Desert Kings (26 page)

“What a drek hole,” Rogan commented, scowling at the landscape. There was nothing in sight but desolation. Not even any trees to offer shade, or a trickling creek. It was the type of place a man would ride through on the way to somewhere else.

“Seen worse, but not by much,” Stirling replied, pulling down his neckerchief. Pouring a few drops of water into a calloused palm, the man vigorously rubbed the water over his face. Damn, it was a hot day! And there was still a long way to ride before reaching Bad Water Lake. What they would do then, he wasn’t sure. But if Ryan and the others were in some sort of trouble, he’d just head for the sounds of chilling and watch out for flying lead.

Snorting in reply, Rogan started to take another sip, but paused at the sound of thin metal fluttering in the wind. Only there was no wind to be felt this day. Not even a breeze.

Easing a hand to his Webley, the huge sec man looked warily over a shoulder to see what made the noise, then he paused to blink in surprise.

“Well, nuke me.” Rogan chuckled. “Looky there!”

Turning fast, Stirling leveled his sawed-off alley-sweeper, then lowered the weapon when he saw an old, predark sign sticking out of the side of a small sand dune. Surrounded by tumbleweeds, the worn metal was heavily corroded with rust, but there was still just enough paint on the surface for him to see the vague outline of a red horse with wings. A red-winged horse.

“Son of a bitch,” the sec chief whispered, resting the double-barrels on his shoulder. “Just like that doomie told us about. Think we should have a recce?”

But Rogan was already off his mount and throwing the reins over a clump of cacti festooned with colorful flowers.

“Yeah, guess so,” Stirling relented, and did the same to his own stallion to join the norm standing near the sign.

“Okay, now what?” he asked bluntly.

“How the frag do I know?” Rogan muttered, then squinted against the harsh sunlight. There was a dark shadow behind the tumbleweeds.

Approaching the plants as if they were a pit full of stickies, Rogan saw they were plastic and lashed into position with thick nylon rope.

“Markers,” Stirling whispered, swinging up his sawed-off again and clicking back the two hammers. “This is a cache for somebody. Mebbe coldhearts or slavers.”

Or Delphi, Rogan mused, but he did not say that thought out loud. The chief did not know that he had once worked for the Delphi, only that he hated the bastard and wanted to ace him personally. That alone was enough of a bond to make the two men friends. The sluts could yak about love, but hatred kept a man strong, like powder in a blaster.

Going to the largest tumbleweed, Rogan looked around carefully and grunted upon spotting a spring-loaded mantrap in the sawgrass. Moving back a few feet, he found a stick and tossed it onto the pressure plate of the trap. The rusty steel jaws closed with a resounding bang that made it leap off the ground and rattle the chain that anchored it to a wooden hatch set flush to the hard sand.

“Watch for another,” Stirling warned knowingly, running a hand over his blue tattoo. “Nobody but a stupe leaves only one trap.”

Nodding, Rogan used his machete to probe the edge of the hatch until finding the locking mechanism. Twisting the blade, he felt the lock give and jerked back fast as a scattergun boomed from the tunnel below. Dropping flat, the two men heard objects humming past them overhead for a few seconds. Then there was only silence and a spreading dust cloud that expanded until it was thinned down to nothing. The noise echoed across the sandy desert for a long time.

Easing their heads over the jamb, the two men looked down into the tunnel to see a worn iron ladder attached to a cinder-block wall, electric lights glowing dimly from the concrete ceiling. The sec men exchanged excited looks. This was no trader’s cache, but a baron’s bolthole!

Tossing down another stick, Rogan saw there was no reaction from the walls or floor of the predark tunnel. But Stirling held the man back and threw down a heavy stone. It hit the floor and cracked apart setting off another blaster hidden inside the wall.

“Bastard really protected his stuff well,” Rogan said in grudging admiration.

“Almost too well,” Stirling agreed, titling back his hat. “If we find any more traps, mebbe we should move on.”

“No prob there. I like my guts where they are right now, safe inside me.”

“You can load that into a blaster and fire it, my friend.”

Testing the ladder with more sticks and stones, the two men made it down to the floor where they found a trip wire. Stepping over the wire, they crept around a corner and gasped.

The next room was a storehouse of blasters and munitions. Plastic pallets lined the floor, and metal shelving covered the walls, every inch of the depot packed with mil supplies: combat boots, vacuum-packed fatigues in clear plastic bags, web holsters, ammo, grens, a pile of canvas satchels marked C-4 and a row of plastic tubes of unknown function. In the corner, a dusty canvas sheet was draped over something large and irregularly shaped.

“Rapid-fires!” Rogan snorted in delight, taking an M-16 assault rifle down from a wall rack. “She’s packed with gel, but looks in perfect shape!”

Already at the pallets of grens, Stirling was checking over the explosive charges for any signs of rust or corrosion. But they seemed to be in the same perfect condition as everything else. As if the cache had only been filled a few days ago. That stirred a dark suspicion at the back of his mind, but how anybody giving them a fortune in blasters could be a bad thing he had no idea. But instincts honed in a hundred battles told him this whole cache was some sort of clever trap. Stirling just wasn’t sure who it was set to ace.

“LAWS!” Rogan laughed, lifting one of the plastic tubes. “These are fire rockets that fly farther than arrows and are hot like a dozen bombs!”

Easing down the hammers on his double-barrel, Stirling gave a low whistle. “A man could take over a ville with this lot,” he said in a carefully measured tone.

As if sensing trouble, Rogan turned. “You saved my ass,” he said bluntly, “and I gave Baron O’Connor my word. Never meant much before, but it does to
you
.” He said the last word strongly, thrusting out a finger. “I want this stuff so I can chill Delphi, then we give the rest to the baron. Got no interest in becoming one myself. Savvy?”

“Natch,” Stirling said after a moment. Then he grinned. “So let’s loot the place, amigo! With these sorts of blasters, Delphi is gonna be eating dirt by noon!”

“Fragging hope so,” Rogan muttered darkly, going to the corner and yanking away the canvas sheet. “Mebbe this is a flame-thrower or a—Nuke me!”

With the soft sound of powerful hydraulics, the sec hunter droid slowly rose to its full height and took a single step toward the startled men, the thick steel arms extending to proffer the spinning metal blades.

The smoke slowly faded into the distance behind the companions as their battered war wag lumbered along the rolling hillside. Evening was darkening the world before they reached flat ground once more and stopped to refuel. The big barrels of diesel were tapped, the juice flowing into plastic buckets with a cloth stretched over them to filter out any dirt or debris that might have gotten mixed into the precious liquid.

“Watch for any flashes of light,” Ryan warned, standing guard while Jak and Doc emptied the buckets into the rusty steel fuel tanks of the big rig. “Anything bright could be a war wag coming this way.”

“Or a laser targeting us for a missile strike,” Krysty added ominously, working the arming bolt on a Kalashnikov. Standing in the rear of the flatbed gave the woman much greater visibility, and she was keeping a close watch on the setting sun. That was the direction Delphi would attack from if possible, hiding his advance in the dying glare.

“If see, what do?” Jak asked, lowering the empty can to the ground and wiping a sheen of sweat from his brow.

“Do?” Mildred repeated. “If a contrail starts arcing into the sky, we jump ship and run like the blazes!”

“Thank you, Sister Mary Sunshine,” Doc said sarcastically, an AK-47 resting in his hands.

“Even paranoids have enemies, Theophilus,” Mildred said, then chuckled, keeping a tight grip on the Kalashnikov. It had a massively greater range than her ZKR target pistol, and while the scope was low power, it was better than nothing. Mikhail Kalashnikov had invented a damn fine weapon.

It was funny, the physician realized, back in her time this was the chosen weapon for the enemies of America: the Soviet Union, Vietcong, Arab terrorists, Colombian drug lords and the like, and here it was the protector of civilization. The irony would have been amusing if it wasn’t so damn heartbreaking.

“Full,” Ryan announced, tossing the empty fuel can over the splintery wooden armor of the flatbed. It landed with a hollow clatter on the corrugated floor. “Let’s roll while we still have some daylight left.”

“Miles to go before we sleep, eh, Doc?” J.B. said with a smile, trudging into the rear of the big rig.

“Indubitably, sir,” Doc answered, stoically still on guard. “And as the poet so wisely added, we also have many promises to keep err we dare to sleep.”

“Like acing Delphi,” Jak noted grimly, flipping his jacket over a shoulder and climbing into the cab. It was his turn to drive, and he was looking forward to operating the big rig. Ever since he saw his first wag, a steam jenny powering a water pump, the albino teen had liked machines. He considered them to be just like blasters. Not good or bad. Just tools. It all depended on who was holding the controls.

After removing his jacket and setting it aside, Jak started the engine and ran a check over the controls while Doc got in the passenger seat to ride shotgun. The albino teen hunter knew everything had to be okay with the rig, or else Ryan or J.B. would have told him.

Doc saw the condition of the teenager, and wisely slipped off his own frock coat and folded it neatly on the front seat. Even though night was coming, the air was steadily getting warmer. The companions were approaching the Great Salt, a vast crystalline plain of sizzling desert and sun-baked rock where nothing grew but the body count.

Rumbling black smoke from the overhead exhaust pipes, Jak worked the gearshift and brake, and the Mack lurched into motion, starting across the barren flatlands and steadily building speed as they headed directly into the setting sun.

“Miles go before sleep,” Jak said, shifting gears. “Know any other poems?”

“Certainly!” Doc said with a smile, the barrel of the Kalashnikov protruding out the open window. “I have every sonnet written by Shakespeare memorized! Along with most of Milton’s ‘Paradise Lost,’ Dante’s ‘The Inferno,’ the collected works of Walt Whitman, Emily Bronte, Alfred Lord Tennyson—”

“Anything
good?
” the teen interrupted, putting a lot of emphasis on the last word.

“But they’re all excellent…” Doc started, sounding puzzled, then thoughtfully pursed his lips. “Ah, you mean ribald! Well, there is a most disrespectful limerick about a rather special fellow from Nantucket…”

“Heard it. Others?”

“Not really, no.”

“Damn.”

Settling into the monotony of long-distance travel, the two men turned their talk to battle plans for confronting Delphi. Slowly the storm clouds followed the sun over the horizon and the black velvet of night filled the sky, the stars twinkling brightly around a low, bloodred moon. Around midnight, the companions stopped for food and a bathroom break, and to pour the last of the juice into the fuel tanks. The barrels were deadweight now, bone-dry empty. In less than a day, they would be back on foot. In preparation for that, Mildred and Krysty started making backpacks of food, while J.B. and Ryan sorted through the collection of blasters, taking only those in the best condition. There was a minor excitement when a solie was found hidden under a wooden box they had been using as a seat, but the deadly little mutie was long dead from starvation. However, the knowledge that it had been living among them, waiting for release to strike was rather disturbing. Stabbing it with his panga, Ryan flipped the corpse over the side and cleaned the blade.

Just then, a soft hooting came from the darkness and the companions scrambled to get back inside the war wag. Hastily starting the engine, Jak drove away fast, the headlights sweeping across a group of stickies for only a second before they were left behind. The hoots came louder for a minute as the muties gave chase, but the sounds faded as the wag picked up speed. Soon there was only the noise of the diesel and the hum of the predark tires on the hard-packed sand.

“At least they weren’t holding any weps,” Ryan stated, easing the safety back on his SIG-Sauer and holstering the blaster.

“Thank Gaia for that.” Krysty sighed, her hair flexing as if anxious. “That’s something I never want to see again.”

“Another good reason to chill that damn cyborg,” Mildred muttered in unaccustomed anger. “The world is quite screwed up enough as it is without his insanity to help things along!”

“I zero that,” J.B. stated, releasing the pistol-grip safety on his 9 mm Uzi blaster. “The Trader always said that if something wasn’t broke, then don’t try to fix it!”

“Amen to that, brother!”

Soon there was the faint smell of salt in the air, waxing and waning with every tuft of the breeze. But the smell got steadily stronger as the ground changed from stubby grassland to sandy barrens and finally into a desert. The companions pulled neckerchiefs around their mouths to keep out the loose windblown salt. The granules stung their eyes, but there was nothing they could do about that, so it was ignored like so many of life’s small pains.

“This is it, the start of the Great Salt,” J.B. said, resting his folded arms on the top plank of the splintery wall. “Dark night, we haven’t been here since…” He paused to frown.

“Not since we last tangled with Delphi,” Ryan finished. “Yeah, I know. What the frag is it about this particular slice of hell that keeps drawing us back again and again?”

“Just coincidence. There isn’t anything special about it,” Mildred declared firmly. “After all, this is just desert, miles upon miles of hot, dry, sandy nothing.”

“Mebbe,” the one-eyed man muttered uneasily. “But it does make me wonder sometimes.”

“Anything look familiar, lover?” Krysty asked, scanning the plains and dunes around them. The heavy tires of the wag were kicking up a huge dust cloud. In the daylight, they’d be visible for miles. Hopefully, the same would be true for Delphi.

“Familiar? No, rocks are rocks,” Ryan replied. “There’s nothing special about anything in the Great Salt, and it’s been a long time.”

“I seem to recall that we had just left some partially melted ruins and were trying to reach the mountains when the stickies attacked,” J.B. said, stroking his chin. “We were near a gorge…an arroyo? No, it was a cliff overlooking a huge green lake….”

Studying the ground, Ryan felt foolish looking for the tire tracks of War Wag One. But that had been many years ago. The one-eyed man frowned in concentration.
But I’ve been here long before our encounter with Delphi,
he realized, feeling the years slip away.
I rode this sand with a Colt on my hip, and my missing eye still giving me headaches just before a rain storm.

With a squeal of brakes, the war wag came to an abrupt halt that almost threw the companions to the floor. After a moment, they recovered and looked over the plank wall to see that the Mack was stopped near the edge of a cliff. Dully illuminated by the bloated moon was a vast shimmering expanse of gray that stretched outward from the cliff for miles.

“We’re here,” Ryan said, feeling an odd surge of excitement in his stomach. “Bad Water Lake.”

“Can’t see a thing. Jak, ace the lights!” Doc commanded.

Obediently the headlights went out and darkness covered the land. It took several minutes for their sight to adjust to the gloom, then Ryan went to the rear of the flatbed to unbolt the hatch and hop to the ground.

Walking carefully to the edge of the cliff, the companions kept their blasters at hand as they stood facing the huge lake. Long minutes passed, and there was only the sound of the wind and the ticking of the cooling engine block. Nobody spoke as they studied the seemingly endless expanse of gray. There was no reflection of the moonlight on the waves, so there was obviously something covering the water, chems mebbe, or scum.

We’ve seen similar things before in the Oarks, and Pacific, Mildred noted, crossing her arms. Once, very long ago, Bad Water Lake had been called Lake Powell. She caught a special about it once on the Travel Channel. Built to power some hydroelectric dam whose name she couldn’t recall, Lake Powell was one of the biggest reservoirs in predark America, and one of the largest in the world. The rough and craggy shoreline was longer than the entire west coat of North America from Alaska to Mexico. There had been several attempts to stock the artificial lake with fish, and they’d all failed until somebody got wise and seeded the lake with plant life first for the fish to eat. Then the lake had become a sportsman’s paradise. But that was before skydark.

Now, a cliff extended along the lake like the wall of a ville, impossible to traverse. Here and there were broken canyons, deep recesses where the cliff crumbled down to the shore of the lake, offering limited access. The rock formations were beautiful, rising and flowing along the shores as if formed by the hands of a loving sculpter. Gigantic boulders were perched miraculously on top of small peaks, and a soft wind whistled through arroyos as if they had been carved to become musical instruments. Dotting the distant shoreline were the hulking wrecks of houseboats, huge vessels, two, three stories high, the gold trim and silver brightwork still shiny in the Utah sun. And covering everything was a thick layer of green scum that looked as hospitable as an open grave.

“So have the mighty fallen. This had been a playground for millionaires in my time,” Mildred said, resting both arms on the railing. “They all tried to build fancier boats than their neighbors, the vessels soon becoming ridiculously expensive. Several of them were worth millions of dollars…a baron’s ransom,” she deftly translated for the others. “They had jets instead of propellers, plasma-screen televisions, fireplaces, wine cellars, heliports, everything you could possibly think of, and then some.”

“Then the war hit,” Ryan said in a tolerant voice. “These millionaires probably turned against each other for the last supplies of fuel and food.”

The physician shrugged. “Some would have had some weapons on board in case of thieves or pirates. It was rare, very rare, but it did happen sometimes.”

“And so their Bacchanalian paradise ended like this,” Doc intoned dourly. “To become a sargasso of death and destruction. The damn fools probably had enough to start a proper ville, and live in safety, but no, they each wanted it all, a thousand little barons fighting over the last few scraps of civilization until they destroyed themselves.”

“Pride goes before a fall.”

“As does stupidity, madam,” Doc growled, the cool wind ruffling his silvery hair. “And as the good book suggests, I do not suffer fools gladly.”

“Corinthians 11:19,” Mildred replied, settling the matter.

“Hey, what there?” Jak asked, pointing.

Everybody turned in that direction. Far off in the distance was a large block shape sitting motionless in the gently rippling sea of gray.

Pulling out the longeyes, Ryan extended the Navy telescope to its full three feet and studied the scummy lake until finding a sandy island located in a small cove. Son of a bitch, there it was, exactly as he remembered. A couple dozen adobe buildings clustered around an open plaza. Ryan thought the ville had been on shore, but there it was, smack on the island. He had to have gotten lost tumbling off the cliff. This was the ville from his dreams.

No, this place was real. I have been there and walked those streets! Ryan frowned. Then a split tick later, I awoke miles away.

“Any islands here from your time, Millie?” J.B. asked, adjusting the position of the wire-rimmed glasses on his nose.

“No, this is something new,” the physician stated, taking hold of the canvas strap of her med kit. Clearly, from the rock formations, the water level of Lake Powel had lowered over the intervening century. But enough to form an island? The land mass would have had to be only a dozen or so feet below the surface.