Hell Road Warriors

The iron-skinned pickup closed up with the convoy and pulled alongside the semi. Six scowled even more mightily than usual at the sight of Krysty grinning behind the wheel. He shouted over the cacophony of engine noise. “What do you propose?”

“Get us two of the bikes!”

Six got on the horn, and two of the motorcycle scouts headed back in.

Ryan slid down into the cab. “Keep her straight.” The one-eyed man took up his rifle as the vehicle came alongside, and he jumped into the pickup bed. Six thumped his hand on the roof and the driver brought the pickup to a halt.

Six got back on the horn. “Seriah, Krysty is driving the truck. Why don’t you ride with her for a while?”

The little wrench’s voice came back. “You got it, Vinny!”

Six made another noise. Seriah’s attitude seemed to be eternally sunny. The two bikers pulled up. “Oui, Six?”

“Ryan and I are going for a ride. Give us your bikes.”

The two riders didn’t look happy about having their rides usurped, but Ryan was quickly getting the impression that no one in the convoy other than Toulalan and perhaps Seriah ever gave Six any lip.

Ryan threw a leg over an ancient Honda Nighthawk that looked as though it had been rebuilt from stem to stern more than once. He gave the ’Hawk some gas and began tooling down the road the way the convoy had come. Six followed, and Ryan could feel the big man’s eyes burning into his back. He ignored the sec man and thought like a coldheart. The land was low and rolling, and the road wound between the hills and stands of forest. There was no way for the convoy to hide its tracks.

The one-eyed man looked back, and the convoy’s dust plume rose into the sky like a giant pointing finger. All of the convoy’s vehicles had been modified. Beefed-up suspensions and offroad tires gave them the ability to traverse the raddled, broken and often overgrown Canadian roads, but they had few genuine offroad vehicles. The symbolism was obvious. The convoy was a herd. A dangerous herd, as it had horns, but like a migrating herd it stayed on its route. The coldhearts were a wolf pack, which could strike wherever and whenever it wanted. Chipping away, picking off stragglers, just the presence of a few of them in the distance would keep the convoy on the razor’s edge, day after day, wearing them down.

Ryan was pretty sure they were close.

He pulled off the road and drove up a steep green hillside, followed by Six. Ryan reached the top of the hill and stopped. On a hill opposite them to the east a coldheart stood dismounted and was watching the convoy’s dust. He didn’t seem particularly cautious.

Six’s voice was bitter with frustration. “This isn’t the first time they’ve done this.”

“Oh?”

“Yes, my second in command, a man named Guy. He doubled back to find our trackers. The situation was much like this. He and his team gave pursuit.”

Ryan thought he knew the answer. “And?”

“And we used to have six motorcycles,” Six said bitterly. “Now we have two.”

“They drew Guy into an ambush.”

Six scowled across the rolling grassland separating him from someone he desperately wished to kill. “Guy was brave, and strong, but impulsive. I have since forbidden hot pursuit of the enemy.”

“So they pick at you, waging a war of attrition.”

“Yes.” Six glowered. “Look, he has seen us.”

“No doubt,” Ryan agreed. Quicksilver flashed in the pink, late-afternoon light on top of the far hill. “They’re signaling with mirrors. He’s got more behind him.”

“I can see that.” Six turned his glare on Ryan. “Somehow I thought you had a plan.”

“I do.”

“Oh? I would very much like to hear it.”

Ryan lifted his chin toward the other hill. “We kill that guy.”

“Oh?”

Ryan looked at the laser range-finding binoculars Six wore around his neck. The one-eyed man almost never carried battery-operated devices himself, simply because in the Deathlands the rads, electromagnetic anomalies and the nearly universal lack of recharging facilities made them a dangerous crutch to become dependent on. However, since Six happened to be carrying one…

“Yeah, range me.”

“Ah, your magic rifle,” Six scoffed, but raised his optics to his eyes and pushed a button. The laser aligned with the glass gave him an exact distance. “The range is nine hundred and seventy-five meters,” he reported dryly.

Ryan dropped prone and deployed the Scout’s internal bipod. The blaster had proved to him it could unleash lightning during the boar attack. Now it was time to see if it could hurl the thunderbolt. Ryan tilted his cheek into the stock of his rifle. At 2.5 power, the magnification was low and at nearly a thousand yards the range was long. The man on the opposite hill was still doll-size in Ryan’s scope. The Deathlands warrior considered his target very carefully and raised his aim until it barely occupied the lowest visible point of his crosshairs.

“You think you can hit a man at a thousand meters, in this light, with that—”

Ryan’s fingertip gave the trigger a slow kiss and the Scout bucked against his shoulder. The man on the other hill jumped in alarm.

“A miss!” Six spit.

Ryan flicked the bolt and fired again.

“Miss! You are wasting your am—” Six suddenly shifted his binoculars. “No! Hit! Hit!”

“Six!” Ryan put a final round into the other man’s bike. The coldheart didn’t dare try to jump on as bullets kept cracking against it. “Get him!”

Six jumped onto his bike as the coldheart broke and ran. The big man popped a wheelie and tore across the grassland separating him and his prey. Ryan snapped his bipod shut, slung the Scout and got in the saddle. The Nighthawk snarled and spit blue smoke.

The Quebecer flew over the hill and disappeared. Ryan came to the crest and spun to a stop. The sec man quickly caught up with the coldheart. His longblaster flashed in his trademark big spin. The running man turned only in time to scream and take a big .45-70-caliber bullet through the sternum. Six swept past the fallen man and turf flew as he spun in tight circle.

Ryan unlimbered his longblaster once more as massed engines rumbled like thunder in the distance.

Six knelt over the man and drew his huge bowie knife. Despite the slug in his chest, the coldheart managed a thin scream as Six scalped him. Ryan looked at the coldheart’s motorcycle. The tailpipe was torn, tufts of wool batting stuck out of the bullet hole in the buckskin seat. Ryan had hit the tank, and he could smell the home-stilled alcohol the coldheart had been burning for fuel. Ryan took a precious butane lighter out of his pocket, then pushed the stricken bike over with his boot. In the Deathlands you didn’t mess with another person’s ride. Most likely it was the same in Canada.

This was war.

He took a rag from a pocket, touched the flame of his butane lighter to one end, then tossed the rag onto the bike. Pale blue flame played across the engine block.

“Six!” Ryan shouted. The big man leaped onto his bike and rode back to the top of the hill and spun to a stop next to Ryan. From their vantage the one-eyed man saw a mob of motorcycles cresting the next row of hills to the east. He took out his Navy longeye and extended it, counting about a dozen. The two forces stood and regarded each other over the half mile between them. A thin plume of black smoke rose from the burning bike beside Ryan. Six slowly held aloft his grizzly trophy. The scalped man was a bloody rag lying between the contenders. Ryan waited for the cavalry charge and hoped for it. If the coldhearts were hot for revenge, they would roar down in a swarm, and Ryan and Six would drop prone and shoot the riders out of their saddles as they came on.

The coldhearts didn’t take the bait.

Ryan was pretty sure they had taken note. Six had made his bloody mark, and the one-eyed man had made his point. Stalking the convoy had turned into a much rougher game. Unfortunately the enemy had made a point, as well.

For roving coldhearts they had a sense of discipline that Ryan didn’t care for at all.

BARON MACE HENNING wasn’t pleased. He sat on his camp tool with his cluboss his knees like a samurai warlord. “What’s that you say, Shorty?”

Shorty scuffed the toe of his boot into the ground nervously. “Said Jimmy Pickering’s been chilled.”