Edward Llewellyn - Prelude to Chaos

“No need to bother the Sergeant.” Barbara had the arrogant self-confidence of youth. “We can handle these dead-necks.” She headed the Brinks at the car blocking the exit. “Maybe have a little fun ourselves!”

More rocks bounced off the cab. The driver of the car yelled, “Whatcha’ going to do now, little girl?”

“Flatten that heap of yours!” muttered the little girl, keeping the Brinks rolling.

The driver suddenly realized that the Brinks was about to ram, and tried to shoot ahead. He stalled the motor and his acned face showed stark terror as the armored car loomed above him. Then he threw open the door and went tumbling out into the roadway, scrambling for safety.

Barbara braked the Brinks with its front bumper resting against the car door. Sam picked up the bullhorn and roared, “Get that crate outta the way or we’ll roll it over. You’ve got thirty seconds!”

The driver clambered back in, started his motor at the second attempt, and skidded away up the street. Barbara accelerated through the exit and sent the Brinks charging along Main.

Sam swung the periscope. “They’re following.” He didn’t seem worried.

I was! Behind us were more than six cars, packed with hoodlums, trailing us along Main, with the leaders attempting to slip past, careless of other traffic. They might—“Hey! You’re dead-ending!” I shouted as Barbara swung off Main and down a narrow road which finished in what looked like a junk yard.

“Just having our bit of fun!” she yelled, as the Brinks crashed from pothole to pothole.

“Fun?” Ahead was a wooden fence and an overgrown lot filled with the rusting remains of generations of pre-veralloy autos. I looked astern. A string of cars had turned off Main after us, the leader only a meter from our tail. I eased out my Luger.

“No need for that!” yelled Sam. “Not yet!”

“Hang on, all!” shouted Barbara and hit the brakes.

An instant later the lead car hit us. The Brinks gave a ponderous lurch. From astern came a cadence of tinkling glass and screeching metal. The lead car was concertinaed between us and the car behind it. The lane was clogged with rear-end collisions.

“Got ’em!” shouted Sam.

“How many?” asked Barbara.

“Six—no—eight!”

“Right on!” She headed the Brinks at the wooden fence. It went down as we hit and she took us swerving among the wrecks. The yells and curses behind us faded as she went through another fence on the far side of the junk yard and then out onto a lane. “That’ll teach the cabron to leave us alone!”

“You young idiots!” I raged. “The Settlement’s unpopular enough already. Are you trying to make things worse?”

“We couldn’t,” said Barbara as we reached the highway. Then, as she turned onto the dirt road leading to the Cove, she added, “We’re already as unpopular as we can get. All we can do now is to show those nerds that it’s expensive to tangle with us.”

We started winding through the woods. The setting sun was hidden by the trees so that on the road it was already dusk, but the farther we got from Standish the less the tension in the cab. Barbara paid me one of her rare compliments. “It was smart of you to fake the axle of the trailer, Mister Gavin. I couldn’t have pulled off that rear-end caper if we’d been dragging it behind.”

“You’d have thought of something equally infuriating!” I stared out of the window at the woods jolting past “The talk I heard in Standish was bad!”

“This is my last trip to town!” said Sam. “At least, it’s my last trip looking like I’m from the Settlement.” His grin hinted that trips by youngsters to town while not looking like Believers were common.

“If Goodson wants our lobsters he can come and fetch ’em,” said Jehu from the rear. “He was talking about renting an amphibian to air-freight ’em direct to Boston. He won’t like it. It’ll cut into his profits. But from now on the only trading I’ll do is on the wharf or aboard Ranula."

I twisted round to speak through the hatch. “Goodson! That unctuous little bastard’s making an enormous profit You sell lobsters to him at twenty bucks a kilo. In the Boston market they wholesale for eighty!”

“Eighty and more,” said Jehu, nodding.

“So why don’t you demand a fair price?”

“If it was up to me, I would. But the Council say we’re earning more than we need right now. They let the dealers make a big profit to keep them friendly.”

“You’re paying protection?”

“That’s how Chuck Yackle and most of the Council see it They call it insurance against the future.” He spat on the floor of the Brinks. “Not much of an insurance, not to my mind.”

I agreed. “Once you have paid them the Dane-geld, you never get rid of the Dane.” We rode without talking for some time, conversation was an effort in the Brinks. When the road dipped down into a cutting and we passed the entrance to an old lodging trail, I remarked, “I thought the locals never came as far as this to cut lumber?”

“They don’t,” said Sam. “Why?”

“There’s a bulldozer hidden back among those trees.”

My words acted like an alarm blast. Barbara hit the brakes without warning. We skidded round a bend and stopped a few meters short of a heavy truck parked slantwise across the road. The next instant she was in reverse. Then she braked again as the bulldozer lumbered out onto the road, lurching toward us.

“Christ! A hijack!” We were in a cutting with the truck ahead, the bulldozer astern, and steep banks on each side. “Close up!” She grabbed a lever, dropping the armored shields over the windows. “Sam—can I shove that bastard astern into the ditch?”

“You can try. No—hold it! He’s broadside on and the driver’s bolted. Won’t help any to roll it over. Nor that truck ahead neither.” Sam took his deer rifle from the roof rack, and began loading the magazine.

“Keep that thing out of sight!” snapped Barbara, then called through the hatch. “Midge—get on the blower and call Kitty. Tell her we’ve been bushwacked at fifteenth click. Then call Sergeant Carver and ask him to come and get these thugs to move out of our way.” She switched off the motor.

Jehu said nothing. I checked my Luger, then asked, “What are you proposing to do—whichever of you’s in charge around here?”

“Orders are to sit and wait,” said Jehu as though he was. He put his face to the hatch. “This truck’s got veralloy armor, so nobody can get in. We just stay closed up. The plan is that they’ll get tired eventually and go away.”

“That’s what happened last time,” said Sam.

So there had been a last time! Nobody’d mentioned a “last time” when they’d invited me to come this time. I suppressed my fury and spoke in a cold voice, slowly and clearly, making sure my message got through. “I don’t know who told you that nobody can cut through veralloy armor. Whoever it was, they’re wrong! A fluorine torch will cut through any armor, even sintered veralloy. And this armor isn’t sintered. It’s plain plate!”

“Bandits don’t have fluorine torches,” said Jehu, producing a pump-action shotgun. “And if they come too close Chuck Vackle says I can tingle them with this. He thinks I’m loaded with sparrow-hail.” From his grin I gathered he was probably loaded with buckshot.

“Maybe I could bounce a round or two off that truck’s cab?” suggested Sam hopefully.

“No shooting!” said Jehu in a loud voice. Then, more softly, he added, “Not unless we has to.”

I peered through the periscope. A group of shadowy figures were crouching behind the cover of the truck. A bullhorn roared, “Open up and get out! All of you!”