Tainted Cascade (7 page)

In a splintery crash, the exit doors burst open, and Thal blinked at the sunlight streaming into the basement. Then he saw figures moving through the ruins and drew both of his blasters to instantly fire. The double discharge threw the big man backward from the brutal recoil, and he almost dropped both weapons. An arrow came out of the shadows across the street, and Thal used just the Colt, sending out five fast rounds.
A window shattered, leaves went flying and a boneman stumbled into the middle of the street, his shoulder pumping lifeblood. Holstering the Colt, Thal used both hands to aim the LeMat and fire. The trigger merely clicked, then Thal remembered to cock the hammer first and try again. This time, smoke and flame lanced from the black-powder weapon, and the boneman flipped over backward from the triphammer arrival of the .44 miniball.

Hosing a long stream from the Uzi, Rose lost control of the chattering rapid-fire, the 9-mm rounds hitting nothing in particular. Dropping behind a derelict police car, the woman frantically reloaded, while Petrov sent off four thundering discharges from the S&W scattergun. As he knelt to reload, Rose stood. Switching to short bursts, she found the weapon much easier to control and began to hammer away at the people on the other side of the corridor. A flurry of boomerangs sailed down the corridor to smack into a stack of tires, and several arrows slammed into windows, the sheets of glass shattering into tiny green squares that rolled and bounced everywhere underfoot.

Ducking, Charlie almost got hit in the head while forcing open another unmarked canister. A lot of them were filled with a mixture of gasoline and sugar water, which would ace the engine of a hog in only a few minutes. Just another fragging trick of Big Joe's to stop a thief. However, Charlie was smart enough to taste the fluid inside each canister until finding the real juice, a combination of gasoline, diesel and shine that worked perfectly in the old engines.

Still standing in the open exit, Thal saw another
movement in the lush greenery, but did nothing until he saw a boot. Aiming carefully, he shot once, and a boneman howled as his foot erupted into ragged meat and bone, the boot torn off to tumble down the street. As he fell, Thal fired the LeMat again, sending the body rolling back into the grass and weeds.

Trying to fool the others into thinking she was out of brass, Rose pulled out the panga and threw it at the bonemen, but the curved blade merely wobbled in flight and smacked into the floor, skittering out of sight. Shitfire, what a crappy knife! That one-eyed man had to have been a feeb.

Unexpectedly, the blade came flying back, but this time it was spinning sideways, moving parallel to the floor. Only a blur in the air, the panga skimmed over the police car, just missing Rose, and slammed into the wall. She gasped in astonishment at that and started to reach upward, when an arrow smacked into the wall just below the panga.

“Clever,” Rose growled, quickly tugging the panga free, then pulling a spent clip from her pocket to throw it on the floor. At the clatter, three bonemen charged out of the smoke, grinning like fiends. Instantly, she cut loose with the Uzi and mowed them down, wasting precious brass until the bodies were barely recognizable as humans anymore.

“Done!” Charlie announced, screwing the cap back on the gas tank of a motorcycle. Tossing away the empty gas canister, the man then drew both of his blasters and banged away at the unseen attackers.

“Rock and roll!” Petrov shouted, lighting a stubby
candle and placing it strategically on the floor, just behind a heavy toolbox.

Going to the largest hog, Thal revved the knuckle-head engine alive and roared out of the basement, leaving behind a trail of blue smoke. Hopping onto another bike, Rose needed three tries to make the twin-V engine catch, then she twisted the throttle on the handlebars and charged out of the basement, driving at breakneck speed.

“They're jacking the hogs!” a boneman yelled.

Howling like banshees, a mob of the Boneyard boys charged into view. Petrov laughed insanely while triggering the scattergun. The range was too great for a chill, but the barrage of double-O buckshot drove the men back inside the main building, limping and bleeding.

“Whoever you nuke-suckers are, I'm gonna personally rip out your fragging hearts!” Big Joe yelled, stepping boldly into view, both of his Ingram machine pistols spitting fire. The streams of small-caliber rounds knocked paint off the walls and zinged about the garage, shattering more windows, throwing sparks off tools and punching holes in oil cans.

“Don't you know me anymore, Father?” Petrov screamed at the top of his lungs.

There came a moment of silence.

“Peter?” Big Joe asked in a strained whisper.

“Not anymore!” Petrov answered, kicking over a row of open gas canisters. Pinkish juice gushed out to spread fast toward the waiting candle.

Climbing onto a couple of motorcycles, Petrov and Charlie gunned the hogs alive and raced out of the
basement at full throttle, thick black fumes pouring from the exhaust pipes. They collided on the exit ramp, almost knocking each other down, but the confines were too tight, and the men stayed in motion, reaching open ground outside to separate and head in different directions to confuse any trackers.

Charging into the garage, Big Joe and the bonemen looked about for any traps before heading after the thieves. They found the candle a split second before the fuel did, and a boneman dived forward to grab the wick and crush it dead in a fist.

Charging out of the exit ramp of the basement, Big Joe and the others opened fire with every weapon they had at the departing thieves, but the bikes were already out of range of the small-caliber blasters.

“Juice up the war wag!” Big Joe snarled, holstering a piece. He ran a hand along his neck and inspected his blood-smeared palm. The ricochet had only grazed his neck, nothing more. “I want it running in five minutes!”

“No prob, Chief,” a boneman replied, dumping out the spent rounds from his .32 revolver and pocketing the brass to reload later.

Then the man blinked at the half stick of dynamite lying on the side of the smooth road.

Turning fast, the boneman started to yell a warning, when the entire world seemed to explode, and bodies went flying into the trees like burning rag dolls….

 

A
S THE AFTERNOON
faded into evening, Ryan called a halt to their progress for the day. There were still some lingering aftereffects of whatever drug had been used
to render them unconscious, and everybody needed some rest. The smoked fish and rolls had made decent sandwiches during the ride, but now it was time for a hot meal and some proper sleep.

Making camp in a glen, the companions fed and watered the horses from a small creek trickling through the weeds. Then they curried the animals clean, carefully checking for any wounds that might fester. But the horses were undamaged and nuzzled their new owners to show they were ready to keep going. After so many years of dragging the slave wags, the weight of a single rider meant nothing to the hardy animals. However, the companions had been pushed as far as they could go this long day and ached for some real sleep.

Pitching the canvas tent, the weary companions dug a pit to hide their campfire and cooked dinner—fish stew, as there was nothing else, aside from the grain for the horses. Afterward, the friends spent a few hours cleaning and tailoring their new clothes until sleep sounded a clarion call, and everybody piled into the tent to share the two thin blankets, all of them far too exhausted to even try standing guard. Hopefully, the horses would warn them of any intruders in the night.

The sun was high in the sky when the companions finally stumbled out of the tent, yawing and scratching. Breakfast was the same as dinner—stale bread and dried fish—but the food eased the ache in their bellies and was good enough for the present.

Washing as best as possible in the tiny creek, the companions got dressed and strapped on their new weapons. Ryan had a strip of torn cloth tied around his head in lieu of his former eyepatch, deerskin moccasins
and a rope belt on his pants that supported a bullwhip and a machete. A battered leather bag was slung over a shoulder, containing plastic jars of black power, lead balls and wadding for his longblaster, plus two spare flints.

Unable to find a pair of pants that she could wear without tripping over the loose folds of cloth, Krysty was wearing one of the slavers' huge shirts as a makeshift dress, the material reaching midthigh. A canvas gun belt cinched around her trim waist supported two flintlock pistols and a small knife.

Amused by the Old West appearance of the woman, Mildred started to make a comment about Annie Oakley, but then decided reticence would be the wiser course, since she was wearing something similar, with the hem reaching to her shins. Mildred hadn't been able to find a pair of shoes that fit her feet, and so had made peasant boots, or whatever they had been called back in the Middle Ages. The boots were just thick folds of cloth wrapped around her feet and legs, lashed into place with leather straps. Between the boots and the shirt, not an inch of her showed below the neck.

Passing on a flintlock, Mildred was armed with a crossbow and a full quiver of arrows, along with a .22 zipgun. The numbing recoil of the black-powder pistols hurt her hands, and a physician without a delicate sense of touch would be worse than useless during surgery. She would have to depend upon accuracy, instead of stopping power.

In contrast, J.B. had managed to trim down some of the slavers' clothing to a reasonable fit, although the cloth was covered with stains that he didn't want to
think about too hard. The pepperbox longblaster was rigged to hang across his chest with a sling made from the leather reins, and an unsheathed machete was tucked into a rope belt. J.B. considered them both excellent weapons for a man who couldn't see very clearly. In tight confines, he would be as deadly as ever.

The wiry man also had a loose sack slung over a shoulder. The inside of it reeked of smoked fish, but it now held a couple of pounds of black powder wrapped in cloth bundles, some spare wadding, five worn flints that needed to be resharpened, a plastic bottle half-full of shine, some rope cut to the various lengths and a single butane lighter. It was a feeble collection in comparison to the formidable armament the man had formerly carried in his munitions bag, but it was a start, and that was what counted.

Sporting another .75 musket, Jak was in a tunic made from a shirt, horsehide moccasins and rag leggings that reached his knees. His wide leather belt bristled with five assorted knives, none of them with a decent edge yet, and the hatchet, which had been honed to a razor edge during the long ride yesterday.

After some due consideration, Doc hadn't altered the clothing of the chilled slavers, instead concentrating on pounding out the various stains and smells with a rock and a little sprinkle of black powder. His shirt and pants were almost clean now, although ridiculously loose, the excess material fluttering in the breeze. The old man was overarmed with a bullwhip, crossbow, a machete and a .22 zipgun. To help manage the weight
of the canvas gun belt, the man had added two leather straps that hung over his shoulders like suspenders.

“Not run fast carrying weight,” Jak stated with a snort.

“True, but I am astride a horse at the moment, so I have no need to challenge Hermes,” Doc retorted, checking the draw of his zipgun. “Besides, the best defense is a good offense!”

The homemade weapon was made from a block of soft wood, some copper pipe, a roofing nail and a mousetrap. It looked like junk, but there were notches in the handle. So either it did work, or else the previous owner was a blowhard.

Probably a little of both, Doc decided.

Breaking down the campsite, the companions packed everything away carefully, then buried the campfire. They rode around in circles for a few minutes to disguise their numbers, then continued along the fading trail of the wags. If there had been any rain, acid or otherwise, they would have been completely out of luck. But so far, the weather had held, the dark clouds overhead merely rumbling. Stubby grass was already starting to grow where older plants had been crushed under the weight of the wooden wheels, and Jak often had to stop and study the ground for minutes before figuring out which way the slavers had come from.

Animals were in the dwindling forest, and the companions hunted along the way, using the crossbows as much as possible so that Big Joe and his people wouldn't hear their approach. It also gave Mildred and Doc some much-needed practice of quickly reloading the cumbersome weapons. The bows were made from
the leaf-springs of predark cars and required a lot of raw muscle to pull back into position.

By late afternoon, the pommels of every saddle were festooned with rabbits and squirrels. Jak had brought down a hawk in flight using his hatchet.

“Might good balance,” the albino teen said, grinning as he extracted the blade from the fallen hawk.

An apple tree had yielded the last of the summer fruit, and Mildred had collected a good supply of wild onions and dandelion leaves.

“Find taters, I make stew tonight,” Jak said, honing the edge of a knife across the top of a smooth stone he had found. The steel was slowly getting a decent edge.

“We don't have any bowls or spoons,” Krysty reminded him, plucking the feathers off the hawk as they rode through the rolling countryside.

“I can carve us some of those,” Doc said confidently, then grinned. “Just not enough for everybody in the span of a single day.”

As evening fell, the companions stopped to make camp in a wooded glen alongside a small creek. There were plenty of bushes to hide their campfire and enough wildlife to tell them that no big muties infested the area.

Dinner that night was the roasted hawk with dandelion greens and onions simmering in the dripping fat. The apples were given to the horses to extend the dwindling supply of grain and grass. Properly gutted and skinned, the rabbits were set to smoke above the smoldering embers to preserve them for the following day, and the companions were forced to turn their attention
away from the delicious smells coming from the slow-roasting meat.