Hell Road Warriors (Deathlands) Read online

  Ryan nodded. “Good work, Mildred.”

  Mildred beamed. Ryan didn’t hand out praise often. She went to the nearest computer and hit the space bar. The Canadian flag popped up, but other than that the computer responded to nothing she tried. “Without a password I think we’re locked out.”

  Out in the kitchen the oven pinged.

  The map was forgotten as they filed back into the kitchen.

  “If Toronto’s the capital,” J.B. mused, “then it probably got hit.”

  J.B. was probably right, Mildred thought.

  They sat around the kitchen counter as she found a pizza cutter in a drawer. She cut slices and doled out fresh beers all around. Krysty took one bite of the pepperoni and cheese slice and closed her eyes. “Gaia…”

  Conversation ceased as the friends attacked the hot food and cold beer. It wasn’t often that they got to eat their fill of anything. Much less something that good. Ryan spent some time savoring the flavors. “You pulled your weight today, Mildred.”

  “Yeah, well, it isn’t Domino’s.” Mildred spoke through cheeks bulging like a squirrel gathering nuts for winter. “But damn, it’s been a long time.”

  “Indeed.” Doc finished his first slice and nodded. “I was always rather partial to Poppa John’s, myself.”

  Mildred stared over her fourth piece. “When did you get Poppa John’s?”

  “During the time of my unfortunate captivity. Perhaps it was in the Chicago lab… I was particularly enamored of their anchovy and onion pies.” Doc’s eyes grew faraway as he reviewed pain and indignities inflicted upon him over a hundred years earlier. “That is, when the scientists saw fit to share any with me. I fear after my last escape attempt my rations were rather severely reduced in diversity, quality and quantity.”

  Mildred felt her eyes sting. Whenever she felt like she couldn’t take living in this hellish future another second, she reminded herself that Doc’s suffering dwarfed hers. Mildred pushed the plate over. “Have another slice, Doc.”

  “I believe I will try the Hawaiian, thank you, my good Doctor.”

  The pizzas disappeared to the last crumb. Krysty and Mildred weren’t above licking their plates clean. The cans of lager were shaken, turned upside down and sucked for the last bit of foam. Ryan wiped his mouth with the back of his fist. “Someone’s been here. A lot of them. And they’re going to be back. We’ll recce the rest of the redoubt and hopefully avoid a confrontation.”

  Doc sighed. “A shame to have feasted so well, only to regurgitate our repast in some mat-trans only the Fates know where.”

  Ryan admitted it was one bastard sad thought indeed, but there just wasn’t going to be much time for digestion. “Let’s do it.”

  They scouted out the rest of the redoubt. More of the rooms upstairs had been raided. In the second dormitory the beds had been stripped down to the frames. A tool room and a machine shop were bare bones. They came to another room, and J.B. rocked on his heels. “Dark…night.”

  Jak whistled.

  Dark night was right. Ryan shook his head. The barrel-shaped vault looked like another add-on, quick and dirty as Mildred had said. It was an armory. Many of the racks were empty, but a shocking amount of weaponry was still in place. Ryan counted more than a dozen military blasters, the only difference being their plastic furniture was a dark green rather than the usual Deathlands black. Spare mags, bandoliers and crates of ammo were stacked along the walls.

  “Nuke me!” J.B. ran to a rack. “Ryan! Ryan!”

  The one-eyed man ran his hands over the racks of weapons as he walked over to where J.B. stood transfixed. Ryan looked at a little bolt-action rifle with a funny little scope that was set too far forward.

  “Know what that is?” J.B. asked.

  Ryan frowned. The Armorer wasn’t normally the gushing type. But his old friend was a gunsmith of the first order, and the weapon in front of them had detonated his passion. “A blaster?”

  J.B. gave Ryan an offended look. “That is a Steyr Scout longblaster, Tactical version.”

  “Yeah?”

  “It was designed to be the ultimate do-it-all rifle— 7.62 mm, big enough for a good shot to take any game in North America. But look at it!” J.B. handled the rifle with almost erotic enthusiasm. “Unlike most bolts, this detachable mag has a ten rounder.” J.B. flipped the rifle over. “See here? It carries a spare mag in the stock. Here?” He pushed a button. “Cleaning kit in the butt. Here, sidesaddle on the stock holds five ready rounds in these clips. And here?” The fore end of the little rifle split and deployed forward like a praying mantis’s wings. “Bipod.” J.B. snapped the bipod back in place and handed the rifle to Ryan.

  It was light, not much more than six pounds. Ryan eyed the short fluted barrel. “Going to kick some.”

  “Recoil reducing stock,” J.B. said smugly. “And check the sling. Three swivel positions and two straps. One for carrying and one for wrapping your arm through to steady you.”

  Ryan looked at the little scope. “Not much magnification.”

  “It’s 2.5 power.” J.B. nodded. “It’s not a sniper rifle. It’s the weapon of a rifleman, of a scout.”

  Ryan shook his head. The scope was completely forward of the action. “Scope’s too far forward.”

  “It’s supposed to be. Shoulder it.”

  Ryan shouldered the longblaster and instinctively wrapped his arm through the sling. He peered through the scope. It was about a foot from his face, but the image within was crystal clear, and he could still see everything else in front of him.

  J.B. knew Ryan saw it. “You see! That’s what they call long eye relief. It allows you to see your target in the scope, but at the same time you can still see what is going on around you. When you shoot a Scout, you want to keep both eyes open, and that allows you to…” The Armorer trailed off as Ryan turned his single blue eye on him in vague amusement.

  J.B. cleared his throat. “And if the scope ever breaks?” He reached over and flipped up front and rear iron sights. “Back in the day it they said it was one of the fastest, handiest rifles ever designed. Experienced men could bust clay pigeons out of the air with one.”

  Ryan wasn’t sure what a clay pigeon was, but taking a bird in flight with a longblaster was something. He was a keep it simple kind of man. He had to admit everything about the little longblaster made absolute sense, and it felt absolutely right in his hands.

  “One more thing.” J.B. was grinning uncharacteristically. “Look at the muzzle.”

  Ryan looked. It was threaded.

  J.B. reached into the rack and pulled out a factory-fresh black sound-suppressor tube. “I’ll work up some subsonic rounds for you. Keep them in the side carrier. Between that and the tube you got a silent shot whenever you want it.”

  “Sold.” There were three Scouts in the rack. Whoever had been here had probably looked at them and dismissed them at first glance like Ryan had. “I want ten mags on a bandolier. Take the other suppressor tubes. Cannibalize the other scopes and any parts you can think of for spares.”

  “Right. You’ll probably want a slightly longer length of pull. I’ll take a spacer from one of the spares and lengthen it for you.”

  “Just grab it all. You can smith it after the next jump.”

  J.B. festooned himself with rifles and gear.

  They left the armory and followed the corridor, which opened up into a very large room. It was clearly another crude, last-second expansion. Ryan stopped short, and J.B. nearly dropped his load as he bumped into him.

  Huge blast doors dominated the far wall. The most important thing was the vehicle bay off to the side. There were three bays, and two were empty. Ryan could smell gas and see fresh grease in the bays. The last bay was occupied by a Light Armored Vehicle. Ryan took in the 25 mm cannon and the eight giant road wheels.

  The armored vehicle was painted a dark military green and looked like it had just rolled off the factory floor. “You remember, Ryan? When we wagged it up to Seattle in one?
”

  Ryan remembered. “LAV 25.”

  “Nah, this is a LAV III.”

  Ryan didn’t see much difference other than the red maple leaf painted on the prow.

  J.B. was shaking his head, only he wasn’t smiling any more. “Ryan?”

  Ryan was shaking his head, too.

  It was too much. No one would leave this kind of wealth behind. There were only three explanations. One, it was a grotesquely well-baited trap. Two, something horrible was lurking in this Canadian redoubt that they just hadn’t run into yet. Three, and most likely, there was simply too much loot here for whoever had been visiting to carry or wag away, and they would be back. Though that did beg the question, why didn’t they leave anyone to guard it?

  “Ryan?” J.B.’s eyes glittered behind his glasses in pure avarice. “Tell me we’re taking that wag.”

  Jak looked around the Diefenbunker meaningfully and said what everyone was thinking. “Stuff it full,” Jak voted. “Run south.”

  Ryan knew Doc’s vote but he asked anyway. “Doc?”

  Doc sagged with visible relief at the idea of not having to go through the mat-trans. “I believe a cross-country jaunt across Canada might be edifying to both mind and body.”

  “Mildred?”

  “Doc’s right. We’re all tired of jumping. Last few things we jumped into were bad. In a vehicle at least we can see what’s coming. Plus I’m thinking Canada couldn’t have got hit anywhere near as hard as the States. Maybe clean air, clean water.” Mildred’s eyes got faraway like Doc’s sometimes did when he thought of the past. “I remember Ontario being beautiful.”

  Ryan looked to Krysty. “Lover?”

  “I’m going whichever way you’re going, jump or drive.” Krysty ran her eyes up and down Ryan’s long, hard, scarred frame and then smiled at the Canadian Land Force LAV III behind him. “But I’ll tell you something. That wag looks good on you.”

  One of Ryan’s rare smiles crossed his face. The vote was unanimous.

  “J.B., you and me load it and check it. Cannon, coax, top blaster, gren launchers, spare fuel everything. Full war load. Everyone else, food, trade goods and supplies. Blasters, ammo, ration packs.” Ryan nodded at the external cleats and equipment cages. “Load it to the gills. I want to wag out of here within the hour.”

  Chapter Two

  “Clear!” Krysty called. She tracked the security periscope. All the computers were locked down, including those controlling the sec cameras. The Diefenbunker did have several periscopes strategically placed around the facility. “Got some daylight left!” She let go of the periscope’s handles.

  Ryan stood in the commander’s hatch of the LAV behind the pintle-mounted Minimi Squad Automatic Weapon. “Mildred!”

  The physician hit a big red button and the blast doors began grinding open. The two women ran and jumped in the back hatch.

  “Jak! Button her up and take us out!” The LAV’s rear ramp whined up while red light spilled into the vault of the Diefenbunker’s entry bay from the outside. Gears ground as Jak sent the LAV rumbling out into Ontario. The sun wasn’t quite setting yet, but it was a low red ball in the sky. The sky pulsed with sheets of red and green light as if it were on fire. Ryan had seen the Northern Lights before, but not often while the sun was still shining. In the lurid light Ryan saw a plain of low rolling hills broken up by stands of pines. Ryan also saw a war going on about a mile away.

  “Jak! Hold up! J.B., up top!”

  The gunner hatch clanged open and J.B. stood from behind the cannon. Ryan pointed. The Armorer took up his binoculars. Almost a mile ahead the land dropped into a shallow depression. Within it a sizable convoy was pulled up into a defensive circle. Outriders besieged it on every side. Ryan ran his Navy longeye over the encircled wags. He counted about a dozen vehicles of all different descriptions with men firing out of, from underneath and between them. Diefenbunker gear and supplies were strapped to the outsides of the vehicles. Most interesting were the convoy’s two LAVs. It explained the empty bays in the bunker. One was like the one Ryan and his companions were in, and it was burning out of control.

  “Attackers.” J.B. grimaced. “They got some kind of tank buster.”

  Ryan scanned the other LAV. “That one doesn’t have a turret.”

  The Armorer’s eyes went wide. “That, is an engineering-recovery vehicle. Check the crane folded down on the back, the dozer blade and the winch.” J.B. sighed. “How many times could we have used one of those when we were with Trader?”

  More times than Ryan could count. In the Deathlands a vehicle like that was worth its weight in anything, including human life. Ryan noticed it wasn’t attracting much in the way of fire despite the fact a man in the top hatch was firing a machine blaster like the one Ryan stood behind. The one-eyed man scanned the enemy ringing the convoy. Most of them had off-road bikes, but they had laid their bikes down and were firing prone from behind rocks and folds in the earth. Some of the pits were clearly man-made. They had chosen their ambush site well. They had probably blown the LAV before the convoy knew what was happening. The convoy had been surrounded in plain sight of the sanctuary of the Diefenbunker and cut off. Ryan picked out some 4x4 pickup wags pulled far back from the fight. The attackers were numerous, heavily armed and equipped for cross-country speed. Most had painted their faces with skulls, abstract designs or swathes of color. It wasn’t camouflage. It was war paint and designed to terrorize.

  They were coldhearts.

  J.B. pointed. “Watch there.”

  A coldheart rose up with broad length of pipe over his shoulder. A man behind him touched a flame to the fuse in the back and ducked. A rocket hissed out of the pipe and shot out of the tube. The object arced and twisted in flight and exploded into the ground in a blast of orange fire and gray smoke a dozen yards from one of the caravan’s flatbeds.

  J.B. snorted derisively. “Home made. Black powder. Not even spin stabilized. Real close you could take out a wag, even a big one, but nothing like what we’re sitting in. They still got a tank-killer we haven’t seen.”

  The driver’s hatch clanged open. Jak’s head popped up. His eyes were the same color as the sinking sun as he surveyed the scene. “Pickin’ sides?”

  Ryan was about the closest thing to a decent human being that could survive in the Deathlands. He could see there were women in the convoy, and the attackers looked like they were doing what they liked to do best. Nightcreeping and ambushing.

  “Not our fight, and they got something down there that can kill us all.” Ryan shook his head wearily. It was a scene he had seen far too many times in his life. He was reluctant to walk away, but his friends came first. “We’re out of here and— Fireblast!”

  Ryan’s hand crushed the top of J.B.’s fedora as he shoved him back into the turret. Three men had crept up out of a fold in the terrain and a rocket hissed straight at the LAV. Jak slammed the driver’s hatch shut. Ryan dropped down the commander’s hatch as a thunderclap backhanded the LAV. Mildred yipped as the armored war wag rocked violently on its chassis. The brimstone stench of black powder filled the air from the open hatches. The coldhearts howled with bloodlust outside. “Die! Die! Die!”

  “Jak,” Ryan snarled, “we just picked sides!”

  Jak answered by stomping on the gas. The LAV lurched forward. Bullets whanged and spalled off the hull. Ryan rose out of the hatch and leaned into the light machine gun’s stock. He rattled off a 5-round burst into a shrieking, painted face. Dust flew from the chest of a second coldheart as Ryan hammered him down. The last man dropped his rocket tube and turned to run screaming. He was still screaming as he went down beneath the LAV’s wheels.

  Ryan knew he was a bullet magnet standing in the turret, but buttoned up it was very hard to see the enemy coming. “Jak, take us about a thousand yards out! Western side. Get us in range of those pickups!” Jak put a low hill between the LAV and the battle and began sneaking west.

  “J.B.?”

  The Armorer sat in the g
unner’s chair. He’d pushed his fedora firmly on his head and tapped his finger against a small comp screen. “Fire control comp is locked, like inside. Going to have to shoot manual. Jak, get me within three hundred yards!”

  The LAV rolled across the terrain at speed. Jak suddenly drove up a low gradient and parked on the crest of a low hill looking down on the battle. It would be a matter of seconds before they were spotted.

  Ryan called down into the cabin. “Krysty, Mildred, Doc! Out, and keep an eye on our six!”

  The back door lowered and they spilled out, blasters at the ready.

  The turret whined and the seven-foot, fluted cannon barrel dipped as J.B. picked a target. Sitting in the gunner’s seat and looking through the manual aiming optical gradients, he was calculating more than aiming.

  The muzzle of the cannon thudded and spit smoke.

  Five coldhearts surrounding a pickup three hundred yards distant just about crapped their homespun coveralls as the high-explosive round detonated uncomfortably close. “Ten wide! Thirty short!” Ryan called. The turret turned a hairbreadth. The barrel tilted up an even tinier increment. The cannon spit. The coldheart pickup’s hood flew up into the air and the windshield shattered. The man behind the wheel disappeared in a haze of blood and smoke.

  Coldhearts scattered.

  Ryan kept his eye on the big picture as J.B. traversed for targets of opportunity. A coldheart had leaped up from his firing position and was jumping onto his bike. The 25 mm blaster thumped and man and motorcycle burst apart in a cloud of flesh and metal. Ryan nodded as he continued to scan the surroundings. “Nice shot, J.B.”

  A pleased noise drifted up from inside the turret.

  “J.B.!” Jak pointed excitedly at another pickup. Ryan whipped up his Navy longeye for a moment and smiled. The back of the wag contained a pallet of the homemade rockets.

  “Oh yeah!” J.B. enthused.

  Ryan thought he might be enjoying this a little too much. “I make it four hundred yards, J.B.!”

  “Right!” The turret turned. The muzzle of the cannon elevated a few inches then. The blaster thudded and earth flew up in a geyser.