Hell Road Warriors

Krysty rolled off Ryan and stared up into the night. “I didn’t say that.”

They were quiet for long moments as they stared into the shimmering veils of the light show above. Krysty was a mutie. It didn’t show outwardly, unless her hair flexed around her head when she was in distress. Most places in the Deathlands tolerated muties if they weren’t too deformed, or if their mutation proved useful somehow. A lot of places drove them out. All too many summarily executed muties upon discovery. It made Krysty sick to have to hide her own leap in evolution; but Ryan knew she would hide it, and take it, for the sake of the man she loved, and her friends.

“We’re in this together, lover,” Ryan told her. “I’ll defend you to the death.”

Krysty snuggled closer. “I know.”

Chapter Four

Ryan awoke to the smell of real coffee. The Northern Lights shimmered in shifting golden sheets in the morning light. Mildred stood over Ryan and Krysty’s bedroll grinning from ear to ear. She held two steaming sierra cups. “Wakey, wakey eggs and bakey!” Ryan sat up sniffing. The majority of the coffee he had drunk in his life was instant from one-hundred-year-old redoubt MRE packs, or old cans of coffee on redoubt shelves. Most people in the Deathlands drank chicory or a brew of herbs called coffee sub, and even that traded at a premium. The smell of what Mildred held set Ryan’s mouth to salivating. He took the cup and drank deeply.

“French roast.” Mildred sighed. “Who would have guessed?”

Ryan drained the mug and was grateful that Krysty had agreed that they stay with the convoy for another day or two and see how it went. Ryan rolled out of the blankets and shucked into his pants, drawn immediately to the smell coming from the mess wag. “Pancakes?”

“Oh yeah,” Mildred enthused. “With syrup, sausages and mimosas.”

“What’s mimosa?”

“Champagne and orange juice.”

Ryan’s face showed that he thought that sounded like an excellent waste of two rather rare commodities. Mildred took a patient breath. “You’ll like it. I promise you.”

Ryan and Krysty sauntered over to the mess wag for breakfast. He found that he did like mimosas. Krysty loved them. The friends sat at a table being waited on hand and foot. The redheaded beauty gave Ryan’s leg a squeeze and whispered, “If we stay here much longer, Doc might just put on a pound or two.”

Doc normally ate with relish, but maintained his spare frame. This morning he was enjoying a hearty breakfast, but he was smiling as he engaged one of the drivers in conversation. Canada was agreeing with him. It was agreeing with them all. If the pastoral beauty of the place was only going to last a few more weeks, then Ryan was tempted to wring every last second out of it. According to the map and Toulalan there were other Diefenbunkers ahead, and the one they’d exited contained one of the biggest stockpiles Ryan had ever encountered. He wanted to be there when Toulalan unlocked the next one.

Toulalan came over, smiling amiably. Six followed him, and with obvious effort managed an attitude short of open hostility. Toulalan gestured at the spread. “Breakfast agrees with you?”

“Yeah.” Ryan nodded. “Thanks again.”

“May I?”

Jak moved over and Toulalan took a seat. Six stood while Toulalan unfolded a map. Ryan raised an eyebrow at it. He had seen a fair chunk of what remained of Deathlands’ West Coast. It didn’t look anything like the map in front of him anymore. “That’s an old map.”

“The thing to notice is this.” Toulalan ran his finger along a pair of red intersecting lines stretching from east to west. “The convoy follows the Trans-Canada Highway.”

Ryan looked at the route dubiously. “It’s still up?”

“I will admit time hasn’t been kind to it. Many sections are out. But unlike much of your Deathlands, the basic path is still there. We have extensive maps of all the provinces. Each time we’ve found an impassible stretch we have found smaller routes around it, and once more returned to the path. River traders tell us vast sections in the great central plains are whole. There we will make good time.”

“River traders.” Ryan poured more Diefenbunker syrup on his pancakes. “Why aren’t they using it?”

“It is rumored there are dangers, plus fuel is scarce. A cross-continental trip?” Toulalan made a noise. “Few have the resources to attempt it. Besides, since time immemorial rivers have been the roads of Canada.”

“But you have a map of the Diefenbunkers. Assuming they haven’t been cracked, you got resupply depots in every province with all the fuel, food and supplies you can carry.”

Toulalan nodded.

“You give away too much!” Six snarled.

Toulalan gave Ryan a poker player’s smile. “I’m not telling our guests anything they haven’t already surmised.”

Six could no longer contain himself. “You’ll give them a place among us?”

Toulalan sighed. “Vincent, my friend, you know I respect you. But you were here yesterday, no? Around sunset? During the battle?”

Six looked away. “I’ll admit they were helpful.”

Mildred mumbled into a mouthful of pancake and sausage. “Saved your Canadian bacon is what we did.”

Six flinched.

Jak’s fork froze midbite, and he snapped his head around. His eyes narrowed as he looked toward the thickets between the hills just a few hundred yards to the west. Ryan set down his mimosa and scooped up the Scout longblaster. He had seen that look on Jak’s face before. “Something coming?”

The albino teen stepped away from the table and put hand to the ground. He crouched that way for long moments. “Herd.”

“Oh?” Six frowned at the hills. “It’s early for the caribou. They usually run south before the hard freeze, and that’s weeks away.” The big man’s stainless-steel longblaster flashed like a drum major’s baton as he twirled it through the rifleman’s spin to cock the weapon and pushed on the safety to lock it. “Perhaps they migrate earlier here in Ontario.”

Ryan, Jak and J.B. followed Six outside the perimeter. The Armorer began rapidly ejecting fléchette rounds out of his scattergun and swapping them for rifled slugs.

“Hunters!” Six called. “Go!”

A handful of Six’s sec men gulped the last of their coffee and grabbed their blasters. The convoy was bristling with Diefenbunker assault rifles. These men came forward with predark bolt-action hunting weapons of .30-caliber or larger.

Ryan checked the loads in his Scout. “You say it’s early for caribou?”

Six shrugged. The one-eyed man was starting to believe that everyone in the convoy’s shoulders, hands and eyebrows were attached to their vocal cords. “I’ve never been this far west, though I’ve heard traders say the St. Lawrence lowlands have sizable herds of wild mustangs. Either way, meat is meat, no?”

Doc strode up to the hunting party. “A morning shoot?”

Ryan frowned at the tangled, impenetrable acres of scrub thorn between the hills. The sound was getting louder. “Thick cover for a migrating herd.”

Six’s brow furrowed. He was thinking the same thing. The thicket rippled with the passage of large animals and the sound of brush snapping sounded like the distant gunshots of an army starting a skirmish. Six pushed off his longblaster’s safety. “In moments we’ll know.”

It didn’t take moments. It took a heartbeat. The edge of the thicket exploded as the herd burst forth. They weren’t caribou or wild mustangs. They were hogs. Boars, bigger than Ryan had ever seen. They came out of the thicket between the hills in a wedge. He made the lead boar to be over nine feet long and four feet tall at the shoulder.

Its companions weren’t much smaller.

“Good heavens,” Doc opined.

Ryan didn’t like what he was seeing. Wild boars were solitary animals. When you saw them in groups, it was usually a sounder consisting of a few sows and their offspring. Over half of the herd were adult males the size of wags. There were no piglets in sight. The fifty-strong herd arrowed straight for the convoy in a rumbling wave. Ryan dropped to a knee and shouldered the Scout. It was time to see what the new weapon could do.

Ryan wound his arm through the Scout’s sling and dropped his elbow to his knee to form a solid firing platform. The scope was mounted well forward, and he could see the entire oncoming herd around it. At the same time the crosshairs of the heavy reticule were crystal clear as Ryan held them low beneath the gargantuan lead boar’s shoulder. His finger slowly began putting pressure on the trigger as he watched the herd rumble into range.

Six watched Ryan with a dubious air. “Long range for a carbine. I would—”

The Scout bucked against Ryan’s shoulder. It was a light rifle firing a high-power bullet. The muzzle-flash and report were impressive; the recoil was surprisingly mild. The huge hog’s snout dug into the turf, and the momentum of its half-ton frame nearly made it summersault.