Jaspre Bark - Dawn Over Doomsday

He pulled out his pistol and let off a few shots. The biker zig-zagged across the road and Simon Peter tried for his tires but didn't have any luck.

The rider took his bike off-road and tried to lose Simon Peter by taking sharp turns through the trees. Simon Peter took a gamble on the biker's next turn and drove straight at the point he thought the rider would hit. He was spot on and ploughed straight into him at nearly fifty. At the last minute he leaped and caught hold of the biker around the waist. They went straight into a tree trunk. The biker caught the brunt of the impact. Simon Peter fell backwards and the man landed on him. A sharp pain shot up his spine and he kicked the biker away.

He sprang at the man and tore his helmet off, then punched him twice in the face before he noticed the ribs sticking out of the biker's chest.

"Who sent you?" he screamed. "Who are you working for?"

The man just shook his head and coughed up blood.

Simon Peter punched him a few more times, but the biker couldn't have talked even if he wanted to. Simon Peter was so pissed at him after chasing him all this way that he just walked away and left the man to die slowly. He wasn't going to put the son of a bitch out of his misery.

Half an hour down the interstate he found Colt and the other men. Colt wasn't too pleased when he heard what Simon Peter had to say. He remained ominously silent for about five minutes then said: "We don't need no confirmation. He'll deny it of course, but we know who sent those men to kill us. And he just signed his own death warrant."

Linda had never ridden with anyone as irritating as Greaves. For a guy who had survived the worst plague in history he sure was allergic to a lot of things.

Every five minutes he was either taking some pill or sucking on some inhaler. The huge greatcoat he never took off was an Aladdin's cave of pharmaceuticals. It had a million pockets and each one of them rattled with some kind of medication. Shame it stunk worse than a flatulent skunk.

"Ah, New Harmony," he said as they passed a bullet- riddled road sign. "Site of America's only socialist community. Founded in 1825 by Robert Owen."

"Wasn't he a blues singer?"

"A British industrialist actually," said Greaves, missing Linda's bored sarcasm. "It didn't last long. Socialism never caught on in the States. It's one of those European things."

"Like soft cheese and not bathing?"

"Quite."

Wherever they drove he'd come out with these gems, straight out of some 'Big Boy's Book of Facts'. Greaves was a walking almanac. Still, that did prove useful at times. He could scavenge them just about anything with what he knew.

As soon as they hit Indiana, Greaves took them to the waterfront on Lake Michigan. He blew a lot of hot air about how it used to be one of the industrial centres of the world. Then he lead them to an underground fuel depot with enough gas to fuel an army of Berthas. They drove away with enough gas to get them all the way to Montana.

God knows how Greaves knew where all these things were. It was like he never forgot anything he read or heard. He was obviously one of these freakishly intelligent mutant types you hear about. The kind of guy that can only form relationships with cyber-porn. Greaves probably hadn't had his pipe cleaned since the Internet disappeared. No wonder he had to keep swallowing so many pills.

After fuelling up, he had taken them south in search of some cave complex, even though it was miles out of their way. They followed the River Wabash south for a while then headed out on the highway to Kentucky. Greaves directed Linda west as they hit Crawford County. Only then did he tell her they were looking for the Wyandotte Caves.

That was his way of keeping control of everyone. He told them just enough to keep them going where he wanted them to, then found them just what they needed, hidden somewhere no-one knew about.

All except for Anna. Greaves treated her differently, like some bashful kid in the company of royalty. He really tried hard to be gentle with her, this wasn't something he was used to. Not from the way he acted with everyone else. Watching him around Anna was like watching someone who'd read a book on kindness without ever having been shown it.

All Anna did was snivel mostly. Occasionally she'd start praying in that strange 'olde worlde' language she used, sounding like she was a refugee from the Little House on the Prairie.

In the two weeks or more that Linda had been travelling with the three of them she hadn't seen Anna do anything to justify Greaves' strange belief that she was going to save humanity. Maybe it was just a little quirk he had. Like those otherwise normal people who believe their dog controls the weather.

Still, it was an easy job and the rewards seemed to be good. She'd drop Greaves and his little band in Montana, let them save the world or whatever, and make off with her payload.

First Greaves wanted to go exploring caves though.

Cortez was sleeping when the motor-home pulled up. He could drop into a deep sleep for five minutes and wake alert and refreshed, it was a technique he had learned in the jungles of El Salvador during his time in the Mano Blanco.

Cortez had learned many things in the Mano Blanco, like what made a real man. The men he had run with knew what real men were and wasted no time in showing him. Many of them had been part of the paramilitary Organizacion Democratica Nacionalista, or Orden for short, before the government shut it down in '79. This hadn't stopped General Medrano, its founder. He knew how to keep his country in line. He simply streamlined the organisation and turned it into an even more lethal machine: the death squads of the Mano Blanco.

Cortez was just a young hooligan from a coffee plantation when he joined. He was good at hurting people and it didn't worry him. The Mano Blanco hardened him, focused him and taught him everything he'd ever needed to know.

Such as not questioning your employer when he wants to go exploring caves. This was something that the whore did not realise. She knew how to fight he'd give her that, but she didn't know her place or when to keep her mouth shut.

"So," she said as they stood outside a fissure in the rock face that Greaves said was a secret entrance. "You mind telling me why I've got to crawl down this hole in the ground?"

"There are twenty-three miles of passages down there," Greaves told her. "More than half of them were used covertly by the CIA. There is a weapons cache, a Black Ops archive and nearly a quarter of the entire Colombian annual cocaine export hidden down there."

"Well why in hell are we wasting our time chatting?" said Linda and crawled into the hole.

"What about the girl?" Cortez asked Greaves. "It is not safe to leave her alone in the vehicle."

"Go get her. She'll have to come with us."

"The passage splits here. We need to take the left fork. It goes down for a little way then comes out onto a proper walkway."

Linda was glad to hear that last part. She'd crawled nearly half a mile on her hands and knees so far. As she took the left fork Greaves put his hand on her butt. "You might wanna find another hand hold. Or you won't have any hand left to hold it with."

Greaves snatched his hand back and dropped his torch. It was the only one they had. Everything went black for a minute and Linda heard Anna whimper behind them. Then Greaves fumbled the torch back on.

Sure enough they did come out onto a walkway. "Down this way," said Greaves. They followed him through a series of tunnels for about ten minutes until he came to a stop. He bent down and started to mess with what looked like a fuse box. There was a loud clunk and lights came on. "Auxiliary generators still have some juice in them."