Tainted Cascade (16 page)

That caused a ripple of smiles from the guards, and their postures became more relaxed. In the van, Mildred rested her hands on the steering wheel again, and J.B. subtly moved his thumb.

“It's under the last bunk on the second floor of the barracks,” Baron Cranston said blandly. “Good stuff. I've had some when nobody was around.”

The armed sec men gawked at the frank admission, then broke into nervous laughter.

“Yes, we know, sir. I've been watering it for years
until you were older,” Fenton added. “Didn't want to stunt your growth. Some of that stuff would knock the nuts off a tank.”

“As I very well recall,” the baron muttered, touching a scar on his forehead, a souvenir from his first bottle of the ancient shine called brandy. “Very well, Sec Chief Dunbar, your request is granted.”

“Thank you, Baron!”

“Damn, an officer at last,” Fenton said, rubbing the back of his neck. “Thank you, my liege.”

“Up a stripe, down a stripe,” a sec woman said from amid the ranks.

“Oh, shut up, Lucille,” Fenton ordered, but not very harshly. The woman grinned in reply, but went still. She would congratulate the man properly later on in their bed.

“I'll want an untouched bottle of that brandy for our dinner tonight to celebrate the return of my brother,” the baron stated. “But for now, Chief, tell me about these people.” The boy turned to face the companions. “Was there a revolt among the bonemen, or are these sec men from another ville?” The group had the look of coldhearts, or mercies, at the very least, and from the number of blasters on display, they were very good at the work.

Briefly, Dunbar described the events of the previous day. The crowd was delighted at first over the chilling of Big Joe, but their faces grew dark when the new sec chief told about the circumstances of Ryan and the others.

“That's mutie shit,” a sec man growled. “Petrov and his gang would never deal with slavers.”

“Didn't say they did,” Ryan corrected. “They jacked our blasters at the waterfall, then left us for Big Joe to sell.”

“You see 'em jack the iron?” someone demanded hotly.

Clearly annoyed, Krysty frowned. “We were unconscious.”

“Then how do you know they did?” a sec woman asked defiantly.

“Big Joe said they did,” Ryan replied calmly. Raised to be a baron, the man knew that a crowd had a mind of its own, and once it started moving, there was no way to stop it short of bloodshed, with the companions smack in the middle. If six versus fifty were bad odds for a fight, then six against a thousand was nuking suicide.

“Only a feeb believes a coldheart,” a woman muttered, and a sec man spat on the ground.

“More likely Petrov stole those blasters from Big Joe, and these folks just want them for themselves!” a gaudy slut added, both hands on her hips. “I'm seeing lots of iron, but who says there's any brass in it, eh? That's what these bastards are after. Brass!”

“Don't give them any, Baron!” a man shouted from the rear of the murmuring crowd.

Knowing the cargo van was jammed full of spare rounds, Dunbar rallied. “I was there and saw Petrov and the others hit Big Joe. They never tried to set me free.”

“Mebbe they didn't know who you were,” a fisherman offered, scratching under his hat. “It has been years, sir.”

“They knew,” Sec Chief Dunbar stated. “I told them.”

“They coldhearts, that fact,” Jak stated gruffly.

“Well, they never jacked anybody in this ville!” a sec woman declared. “Shitfire, they helped defend Delta when those muties attacked last spring!”

“When the healer was sick, Rose delivered our first baby,” a woman added, sounding oddly proud of the fact.

“And that big Thal fellow helped me patch my roof when the acid rains came early,” a wrinklie added, angrily waving a cane. “Won't take nothing in payment but some dinner!”

“Petrov knifed that outlander who raped the basket-weaver!”

“Their credit is good at my bar!” McGinty shouted, the big barkeep staring with open hatred at the companions.

“Fucking outlander scum!” someone yelled, advancing a step. An angry mob of a dozen more people was close behind. One of them pulled a knife, another raised a hatchet, then a blaster.

Instantly, the companions swung up their weapons and aimed, fingers tight on the triggers, waiting for the first wave to charge. Inside the van, J.B. leveled the Atchisson, and Mildred worked the arming bolt on the Ingram MAC-10.

Quickly, the sec men closed ranks around the baron.

“Fenton!” Baron Cranston yelled, his thin voice cutting through the general chorus of angry growls and cursing.

Drawing his sawed-off blaster, Fenton fired both barrels into the sky. As the double booms echoed across
the ville square, the crowd stopped moving, the heated rush neutralized as fast as it had started.

“Sec Chief Dunbar, the next person who threatens these outlanders goes to the wall post!” the baron yelled furiously. “Fifty lashes, man, woman or child!”

“But Baron…” a wrinklie started, lowering his home made zipgun.

“My sec chief gave his word to these people they would have safe passage!” the boy snarled, radiating an adult fury. “And his word is law! My law!”

Lowering their weapons, the crowd shifted uneasily under the stare of the young baron. The companions didn't speak or move; the sec men did nothing. Then Dunbar reached out a hand, and Fenton slapped the reloaded sawed-off into his waiting palm.

“Go home. We'll sort this all out tomorrow,” Dunbar commanded gently, opening the breech to check the condition of the 12-gauge cartridges. With a jerk of the wrist, he snapped the blaster shut. “Or do you really want to spend the rest of the night cleaning your own guts off the street?”

“McGinty!” Fenton yelled. “The baron wants to buy the entire ville a drink to celebrate the return of his brother! You got enough shine?”

“Shine and beer,” the barkeep amended, tucking a blaster back under his stained apron.

“Good enough.” The lieutenant grinned amiably. “Everybody, drinks for free tonight!”

“All hail Sec Chief Dunbar!” Lucille shouted from the ranks.

Mumbling assent, the confused crowd began to thin,
everybody heading in different directions, none of them toward Heaven.

“Yeah, I thought the offer of free shine would make them too embarrassed to go to the tavern,” Fenton stated, allowing himself to exhale. “Nobody will be get ting drunk tonight and doing something stupe. The carrot and the stick, my grandy used to call it.”

“My thanks for the loan,” Dunbar stated, extending the blaster.

“Keep it, sir,” Fenton said, unbuckling his gun belt and passing it over. “A sec chief can't walk around naked.”

“Again, my thanks.”

“As for you folks,” Baron Cranston began, addressing the companions. “Have dinner with me at the castle. Nobody will bother your wags and horses there. You can leave in the morning.”

“First thing in the morning,” Fenton corrected.

“Be even better if we leave now,” Ryan said, sliding the Marlin back into the gun boot of the motorcycle.

“Out of sight, out of mind, sir,” Doc added, doing the same with the M-16 rapid-fire.

“Agreed,” the baron said. “I know my people, and this isn't over yet. Fenton, take a squad and bring these folks food and water, enough for thirty days.”

“And fuel for the wags,” Dunbar added, looking at his brother.

“All they can carry,” the baron confirmed.

“At once, Baron,” the lieutenant replied with a salute. “Okay, you, you and you! Thanks for volunteering!” Breaking into a run, the man hurried off with the other sec men close behind.

“Now, brother, do you actually have something for these folks,” the baron asked softly, “or was it just a trick to get out of the cell?”

“Head east,” Dunbar stated, adjusting the new gun belt. “I heard Petrov talk about crossing deep water. That sounds like he's heading for Horseshoe Canyon and the ruins outside Modine. Big Joe once mentioned that would be a good place to start over again, if they ever got chased out of this area.”

“Modine,” Ryan repeated aloud. “Never heard of the place. Any chance of a map?”

“Nope, never needed one before since nobody sane ever goes there,” Dunbar explained succinctly. He started to add something else, but then changed his mind. “Just head for the dawn, and if you run into a swamp full of stickies, you've gone too far south.”

Scowling, J.B. said nothing, a hand flat on his hip where he normally had the munitions bag and his collection of predark maps. Horseshoe Canyon, why did that sound so familiar?

“What's to the north?” Krysty asked, watching the return of the sec men, their arms full of fuel canisters and lumpy canvas sacks.

“North is barb country,” the baron stated with a frown. “Best stay away from them. The crazy bastards hate tech, even blasters, and they'd go triple-ballistic over those hogs.”

“If no blasters, how chill?” Jak asked, furrowing his brow.

“Spears, and they're nuking accurate,” Dunbar stated. “Our father told stories of them throwing the spears into the empty air. Seconds later, a griz bear
ambles out of the forest to get impaled through the eyes by the falling spears.”

“Very impressive,” Mildred said, setting aside the MAC-10 to pull the handle under the dashboard and open the hatch covering the gas cap.

“We can handle barbs,” J.B. asserted, patting the Atchisson cradled in his arms.

“Mebbe you can, but I'd rather circle around a pile of broken glass than prove how tough I am by running through the middle.”

“A most sensible attitude, my dear baron,” Doc rumbled. “On our journey to Modine, we shall be stealth personified! Ghosts in the night!”

“Damn well better be,” Baron Cranston declared. “Or else the next time we meet, some hairy-ass barb will be wearing you as a vest.”

 

T
HE DEAF WOMAN
called Post stood very still on the second-floor balcony of the gaudy house, repeating the conversation several times to memorize it, before vanishing from sight.

Night had fallen by the time the rest of the supplies arrived. The sky was heavy with black clouds that blocked out the stars and moon, only the occasional break allowing a flickering beam of moonlight to lance down and briefly touch the ville before it vanished again, gone with the wind.

The young baron and his personal guards had gone back to the castle hours earlier, leaving the new sec chief to arrange for what reward the ville could offer. Bottles of shine, fuel, oil, shower curtains altered into rain ponchos, decent boots, grain for the horses, baskets of bread, beef jerky and the omnipresent dried fish. The baskets and bags were put in the back of the cargo van, Ryan and J.B. taking them from the ville sec men to place on top of the stacks of hidden blasters.

Standing guard, Doc and Jak had stayed in the saddles of their horses, the additional height giving them a commanding view of the ville square and side streets. In spite of the earlier grumblings, there were no ville people in sight. Every window shutter was closed, the streets almost as dark as the rumbling clouds overhead. It was painfully obvious that a storm was coming soon.

“Sorry about that hot bath,” Dunbar said, topping off
the fuel tank of a motorcycle. He spilled a little on the exhaust pipe, but made no attempt to wipe it off.

“It was Mildred who wanted one,” Krysty answered, reaching for a cleaning rag.

With the Ingram slung over a shoulder, the physician had the hood open on the cargo van and was checking the oil level on the dipstick. Standing in front of the halogen headlights, her giant shadow was thrown across the square, reaching all the way to the wall.

“Ah, yes, good times,” Dunbar said as if not hearing her response. Finishing off the canister, the teenager put the cap back on the fuel tank, then passed the empty canister to a waiting sec man.

“Nuking hell, I'm gonna miss you,” Dunbar gushed, and stepped forward to fiercely hug the woman.

Startled by the unexpected display of feelings, Krysty patted the teen on the back in a friendly manner and started to push him away, when the teen whispered into her ear, “Remember the waterfall!”

Instantly alert, Krysty now went to hug the teenager ever closer, but Dunbar released his hold and turned to walk away, heading toward the barracks.

“Good journey!” he shouted over a shoulder with a cavalier wave and then vanished into the gloom between a tavern and the stable.

“What the hell was that about?” Ryan asked softly, pretending to check the straps on the canvas sheet covering the Gatling gun.

“We're in a trap,” Krysty replied tersely, keeping her expression neutral. Trying not to be obvious, she dabbed a finger into the spilled shine, then scratched her nose to take a sniff. There was definitely alcohol
present, but nowhere near enough the concentration needed to properly run the big twin-V8 of the Harley.

“Water?” Ryan guessed, studying her face.

She laughed and stroked his unshaved cheek as if the man had just made a lewd suggestion. Shrugging in mock acceptance, Ryan turned away to climb onto his own bike. Watered-down fuel. Fireblast! It couldn't be the baron. The boy had given the companions safe passage out of the ville. If Cranston broke his word, nobody would ever trust him again, and that would be the beginning of the end. This had to be the sec men taking matters into their own hands.

“Where next, lover?” Krysty asked, kicking the bike alive. The engine sputtered, but continued to operate. However, she knew that once the diluted fuel reached the engine, the bike would instantly become a millstone, deadweight that would anchor them to one location. Lambs for the slaughter.

“Front gate,” Ryan answered, getting his own bike into operation. Straddling the machine, he walked it over to the cargo van and grabbed Mildred around the waist to pull her close. Confused, she resisted for a second, then her eyes went wide and the physician laughed gaily, tousling his long black hair before pushing him playfully away.

“Not here!” Mildred laughed, giving a wink. “Wait until we make camp!”

Stopping her bike between Doc and Jak, Krysty was annoyed to discover there were some people lounging inside a dark alley nearby. With no time to waste, Krysty grabbed Doc by the shirt and hauled the astonished man over to plant a passionate kiss on his mouth.
As his long hair fell forward to mask their faces, Krysty then nuzzled his ear. After a moment, Doc returned the favor, then patted her affectionately on top of the head.

“Of course, my dear!” He chortled, sitting back into the saddle. “Both of us at the same time, if you so wish! The more the merrier!”

As a grinning Krysty drove away, a very puzzled Jak asked a silent question. Smiling broadly, Doc rubbed his neck to surreptitiously run a thumb across his throat. Narrowing his pale eyes at the sight, Jak said nothing while loosening the Browning longblaster tucked into the gun boot.

Patiently sitting inside the van, J.B. waited until Mildred climbed behind the steering wheel and closed the door. “Trap?” he whispered, hefting the Atchisson.

“Diluted fuel,” Mildred muttered in response, starting the engine. She tried not to scowl at the fuel gauge as the needle climbed to the top.

“Yeah, thought it didn't smell right,” J.B. answered, trying not to move his lips. “Only one can went into our tank. When nobody was looking, I switched the others and used the stuff from the Boneyard.”

“So the van is okay?”

“Should be,” he said, sliding something across the floor with a boot. “Unless they used sugar water. Then we're nuked big-time.”

“Only one way to find out.” Mildred sighed, shifting into gear and driving slowly forward. Flashing a look down, she saw an AK-47 rapid-fire resting between the seats. “I love you,” she said with a nervous laugh.

“Same here, babe,” J.B. whispered, thumbing the
selector switch on the Atchisson from single shot to full-auto. Showtime.

With Ryan and Krysty taking the lead, the companions started along the empty bedrock road. Not a soul was in sight, not even a drunk or a sec man on patrol. Even the buildings along the street were unnaturally dark, with no stoves cooking dinner, lanterns or even candles burning. Just darkness. The ville seemed empty it was so quiet, the only noise coming from the tires on the street and the steady clip-clop of the horse hooves.

A block later, Ryan's bike sputtered, closely followed by Krysty's. Killing the engines, the man and woman let the bikes coast along for another block to gain some distance, then braked to a halt. Nothing stirred in the darkness around the companions. The only source of light came from the headlights of the van and bikes, and those were slowly starting to dim as the ancient batteries quickly drained.

Climbing off the bikes, Ryan and Krysty turned them around to point the fading beams back toward the ville square. In the distance, murky figures shifted out of view.

“Get ready,” Ryan said, working the bolt on the Marlin. “Here they come.”

As if on cue, something sighed in the air above them, moving across the stormy clouds as fast as arrows. With nothing in the vicinity to use as cover, Ryan and Krysty scrambled under the van, while Doc and Jak jumped off their horses to crouch underneath. The animals whinnied in surprise, then screamed in pain as the flurry of crossbow arrows rained down in the street.
The wooden shafts exploded against the hard bedrock, slamming into the roof of the van and piercing deep into the horses.

Rearing high, the bleeding animals pawed their hooves at the unseen enemy, their muscular bodies feathered with arrows. As more shafts plummeted down ward, Doc and Jak dashed away from the dying animals to throw themselves flat against the side of a brick building. Once again, the bedrock street exploded into a spray of splinters, the sheet-metal roof of the van crunched from the hard arrival of a dozen more shafts.

Behind the wheel, Mildred cursed as she struggled to release an arm pinned to her seat, while an unharmed J.B. shrieked at the top of his lungs and dropped an empty Garland longblaster out the window to clatter on the street.

There came the sound of running boots from a nearby alley. Already under the wag, Ryan and Krysty opened fire with their blasters, the hail of hot lead invoking real screams of pain. Several people toppled over and a lantern crashed, a spreading pool of shine whooshing into flames and revealing a dozen more men carrying crossbows, wooden clubs and zipguns. Even as Ryan chilled two of them, he cursed at the sight. Ville people, not sec men! The damn fools. The odds of getting out of the ville alive just shifted dramatically against them.

In the bluish light of the burning shine, Doc and Jak felt horribly exposed and separated so they wouldn't offer a group target for snipers. Finally getting her wounded
arm free, Mildred slapped the switch on the dashboard to kill the headlights.

Just then, an alarm began to softly clang in the distance.

“Muties at the south gate!” somebody yelled. “Sec men to the south gate! The ville is under attack by muties!”

Reloading her blaster, Krysty looked at Ryan and he nodded. They had been heading for the north gate. The ville people were drawing off the sec men to leave them alone with the companions. This wasn't an attack by an unruly mob, but a coordinated strike directed by somebody with combat experience. Time to do something unexpected.

“The bastards got Adam!” Ryan bellowed, letting the other companions know that he was lying. “Head for the castle! Chill the baron!”

“Consider him aced!” Doc boomed in his deep bass, then shuffled his boots going nowhere.

Rolling out from under the van, Ryan stood to focus the crosshairs of the telescopic scope of the Marlin on the castle, and fire. A window on the second floor noisily shattered, a shaft of bright light stabbing out into the night.

“Everybody to the castle!” a woman shouted. “Protect the baron!”

“Fuck that,” a man yelled. “Chill the coldhearts!”

Tracking the masculine voice, Jak fired fast three times and was rewarded with a strangled gasp of pain. In return, another flurry of arrows arched down from the sky, but they descended along the path leading back
to the ville square, obviously trying to bring down the would-be assassins.

Gently working the door, Ryan waved the others inside with his smoking blaster. Krysty scrambled in first, closely followed by Doc and then Jak, the albino teen carrying a bulging saddlebag over a shoulder.

A door slammed open in the building across the street, and several large men rushed toward the idling van. Waiting until they got into visual range, J.B. swung up the Atchisson and fired a triburst. The triple discharge filled the night with flame and buckshot. Riddled with holes, the men staggered backward, blood gushing from a dozen wounds.

Shifting into gear, Mildred let the van roll along at its own pace, slowly building speed, until they traveled at a decent clip. Swinging the MAC-10 into action, the physician cleared away some men dragging a cardboard box out of a log cabin. As they fled, the box dropped to the ground with the tinkling crash of breaking glass.

She grunted. Smart. That would have blown the van tires and left the companions riding on rims straight into hell. As more men appeared, she triggered another burst, sending them scurrying for cover, then the MAC-10 jammed. With only one hand free, the woman tossed the useless rapid-fire into the back of the van.

More arrows appeared from above, missing the zigzagging van, and the companions raked the rooftops with their blasters. The rapid-fires lit up the night with their stuttering muzzle-flashes. Brick chips went flying, glass shattered, a man screamed and a body slammed on the bedrock in a wet crunch, two more corpses arriving only seconds later.

“Floor it, Millie!” J.B. growled, triggering the autoshotgun into an alley. In the fiery discharge, he briefly saw two men crouching with axes in their hands before the spray of double-O buckshot ripped away their lives.

Slamming down the gas pedal, Mildred shifted into high gear and tore off down the street, veering from side to side to try to avoid any incoming lead.

Taking positions at the windows, the companions smashed out the glass to keep it from exploding into their faces, then they settled down to start shooting at anything that moved. It was too dark to properly see their enemies, but that had been their choice, not the companions'. An arrow hit the van, and Doc sent off a brief burst from the M-16. Then something streaked from an open window in a ramshackle hut, and a boomerang slammed into the front windshield and shattered it.

Snatching the spare AK-47 from the floor, J.B. fired the weapon into the darkness ahead of the speeding van. A horse cried out in pain, a dog howled and several people cursed.

“Lights!” Ryan snarled, swinging up the Marlin.

Clumsily, Mildred pulled the switch, and the street ahead of them exploded into view, revealing a pair of ville men throwing handfuls of something from a saddlebag onto the street.

“Nails!” J.B. cursed, triggering both barrels, but the range was too great. Unharmed, the men ducked behind the dead horse to return fire with zipguns.

Even as Mildred braked the van, a headlight shattered, and Ryan cut loose with the Marlin. The powerful
discharge of the Magnum round plowed down the street like sonic boom. Pulling back the rubber band to fire another .22 brass, a man jumped backward to land sprawling on the bedrock with most of his face removed.

Snarling a curse, a woman dashed behind a water barrel, her shaking hands fumbling to shove another round into the homemade blaster.

Working the bolt, Ryan stroked the trigger. The water barrel exploded into wet planks, and the woman limply hit the brick wall across the street, a handful of tiny .22 cartridges tumbling from her twitching hand.

Moving fast, Jak and Krysty scrambled from the van. Ripping off their shirts, they brushed aside the carpeting of nails and broken pieces of glass. A shadow moved on a rooftop, and Doc stitched it with his rapid-fire. A window shutter eased slowly open, and J.B. violently slammed it closed with a blast from the Atchisson. However, the weapon was starting to feel light. He was almost out of shells.