo van moved under the canopy of the apple orchard just as the dashboard indicators turned bright red.

  “That’s it, we’re dead,” Mildred stated, as the over-heating engine sputtered and went silent. Throwing the transmission into Neutral, the woman steered the wag into a small clearing and braked to a halt.

  “Good work,” Ryan said, studying the lay of the forest. “Didn’t think it would get us this far after that bastard crash.”

  “Millie’s one of the best drivers I’ve ever met,” J.B. boasted, resting the Atchisson on the cracked vinyl of the dashboard. “How’s the arm?”

  “Been better,” Mildred admitted, gingerly probing the bloody cloth covering the wound.

  Wordlessly, Krysty passed up the new med bag, and the physician scowled at the meager collection of items, then got to work. Exposing the wound, she cleaned the area thoroughly with shine before wrapping it with a strip of clean cloth. She grunted as the bandage tightened, then sighed as the trickle of blood stopped flowing.

  “Well, we’re Spam in a can if we stay inside this thing,” Ryan dourly noted. “Everybody grab spare brass and take cover in the trees. J.B., see if there’s anything you can do to get us mobile again. Jak, start choosing what blasters and brass to keep, then toss the rest outside. It’s too crowded in here to fight properly, and lightening this wag will make the fuel go further.”

  “Dropping blasters like ballast.” The teenager snorted. “Never thought see day.”

  “Needs drive as the devil must,” Doc replied cryptically, then there was a wet smack and the van shook slightly.

  Turning to look out her window, Mildred found herself staring directly into the open mouth of a sucking flapjack, the translucent mutie wiggling and writhing across the iron bars covering the broken window as it struggled to reach the woman.

  Recoiling in disgust, Mildred felt somebody grab her by the collar and haul her roughly to the floor. She hit in a sprawl and looked up to see a semitransparent pseudopod coming through the air vent to probe the blood smeared on the vinyl seat. Son of a bitch!

  As Mildred fumbled for her blaster, Doc released her collar and triggered a short burst from his rapid-fire. The muzzle-flash seemed to fill the van, and the flapjack was thrown off the protective grid.

  Rushing outside, J.B. squinted in the darkness, then fired the Atchisson. The roar of the shotgun shook the trees, and the mutie wriggling on the ground died horribly. Oddly, the trees kept rustling, and another blob dropped onto a pile of leaves.

  “Nest!” Jak snarled, pulling both blasters

  “Light ’em up!” Ryan shouted, blazing away with his blaster.

  A mutie thumped onto the roof of the van, landing amid the cluster of arrows still there. With a snarl, J.B. fired and blew the thing into pieces, a gelatinous rain flying back into the apple trees.

  Her hair waving and flexing, Krysty shot a blob on a tree stump, then another flapjack landed on her barrel. The creature instantly began to sizzle from the hot metal and jumped off again. Krysty put a short burst into the horrible thing, then stomped on the remains with a boot.

  Two muties smacked into the earth alongside Doc, and he shot one, then kicked the other. It hit a tree trunk and stayed there, undamaged and pulsating. Pulling the trigger on his rapid-fire, Doc cursed when the weapon jammed. Launching itself into the air, the mutie flew toward the man, and Jak sent it to hell with his blasters.

  Tingling with adrenaline, the companions listened for any more movement in the leaves, but the apple trees seemed deserted. On a hunch, Krysty swept the treetops with a long burst from her rapid-fire, and two more flapjacks smacked onto the ground. One of them a pulpy oozing mess, the other transparent mutie very much alive. Wriggling along, it scooted under the van.

  “Nice try,” J.B. snarled, shoving the sawed-off into the darkness and cutting loose with both barrels. The double discharge illuminated the undercarriage in hellish relief. However, the nimble flapjack escaped unharmed out the other side, only to encounter Doc and his machete. The sharp blade cut the creature neatly in two, and both pieces started moving toward the man. Scrambling to get clear, Doc tripped over an exposed root and fell into the loose leaves. Instantly, Mildred appeared with the AK-47 to hammer the inhuman mutie, blowing its halves apart at point-blank range.

  “My sincere thanks,” Doc rumbled, getting back on his feet. “It would seem that the dark goddess Luna does not favor me with her good graces this night.”

  “Had to pay you back for yanking me out of the driver’s seat,” Mildred replied.

  “Sorry if I was too rough, madam.”

  “Ha! Under similar circumstances, feel free to throw me on my ass anytime.”

  “Wouldn’t that make J.B. jealous?” Doc asked, trying not to smile.

  “Crazy old coot.” Mildred snorted, then playfully punched the man on the arm.

  Levering a fresh round into his longblaster, Ryan looked about the clearing until finding the distant lights of Delta ville. There was a great deal of activity near the front gate, but nobody seemed to be coming after them.

  “Mutie shit,” Jak drawled, his hair ruffling in the breeze. “They come.”

  “Agreed,” Ryan said, taking a position near a tree and settling down amid the tangle of exposed roots. Now he had an excellent view of the countryside, from the river to the farmlands past the ville. “They’ll use horses to be quiet, at least ten sec men, mebbe a few more, just to help one another feel brave.”

  “Well, we did shoot up their ville,” Krysty reminded him. “The fools. All we wanted was to leave in peace! Now we’ve lost almost everything
! The bikes, the Gatling, our horses…”

  “Still got some brass and our asses,” Ryan retorted, placing the Marlin to the side and drawing his handblaster. Cracking open the cylinder, he started taking out the spent brass to reload. “Mebbe even wheels if J.B. can patch the engine.”

  The hood of the wag was raised, and J.B. was bent at the waist, fiddling with the machinery. A low, steady stream of metallic bangs and profanity could be heard.

  “Sounds promising,” Doc noted.

  “No, it’s dead,” J.B. said, stepping back to wipe his hands clean on a rag. “The hoses burst when the radiator overheated. Without a spare, or a roll of duck tape, there’s nothing I can do.”

  “Duct tape,” Mildred corrected, feeling very vulnerable in the dark night in spite of the rapid-fire in her hands. High overhead, the storm clouds rumbled softly, and lightning flashed in the distance. “Okay, what do we do, try to cross the river?”

  “That would be tantamount to suicide, madam,” Doc stated, working the arming bolt of his rapid-fire to clear the jam from the ejector port. The bent shell casing finally came free to spin away in the darkness.

  “Not seen worse,” Jak agreed, glancing in the direction of the turbulent waterway. The albino teen couldn’t see it through the trees and bushes, but the power of the river could be felt as a low vibration through his boots.

  “Which leaves us with only one choice,” Ryan stated, closing the blaster and tucking it back into the holster. “J.B., have you got any string?”

  “Way ahead of you, old buddy,” the man replied, unraveling a ball of twine recovered from the Boneyard. “I’d been planning on soaking this in black powder and shine to make some fuse, but now…”

  “Wind chimes?”

  “Bet your ass.”

  “Get razor, people, they’re coming,” Krysty whispered.

  Moving fast, everybody went to the van and began stuffing extra brass into their pockets.

  “ARE YOU SURE?” Fenton asked, cocking back the hammer on his Webley .44 blaster, a gift from Petrov.