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  At a command from the young baron, the townsfolk swarmed to the walls and got the portal open wide enough for the armored transports to squeeze through.

  “Think we’ll beat Pete?” J.B. asked from the gunner’s chair, his fingers tripping the controls for the fully loaded Fifty. In the rear of the UCV were plastic crates full of spare ammo, food, water, grens and a single precious jug of the mutie ivy juice nestled in a thick cushion of green hay.

  “Don’t know for sure,” Ryan admitted, watching as the ville receded into the darkness. “But you can bet live brass that once he hears about Newton, Pete is gonna to charge for Cascade hell-bent for leather.”

  “Good.” Jak grinned, studying his new knife. “Angry enemy, easy chill.”

  “Usually,” Ryan amended. “But not always.”

  The convoy moved forward into the starry night, leaving behind dead friends and solemn promises. But the promise of a new future lay ahead, and there was always tomorrow. Even in the heart of the Deathlands, there was always a tomorrow.

  Chapter Seventeen

  With a low grating noise, a boulder rolled aside, and Baron Kirkland Conway stumbled out of the rough-hewn tunnel and into the night. Close behind him came five armed sec men carrying oil lanterns and heavy backpacks. The fat moon was directly overhead, flooding the box canyon with a cold silver glow. A stout wooden gate closed off the far end of the small canyon, the top frothy with coils of barbed wire.

  “Dark night, that was close!” a bearded sergeant wheezed, leaning against the rough rock wall of the canyon. “I thought that son of a bitch was going to ace us for sure, until you opened that panel in the torture room.”

  “That’s why it was there,” Conway retorted, looking over the canyon to make sure everything was exactly where it should be. Nothing seemed to have been touched since his last visit. The fuel drums were still in place, as well as the distillation unit needed to turn silver into nitric acid for making guncotton, and off to the side were huge canvas bags sewn shut to protect his most valuable treasure. Five fully restored predark motorcycles. They were a gift from Broke-Neck Pete, an advance payment for chilling Roberto Eagleson. Of course, since he’d failed, Pete would want them back, but that wasn’t going to happen.

  “What next, Baron?” a private inquired, hefting his longblaster. Two bazookas stuck out of his backpack like insect antennae.

  Furious, the baron turned on the man. “Next?” he raged. “Next we go after the coldhearts that jacked my ville! My ville! I want to slit the throat of Roberto, and bathe in his blood! That’s what we do next!”

  “What for, sir?” a corporal asked, lowering a canteen and wiping the water from his mouth on a dry sleeve. “We tried for a jack, the trader burned us out, but we escaped. It was just business, nothing personal, eh?”

  With a snarl, Baron Conway pulled the Ingram machine pistol from his belt and fired, the high-velocity 9 mm rounds punching through the startled sec man and ricocheting off the boulder behind him. The water in his stomach mingled with the gush of blood from the hideous wounds, and the corporal toppled over sideways.

  “Everything is personal!” Conway snapped, holstering the smoking blaster. “You there, Private, you’re now a corporal! Get his weapons and backpack. Sergeant, cut out the bikes! Private, check the batteries. And you, defuse the land mines under the gate. I want to be back on the road in an hour!”

  As a cloud covered the moon, the exhausted sec men bristled at the command, but said nothing. Conway was a murdering lunatic, but they had served worse. And until this disaster he had always been a top-notch source for blasters and brass. Besides, everybody served somebody. It only made sense to work for the most vicious dog in the pack.

  “Why so soon, Baron?” the sergeant asked, pulling out a knife and testing the edge.

  “You heard the blast, man!” the baron declared. “Damnation, it almost collapsed the tunnel! There’s probably nothing left of the mansion, so after raping the sluts and torturing any of my sec men unfortunate enough to still be alive, the trader will torch the ville and leave. We’ll have to hurry to catch his trail.”

  The mention of torture did not bother the sec men much. That was just part of the job when you donned the royal black uniform and strapped on a blaster. A gaudy slut named Yurizane had once joked that sec men probably knew more about the innards of people than any healer as they saw them more often. True words.

  “Beg pardon, Baron, but how are we going to take four war wags with a half dozen bikes?” a young sec man asked carefully, trying not to incur the infamous wrath of the noble.

  “With guncotton and poison!” Baron Conway boasted proudly. “We’ll force them into the mud lake and slaughter them like newborns!”

  “Are we going to become traders, sir?” the private asked.

  “Traders?” The baron said the word as if expelling a piece of rotten fruit from his mouth. “No way in hell. We’ll use those war wags to take over another ville, a better ville, with stronger walls, weaker muties, older shine and younger sluts! And the name of the place is Cascade!”

  “Yes, my doomie said that you would renege on our deal!” somebody said loudly, the amplified words booming over the canyon.

  Spinning in horror, the baron and his sec men saw bright lights swelling into existence from the other side of the fence, then the barrier fell forward to crash on the rocky ground.

  Advancing steadily from the blinding light came a small man and a large woman, backed by a dozen crewmen armed with rapidfires. Behind them was the hulking Road Dragon, several delivery vans and a massive steam truck bristling with weaponry.

  “Pete!” Baron Conway smiled disarmingly, spreading his arms wide as if to embrace an old friend. “I was just talking about how you and I were going to—”

  The strident roar of the 12.7 mm chain gun from the Dragon interrupted the baron, the barrage of hot lead making the people jerk around like mad puppets, chunks of their flesh smacking into the cold stone walls. After a few moments, Pete raised a hand and the chain gun stopped firing.

  “Okay, take everything useful,” Pete commanded. “Especially those bikes. They might come in handy later.”

  “We should hit Roberto next,” Helga growled. “Our slat armor can stop his missiles!” The M-60 in her hands visibly radiated waves of heat from the vented barrel.

  “True, but not his laser, my dear,” Pete corrected grimly. Already his mind was shifting components, altering the plans as poison, motorcycles and bazookas were added to the equation. A hundred possibilities came streaming into existence, and the twisted man chose one with the least amount of personal risk. He had taken a wild gamble once and paid a terrible price. The man touched his uncomfortable leather collar. Hellfire, he was still paying that price to this very day! So now expediency was his watchword, covertness his armor, and stealth his sword.

  “Let’s go,” Broke-Neck Pete commanded, heading back to the Road Dragon. “And don’t forget those land mines!”

  A FEW DAYS LATER, the UCV was steadily crashing through a dense forest of bamboo, the other two war wags moving directly behind like fish on a stringer.

  The pale stalks were only a few inches thick, but they grew over fifty feet tall and in wild profusion, closer together than blades of grass. All of the wags were covered with watery sap as if doused with green blood, and the endless snapping of the stalks against the armored fork of the urban combat vehicle was unbelievably loud, rendering conversation inside the war wag flat-out impossible.

  With bits of waxed cloth stuffed into his ears as protection, Ryan was crouched behind the wheel of the UCV, trying to drive in a straight line. However, there was nothing to see, no features of any kind to use as reference. There was only the high bamboo on every side. With no other choice, the Deathlands warrior was depending entirely upon the dashboard compass to keep them going in one direction, and hopefully not curving around to become forever lost in the pale clattering forest.

  After the battle of Newton, Roberto
had been forced to make a brief stop at one of his more remote caches for some desperately needed supplies. During the night, nobody slept, coffee-sub was made by the gallon, and the arc welders worked nonstop. Now, the convoy was repaired, refueled and grimly racing to make up for the lost time.

  The longest delay had been a gamble on the part of Roberto, but one that he deemed absolutely vital to the success of the voyage. Since Ryan and the companions had fought side by side with his people, that meant they were now considered crew, and should reap the full benefits of that exalted status, which included receiving some heavy iron. The UCV was now armed with the spare rocket pod from the Tiger Lily. Recovered with a crashed LAV-25 in the Dakotas, the 6-shot honeycomb fit snugly in the railings on top of the urban combat vehicle, and control wiring clicked together as if designed for easy installation. But then, since the MRL pod and the war wag were both military machines from the same time period, maybe they were intended for each other.

  With the pintail-mounted .50-caliber Remington machine gun set directly between the driver and gunnery seat of the UCV, the rockets could launch in any direction but straight ahead, which was only a minor inconvenience. The additional firepower had been deemed a sensible precaution by everybody. If Broke-Neck Pete was out to stop Roberto from reaching Cascade, the only thing the crew could be sure of was that when the little bastard struck, it would be hard, fast and with everything he owned. Pete was well known for not believing in mercy, and not giving anybody a second chance.

  Just then Ryan saw a brief glimmer of light from between the stalks ahead, and suddenly the UCV exploded into bright daylight. As the tandem engines revved with power, Ryan downshifted and cut a motor to allow the other wags to catch up with them. A few moments later, the vehicles emerged from the bamboo so heavily covered with sap that they appeared to be painted with camou colors.

  “Thank Gaia that’s over!” Krysty exclaimed, yanking the cloth off her ears. “A few more minutes of that noise and I think I would have gone permanently deaf!” Realizing that she was shouting, the woman lowered her voice to a normal level. “Sorry,” she muttered.

  “Hell, I agree!” Ryan snarled, using one hand to remove the cloth plugs. The man worked his jaw a few times to clear his ears. “Gotta admit, though, it’s clever to hide a supply cache in the middle of a bamboo grove.”

  “Nothing grows faster than bamboo,” Doc agreed from the gunner seat, tucking the waxed cloth into a pocket. As a child, the scholar had been trained to never waste anything, and it was a habit now that had saved his life more than once in the Deathlands. “Under the right conditions, the plant can achieve over a foot a day! In less than a week, there won’t be any trace of our passage through that vast, primordial grove!”

  “Nob blad atoll,” J.B. agreed, the words mumbled around a toothbrush. Lowering the window, he gargled and spit outside. “I got to hand it to Roberto, not even the Trader ever had a self-erasing entranceway!”

  “Wonder what Cascade has?” Jak said with a frown, his hands busy sewing shut a bullet hole in the collar of his leather jacket. “How hide entire ville for hundred years?” With all of the razor blades hidden among the metal and feathers, it was dangerous work and even he had to be exceptionally careful.

  “Guess we’ll find out soon enough,” Ryan stated, shifting gears to slow down and maintain position. Now that they were out of the bamboo, War Wag One had assumed the lead again. However, possessing a pair of tandem engines, the UCV was a lot faster than either of the hand-built war wags. The others were hurtling at their absolute top velocity, while the UCV was tooling along at barely half speed.

  “Be mighty nice if Yates could tell us more,” J.B. complained, tilting down his fedora. “But then, I’ve never met a cooperative doomie in my life.”

  “Genius always borders on insanity, John Barrymore,” Doc gently reminded him in a scholarly fashion.

  “When figure out which Yates is, let know,” Jak snorted in disdain, fastidiously continuing the fine needlework.

  Returning to the original directions in the leather journal, Roberto had War Wag One assume the lead, and Ryan moved the UCV to the rear of the convoy, the two sets of radar constantly sweeping the empty landscape for any dangers. But there was only the flat grasslands, marked by occasional islands of trees and scraggly bushes. High overhead, dark storm clouds filled the sky, heat lightning flashing bright in rumbling majesty, but there was no telltale smell of sulfur in the turbulent air to announce the coming of acid rain.

  As the day passed, the companions used the free time to catch up on their sleep and to cook a meal over a small can of fuel in the rear cargo area. Beef jerky soup and pan biscuits, the bread mix coming from the private stores of the trader. Afterward, Ryan briefly stopped the UCV near some bushes, then hurried to rejoin the rest of the convoy. War Wag One and Two both had the luxury of onboard lavs, while the UCV only possessed wide spacious windows. It was the only real drawback of the armored behemoth.

  A few hours later black smoke appeared on the distant horizon. Extending straight up, the plume slammed into the storm clouds, pushing them away, only to have other clouds flow in to the fill the gap. The turbulence churned the atmosphere for miles, making it appear as if the sky above was boiling.

  Maintaining a safe distance from the phenomenon, the people in the convoy could soon see that the smoke was gushing out a large hole in the ground, the surrounding stones cracked and partially melted. Soon, they could hear a low rumble coming from the ground below, and the urban combat vehicle began to shake slightly. As the faint smell of smoke arrived, the vents of the UCV automatically slammed shut and the air recycling system surged into operation.

  “Dark night, an underground coal fire!” J.B. exclaimed, leaning closer to the window. “Never seen one this big before! I’ve heard that some of these are actually from before skydark, been burning for years and years.”

  “Just smoke?” Jak asked in wonder. “Never seen anything like before.”

  “No coal fires in Louisiana?”

  “No coal.”

  “Fair enough.”

  “Hell of a landmark,” Ryan noted, angling away from the scorched earth around the roaring giant. “A nuking blind man couldn’t miss that big bastard.”

  “Wonder if natural,” Jak mused. “Or if Cascadians set?”

  “Why would they do that?” Krysty demanded askance.

  The teen shrugged. “Help find way home.”

  “Out of the mouths of babes and fools.” Doc smiled, toying with the lion’s head of his ebony stick.

  “Come again?” Jak muttered, tilting his head forward so that his snowy hair fell across his face.

  “Ah…babes, fools and stalwart Louisiana warriors!” Doc quickly corrected. “My mistake, Mr. Lauren.”

  Jak nodded. “Better.”

  “Well, at least you didn’t call him Lochinvar again,” Mildred said with a snort.

  Just then the radio came alive.

  “Okay, we’re getting close,” Roberto said over the ceiling speaker, the radio broadcast oddly clear of the usual static of background ionization. The grasslands must be a clear zone, a place where the nukes never fell. “From here we head due east for those mountains. Watch for a railroad bridge crossing a river valley!”

  “Roger,” Scott replied.

  “Better have your people get hard,” Ryan suggested. “This would be the perfect place for Pete to—”

  Suddenly there were tiny flashes of fire from a stand of trees on the horizon, and the radar began wildly beeping, the tones sounding faster every second.

  “Shitfire, those are missiles!” Scott cursed over the radio. “Full reverse! We gotta try to outrun them!”

  “Frag that!” Roberto commanded. “Fire all blasters! Take them out!”

  Instantly the .50-caliber machine gun of War Wag One cut loose, filling the smoky air with streams of copper-jacketed lead. A split moment later, the M-60 machine gun of Two opened fire, yammering away in short bursts as th
e gunners tried to track the incoming warbirds. Grabbing the joystick of the Fifty, J.B. added the firepower of the UCV to the massive outpouring of destruction.

  For several seconds nothing seemed to happen. Then the protective hatches of the big laser dropped and the cylinder swung around, waves of heat visibly rising from the primary reaction chamber. But suddenly there came a tiny puff of gray smoke in the air, followed by the dull thump of an aerial explosion.

  “Got ’em!” Scott cried in triumph.

  “Not yet,” Ryan growled, working the controls of the MRL to center the crosshairs on the monitor on a stand of trees set off by itself. Savagely, he touched the release and there was a low rush from above, then flames washed over the UCV as a rocket launched to streak away, almost too fast to follow.

  The copse of trees became alive with the twinkling firelight of blasters. But where the convoy succeeded, the others failed, and the entire island of trees was violently removed from the landscape.

  “Least know Pete cheap,” Jak stated with conviction.

  “Five or six,” Mildred agreed, removing her ZKR from a blasterport. A lot of folks seemed amazed that the companions were such deadly shots, but there was a perfectly ordinary reason for that. They used their weapons a lot, while most barons and coldhearts never wanted to use brass unless absolutely necessary. The end result of which was that the companions lived and the coldhearts died. Back when she was trying to qualify for the Olympics, the physician spent several hours at the gun range every day for months. One of Ryan’s favorite sayings was that it was better to spend five brass and learn how to make the last one hit, than spend six and end up in the ground.

  “Five or six,” Krysty stated grimly, removing an M-16 rapidfire from another blasterport, and dropping the empty magazine to insert a fresh one. “Pete may be cheap, but he is persistent.”