Desert Kings (25 page)

The road turned abruptly to the right, and the one-eyed man yanked the wheel hard to keep from going over the edge of a cliff. The tires squealed in protest, the flatbed fishtailing out to smash into the low wall of loose boulders that served as a safety fence. The rear of the wag rebounded as the impact sent a massive stone rolling for several feet, and then they dropped out of sight.

Gaining the roadway once more, Ryan frowned to see that they were running parallel to a deep chasm. He listened for the boulders to hit bottom, but there wasn’t a sound. Only a soft whispering wind.

“Dark night, that must be bastard deep,” J.B. observed sourly, craning his neck for a better look. “Better move off this quick and get us some combat room, just in case that LAV finds us a second time.”

“No need,” Ryan declared, shifting to a lower gear. The transmission stuck, and he had to pump the clutch and shake the shift to get the grinding gears to finally engage.

Squinting through his glasses, J.B. frowned then broke into a ragged grin. Less than a mile up ahead was a thin black line extending across the chasm.

“Hot damn, a bridge!” J.B. cried in delight. “Now we’re cooking with microwaves!”

Shifting gears once more, Ryan almost smiled at the twentieth-century expression. J.B. and Mildred were starting to sound like each other more and more these days.

As the wag drew closer, Ryan could see the bridge was actually a box trestle made of riveted iron. Perfect. Even weakened with age, a trestle should still be strong enough to support the war wag. But soon the one-eyed man could see that the bridge was not designed for civilian traffic. It was for a railroad! There was no pavement, only rusty steel rails and wooden ties with open spaces between them that showed only air.

Sounding the horn, Ryan warned the others just before ramming onto the railroad tracks. The wag shook wildly as if hit by a barrage of cannonfire, but he got it moving in the right direction, the tires scraping along the steel rails, bouncing from one wooden tie to the next. The needles of the gauges on the dashboard began to jump around madly, making it impossible to see if the rattling was doing any damage to the beleaguered diesel engine. The hood was shaking so hard, the man half expected it to come loose and crash into the windshield.

But Ryan forgot about such minor considerations as the entire bridge gave a low moan, and a brown snowstorm of rust flakes sprinkled down from the quivering girders over the aged tracks.

As the rain of corrosion covered the windshield, Ryan activated the wipers. But only the passenger side worked.

“So far, so good!” J.B. said unnecessarily loud, studying the tracks ahead for any obstructions. Bridges were a good spot for coldhearts to try to jack travelers. He’d seen it done many times before. “None of the wooden ties have fallen away yet, so I think we’re fine. Just keep moving!”

Bracing himself, Ryan shoved the gas pedal to the floorboards and threw the transmission into high gear. The war wag promptly accelerated, and bizarrely the shaking eased somewhat. Must be going too fast to fall between the ties anymore.

Halfway across the trestle, Ryan risked a glance outside and saw a white-water river at the bottom of the chasm, jagged rocks thrusting up from the turbulent cascade like the broken fangs of prehistoric beast. A few moments later they were through the trestle and Ryan banked the steering wheel sharply. The war wag lurched violently, and then was rolling smoothly along a flat grassy field.

“Park anywhere. I want to check for damage,” J.B. said, releasing his death hold on the dashboard.

“No prob.” Ryan braked to a stop.

Throwing open the cab door, J.B. hopped to the ground and rubbed his sore leg. It still hurt a little from the graze he got back in the dunes, but only a little. Then a piercing whistle came from the rear of the wag.

“Incoming!” Krysty shouted, and several of the Kalashnikovs started chattering.

Slamming open the door, Ryan swung out of the cab with the SIG-Sauer in his fist. Just across the bridge, smoke was starting to pour out of the trees, announcing the arrival of the fire. And deep within the murky interior something large was smashing a path through the foliage. The LAV had found them again!

Emerging into view, the spidery machine paused near the railroad tracks, sending out a white ray of some kind to play along the ancient steel.

Switching blasters, Ryan worked the arming bolt on the AK-47, dismayed at how light it felt. Half a clip wasn’t going to stop that droid. Nothing they had would, except…

As the machine advanced to the trestle, a flickering glow started coming from the woods, dark smoke rising to taint the sky. A scattering of animals burst from the forest to race past the LAV, but it completely ignored them, staying with the railroad tracks until they reached the bridge. Looking upward, the machine swiveled in their direction and the laser began to strobe, the rainbow beam lancing out to hit the gridwork of old beams and punching white-hot holes in the riveted steel. Moving fast, the companions took cover, but the crisscrossing girders of the box trestle offered no clear view of them from the other side.

“We could run,” Mildred said loudly, “but there’s no place to hide. I see only open countryside for miles.”

“Stand here,” Jak declared grimly, hefting a pipe bomb. “Finish now!”

“Everybody out of the wag!” Doc bellowed. “Keep on the move! Do not offer a group target!”

Advancing to the mouth of the box trestle, the LAV paused, temporarily stymied by the fact it was too large to enter the trestle, then it reached out with two legs and crawled on top of the bridge to scuttle forward, the laser needling out to stab holes in the ground all around the war wag.

The fragging thing was trying to herd them back into the wag for a group chill, Ryan realized in cold certainty. Just how smart was this thing?

“Nuke running,” he declared firmly. “J.B., we got no choice. Use it!”

“Yeah, I know,” the Armorer said unhappily, digging in a pocket as he walked closer to the bridge.

Pulling out a metal canister, he yanked the ring, flipped off the arming lever and heaved with all of his might. Tumbling through the air, the gren landed on top of the trestle, and promptly rolled through the gridwork of girders to land on the open array of rails and ties.

“Gaia,” Krysty whispered, her hair flexing wildly. “Don’t let it fall through!”

As if her battlefield prayer was answered, there came a brilliant white flash, followed by a hurricane of wind dragging the companions toward the bridge. They dropped flat and dug in their fingers to stay in place. Next there was a crumpling noise unlike anything they had ever heard…and then silence.

Rising from the ground, Ryan adjusted his eye patch. The LAV was gone, and so was the entire bridge, along with large chunks of the cliff on both sides.

“So that’s an implo gren,” Mildred said in low astonishment. “Never actually watched one explode…I mean, implode before. Impressive. I have absolutely no idea how the thing works.”

“Nobody does anymore.” Going to the edge of the cliff, Krysty looked carefully over the edge and saw only the rushing white-water below. Nothing could be seen in the river. The droid and bridge were simply gone, compacted to the size of pebbles in less than the tick of a chron.

“Well, there’s no going back now, even if we wanted to,” J.B. commented dryly, tugging his fingerless gloves on tighter. “But without that implo gren, we don’t have a chilling edge on Delphi.”

“Yeah, we do,” Ryan growled. “He doesn’t know we’re coming, and that’ll be enough.”

“Unless he also has encountered a doomie,” Doc rumbled in dark consternation.

There was no possible reply to that, so the companions said nothing as they clambered back into the wag. Starting the engine, Ryan headed west again. According to the map J.B. had checked, Bad Water Lake was about sixty miles away. With luck, they could be there by early dawn.

Mebbe I’ll even get a chance to recce that white building, the one-eyed man contemplated. Although he had a gut feeling it’d be a triple-smart move just to blow the place to nuking hell.

W
ITH BRAKES SQUEALING
, the lead war wag of Dephi’s convoy came to a halt on the pebbled beach of the huge lake. A few moments later, the other three wags crested a low rise and stopped alongside the motionless wag, forming a ragged line. Some loose stones tumbled away from studded mil tires to splash into the scummy green water. They dropped through the thick covering as if it was mist and vanished from sight, the scum rippling outward for a few yards, almost appearing to be alive from the subtle disturbance.

Jagged red rocks rose from the hidden depths of the lake like the teeth of a dragon, ancient and weathered. Sharp cliffs edged the huge lake most of the way around, leaving only a scant few breaks in the sandstone palisades where the sloping pebble shore could be easily reached. Several miles wide, the lake stretched across the horizon, a foamy vista of dark green, the thick layer of slime broken only by the occasional red dagger of rock or the bleaching bones of an aced traveler. There was no sound of birds in the air or of waves on the shore, the scum making the water too thick to lap against the hard stones.

With a low hydraulic sigh, the side of the lead wag cycled open and Delphi stepped onto the beach, Cotton and a few other troopers close behind. A soft breeze ruffled their clothing and hair, the dank air ripe with the pungent smell of filth and decay.

“What a rad pit!” Cotton exhorted, hitching her gunbelt. “No wonder we never came this way before.”

“Guess that’s why the locals call it Bad Water Lake,” a trooper drawled, scratching his unshaved neck. The man felt itchy just looking at the colossal quagmire.

Another trooper grunted in agreement. “Shitfire, I’d rather walk across a rad pit naked than dip a toe in this stinking drek hole!”

“I heartily agree,” Delphi muttered in annoyance, running a hand across his smooth blond hair. The cyborg did not recall the lake being in such a poor condition. Had it gotten worse, or were his memory circuits faulty? Briefly, he tried to access any still-functioning satellites overhead, but there was only the steady crackle of static from the thick layer of radioactive isotopes blanketing the world just behind the storm clouds.

Suddenly a low swell lifted the scum and moved across the lake only to disappear down into the secret depths once more.

“What was that, the tide or something?” a trooper asked nervously, tightening the grip on his BAR longblaster.

“Something,” Delphi answered in droll amusement. “There are muties in the deep parts of the lake. They rarely come to the surface, but when they do, it is best not to be around.”

“I zero that, Chief,” a sec woman replied with a grim expression.

“Ever seen one of ’em, Chief?” a trooper asked curiously. “I heard tell of sea muties before. Krakens, they were called. Nothing but tentacles and teeth.”

But Delphi said nothing in reply, his eyes narrowed in somber contemplation. Teeth in the water. No, surely the warning had been for the rodents in the millet field.

“Mannheim, Caruthers, Beltran! Keep a finger on the triggers of the autoblasters!” Cotton shouted over a shoulder, unwilling to take her sight off the Stygian pool. “If anything comes into view from that pest bog, blast it!”

In response, there came a chorus of metallic clicks from the Vulcan 20 mm rapid-fires on top of each wag as the safeties were released.

Crossing his arms, Delphi scowled. The four war wags were all modified forms of a LAV 25, Piranha-class transport, and were waterproof, capable of floating for days. But there was no way in nuking hell he was going to risk crossing this stagnant pool of toxic chems just to save a few days. No, they’d have to take the long way around. Unfortunately, both directions were equally unappealing. To the north were mountains with deep ravines that might be impossible to cross, not to mention snow avalanches, and to the south was the Great Salt, and more stinking muties than he could think. Impossible terrain or nonstop combat. Damned if we do and damned if we don’t, he thought.

“Okay, Chief, which direction do we try?” Cotton asked, squinting sideways.

Weighing the options, Delphi started to reply when an internal alarm sounded inside his head. What in the…Son of a bitch, the LAV had just been destroyed! And less than a hundred miles to the east! He looked in that direction. But how was that possible? The nearest ville would be…Pine ville. But the cyborg had established that was a secure zone, a fallback position in case he ever needed to hide from TITAN. The LAV was programmed to never approach the ville under any circumstances.

Which left only four distinct possibilities. The machine might have suffered some sort of malfunction and actually was in fine shape but was simply unable to broadcast anymore. That made the most sense. Second, that some natural disaster had destroyed the LAV, a volcano or an earthquake. Not an unreasonable possibility. But with the on-board protocols in effect, that seemed rather far-fetched. Third, an operative of TITAN could have found the machine and destroyed it. Delphi didn’t like that idea very much. It would mean that TITAN was now on the move against him, aggressive instead of reactive. He’d have to start watching for traps. The fourth possibility was the least likely, almost ridiculous, but the more Delphi considered it, the more it seemed to make some sort of horrible sense.

Ryan, the cyborg raged silently. The LAV had to have been destroyed by Ryan, Tanner and the others! Logically that meant they had been hunting for him from the Colorado redoubt where the LAV had been in storage. Which also meant they were now heavily armed with AK-47 assault rifles and grenades. More than an equal for his troopers. The cyborg flexed his hand, feeling the weight of the damaged Educator buried inside his plastic skin. But not for his war wags, and certainly not for him.

“Everybody back in the wags!” Delphi bellowed. “Get razor, people, we’re heading south!”

“Across the Great Salt?” Cotton gasped, taken aback. “North would be a lot easier.”

“And slower,” Delphi retorted. “We have more than enough firepower for anything, or any thing, that gets in our fragging way.”

“If you say so, sir,” the woman relented hesitantly. “But why the rush? Why not take the time and go around the long way?”

“Let’s just say that I heard a hoot,” Delphi replied, giving a carefully calculated half smile.

The rest of the troopers grinned back, taking heart at his bravado.

Blind Norad, they were dumber than stickies.

“Besides, have I ever steered you wrong before?” the cyborg added.

“No, sir, you haven’t,” Cotton replied, straightening her shoulders. “Okay, Chief, give the word and we’ll follow you right into nuking hell!”

Good, Delphi mentally noted, starting back to the waiting machines. Because that was exactly where they were heading.

Straight to hell.

R
EACHING THE CREST
of a low desert hillock, Chief Stirling paused to look around the desolate countryside. There was a blast crater to the south, the rill of lava thrusting upward like a picket fence of spears. But there was no glow in the air above the crater, so it was probably safe for the two men to stay in the area. Just not for too long, the sec chief amended privately.

The weathered ruins of a predark city rose on the horizon to the west: concrete bridges broken off in mid-span, the crumpled remains of buildings littering the grounds. In every direction around the ruins were scattered pieces of broken tech, debris thrown wide of the nukestorm and embedded by the pervasive desert sand: a white enamel sink with the faucet still attached, the rim of a car tire, a topless female mannequin, the bent hatch to a tank, a gravestone, a stuffed bear.

Removing the stopper from a canteen, Edward Rogan took a small sip of the lukewarm water and held it in his mouth for a minute to allow the tissues to absorb the fluid before finally allowing himself to swallow. As with everything else, there was an art to staying alive in the desert.