Prodigal's Return (20 page)

“How could you possibly know his name?” Krysty asked, puzzled.

“I don’t, but where’s the fun in that?” she admitted with a wide grin.

“Sometimes your sense of humor makes no damn sense at all,” J.B. stated with conviction.

“Sometimes?” Ryan asked, stressing the word.

Climbing back on their horses, the companions followed the road to a traffic circle and rode around it twice, looking into shops and burned-out office buildings. Small purple lizards darted in and out of rusty storm drains. A condor flew by overhead, its shadow skimming along the debris-filled street, and from far away came the sound of Doc belting out a song about marching through Georgia.

“He making that up?” Ryan asked curiously.

“No, it’s a real song from the Civil War,” Mildred
answered with a grimace. “But it seems kind of rude to be actually singing it in the state of Georgia.”

“Who knows this is Georgia anymore?”

“Good point.”

“Hey, there’s a police car over there,” Krysty announced, pointing into an alley. “Might be some weapons we can scav.”

“That’s not a police car, but a county sheriff’s patrol car,” Mildred said, veering her horse toward the vehicle. “They use a star for their badge!”

After galloping over, the companions left their horses at the mouth of the alley, then proceed deeper into the shadows.

The patrol car was parked alongside a cinder-block wall, the tires long gone to the insect population, but the windows were closed and intact. Apparently it had remained airtight over the long decades, because there was a skeleton dressed in rags sitting behind the steering wheel, the regulation mirrored sunglasses still balanced precariously on the bony bridge of where there had once been a nose.

“Crap, that’s a five-point star, not a six,” Mildred said, pointing at a badge hanging from the tattered uniform.

“I see a 9 mm Glock in the holster,” Krysty said excitedly, then scowled. “Along with an open can of soda in the cup holder.”

“Useless then,” J.B. stated, turning to walk away. From bitter experience, he knew the sugary fumes of the carbonated beverage would have severely corroded the inner workings of the weapon, especially the springs, rendering it useless.

“Mebbe the spare ammo is okay,” Ryan said, going to the trunk and using the panga to pop the lid. Inside, safe from the evaporating soda pop, was a host of items: nylon rope, a fireproof blanket, a first-aid kit, road flares and a plastic rifle box containing a Remington pump-action shotgun, an M-16/M-203 combination and a dozen mixed boxes of ammo, including a couple boxes of standard 9 mm brass for the Glock. Plus, there were a dozen 40 mm grens for the M-203. Even better, everything was in the original airtight plastic wrapping.

“Jackpot!” J.B. cried, and began happily distributing the wealth.

“God bless the sheriff’s department,” Mildred said, slinging the Winchester over a shoulder and tearing into the first-aid kit.

Most of the medicine inside was simply too old to risk using, even in an emergency, such as the ampoule of adrenaline and the antihistamine pen. But there were a lot of clean bandages, and a myriad of small Mylar packets containing aspirin, muscle relaxants, and some of the old-fashioned silver-based antiseptics. Those would still be good in another hundred years! There was an assortment of surgical instruments, medium forceps, scissors, two scalpels as sharp as the day they had been forged, and three packs of dissolving sutures with needles already attached. There was even a stethoscope, and an untouched box of latex gloves. No more bare-handed surgery!

“We’re back in biz.” J.B. smiled, filling the loops of the strap for the scattergun. Along with the double aught buckshot, there were a few deer slugs, and two bright red-orange cartridges that he knew contained steel sliv
ers. They were designed to blast open a wooden door, and the damage they did to a norm, or a mutie, had to be seen to be believed.

“Save a couple of those twelves for Doc,” Ryan directed, stuffing the fireproof blanket into his saddlebag, along with the nylon rope.

“Already did,” Krysty said, patting a bulging shirt pocket. Then she added, “You know, if this wag was missed by other scavengers, do you think we should check on their headquarters?”

“Good a place as any for Dean to leave us a message,” Ryan said, returning to the horses.

Easily locating what had once been the ville common, the companions found city hall, and discovered the sheriff department right alongside the main courthouse. There was no mistaking the stout brick building with iron bars covering the small windows.

Unfortunately, there were no other patrol cars parked near the structure, so they went inside. It was readily evident that the place had been gutted to the walls ages ago, and nothing usable remained. Even the wooden gun racks were missing, probably now the prized decoration in some baron’s bedroom.

“What do you think, lover, wall or floor?” Krysty asked, resting her M-16 combo on a shoulder. The rapidfire felt a lot heavier with a full magazine and a 40 mm gren in the launcher.

“Wall,” Ryan stated, easing his finger off the trigger of the Galil. “That’s where I’d stash a spare blaster…or a message.”

Going into the office of the sheriff, Ryan swung aside a portrait of General Robert E. Lee on the wall to reveal
a built-in safe. He wasn’t surprised in the least. Nearly every police station had a small safe to store important documents, critical evidence and an emergency weapon or two.

Eagerly, Mildred loaned J.B. her new stethoscope, and he expertly twirled the dial, listening for the clicks. In only a few minutes, he had it open. The steel box was empty, aside from a black metal keypad.

“No way,” J.B. whispered, hesitating a second before tapping the access code to a redoubt onto the alphanumeric pad.

For a long moment nothing happened, then there came the muffled sound of hydraulic pumps building pressure, and the office wall broke apart, the thick veneer of plaster crumbling away as the blast door of a redoubt slid aside to reveal the standard entrance.

“What is a redoubt doing in the middle of nowhere?” Mildred demanded, stepping over the threshold. As she did, the wall vents came to life, issuing a steady breeze of clean, warm air.

“Somebody important must have lived in town,” Ryan theorized. “A retired general, or kin to the President. Something like that.”

Since the entrance to the redoubt was hidden inside a brick building, the companions fully expected the garage level to be empty. But they were wrong. The entire space was stacked high with rows of wooden packing crates.

“Wonder what this ident number means,” Ryan muttered, running a finger along the military code stenciled across one crate.

Going to a workbench, J.B. got a crowbar and pried
off a lid. Inside were mounds of fibrous packing material, and buried beneath was a smooth metallic dome, with two large red crystal eyes.

“Dark night, these are filled with spare parts for sec hunter droids!” he said, pushing aside the cushioning to find the steel torso of the armored machine, then the arms, wheels, a buzzsaw, and finally, the pneumatic hammer that could smash through any civilian-made door, dent the armor in an APC, or crush a person’s head in a split second.

Squinting at the rows and stacks, Mildred did some fast calculations. “If there is one droid per crate, then these hold a total of…three…six…nine—four hundred and two sec hunter droids,” she finished, her voice fading away at the end. That was a veritable army of the blasted machines!

“Just sec hunters?” Ryan asked, shifting the packing material with the barrel of the Galil. “No spider droids, or high-rollers?”

“Nope, only hunters,” J.B. replied, working the pump on the scattergun to eject the buckshot cartridges and replace them with the ones containing the stainless-steel slivers, and his only deer slug. After those crazy red eyes were shattered, the machines were relatively easy to avoid. As long as you didn’t move, cough or breath too hard. Their hearing was extremely acute.

“At least we’re ready if there’s a working droid in the place,” Krysty said confidently, cradling the M-16 combo. “This 40 mm gren should blow the damn thing to pieces.”

“Just make sure you’re far enough away for the warhead to arm,” J.B. advised, studying the floor for any
sign of scoring from the treads of a droid. “Or else the gren will only bounce off and do about as much damage as a well-thrown rock.”

“Eighty feet?”

“Make it a hundred, just to be safe.”

“Fair enough.”

Doing a fast recce of the garage level, they then worked their way down to the armory. As expected, it was completely devoid of weaponry, like most redoubts. However, this one was packed solid with nuke batteries. Roughly the same size as a conventional car battery, a nuke battery delivered a lot more power and never became drained. None of the companions had any idea how they worked. But it was primarily because of nuke batteries that the companions ever got a predark civilian, or mil, wag running again after a century of neglect.

“Do these go inside a sec hunter?” Mildred asked.

“Never noticed any there before,” J.B. answered truthfully. “But then, I never really looked. Just aced the tin bastard and ran away, in case another was coming.”

Going to the cafeteria-style kitchen, the companions found a large whiteboard prominently on display to announce whatever was the special for the day. Hoping against hope for a message from Dean, Ryan grunted in disappointment that there was no note, but then admitted it only made sense. There were just two ways into this particular redoubt, and they had been the first through the disguised entrance in the sheriff’s office since the blast doors had been plastered over. What had he been thinking?

Briefly checking the pantry and walk-in freezers, Krysty found them barren. Even the saltshakers were empty. It was as if the redoubt had been built purely to store the spare parts for the droids, then been forgotten.

As the companions continued their recce, it was soon apparent no one else was present, norm or machine.

“Okay, enough stalling,” Ryan stated. “Time for the real reason we’re here.”

Summoning the elevator, the companions piled inside and ascended to the middle level. As they rose, the silence among them become more and more pronounced, until it was almost a tangible presence.

“Lover, have you given any idea to what we’re going to do if this mat-trans is also deactivated?” Krysty finally asked, her animated hair tightening into fiery ringlets.

“Stay with the convoy until the travelers reach their destination,” Ryan replied gruffly. “Then barter a deal with Alan for a couple of the wags.”

“We going to become traders, like the Trader?” J.B. asked, a smile slowly forming. “Dark night, I like that idea!”

“We could always go to Front Royal,” Mildred suggested hesitantly. “Your nephew would be delighted to have us stay.”

Ryan scowled. “And work as his sec man? No, thanks. He’s the baron. I’d just be in the way.”

With a musical ding, the elevator reached the floor, and the doors opened wide with a soft sigh.

“If this mat-trans is off-line, then we check one more before hitting the road,” he stated. “Just one more. Then it looks like we choose a redoubt to use as a base, one
that has enough equipment, tools and fuel to build some proper wags for a trader: a hundred feet long, twenty tires, lots of steel armor, bathroom, kitchen, blasters, rockets, flamethrowers, radar, radio, the works.”

“We sure as nuking hell know how to do that,” J.B. said, grinning as they walked along the corridor.

“That redoubt down in New Mex, the one that Jak likes to call Blaster Base One, had a ton of blasters and brass,” Krysty stated, her hair starting to loosen again and gently move. “Plus, the local baron loved us. Make a great place to start our circuit of the Deathlands.”

“Doc might leave us,” Mildred said simply. “He wants to get back home more than anything else. That is what is keeping him sane. If we’re not traveling through the mat-trans system, he’ll keep going from redoubt to redoubt until he finds one that is working and lets him go back in time, or until he dies of old age.”

“That’ll be his decision,” Ryan said, pushing open the door to the comp room. Then he softly added, “But I’ll miss Doc, sure enough.”

The dozen comp stations seemed to be functioning normally, a low hum filling the room. A spectrum of lights blinked on the bank of control boards, with the rows of meters flickering in the safe zone. Only a single monitor was active, the monotone screen scrolling an endless deluge of binary code.

“This seems to be working,” Mildred said hopefully.

“So did the last one,” Krysty retorted harshly.

Grabbing a wheeled chair from in front of a control board, Ryan pushed it through the anteroom and over to the gateway door. Working the access lever, J.B. opened the portal, and the one-eyed man shoved the chair into
the mat-trans unit. He stepped back and waited while J.B. closed the door firmly.

A minute passed, then another. Nothing happened. The great machine didn’t initiate a jump. It remained as still as a stone in the dirt.

Silently, the companions turned and walked away.

Two redoubts down, one to go.

Leaving the redoubt, the companions stopped in the armory to take a couple nuke batteries, then left through the sheriff’s department and reclaimed their horses.

“Not sure what Alan and his people are going to do with these,” J.B. said, easing the heavy battery into a saddlebag.

“They can always sell them to a ville,” Ryan replied with a shrug. “Walls need lights.”

“Wish we could have hit the showers,” Krysty said. “But there wouldn’t be any way to explain to the others how we happened to come back freshly scrubbed and wearing clean clothes.”

“Yeah, me, too,” Ryan replied, climbing into the saddle and starting along the road at an easy trot.

Spotting the remains of a firehouse across the ville common, Mildred rode her horse in through the smashed doors, hoping for some medical supplies. But the trucks were gone and the shelves clear. However, perched on top of a locker, where it couldn’t be seen from the ground, was a slim aluminum cylinder. Thoroughly repulsed, she almost left it there, then felt guilty, and tucked it into a pocket.

“Find anything good?” Krysty asked hopefully.

“Something for John, anyway.” Mildred sighed, proffering the tube.

Accepting it, J.B. curiously glanced at the tube and burst into a wide grin. “A cigar! A predark cigar!” He chuckled. “I’ll bet something like this has been buying blasters, horses and gaudy sluts for a dozen owners since skydark!”

Popping off the cap, he tilted the tube, and out slid four slim homemade cigarettes.

“Wolfweed.” J.B. snarled in disgust, casting the drug into a puddle on the pavement. “I’d rather smoke my own socks than that shit!”

“Sorry,” Mildred murmured, even though she was secretly pleased. Ever since they first met she had been encouraging him to stop smoking, with some success.

“Well, I appreciate the effort.” J.B. sighed, pocketing the tube. “At least this’ll still be good for protecting the next cigar I find. Or I can always pack it with plas-ex to make one hell of a anti-pers!”

“Don’t you have one of those already?” Ryan asked, guiding his mount around a pothole filled with murky yellow water.

“Never hurts to have a spare,” J.B. said with a chuckle, kicking his horse into an easy gallop.

A
S THE NOISE
of the horse hooves rang across the acid-washed ruins, a low growl came from the direction of city hall. Broken granite pillars lay askew around the collapsed marble dome, and from the darkness underneath, two sets of red eyes glared hatefully at the departing two-legs and their beasts.

Loose rocks shifted, and pillars loudly cracked as the thing trapped beneath the dome attempted once more to get free. But the ancient steel beams set inside the
granite columns had been driven into the hard ground like the bars of a cage, and the colossal mutie could only silently rage against its inadvertent prison.

Then a section of the terrazzo floor settled, exposing the basement level. Sensing a possible route to liberty, the mutie began to claw aside the mounds of moldy furniture, stained marble walls and concrete flooring. Soon it was tunneling into the compacted earth, angling slowly back up toward the sun and the rapidly escaping meat…?.

S
TOPPING HIS HORSE
near the skeleton of a two-headed cow lying on the sidewalk, Jak unscrewed the cap off a U.S. Army canteen and took a long drink.

“Hi, Adam,” a familiar voice whispered from the dark interior of a crumbling store.

Caught in the middle of a swallow, Jak almost choked on the water, and needed a moment to catch his breath. “The name’s Alvin,” he replied, screwing back on the cap. “Nice know you alive.”

“Hard to chill a Cawdor,” Dean said, stepping into view from the shadows inside a crumbling ice cream parlor. “Thanks for leaving such an easy trail for me to follow.”

“Well, you came up with broken star idea.”

“You twist those twigs into a star while riding?”

“Sure, easy do,” Jak said, shrugging.

“Where’s my father?” Dean asked, looking at the line of big wooden wags and horses trundling along the ancient road.

“Hunt for you,” the albino teen replied, slinging the
canteen over the pommel of his saddle. “Where Sharona?”

“Don’t know. We got separated in a flood a few months ago,” Dean replied stiffly. “I’ve been living with the Angels since then.”

“Willingly?” Jak asked with a scowl. In truth, he barely recognized this young giant for the child who had traveled with the companions. Then it occurred to him that Dean was now almost sixteen, older than Jak had been when he first joined the companions.

Dean grimaced. “Hell, no!”

“Why not leave?”

“Hostages,” Dean replied. “If I left, I know Camarillo, the gang leader, would have sent a dozen slaves to the lashing post.”

Somberly, Jak nodded in understanding. “So you set free first?”

“Yes, we did,” Althea said, appearing behind Dean, the reins of a limping stallion in her hand.

Studying the young beauty, Jak started to ask a question, then saw that it wasn’t necessary. From the way they looked at each other, it was clear the two were a couple. “Jak Lauren,” he said simply.

“Althea Stone.”

“What happen horse?”

“The first got aced by a flapjack,” Dean said with a scowl.

“Then this one caught a hoof in a gopher hole and sprained a muscle,” Althea added, patting the stallion’s neck. Softly, the animal nickered in reply.

“Any chance of getting another?” Dean asked, hitching up his gun belt. “We can trade for it.”

“Nope,” Jak stated bluntly. “Lost about half last night in fight during storm.”

“What attacked this big a group?” Althea asked, glancing at the rattling convoy of wooden wags and horses.

“Everything.” Jak heaved a sigh.

Dean grinned. “Found the local safe place, eh?”

“And so did every mutie in the valley,” Cordelia declared, riding her horse closer. She held the reins loosely in one hand and cradled a flintlock longblaster across her lap. The hammer was cocked, but her finger wasn’t resting on the trigger. “So, are these the two that Ryan and the others really went searching for?”

“Dean, Althea,” Jak said as an introduction, jerking a thumb.

After a moment, Cordelia tilted her head in greeting, then shouted over a shoulder. “Hey, Dewitt! We got a lame horse here!”

Instantly, the rear doors of a wag slammed open, and Dewitt jumped to the cracked pavement, his fishing tackle box in hand. But before he got halfway there, something powerful exploded in the distance, the concussion making ripples in every puddle in the road.

Pulling out blasters and crossbows, everybody looked around for the source of the detonation, but nothing was in sight except for decaying ruins. Then it happened again and again, the dull thumps coming ever faster until they sounded like the beating of a human heart, or—

“Nuking hell, they found us!” Dean snarled, drawing the Browning Hi-Power.

Only a half-second slower, Althea pulled out the
Ruger and jerked back the slide on top. Trained in combat, the lame horse backed deeper into the shadowy interior of the ancient structure.

A moment later, the brick wall of a movie theater exploded into the street and the
Atomsmasher
rolled into view with the steam whistle screaming. Close behind was a boiling mob of coldhearts on horses and sandhogs, as well as a dozen people in matching uniforms, riding horseback in a tight formation.

“Alton ville sec men!” Jak shouted in recognition, even as his M-16 started chattering at the better-armed sec force. Only the best shots got the good weapons, so he always aced those first.

The spray of 5.56 mm rounds stitched several of them across the chest, but the coldhearts only flinched as tufts of splinters erupted from their bulky canvas jackets. Damn, he had forgotten about the bastard body armor!

“Aim for their heads!” Cordelia yelled, triggering her longblaster. Smoke and flame vomited from the pitted muzzle of the black-powder weapon, and a hundred yards away, a coldheart flew backward off a sandhog with most of his face removed.

A flurry of blasters answered back, the bullets humming past the woman as thick as summer flies. As if she didn’t have a care in the world, Cordelia coolly reloaded, directing her horse to move backward with some knee jabs.

“Blue Thunder!” Camarillo yelled from within the tiny control room of the pounding steam truck. “Blue Thunder!”

At the code phrase, the coldhearts promptly spread
out in a skirmish line to flank the massive war wag, leaving the middle avenue wide open for the
Atomsmasher
to charge through, coming up behind the convoy of wooden wags.

“Scatter!” Alan bellowed, discharging both his blasters at the colossal machine. The .63 miniballs slammed against the iron bars covering the windows, but ricocheted off harmlessly.

As if in reply, Camarillo released a long blast from the steam whistle, the unnatural sound terrifying people and horses alike.

Rapidly increasing in speed, the
Atomsmasher
headed for its target. Frantically whipping their horses, the drivers attempted to get out of the way of the machine, a handful of the wags arching into the ruins. The rest of the convoy foolishly tried to outrun the steam truck.

Looming like the armored fist of God, the modified locomotive rammed into the rear wag. The wooden slats disintegrated into splinters and the broken wheels went flying, people and horses vanishing under the armored bulk of the
Atomsmasher.

Angling sharply away, the second wag received only a glancing blow. But it burst apart anyway, and boxes and barrels went tumbling, along with the hapless passengers. However, the galloping horses escaped intact. Still harnessed together, they pelted away, dragging along the driver. Cursing wildly, he was scraped along the cracked pavement until reaching a pothole. Then he was gone, a severed arm still holding on to the flapping reins for a few seconds before finally coming off yards away.

The next three wags were even less fortunate, with travelers and horses ruthlessly slaughtered by the rampaging iron juggernaught. Laughing triumphantly, Camarillo careened off into the ruins, only to start circling back toward the convoy for another chilling pass.

Ignoring everybody else, Hannigan headed directly for Dean, only to be cut off by the sec men on sandhogs.

Firing in every direction, the travelers let loose with their assortment of blasters. Several of the coldhearts and sec men jerked as the miniballs hummed past them, but nobody fell, wounded or aced. Then the dense cloud of dark gun smoke rolled toward the invaders, and they were forced to slow their advance, or risk going into a pothole and breaking their necks.

“Ryan! I want Ryan Cawdor!” Chief Ralhoun bellowed from a sandhog, firing a Beretta steadily into the mob of travelers and horses. Her white scarf billowed in the wind as she drove over the dead and the dying in her mad search for revenge.

Suddenly, a flurry of boomerangs darted from the wags. The coldhearts ducked low. The sec men didn’t, and two of them fell, their faces crushed into jelly. Blindly, the dying sec men continued to shoot, the rounds mostly hitting empty air, or shattering a predark window.

Pausing to chill a big black dog that started coming his way, Jak slapped a spare magazine into the M-16, then kicked his horse into a full gallop.

Drawing her Navy flare gun, Cordelia stayed right alongside, sending the fat magnesium charges sizzling into the invaders. Screaming, a sec man fell with a flare
buried in his chest, the brilliant vermilion flame extending outward for almost a yard.

Crouched on a sandhog, a coldheart aced a traveler with his sawed-off scattergun, then triggered the second barrel toward Cordelia. She loudly grunted as the spray of broken glass and bent nails peppered her side, starting a red stain spreading across her shirt. Then she fired back, the flare punching through the sandhog’s gas tank. The vehicle erupted into flame, the coldheart falling out of the saddle a human torch.

“Fix!” Jak commanded, tossing her a clean cloth. “I cover!”

“No time, Jak!” she bellowed in reply, grinning like a madwoman as she threw away the flare gun. Coughing blood, she sagged a little in the saddle, then sat straight and began to calmly fire the Mauser at the scattering enemy.

Discharging the LeMat as fast as possible, Doc took out a cougar and a coldheart, then stumbled backward as an arrow slammed into his thigh. Reaching down, he snapped off the wooden shaft at skin level, then dumped the spent brass from his blaster. He’d started to reload when a sec man came pounding toward him, waving an ax and grinning widely.

Quickly, Doc switched to the second barrel, and waited until the rider was almost on him before discharging the miniature shotgun. The 12-gauge cartridge tore open the throat of the horse in a bloody geyser, and the animal veered sharply. Caught off balance, the sec man sailed out of the saddle to land on the sidewalk with an audible crack. Incredibly, the panting man tried to
rise once more, and Library sent an arrow straight down his gullet, the barbed tip coming out his neck.

With a snarl, a coldheart cut loose with a short burst from a MAC-10 rapidfire. Dropping the crossbow, Library clutched her stomach and doubled over in pain.

His face ablaze with anger, Doc snapped shut the cylinder of the LeMat and sent two booming rounds into the coldheart. Spinning away, the man lost his life and his blaster at the exact same time.

Shooting her stolen blaster nonstop, Althea darted into the fray to grab the MAC-10, then rummage in the pockets of the corpse for any spare magazines. A coldheart aimed a longblaster at her, and Dean stroked the trigger of the Browning Hi-Power. The .38 dumdum round hit the coldheart in the shoulder and exploded out his back like a cannonball, blood squirting from a severed artery. The man was fumbling to staunch the flow when Althea sent a burst across his chest, then continued onward, cutting down two more coldhearts, and a sec man working the arming lever of a longblaster.

“Short bursts!” Dean yelled while firing twice, hitting the coldheart in the chest and wounding his horse.