Tainted Cascade (4 page)

“Hell of a shot,” Krysty grunted, shaking her hair to ease the sting from the fiery discharge of the weapon.

“I was going for the horses,” Mildred growled, already starting the laborious process of reloading the big bore blaster.

Shots rang out from the third wag, several of them smacking into the wooden bars of the cage with remarkable accuracy. Krysty grunted at that. Clearly, somebody over there really knew how to shoot. With no choice, the redheaded woman stepped in front of the frantically busy physician to offer what protection her body could.

Steering around what sort of looked like a pile of boulders, J.B. grimaced to see it had actually just been a stand of cacti. Dark night, he thought, I'm going to get everybody aced unless I get this nuking thing under control!

A flurry of gunshots rang out from the second wag, and Krysty flinched as a miniball scored a hot line
across her thigh. Jak was thrown backward into the loose pile of hay, his arm gushing blood.

Trying the key once more, Doc was delighted when the spit proved sufficient lubrication and the lock clicked open easily. But the hatch was incredibly heavy, and try as he might, Doc couldn't get it to budge an inch.

Shaking the reins for more speed, J.B. could see a couple of longblasters tucked into a gun boot along the side of the buckboard. But trapped inside the cage, those were completely unreachable at the moment, so he simply concentrated on trying to control the horses. Dodging the cacti was easy, as the horses knew better than to run through it. But there was a forest coming up fast, and J.B. would soon have to turn left or right. That would slow the wag, making them an excellent target for the furious slavers. It all depended on whether the slavers wanted to try to recapture them alive or wanted to chill the companions to recover the stolen wag. Either option wasn't very good. Nearly naked and trapped in a cage was not the way to survive a fight. Especially if you only had a single working blaster.

Rising again, Mildred placed the flintlock on Krysty's strong arm, the other woman's animated hair coiling away from the expected pain of the muzzle-blast. Aiming through the roiling dust clouds, Mildred lost sight of her target for a moment, but as the horses charged back into view she instantly fired. The lead horse of the third wag screamed as the soft lead plowed into its neck, crimson squirting out in a high arch. The other horses in the team reared in fear at the terrible smell, almost tearing loose from the wooden yoke be
ween them. The buckboard wag shook hard from their reaction, and the gunner went off the side to land in the stand of cacti, his high-pitched wails of agony cutting through the rattling wags, clattering wheels, pounding hooves and blasterfire.

Suspiciously fingering the jamb of the hatch, Doc gave a humorless smile when he found a second bolt. Clever bastards! Tearing it aside, Doc then easily swung the hatch open and it hit the bars with a hard crash. Now holding on for dear life, Doc braced himself against the pain in his chest as Ryan moved out from under his feet and started climbing the old man like a ladder.

Finished reloading, Mildred began to aim when the wag jounced through a weedy gully and the entire supply of black powder and wadding went flying away, briefly forming a dark cloud in the air before vanishing behind the escaping prisoner.

“Last shot,” Mildred said in forced calm, commanding herself to be cool in spite of the situation. It was like performing emergency surgery on a friend.

Reaching the top of the cage, Ryan helped Doc over the jamb, and together they started to crawl along the cage.

“Easy does it,” Krysty said in a soothing voice. “There's no rush. We have loads of time.”

Thankful for the calming lie, Mildred still had trouble aiming against the constant jerks of the wags, then a white hand grabbed the bottom of the flintlock in an iron grip.

“Nuke 'em,” Jak muttered, panting heavily.

With a grimace, Mildred wordlessly stroked the
trigger, and the driver of the second wag threw back his head with most of his throat gone. Clutching his neck with both hands, the reins dropped and the gunner tried to make a save, when a slave poked a skinny leg through the wooden bars and kicked the man hard in the ass. Pitching forward, he landed on the yoke, struggling to hold on, but his fingers slipped and he went under the hooves of the horses and then the wheels of the wag. What was left behind in the dust could only barely be recognized as human anymore.

“Power to the people!” Mildred shouted, raising a clenched fist. Incredibly, the other slaves repeated the cry, now pelting the remaining slavers with wads of dung.

Reaching the front of the cage, Ryan and Doc dropped into the buckboard seat.

“Blasters to the right!” J.B. shouted, giving the reins to Doc.

There were two longblasters in the boot, crude flintlocks over a yard long and more suitable as clubs than firearms. Snatching up the first, Ryan was pleased to find it loaded and ready to use. Useless for dealing with prisoners in their own cage—the things were just too long—the long-range weapon was just what Ryan needed at the moment.

Speaking soft words to the horses, Doc began easing the wag to a gentle stop. Obviously realizing where this was heading, the two remaining slavers began to arch away from each other and head in different directions.

“If get away, back soon with friends!” Jak shouted, a pale hand tight over his wound.

“Not gonna happen!” Ryan bellowed, clicking back
the colossal hammer. Standing, the man rested the flint lock rifle on top of the cage and pressed his body against the wooden bars for additional support. Then several pairs of arms wrapped around his legs and torso.

“Got your back, lover!” Krysty shouted.

Ryan took careful aim at one of the remaining slavers and fired. The blaster almost tore itself loose from his grip. With a strangled cry, the first slaver doubled over, clutching the red ruin of his flopping belly.

Switching longblasters, Ryan aimed once more, and the other slaver stupidly tried to put the cage full of slaves between himself and Ryan for protection. But the man angled the horses too sharply, and one of the animals tripped, then another. Suddenly, the entire team was entangled in the reins and yoke, flailing helplessly, their combined weight pulling the wag sideways. As the buckboard started to dangerously tilt, the driver tried to jump clear, when the dirty hands of a dozen slaves grabbed his clothing and held their former master firmly in place.

Pulling a knife, he wildly slashed at them when the wag passed the point of no return and thunderously slammed into the ground. Dirt and leaves exploded from the shattering wreckage as horses screamed and people shrieked in unimaginable agony.

Walking through the predark ruins, the Pig Iron Gang kept in a tight group, their new blasters held up and ready.

The remains of the ville were mostly crumbling brick and cracked pavement, thickly covered with a lush blanket of foliage from the nearby jungle. Here and there, oak trees and birch were starting to appear among the banyan trees, the branches reaching out to mingle overhead, forming a sort of canopy over the ancient highway. Slowly, the jungle gave way to a proper forest, the creepers becoming ivy, and the Spanish moss replaced with mulberry bushes and laurel.

“I remember when this was a swamp,” Charlie said, adjusting his new glasses. The hammerless S&W Model 640 was tucked into the pocket of his bearskin coat, the Czech ZKR held tight in a fist. The man was delighted over the find of the wire-rimmed glasses. He had just assumed that everybody saw the world in a kind of foggy blur, but with these he could see things hundreds of feet away as if they were at arm's reach. It was nuking amazing!

“Yeah? Well, my daddy said he was alive when it was a desert, and my granddaddy said he swam in it as a lake,” Rose retorted, hefting the compact Uzi rapid-fire. “That don't mean drek to me or mine.”

A camouflage jacket hung loose on her shoulders, the collar heavily festooned with feathers and bits of metal, perfect for a nightcreep in the ruins. Rose had discovered the hidden razor blades just in time to keep from losing another finger, and now the woman slept in the jacket, she liked it so much. A minisextant dangled between her pert breasts, the purpose of the thing completely unknown. But Rose liked how it shone golden in the sunlight.

“It is good to know what has happened, so that we may prepare for what will occur,” Thal rumbled, shifting the med bag to a more comfortable position. A rad counter was clipped to a knife sheathed on the canvas gun belt of the huge man, and he was carrying a Colt Python .357 Magnum blaster in his right hand, a .44 LeMat in his left. His pockets bulged with spare brass, spare socks stuffed in there to keep the ammo from jingling when he walked.

“Shut up and watch for jumpers,” Petrov commanded, clicking off the safety on the Steyr longblaster.

A battered old fedora was perched on the back of his head, and fingerless gloves covered his hands. A frock coat swept out behind the man like soaring wings, the silver toes of his cowboy boots glinting in the cathedral light streaming in through the dense foliage overhead. The ebony cane was thrust into his gun belt on the side, and the S&W M-4000 shotgun was slung across his back.

The outlanders at the waterfall had been carrying a baron's treasure of blasters, brass and tech, a lot of it unknown to his crew, but Petrov made them take it all anyway. The poisoned waterfall was one of Big Joe's
best traps. He had them laid out all over the countryside to gather in a steady supply of prisoners to sell to the slavers. Petrov and the others had been poaching the traps for years. They hit the traps every now and then, never very often, and only took the belongings of the unconscious victims, but otherwise leaving the people unharmed. They didn't even rape the women because that would have lowered their value to Big Joe. Slavers liked fresh meat. Petrov knew that Big Joe wanted them aced something fierce, a man could load that into a blaster for damn sure. Nothing pissed off a thief more than getting robbed himself. But so far Big Joe and his bone troopers had never been able to find out who was jacking the traps, and so the Pig Iron Gang lived a comfortable life, stealing a little, staying low and staying off the radar. Ghosts in the fog. Masters of the nightcreep.

Reaching the outskirts of the ville, the gang found the roadway covered with leafy vines, which made them wary of a puppeteer hidden inside one of the buildings. But Charlie identified the plant as just a form of kudzu, and the gang happily plucked some leaves to chew upon and ease their thirst as they probed deeper into the ancient metropolis. There were plenty of pools of cool water among the trees, but the moss on the rocks tainted those, making it a hundred times more potent than shine, or even jolt. The mossy water was what Big Joe used to poison the waterfall near the Great Salt, and a score of artisan wells. In this part of the Deathlands, nobody sane drank water until it had been boiled for longer than a man could hold his breath, and most folks did it twice, just to make sure.

Rising no higher than five stories, the buildings were
neatly sheered off at exactly the same height, a sure sign that a nukestorm had swept across the land, the flying bridges, and warships and megatons of debris simply annihilating anything they encountered. However, the town of Trevose had been built inside a sort of depression in the ground, not quite a valley, and not quite an arroyo. So the thundering maelstrom merely passed by overhead, cutting off anything that reached above the height of the surrounding hills.

“Do you really think that we can do this?” Rose asked, hefting the Uzi. “Hit at Big Joe on his home turf?” It had taken her hours to figure out there was no safety switch. The handle of the rapid-fire had a sort of lever along the back that was depressed when making a fist. When it clicked, you could shoot, but not before. It was the damnedest thing she had ever heard of.

“We've never had a better chance,” Petrov stated, working the bolt on his longblaster.

Turning a corner, the gang moved past a church covered with thick moss, and abruptly stopped in their tracks. Unexpectedly, the streets were clean of any ivy or kudzu, even the leaves had been swept away. The lush greenery on the sidewalks was chopped neatly off at the curb. A wide, smooth boulevard extended directly to a large brick building that dominated the rest of the ruins, even though it was only four stories tall.

Encircling the building were old, rusty pikes topped with the decaying heads of the people and muties who had been stupe enough to cross Big Joe and so had paid the ultimate price. The walls had been painstakingly patched with different color bricks from a hundred buildings until the outside was a strange mosaic
of conflicting colors, and rumored to be thicker than the defensive wall around most villes. There were no windows. Those had also been bricked shut until there were tiny slots where the people inside could fire out with blasters and crossbows.

The only visible door was solid bronze, heavily deco rated with eagles, flags and other totems of power. The metal was covered with countless small dents from blasters. Flanking the door was a wooden catapult and an iron cannon so old that the metal had turned green in color.

However, the truly terrifying aspect was the intact USAF jet fighter perched on the rooftop. Angled downward, the sleek skykiller looked as if it was about to do a bombing run and unleash untold horror on the denizens of the Deathlands.

Easing back around the corner, Petrov and the others moved back into the shadowy foliage before daring to speak. The sight of the aircraft disturbed the four people more than they wished to admit.

“So, that's the Boneyard, eh?” Charlie said in false bravado. “I've seen better.”

“In your dreams.” Petrov snorted. “That fragging—” he paused before saying the ultimate curse word “—that…that
plane
scares the ever-loving drek out of me.” The man tried not to shiver, and failed. Death from above. During the past nuclear war that had been more than just a colorful phrase: it was a painfully accurate description of how the world had ended.

“So, how are we going to handle this?” Thal rumbled quizzically. “Nobody's ever gotten inside and out again alive. Except for Big Joe and his troops.”

“I have,” Petrov said unexpectedly.

At that, Rose gasped in shock. “You used to run with Big Joe?”

“No,” the man replied, turning away from the Boneyard to zigzag deeper into the greenery. “Now, here's the plan…”

 

“W
HOA
,
GIRLS
! Whoa!” Doc commanded the team of horses in a gentle tone, loosening his grip on the reins to bring the rattling wag to a ragged halt. “Easy now, girls! Easy, there.”

As the exhausted horses stood sweaty and panting, Ryan quickly reloaded the stolen longblaster while the rest of the companions hurriedly climbed out of the cage.

Taking the other flintlock rifle, Jak loaded it with sure fingers, then hefted the bulky weapon, only to switch sides to his undamaged arm. The rifle was in poor shape, nowhere as clean as it should be, and there were notches cut into the stock to show the numbers of chills the previous owner had done. Jak scowled at that. Notches only damaged the wood, making it vulnerable to water damage. A wise man counted his friends, not his chills.

“I don't see anybody moving,” Mildred said cautiously, ramming powder, ball and cloth wad down the muzzle of the flintlock handblaster. There was only the soft rustle of the wind through the trees and a distant rumble of thunder.

“Only one way to be sure,” Krysty growled, glancing upward. The clouds overhead were mostly orange and
purple, which meant a storm was on the way. But there was no telltale reek of sulfur announcing an acid rain.

Crawling under the front seat, J.B. unearthed a pair of heavy crossbows and a quiver of arrows, the crude iron tips slightly rusty, but still lethally sharp. Without his glasses these were useless to him, so the man gave one to Krysty and the other to Doc. The arrows were shared equally. There were a lot more supplies tucked away in the shadows, including a rolled-up tent, blankets, pot and pans, bags of grain for the horses and what looked like a cardboard box of .22 cartridges coated in a thick layer of wax, but there were no predark blasters in sight.

“We must be a long way from their home to storage this sort of stuff,” Ryan noted, resting the heavy longblaster on his shoulder. The Steyr weighed only seven pounds, while the flintlock monster was about twenty pounds, if not more.

“At least it means there'll be no more of the bastards,” Krysty replied, testing the balance on her new weapon. The wooden stock was expertly carved and well balanced, the bow made from the steel leaf-springs of a predark car. She had seen something similar many times before and knew the limitations of the homemade weapon. If blasters weren't available, this was the standard weapon of the Deathlands.

“Better let the horses rest for a moment, then we'll go over and do a recce,” Ryan stated gruffly. Common sense dictated that the companions grab some water and clothes if possible. Cutting a deal with the slaves over the horses and wags would be a lot easier to negotiate if the companions were armed and dressed.

Locating a couple of leather sacks slung underneath the wag, stashed there to keep them out of the sun, J.B. deduced one was a water skin and popped the top to take a long swig before passing it around to the others. It was gratefully accepted, especially by Krysty and Mildred, who wasted some by washing off their sticky gun hands.

The other bag was securely tied, and J.B. broke a fingernail in the process. Hoping for his glasses, the man was sorely disappointed to find only hard rolls of bread, a lot of smoked fish and a couple of plastic bottles of shine. But there was no sign of their blasters, med bag, grens or any other of their missing possessions.

Stripping the two corpses of their clothing, Doc found most of it too befouled to be of any use. So taking a knife from the belt of one of the fat men, he cut the man's shirt and pants into ribbons. After tying one around his chest as a crude bandage, Doc handed another to Jak so that he could do the same. Krysty and Mildred declined the proffered strips.

Feeling ridiculous, Doc layered several strips around his loins as a crude kilt. Born and raised in a time where a man or a woman showing an inch of bare skin was considered the height of vulgarity, almost wanton, the scholar was horribly embarrassed to be nearly naked among his friends. He knew it was ridiculous, but the wisdom of childhood often formed the templates of adulthood.

Ryan and J.B. took the shoes of the dead men, but left behind the reeking socks. Personally, neither of them gave a nuking damn about being half-naked, as long as they had a blaster in their hand.

From the second buckboard, the wind began to carry over the shouts from the prisoners in the cage. Ryan couldn't clearly hear any of the words, but guessed it was merely them begging to be set free. He would do that soon enough—after the companions had first searched the other wags for their missing belongings.

Slinging a bag of ammunition over a shoulder, Krysty jumped off the wag and did a little dance, allowing her bare feet to get used to the hot dirt under the grass. “Wish there was more cloth to make moccasins,” she growled.

“Lots of aced slavers over there,” J.B. said, jerking a thumb toward the toppled wreckage. “Should be enough to get all of us shoes and blasters.”

“Some pants would be nice, too,” Mildred said, tugging her bra to a more comfortable position. Then she frowned, catching a tiny piece of what the imprisoned slaves had been shouting for the past ten minutes.

“Outriders!” Krysty cursed, spinning fast to bring the crossbow up to her shoulder.

Just then, a group of large men on horseback galloped over the horizon, each of them carrying a longblaster, with a brace of blasters tucked into their belts.

Quickly, the companions moved behind the wag for some cover.

“By the Three Kennedys!” Doc cursed, hefting his own crossbow. “The dastards weren't running for their ville, but to their compatriots! We should have known there would be more guards than these pitiful, plump patrons!”

“Let come,” Jak snarled, ramming a fresh load of powder down the hot barrel of a longblaster.

Wordlessly, J.B. scrambled up the side of the buckboard and took the reins in hand, ready to run or charge, whatever needed to be done. The other companions would have to do the chilling, but even blind he could plow the wag through the newcomers to break their charge. A disorganized enemy already had one boot in hell, as Trader always liked to say.