James Axler - Deathlands 24 Trader Redux

/* /*]] */ Axler, James - Deathlands 24 - Trader Redux A high-velocity bullet whined off the blacktop, making the horses buck and rear Abe stayed up on the box, fighting for control. He looked over his shoulder, watching as the Armorer unlatched the rear door of the hearse, and, helped by Ryan, heaved Trader inside.

"Leave it open," the older man yelled. "I can slow the bastards down from here.""Whip them up, Abe!" Ryan shouted. He fired several carefully placed rounds at the advancing mob, putting down at least three men, sending others scattering for cover among the trees.J.B. climbed quickly onto the box alongside Abe, hanging on to the side rail, waiting for Ryan to join them. The little gunner was poised, whip in hand, watching as the one-eyed man swung onto the foot plate."Now!"The whip cracked, ringing out into the bright morning like a dueling pistol. The horses whinnied and began to move, hooves slipping; Abe bellowed at them, lashing the animals unmercifully to get the hearse on the road and out of there.Ryan hung on by his left hand, the toes of his boots only scant inches from the rolling wheel. The first hesitant members of the mob appeared, and he fired a couple of rounds among them."They're giving up!" J.B. called. "You did good, Abe!"The team slowed as they approached an avenue of ancient yews. The attack came out of nowhere. 24 in the Deathlands series A GOLD EAGLE BOOK FROM WORLDWIDETORONTO NEW YORK IONDON AMSTERDAM PARIS SYDNEY HAMBURG STOCKHOLM ATHENS TOKYO MILAN MADRID WARSAW BUDAPEST AUCKLANDIf you purchased this book without a cover you should be aware that this book is stolen property. It was reported as "unsold and destroyed" to the publisher, and neither the author nor the publisher has received any payment for this "stripped book."This one is dedicated to the beloved memory of the ever-stylish Vincent Price. He gave us so many hours of the richest pleasure and amusement. Nobody ever did it better. May the earth lie lightly upon him.First edition December 1994ISBN: 0373625243Copyright 1994 by Worldwide Library.All rights reserved. Except for use in any review, the reproduction or utilization of this work in whole or in part in any form by any electronic, mechanical or other means, now known or hereafter invented, including xerography, photocopying and recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system, is forbidden without the written permission of the publisher. Worldwide Library, 225 Duncan Mill Road, Don Mills, Ontario, Canada MSB 3K9.All characters in this book have no existence outside the imagination of the author and have no relation whatsoever to anyone bearing the same name or names. They are not even distantly inspired by any individual known or unknown to the author, and all incidents are pure invention.and TM are trademarks of the publisher. Trademarks indicated with are registered in the United States Patent and Trademark Office, the Canadian Trade Marks Office and in other countries.Printed in U.S.A.During my too long life, I have often lost touch with good, good friends for a number of years and then contrived to meet up with them again. These meetings, which I always anticipated with great eagerness, were universally a great disappointment It is one of the great truths in the world that you can never go back.From The Gospel According to Me , by Bobo 'Tinky" Finkelstein, Showbiz Press, New York, The day was bitterly cold, with a dazzling sun hanging at the center of an untouched blue sky. From east to west and north to south, there wasn't even the hint of a cloud. All around it seemed that you could reach out and touch the perfection of the snow-covered mountains.The cold air had the unmistakable scent of salt, from the Cific Ocean only a few miles away, beyond the ruins of old Seattle. Here and there it was possible to make out the thin tendrils of cooking fires, among the stumps of nuked city buildings. But whatever ate there, ate alone.The oppressive wet weather of the past three days had vanished, and it had snowed during the previous night as the temperature dropped well below freezing.Now, an hour after dawn, it was a heaven of morning.Ryan and J.B. had found no cover, waking up to find their sleeping bags were crusted with frozen snow, which crackled when they moved."Last day of the last week," Ryan said as he stooped, trying to get a fire going to warm them up and dry their clothes and heat some oatmeal."Now we'll see." J.B. checked that the cold hadn't affected any of his blasters. "Yeah, we'll see."THEY HAD DECIDED that the best place to begin the final stage of their search would be to pick a high spot with a view over Seattle from the east. There was a particular hill that suited their purpose and they had been working their way toward it, occasionally slipping on the icy trail.Apart from the scattered fires among the ruins, there didn't seem to be a living soul within fifty miles of them.There had been a pair of white-pelted hares gamboling in a clearing among the pines, as they climbed higher, who'd totally ignored them.In a valley to their right they spotted a small herd of deer picking its way delicately through the frosted grass. J.B. had nudged Ryan and pointed to the Steyr on his shoulder, but he'd shaken his head."Bullet on a still, cold morning like this might be heard twenty miles off. Could attract Abe and the Trader. If they're anywhere near. Could attract anyone else."It was hard work, and both men were panting as they neared the crest of the small mountain."You can make out the sea from here," Ryan said, pausing for breath."Yeah. Look at the Cascades back yonder."A few more paces brought them to the top, giving them the ultimate view, all the way around.Now they could see the far side of the slope, bisected by a narrow hunting path. Two figures about a hundred yards below them, struggling upward through the deeper snow. The smaller man was sliding and falling, a little way to the rear.The leader, using the butt of what looked like an old Annalite rifle to help himself, was gray-haired, tall and erect. He spotted the pair on the ridge above him immediately and stopped for a single heartbeat. Then he lifted his blaster above his head in an unmistakable gesture."There they are," Ryan breathed. As soon as he spotted J. B. Dix and Ryan Cawdor on the top of the hill, Trader turned to call to Abe, then started to run toward them, his long legs ranging through the powdery snow."How old do you reckon he is?" J.B. asked, slinging his Uzi across his back, out of the way."No idea. I always figured that he never had a real childhood. Teethed on an implode gren. I never heard him say much about his early past. You?"The Armorer shook his head. "Never. Lots of rumors, but nothing to support them."Trader was closing fast, breath pluming from his open mouth. At his back, Abe was having difficulty with the steep ascent, slipping and falling twice in the rutted blanket of white.Suddenly Trader was there, standing six feet away, panting with the effort of the climb, nodding as his eyes ranged over the two men. Finally he broke into something close to a smile."Ryan Cawdor and J. B. Dix," he said. "Never thought to meet up with you again."The men clasped hands, Trader's grip as strong as ever. While they stood grinning at one another, Abe finally blundered over the crest.Ryan turned to him, patting him on the back. "You did well, Abe. Real well.""Thanks." Despite the cold and the exertion, the little man had a wide smile stretched across his face. Tiny icicles were crusted in his drooping mustache, making him look amazingly like a happily lugubrious walrus.Trader simply stood there nodding. "Well, I'll be hung, quartered and dried for the crows," he said. "This truly is something.""Ain't it just," J.B. agreed. "We heard you'd been having some trouble.""Causing trouble, J.B., causing trouble. Man who admits to having some trouble is in real trouble."Abe laughed. "If that wasn't real trouble we had a few days ago, Trader, then I sure as shit don't ever want to find myself in real trouble."The older man turned sharply, the smile disappearing like dew off a summer meadow. "I told you" He hesitated. "Abe. Told you before about arguing.""Sure, sorry."It was a prickly moment, and Ryan hurried to pass it over. "Listen, we got a lot of catching up to do. We could use a roof and some food. Any ideas?"Trader glanced toward the distant ruins of the sprawling city. "Probably our best chance is to scout around the suburbs.""Yeah, agreed," Ryan said."Skirmish line." Trader beckoned to Abe. "Take point. I'll go second. J.B., follow me and Ryan bring up the rearguard. Let's go, men."The Armorer glanced across at Ryan, who shrugged. It wasn't that much of a surprise that the Trader had automatically assumed command of them, just as though no time had passed. No sand run through the glass. No water flowed beneath the bridge.Just as though he were still leading the full, highly trained crews of the two war wags.THEY DROPPED DOWN into a wide valley, following the path of an old blacktop. Abe twice managed to lead them into regions of swampy ground, where they all broke through thin ice into rank, stinking water.They saw a solitary figure, accompanied by a dog, watching them from the hogback ridge to their left. Apart from that, their first hours together were uneventfulno threats from any kind of life."Muties in these parts, Trader?" J.B. asked when they stopped for a brief break after the first hour of steady walking."Haven't got a sniff of any. How about you?""Yeah. Way back."Trader stopped suddenly. "Hey!""What?" Ryan queried, catching up, drawing the SIG-Sauer, suspecting that Trader might have seen some danger. In front of them, Abe turned so quickly he slipped on an iced puddle and nearly fell over."No danger, Ryan. Stand down from double red and relax a little. Just that I realized I never asked you where you were when you got the message.""Down in New Mexico on the ranch of a friend. Krysty Wroth is there. Remember her?""Hair that was so hot it scorched your eyeballs? Course I remember her.""And the old-timer, Doc Tanner. He got himself time-trawled with Operation Chronos.""Chronos?""Sure. It was a section of Overproject Whisper. Cerberus was a bit of that. That lethal fog?"Trader nodded. "Sure, sure. All bits of that fucking cosmic puzzle they called the Totality Concept. Abe here's been telling me plenty of that.""Sure brought him up to date," Abe said, grinning eagerly and wiping moisture off his mustache. "How did the message get through to you? You get several copies of it?""Just one.""Bet it was that big black guy with one ear missing," Trader said.Ryan bolstered his blaster. "No. Little ville called Patriarch Springs. Something like that. Drummer was called Friedman. Smoked the foulest cigars I ever smelled."Abe punched his right fist into his left palm. "Damn it! He was about the last we asked to carry the message to you, Ryan. And he did it.""What did you pay these packmen?" J.B. asked.Trader laughed. "Pay! You been away from the war wags too long, Armorer! Trader doesn't pay for what he can trade.""What did you trade?""His life, Ryan. All of them. Told them that I'd come down and pull their lungs out of their asses if they didn't do like they'd been asked.""How're things back down in the Southwest?" Abe asked. "How's Jake and""Button that up, gunner!" Trader snapped. "First thing is shelter, then food and then fire. After that we can spend the whole night talking about where we've been and what we've been doing."Ryan glanced behind him, checking that the figure with the dog on the ridge hadn't reappeared. But the land was still deserted, the watery sun glinting off the snow.THEY WERE ON WHAT LOOKED like an old blacktop that had been superseded some time in the late 1900s by a wide, elevated interstate. The newer highway had collapsed, its piers and bridges tumbling in the quakes that rumbled the land during the long winters.But the ancient, lost road remained.It writhed over the wooded country like a dog trying to rid itself of fleas, but it made for easier walking than the muddy, freezing trails that they'd begun on.The skirmish line had reasserted itself, with Abe leading, followed by Trader, Ryan and J.B.The skinny ex-gunner held up a hand, two fingers extended, and pointed ahead to the right."Company," Ryan said. "Couple of strangers."Then he saw them. Less than a quarter mile away were two men, well wrapped in wolf-skin coats and muffling scarfs. Each carried what looked like hunting rifles.Trader gestured with his Armalite, beckoning Ryan to one side of him, J.B. to the other, not noticing that they were already moving. Abe fell back to join the other three.The pair was within eighty paces when they stopped, both holding up a hand in a gesture of peace. "Hi, there!" called the one on the left.Ryan realized they were both quite young, probably in their early teens."Hi," the Trader replied, holding his beloved Armalite at his right hip, the barrel pointing in the general direction of the young men."Come far?""Been hunting back yonder," Trader told him, hitching a thumb toward the eastern horizon.The other teenager spoke. "Seen anyone?"Abe answered. "Feller with a dog on the ridge. Hour or so ago, I reckon.""Ah, that'll be our pa. Went out after breakfast with ol' Bess, finest coon dog in Deathlands. We figured to mebbe join up with him this afternoon.""Live around here?" Trader asked."Small horse ranch, three miles west and then north off a spur trail."The other youth laid a hand on his brother's sleeve, as if he were warning him about speaking too openly to the quartet of outlanders.Trader ignored the movement. "How far from here to the skirts of Seattle?""Reach them by sunset, if you want to," the slightly taller teenager replied."Not many wants to go that close to the cannies and ghoulies livin' there.""Cannibals?" J.B. asked."So they say."It wasn't any surprise. The sprawling, nuked ruins of virtually every major American conurbation were a breeding ground for every kind of mutation and social perversion.Ryan suddenly felt the short hairs raising on his nape. Something didn't set quite right here. The body language of the two youths was just that fraction out of kilter, a tenseness above and beyond meeting the potentially hazardous situation of four strangers on a snowy highway.As if they were waiting for something.Someone?"You'd be welcome to stay the night at our place, if you don't take to the skirt of the ville," said the shorter teenager. "Have to be one of the barns, but it'd beat a lot of other places at a frosty time.""Real kind," Trader replied.His blaster had started life as one of the early AR-16 models, originally designed to deliver 7.62 mm rounds. But over the years the Armalite had seen a great number of reworks and changes. Now it had yet another flash-suppressor and had been rechambered to fire twenty rounds of the more common 9 mm ammo.He leveled the rifle at the taller of the strangers and shot him through the chest, at the same moment yelling the single word "Ambush!"A heartbeat after the sharp crack of the Armalite, Ryan heard the boom of a black-powder musket. But by then he was already moving, diving to his left. He felt the hot breath of buckshot close by his cheek.Out of the corner of his eye he watched as the teenager shot by Trader took a few staggering steps backward, slipped on the frosty ground and went down on his back, sliding and leaving a smear of bright blood on the ice.The second youth was alert enough to snap off a return shot at Trader, but not quick enough to allow for the speed of the gaunt figure. The hunting rifle snapped, but the bullet went a good yard wide.J.B. had been ready for the attack as well, but he skidded as he moved to his right, falling badly and knocking the Uzi out of his grasp.Abe was slowest to react. But he rolled forward, coming up in a crouch, realizing that nobody was actually shooting at him. He took his time with his Magnum and carefully placed a .357 bullet into the small of the back of the standing teenager, the powerful round exiting a handbreadth above the left hip in a fountain of dark blood and ribbons of torn flesh.The youth screamed, his arms thrown wide, his blaster spinning from his fingers into the frozen ditch at the side of the old highway. His leg gave way under him and he stumbled, falling heavily onto his left side."Someone's behind us," Trader called, swiveling around to peer in the direction that the ambush had come from."Mine," Ryan said.The shot had barely missed him, and it had given him a good idea of the angle. An antique billboard stood twenty yards away, with a pile of rubble behind it. His combat instinct told him that the attack had come from there.He scuttled sideways, the SIG-Sauer pistol in his right hand, keeping low. His guess was a single-shot musket of some sort. The idea behind the ambush would have seen him blown away, while the other two opened up with their rifles. If it had worked, it was likely that all four of them would have been down and done for.But Trader had gotten there firstest and fastest.As he left the blacktop, Ryan heard the sound of hasty movement ahead of him, in the shadows behind the wreckage of the billboard. He glimpsed a dark shape and snapped off a quick shot at it, seeing a burst of icy mud just to the left. He adjusted his aim and fired a second round. This time he heard the unforgettable sound of a full-metal jacket striking flesha strangely wet yet solid noisea gasp of pain and then a body falling.Stillness.Two spaced shots rang out behind him, as Trader and Abe propelled the wounded young men into the next world."Got him?" J.B. called."Yeah. Not sure if he's bought the farm yet.""Go find out, Ryan!" Trader shouted with the old, familiar rasp of command in his voice.For a moment he hesitated, feeling an odd mix of emotions. But there wasn't time to stop and analyze them. He went on, keeping low, ready for a second shot.But the man was dead. A clean head shot had blown away most of the left side of his face, leaving him lying in a steaming puddle of his own brains. From the matted white hair, it looked like he could've been the father of the two teenagers. And he was wearing the same coat that Ryan had spotted up on the ridge. A single-shot smoothbore musket lay close by his corpse. There was no sign of the dog.Ryan noticed that the dead man had been crippled, and wore a built-up boot on his left leg.There was nothing worth taking off the body, so he turned on his heel and rejoined the others, finding Trader quickly going through the pockets of the teenagers."Was it the man off the ridge, Ryan?" Abe asked, reloading his Colt Python."Reckon so. Must've shown himself as a decoy. Set our minds at ease, then looped around behind us under the cover of the old interstate. Nice plan. It could've worked."Trader straightened, wincing and holding the small of his back. "Bastard rheumatiz! Not a thing worth removing from these stupe kids."J.B. had brushed himself down, taking off his spectacles and peering closely at the lenses, making sure they hadn't been muddied or scratched by his fall. He replaced them on the narrow bridge of his nose, then checked the action of the Uzi."I hear right?" Trader asked."What?" Ryan had also reloaded his SIG-Sauer P-226 with two more rounds of 9 mm ammo, slotting them into the mag with its push-button release."They say they ran a ranch?""They told us they had horses," Abe said excitedly. "Could use transport to get us down to New Mexico.""If that's where we're going." Trader gazed at Ryan, his face showing no hint of any emotion.The one-eyed man knew his old leader, knew that this was one of his typical tests. He was pushing to see what sort of a response he'd get from Ryan."It's where I'm going," he replied. "Not saying you have to come along."Trader threw back his head and gave a short, barking laugh. "Haven't changed, you son of a bitch, Ryan! Let's go find this spread and then we can talk." Next page