Kenneth Bulmer - Land Beyond the Map

“That’s it,” Crane said with satisfaction. “That’s the sight — factory, city, hell, what-have-you — I saw as a child.”

“It’s a long way off.”

“Just as well. Look.” He pointed to the road, a thin strip of whiteness running directly to the distant buildings. “Tanks. Half a dozen of ’em. All trundling this way. Fast. After our blood.”

Those distant specks of bright vermilion stained the white road like spots of blood. Polly caught her lower lip between her teeth. “You think—?”

“They’re coming out to find out what happened to their buddies, why the two we knocked out don’t respond to signals.” He looked more closely at the city. “I think we’d better get out of it while we still have the time.” He felt unnaturally calm.

That roaring, fiery, gleaming monstrosity over there had last been seen by him when, as a child, he had been enjoying a country holiday with his father and mother and sister Adele. Now his father and mother were dead and Adele was — well, Adele was now just as she had been then in everything except physical age. Distance hazed detail. He caught tantalizing glimpses of that monstrous branched tree and that silver bowl from which flames licked ruddily. His memory had not played him false, then. The lowering Gehenna had existed — did exist still. Through the surging currents of memory and anger and fear the impudent thought occurred to him that he should have a camera. But, then, people would scoff at what they would dub camera trickery. He slid back and stood up.

“Come on, Polly. We can’t do any more. You’ve just got to face it about Allan.”

She didn’t answer. But her face distressed Crane.

Back in the car and driving fast in retreat along the way they had come, Crane wrestled with the heavy sense of defeat permeating his acknowledged relief in traveling in the right direction. Hell! What more could two rational people do? If they had gone towards the city, or whatever it was, the tanks would certainly have dealt with them as they must have done with Allan Gould and Colla. The best bet was to return to the normal world and prepare for another expedition into the Map Country. They’d been pitchforked into it without warning, quite unexpectedly, without arms, food or a reliable method of long-term transportation. He glanced at the gasoline gauge.

Just enough to take them back to the torn edge of the map.

He continued to drive. The feel of the controls beneath hands and feet gave him a sense of purpose and a material task on which to fix his impatience. The miles fled back as the road unrolled. Twice the surrounding country went through stomach-churning upheavals with the solid land rolling like the mid-Atlantic; but through it all Crane kept the Austin going stolidly, compensating for each treacherous lurch of the queasy road surface. Polly sat huddled up at his side, not speaking.

They were, Crane realized with savage self-mockery, a forlorn little band.

Going back they saw, not only more perambulating bushes, but a whole forest on the march. The unceasing frieze of sky-pricking mountains changed, too, and from gaunt, coned summits fire and fury vomited forth, scorching the earth, spreading lava in a wicked trickle of flame all across the ground until the oven-heat licked at them from the roadside and they could hear the ominous hissing and bubbling and smell the rank sulpher odors from the depths of the earth.

Shining white under the sunshine, dappled with cloud shadows from the belching volcanoes, the road tamed the lava and the furnace-filth recoiled from the highway.

Great birds swooped from the sky and once a raking talon scored all along the paintwork of the car’s hood. Crane gunned the car, bashed it solidly into the bird’s body, felt a sadistic satisfaction as the feathered reptilian flyer spun away, screeching.

Monsters with greenish-gray hides, slimy and rank, blundered from the river and stood glaring stupidly at the road and the fleeting car; but they did not venture further.

“They’ve been tamed by the tanks,” Crane said. “This road is a single lonely streak of sanity running through the chaos of this world.”

Up hills and down long slopes the car sped with smooth precision, the tires hissing and the air blustering through the smashed windshield. The rear-view mirror showed an odd glimpse of a clanking machine far off. The Austin had the legs of them. They passed the wrecked tank tumbled at the side of the road where they had left it. Ahead a black object appeared on the road and Crane tensed up. Then he relaxed, consciously slackened the grip of his fingers on the wheel.

“Colla’s truck. And the first tank. Nearly there.”

There was no warning.

The fuel gauge needle still confidently showed that half a gallon or so should be in the tank. But without a sigh or a cough the engine stopped and the car ran gently forward and gradually slowed to a stop.

Even as Crane cursed and jumped out, the leading tank breasted a distant rise behind them. There was one last, desperate, seemingly hopeless chance.

“We can’t run for it!” Polly shouted. “It’s too far! They’d be on us…” For the first time she sounded really scared. Their situation was enough to make the toughest of tough characters drool in fear.

“Come on,” Crane said, and started running for the wrecked truck.

Their footfalls battered the road and their breathing gasped raggedly in straining throats. The gasoline can he remembered seeing lashed to the back of the truck’s side, alongside the suitcases stuffed with diamonds, beckoned. If the heat that had burned the diamonds had not touched the can… He panted up to the truck, wiped his forehead, took a couple of quick breaths, then unlashed the can. He shook it.

“Empty!”

“Oh, Rolley — what can we do? What can we do?”

The clanking monsters bore on remorselessly, nearer.

There was no time for finesse. Crane snatched out his big pocket knife, opened the spike, and, crawling under the truck, found the gas tank. He jabbed savagely with the spike. After half a dozen frenzied blows it went through.

Gasoline spurted out, raw and red and beautiful.

“Black market stuff,” he said. “I might have known.”

He shoved the can under the flow. When it was full he stumbled out, scrabbling on the road, not worrying about the gasoline splashing away to waste. He sprinted back to the car.

“Stay there!” Polly, running behind him, checked at once. Then she went back to the wreck.

Running, he realized with detached amusement that this was the first time she’d heard his parade-ground voice.

His trembling fingers made a hash of opening the Austin’s gas tank cap, then the divine splash of gasoline gurgling into an empty tank reached him. His hands shook and gasoline splashed over the side of the car, rilled to the edge of the mudguard, dripped to the road. He stuck it until half the two-gallon can had been emptied, then raced to the driving seat, propping the can against the passenger seat, and switched off. Hood up, priming pump, thump up and down, the clank of treads in his ears like the trump of doom, race back to the driving seat, switch on, starter…

The starter whirred. Whirred again. The engine caught — and died… Starter again, whirr, whirr, whirr… Then the engine caught and held and he slammed into gear and moved forward. The mirror showed him the leading monster a scant twenty yards away. The tires spun.

He slithered to a stop beside Polly.

“Jump!” he shouted. They were racing forward again. “This petrol by rights should have evaporated in the years the truck’s been here. You must be right. Time doesn’t function here.”

“Hurry, Rolley! Hurry!”