This moment vanished in the ground-shaking blast of the main fuel store for the shanty ville going up under attack from one of the armed wags. While one had maintained guard on the refrigerated wags, to cover any attack that may be mounted as a last-ditch by the ville dwellers, the other had followed in the wake of the combat party as they forged forward. While they had decimated the population, and driven away the remnants of the pack, there was still the obstacle of the shanty ville itself to overcome.
It was true that there were now very few of the muties left, but once they had been driven back to their ville, they had the shelter of the buildings. That gave them the advantage as they had cover, and also the possibility of unknown weapons stores contained within. Meanwhile, the combat
party advancing on them had no cover that they could use to counter.
It hadn’t taken much for Ramona, deputed to stay behind and man the wag that she had been traveling with Raven, Doc and Ryan, to figure that out. Seeing that the pack had dispersed, and that the muties were either chilled or driven back, it didn’t take much in the way of initiative to figure that she could be more use if she followed up the combat party. Taking the wag to within firing range of the ville, she had slewed the vehicle sideways-on so that the rocket launchers were dead-on to the shanty buildings.
Her plan, as she seated herself at the launcher, was to try to pick off the biggest buildings first, figuring that the muties would want to band together, and that the biggest buildings were the likeliest to house the biggest armories.
There was no way she could have expected to hit the jackpot first time. The building she chose as her first target was the fuel store for the ville, and it was obvious that they had been storing their plundered fuel for some time.
The sky was momentarily as bright as day, a wave of heat sweeping over the combat party as it approached, scorching as the shock wave accompanying it threw them to the ground. The wave was so fierce that they were pinned to the ground, unable to see the chain reaction as the blast area flattened the shanty buildings nearest, causing their own smaller supplies of fuel, explosives and ammo to go up. In turn, these smaller blasts acted as a chain, catching the buildings nearest to them. And so the whole of the shanty ville went up in smoke and flame, lighting up the skies afresh as the initial fire began to fade.
The cries and screams of those muties who had made
the cover of the shanty ville were lost to the roar and crackle of the buildings as they detonated. By the time that the combat party was able to look up, the initial bursts of light had faded, leaving only the residual glow of a ville that was now little more than a series of rapidly burning ruins.
Unlike the rest of the combat party, J.B. and Eula had been just far enough away to witness the detonation without being thrown down. Now they watched as the party began to rise from the dustbowl floor.
“Guess we won’t have to check that out quite so thoroughly,” Eula said to the Armorer.
J.B. looked at her. She was grinning.
“No, not likely to make a mistake on that,” he returned, his own grin part relief and part exhaustion. “But I tell you something. LaGuerre’s gonna be pissed that we’ve left him down there.”
Chapter Fifteen
J.B. wasn’t far wrong. With the inhabitants of the ville already beginning to bloat up in the first rays of the morning sun, and the remnants of the pack now scattered across the dustbowl to escape the smell of chilling that their less fortunate companions had left in their wake, it was a relatively simple matter for the armored wag to be pulled from the pit. Simple after the matter of pulling the trader from the pit, that was.
Although the pit was several yards deep, it had been dug in a conical pattern, so that the sides were not sheer. Sure, they were steep, but those who had engineered the trap had their own concerns in the construction. From the look of many of them as they lay scattered across the dirt, it had been difficult enough for them to move around on a flat surface, let alone cope with the climbing that may be involved in both the construction and the execution of such a trap.
As a result, it gave the convoy a relatively simple task. The rear of the armored wag presented an easy access for block and tackle, for tow ropes and for the chains that were used to secure one vehicle to another. They were also fortunate that they were in a convoy that was using the refrigerated wags and the large cabs to pull them.
Under the direction of Raven and Ryan, old Ray used his cab to pull the armored wag from the pit. Detaching
the cab from the refrigerated section, the wag jockey moved to the edge of the pit while Raven and Ryan scrambled down with chains, ropes and block tackle. Taking no chances on any of the connections severing and allowing the armored wag to fall back into the pit, they evenly distributed their chains, ropes and tackle, making sure that they secured the ties while distributing the weight to avoid any one connection taking too much strain. The ties were attached to both the top and bottom of the wag, under the chassis and on the bodywork. Wherever they could find a secure spot to attach a tie, they did it until they had run out of chains, ropes and tackle.
The other end of their snaking maze of metal and rope was attached to the heavy-duty fender on the front of the wag cab. At a signal from Ryan, who was looking down into the pit, Ray began to reverse the wag cab slowly, pulling at the armored wag.
It didn’t give easily. Despite the disparity in weight, it was harder to shift than any of them would have thought. Zarir’s reactions had been so slow that, as he had piloted the armored wag into the pit, he had still been at full throttle. As a result, the momentum of the wag had driven its nose into the hardpacked earth, and the ground was a harsh and unforgiving medium.
Raven sat up in the cab with Ray, watching Ryan closely. She still felt as though she hardly knew the one-eyed man, but like her friend Ramona, had instinctively known that she could trust his judgment. Ray, on the other hand, she didn’t trust. The old man was a less than full tank up top, and he was still babbling away to her about nothing much as he reversed his wag. At least, she figured it was nothing
much. She was focusing her attention on Ryan, and Ray’s words were nothing more than a blur of sound to her. As she watched the one-eyed man, she noticed his rippling muscles and the rugged handsomeness of his face. Sure he had that scar, but that only added to his macho charm. On the other hand, the red-haired bitch was his, and looked far too tough for Raven to take on. She was a feisty woman, but she knew her limits. Besides which, now was not the time.
Ray yelped as she hit him on the arm, just for emphasis, every time that she yelled at him to stop or to increase speed. He punctuated his monologue with complaints that fell on closed ears.
Raven watched Ryan, and then the lip of the pit. She saw the chains and ropes they had attached to the top of the armored wag start to slacken. They had tied them at different lengths, to allow for the discrepancy that would occur when the wag began to right itself as it hit the flat. Even so, it seemed that their necessary haste, and the need to judge it by eye alone, had been more than a little out. She only hoped that the bottom of the chassis could take the extra strain that would now be on it.
Ray, despite the constant stream of words from his mouth, had not been jockeying wags for so long without learning something along the way. Despite his seeming lack of attention, he had felt the sudden jerk of the cab when the armored wag had freed itself from the earth’s grip, and so had eased off on the throttle to allow for that. Even now he was regulating his speed, actually one second ahead of the barked commands and punctuating punch of Raven.
On the lip of the pit, Ryan stared down at the wag as it was released from its prison. The ties on the top of the vehicle were slack too quickly for his liking, leaving the bottom to take the strain of the pull. The wag was strong, but it was also heavy. And while the cab had enough power to pull it out, it was a question of whether or not the wag jockey had the skill to pull it out in one piece.
The armored wag made a slow and sure ascent until it reached the lip. The rear wheels fought for purchase on the dusty, crumbling soil, seeming at times to willfully drive the earth from beneath them, leaving nothing but empty space for purchase. Ryan swore softly to himself, realizing that if he had thought about it quicker, he could have organized planking from the shanties of the ville—what was left of them—to shore up the unsafe surface and allow for greater purchase.
But it was of no matter now. All he could do was watch and pray, directing the efforts of the old wag jockey as best as he could.
The rear wheels finally gained sufficient grip to allow the wag to drag itself toward the horizontal. As the length of the wag allowed for the underneath to scrape along the surface with a squeal that made his teeth ache, it reached a point where the ties on the upper section finally came into their own, growing taut once more and pulling the body of the wag upright so that the front wheels dangled over the abyss that had been their prison.
Ryan sucked in his breath. If there was to be one moment where the wag could succumb to the tensions that were working within the structure and render it asunder, this would be that moment…
He indicated to Raven and Ray that it was the moment to put pedal to metal. Before Raven could even open her mouth or move her fist, Ray had stamped on the accelerator, the big rig moving backward with increasing speed, dragging the heavy armored wag onto the flat before it had the chance to rip itself to pieces.
Ryan heaved a sigh of relief, and he wasn’t alone. In the cab of the wag, Raven, too, sighed heavily.
Ray looked at her. “Hon, I don’t know why you were worried. You tie it well enough, I can shift it.”
Raven looked back at him, realizing that she had been looking at Ray as some old crazie for too long. She’d forgotten why Armand kept him on for so long.
“Next time I underestimate you, hit me,” she said.
Ray grinned. “Shit, I’ll settle for you not hitting me anymore. My arm’s numb from the shoulder down.”
WHILE THIS HAD BEEN going on, LaGuerre was moaning in every sense of the word. So much so that Mildred sincerely wished that the trader had bought the farm down in the pit, and not the wag driver who, she understood from J.B., had been silent. In truth, if the miserable bastard didn’t shut up soon, she’d succumb to the temptation to fill the man so full of morphine that he’d be too blissed out to speak. The only thing that had stopped her was that she really didn’t like him, and the thought of the idiot suffering some pain was a pleasant, if not particularly charitable, thought.
“Man, you better hope that my wag ain’t badly damaged. I need that machine, and I need for us to get on the way soonest possible, so they better not be fucking around in
trying to get it out of the ground. Man, if they take as little care as they took in getting me out, then my machine ain’t got shit in the way of a chance. I thought I could trust that bitch Eula, then what does she do? Leave me down there with Zarir, man, leave me down there with a fucking chill boy while she and that man of yours get to make a break for it. Thank fuck you people were able to do your job and get rid of these crazies—man, what did happen up here?—and get me out. Shit, who runs this show, man? Ow. What the fuck are you doing?” he yelped as Mildred deliberately jabbed a hypo full of antibiotic into a particularly fleshy and therefore more painful part of his rear end.
“Sorry,” she murmured, realizing that her tone belied the word, but not caring. Hell, she didn’t even need to do it in his ass. His arm would have done just as well, but she’d hoped that flipping him over might dull the noise. No chance. Not that LaGuerre seemed to notice any of this.
“You damn well should be,” he grumbled. “This was supposed to be a straight run with you people heading off trouble at the pass. Stead of which I get left in a shallow grave while my two supposed armorers turn tail and run.”
That was too much for Mildred.
“You ungrateful fuck,” she gritted in his ear. “J.B. nearly bought the farm, so did Eula. Hell, we all did. We were up here fighting while you were hiding in the dark. Couple of busted ribs never stopped any of us fighting when our lives depended on it. Your people did good, and we’re all alive. Including you. And if you hadn’t pumped that driver of yours full of junk to keep him awake, then he might have had the sense not to drive into a fucking big hole in the ground.”
LaGuerre turned onto his front, and looked at her with a quizzical expression that, in the circumstances, surprised her.
“Shit, what’s your problem?” he said in a tone that, bizarrely, sounded as though he was wounded more by her words that the injuries sustained in the crash. He added, “I was only saying, that’s all…”
Mildred, shook her head, openmouthed. “Just pull your pants up and shut up,” was all she could say, dumbfounded as she moved on to the next patient.
Next was Cody, who had sustained a graze across the shoulder from a stray slug in the firefight. The bleeding had been staunched, and it was a matter of simply cleaning and dressing the wound to avoid infection. Despite the fact that it was raw, and still fresh, the skinny fighter didn’t flinch.
“Pay no mind to Armand. He’s stupe about some things ’cause we’ve been lucky. Hell, guy’s the luckiest trader I ever run with,” he mused, “which I guess is why I stick around.”
Mildred shrugged. There was nothing more to say. Besides which, she had other things on her mind.
After the firefight, as the convoy had regrouped in the wake of battle, and assessed that they had no casualties of any import, with nothing more than a few superficial wounds, J.B. had sought out Mildred to speak to her. She had known J.B. for what seemed like forever; despite the short amount of time it represented in her actual life span, the nature of her life after awakening from cryogenic freezing had made every experience seem deeper. As a result, the bonds forged among the traveling companions had gone deeper than any she had known. Particularly those she shared with the Armorer.
What J.B. had said to her, and the tones in which he had
spoken, had made a deep impression on her. He told her of the way in which Eula had saved his life, and of the change in her attitude prior to that. It was clear that he was confused about what had prompted it, but felt no inclination to be anything other than convinced that her ambivalence had been resolved. He didn’t know why. He only knew that in the act of saving his life when there had been compulsion, she had made her choice clear.
Well, Mildred could live with that. It was John’s choice, even though she was inclined to wait and see this change for herself. What had concerned her more was what he had said next.
In the aftermath of battle, when he had thanked her for her actions, Eula had told him that she wanted to leave LaGuerre after they reached Jenningsville. What she was looking for could not be found with the trader. She wanted to travel with J.B. and his companions. With them she could find what she sought.
J.B. was puzzled but willing to take her word when he relayed this to Mildred. Her actions had been proof enough of intent for him.
But Mildred felt differently. While she was more than glad that Eula had stopped J.B. from buying the farm, she was damn sure there was another motive behind it all. There was no way that she could believe such a sudden and total about-turn in attitude. Maybe John was right. She had never known his judgment to be so flawed. But for Mildred, something was itching at her. Perhaps it was just old-fashioned jealousy.
WHILE MILDRED PONDERED this, the rest of the convoy checked out their wags while they waited for Ray to haul
the lead wag from the pit. It wasn’t a process that took them long. In the firefight, they had sustained little damage from blasterfire, and only some superficial damage from the impact of the pack as it had driven them onto this path.
In truth, the majority of their time had been spent combing the remains of the ville for anything that could be salvaged and put to use. It had been a mostly fruitless task. The damage incurred when the ville went up in a chain reaction had left little behind that was identifiable. The inhabitants who had retreated to their shanties had been reduced to ash and charred debris like their homes and whatever belongings they had plundered over the years. Any indication of how they had lived, how they had survived, had been eradicated in the fierce blaze. There was nothing to even suggest to the convoy what their fate may have been had they not fought so well. All that had survived the scorched earth were a couple of ramshackle barns with the remains of some feed, which had obviously been used at some point for part or all of the pack, perhaps to raise the young so that they were responsive to their masters, rather than growing completely feral.