Iron Rage (18 page)

“And you saved me,” Stone added. She was looking at Ryan with an unusually doe-like look in her big, dark eyes.

He had long since learned that all those stories of his childhood about the damsel in distress falling for the big strong hero who rescued her were a steaming load of glowing nuke shit. In the case of his own crew, honors were about even where it came to Mildred and Krysty saving one or more of the males as opposed to being saved by them. They'd certainly hauled his chestnuts out of the fire on many more occasions than one. And if he tended to hold the greater number of successful rescues, that applied to the whole group, not just the two women.

But—sometimes it happened. Even from a woman clearly as capable of handling herself in a fight as Ellin Stone. She'd gotten more blood on her than Ryan had in the brief but vicious mopping-up actions, having picked up a cutlass on her way down with him. Both of them sat on tarps to save the baron's fine upholstery, the way Ryan had his first night.

He sipped his black coffee. It was real coffee, too. The baron didn't believe in stinting herself. Not that that wasn't obvious from looking at her surroundings. And her. Then again, squatting astride the lower portion of the biggest trade route remaining across the Deathlands had its privileges. It made sense she'd have access to the real thing, not the awful chicory coffee-sub drek they liked to pretend was coffee in most of Deathlands.

“Yes,” Baron Tanya said with a nod. “Thank you for saving my aide, as well. I find her services invaluable.
And Elli has known enough tragedy in her life, poor girl.”

Ryan saw a flicker cross Stone's face. He could not interpret it.

Outside it was still dark, or maybe false dawn was beginning to gray out the skies to the east. He couldn't see anything through the slit-like open port. No more cannon blasts came from outside. As he'd anticipated, Baron Harvey had opted to cut his losses and try his luck another time. Though shots had continued to bang back and forth for half an hour while Ryan and Ellin jumped raiders from behind and butchered them handily, the battle had ended as soon as the enemy ironclads could steam back out of range upriver.

“So,” Baron Tanya said, draining her cup with a slurp, “you picked the lock on your cabin. Care to tell me how you managed that, Mr. Cawdor?”

“No.”

She set the cup in the saucer with a slight clatter, and put both down on the round teak table beside her.

“Ace,” she said. “That just goes to prove you're resourceful as well as bold. And decisive.

“We got off double lightly, thanks to you. No more than a score of casualties. And only two of those weren't from fighting off the boarding parties. When the Armada swung closest to us as they were trying to turn tail, a shell came down on top of
Hera
's cabin and chilled her second lieutenant and a steward. Though I suppose casualties are never
light
to the poor bastards who have lost their limbs. Or their lives.”

“No,” Ryan said. “They're not.”

She shrugged and made a face. “Well, it's war. That doesn't mean I have to like it.”

“In my experience, my druthers don't seem to matter one way or another, as to how war is.”

“Truth.”

She smiled.

“So, I suppose there's no locking you in your cabin anymore, is there? It's not as if there's any point, obviously.”

He grinned. “No, ma'am.”

“I think you've passed your probation with flying colors, Junior Lieutenant Cawdor. So haul your newly promoted ass back to your quarters and get all the sleep you need. I want you nice and rested when I get you started
really
earning your pay!”

“I see stickies!” Mildred heard Ricky shout from the roof of the
Mississippi Queen
's half burned-out cabin. He lay up there on his belly behind Ryan's prized Steyr Scout, with the bipod down, watching the action through the Leupold scope.

A quarter mile away, the launch was just approaching the ruined bridge, towing the dinghy behind it.

“Pipe down, kid,” she snarled. She sat watching the scene from the shore through Ryan's navy longeyes, trying to keep her heart out of her throat.

There was a curious contrast in the hair of the occupants of the towed craft: flame red, snow white. Krysty and Jak rode in it, along with a mounded mass of what looked like wadded-up bedding, which was in fact a heap of clothing ruined by fire or flooding. J.B. rode in the launch with Arliss and Abner at the tiller. All were dwarfed by Santee.

“But I wish I could warn them!”

Mildred saw stickies now, too. They were appearing from the deep shadows of the far end of the bridge, under which the launch and dinghy were set to pass.

“They know,” she gritted. “Jak's with them. Mind you don't warn the muties.”

That wasn't really rational, of course. The stickies were too far away to hear anything shy of a gunshot, just as their friends were.

“What's happening?” Suzan asked excitedly from behind Mildred.

She, Jake, Avery and Nataly were clustered by Mildred upstream of the prow of the grounded
Queen
, as close to the waterline as they dared for fear of crocs. They had started seeing their log-like shapes, or just their lumpy heads, in the couple of days since they'd run back to the wreck site with their tails between their legs. The creatures had shown no sign of interest in the refugees, nor ventured too close to the shoreline clearing. Doc stood behind the others, LeMat and sword in his hands, just in case.

Myron and his assistant, Sean, were back in the bowels of the tugboat, doing something mysterious to the Diesels. It might soon make sense for them to bother, if J.B.'s crazy scheme worked. Or even if this first phase worked.

How strange is it, she thought, that sailing right into the middle of a stickie nest in the least whacked-out part of the plan?

“They're going under the bridge now,” Ricky called out. “Here come the stickies. Should I open up?”

“Wait for them to start blasting,” Mildred replied. She was in charge of this group in J.B.'s and Krysty's absence. The others were deferring to her too, at least for now. “Stick to the plan.”

Water splashed as stickies dropped abruptly out of the rusty girders near the launch. Those passengers of
both craft unfamiliar with fighting stickies reacted with every sign of unbridled terror, whipping their heads this way and that and gesticulating. J.B. shouldered his S&W M-4000 12-gauge and fired at the closest stickie. It fell back in the water, trailing ropy yellow tendrils of ichor. Arliss blasted another on the far side of the launch, as it capered toward them through the weeds by the bank with comical high steps of its splay-toed feet kicking up sheets of water.

“Now, Ricky!” Mildred cried, as the sound of J.B.'s booming M-4000 reached her ears.

The Steyr cracked. Two stickies were almost on the launch, one on either side. The one on the right, away from the near bank, threw up its sucker-fingered hands as the 7.62 mm bullet burst its head like a balloon filled with yellow paint.

“Show-off!” Mildred said. Santee split the second stickie's head with a full-sized ax, swung across his body one-handed as if it were a hatchet.

Abner panicked. His usually firm hand faltered. As he steered the motorboat, it swerved in toward the north bank, instead of away for open water. And in that brief misstep, disaster struck. The dinghy it towed nosed into a tangle of fallen steel truss-work that had rusted almost the color of blood. It stuck fast.

Stickies swarmed toward it. Krysty's Glock ripped them with a burst of 9 mm bullets. Mildred couldn't see the flashes at that range, nor the shock waves rippling the air, and the sound wouldn't reach her ears for just over a second. But she knew by their effects: three stickies went down flailing.

Abner had turned the launch's nose toward the middle of Wolf Creek, trying to dislodge the dinghy from the snag with no success.

Krysty stopped shooting and put her hands on the sides of the boat, rocking left and right in hopes of working the craft free. Jak fired his Colt Python and blasted a stickie that was about to leap aboard.

Mildred, watching the drama aboard the dinghy in mounting fear, saw its right shoulder practically explode. Its arm fell into the water.

Traumatic amputation or not, the stickie kept coming. Jak met it with an overhand left to the face with the steel-studded brass knuckle guard of his trench knife. Stickie blood showered him as the mutie fell backward into the creek.

Tethered to the trapped dinghy by the towline, the power launch had turned completely and swung back almost side to side with it, though only the sterns overlapped. Santee reached out for Krysty, and she grabbed his tree-limb arm. He swung her into the boat, well clear of the submerged propeller of the outboard motor, as if she were a doll.

Arliss and J.B. were gesturing and obviously shouting for Jak to abandon the dinghy and join the redhead in safety. But Jak did a curious thing.

Shooting down the nearest stickie, the albino bent over in the dinghy. He was clearly doing something that required attention. A stickie clambered up onto the steel snag and sprang at his unprotected back.

J.B. shot it in midair as if it were a grouse starting up from a bush. The charge of Number 4 shot caught
the mutie midtorso and ripped blue organs clean out of its body. It fell into the water between the unpowered boat and the bank. Usually only a head shot or a shot to the heart chilled a stickie, but there was no coming back from such a devastating hit.

It was a triple-risky shot, so close to the albino, but not even Ryan had a surer hand with a blaster. J.B. was as precise as a machine in combat.

Ricky blasted a mutie as it reached to grab for the boat's stern. Jak came up to a crouch. He had holstered his Magnum revolver. He slashed through the towrope with a stroke of his trench knife, then without apparent hurry he sheathed the blade. As the launch pulled away, he dived into the water and swam for it.

Santee fished him out in the same manner as he had hoisted Krysty. The albino weighed less than she did, even with all the weapons on his body.

Abner opened the throttle all the way. The launch's prow lifted on a pale bow wave as it sprinted away. Stickies ran after it waving their hands in futile pursuit.

J.B. had switched out his shotgun for his stuttergun. He bowled over a couple of the nearest with two quick bursts. A couple stickies had climbed into the abandoned dinghy. They flung themselves overboard in alarm as flames abruptly blazed up, a shockingly bright orange in the gloom beneath the bridge. Stickies loved fire, but they didn't love getting burned.

“They all got away,” Mildred reported as Ricky's borrowed longblaster banged again. Those around her whooped and danced. “Everybody seems to be in one
piece. You can stop wasting rounds up there, Ricky. Look for danger to the launch.”

The junk cloth heaped in the dinghy had been soaked with pine oil. The pile blazed up brightly in the gloom just beyond the reach of the morning sun, quickly involving the wood of the small boat in the fire. Stickies began to dance and shriek, bending back and forth as if genuflecting to the fire. Others began to caper around it. They reminded Mildred of apes from the Tarzan books she'd read as a preteen.

“That was a good job,” Nataly pronounced somberly.

“The fire looks ace,” Avery said.

Mildred shifted her vision field from the fire to the returning boat. As she focused, she saw Krysty waving toward them, Santee brandishing his ax over his head, Arliss pumping his rifle in the air, and J.B. sitting with his hat tipped back on his head examining his weapons. Typical, she thought, as was Jak's demeanor, crouching in the stern just ahead of Abner, staring moodily astern along their wake as if regretting the lost opportunity to chill more stickies.

“Here come more of them!” Jake exclaimed. He sounded not just animated but excited. “Man, look at all those bastard devils!”

Mildred raised the navy longeyes back to the bridge. The muties were swarming from the south side of the dilapidated bridge, clambering along the truss-work beneath the track bed in the dozens, their pale bodies gleaming in the sun. When they hit the gap they simply dropped to the creek below. Some climbed up the juts and snags of fallen steel beams, springing from one to
the next as much as they could. Others simply paddled across, as did their comrades capering on the steel when the gaps became too far to jump.

“They're swarming to the fire like flies to a fresh cow flop,” Avery said in satisfaction, although for once the always optimistic carpenter was more subdued than the normally glum and few-spoken navigator.

“Don't worry, Jak,” Mildred said. She stood up and lowered the longeyes. “You get your part in plenty of stickie-chilling soon.”

“It's actually gonna work,” Suzan breathed reverently. She smoothed back her graying hair. It sprang immediately out again, as wild as ever.

“Don't count any plan a success until you see how it actually turns out,” Nataly advised. Mildred wasn't sure if that was the tall woman's fatalism speaking, or practicality. Sometimes the one could be hard to tell from the other. Especially these days.

“The ancient Norse had a saying,” Doc said. “‘Never count a man happy until the day he dies.'”

“Rad waste, old man,” Avery said. “Have you been taking Gloomy Gus lessons from Jake?”

Doc shook his white head and smiled thinly.

“Ah, no. I learned from a far longer course of study, in a far harsher school.”

“Let's keep the negative waves down,” Mildred said, “just in case.” That was a reference to a movie she'd seen as a little girl, she realized. But she couldn't place it. She remembered it had a railway bridge in it. And tanks. They could use a few of those right now.

Then she smiled to herself. No, they couldn't. Tanks
would bog right down in the swamps surrounding them. But what J.B. had in mind was along those lines.