James Axler - Pilgrimage to Hell

"Blasting?" she said incredulously.

"Yeah. Strict policy. All of us, since way back, are stuffed to the gills with explosives, or at least the means of creating explosives. An idea I had years ago, worked it out with J.B. Just in case we get caught by bad guys, we have all kinds of shit concealed in our clothes, our boots, our webbing. The bad guys take our pieces off us, grenades, knives, all that. The obvious. They don't bother to look at our boots for false inner soles, or check every stitch, every button. Some of us have big plastique-cored buttons on our long coats, others have wiring sewn into special pouches. You can't even feel it. Don't worry about J.B. He'll make out."

"Now I know why your bunch is talked about like it is," she said. "As special people. Sure is forward planning!"

"It's no big deal. It's called survival. These days you need all the help you can think up."

"Right. In this wonderful country where you could probably live your entire life without getting raped, abducted, murdered, eaten... without seeing a — what did you call it? Plague pit?"

His mind flew back to the scene in War Wag One, her angry face as she argued with him. It all seemed centuries ago.

"Great memory you've got," he growled. "In any case, it's still true. But when you're in our kind of business, even when you have a fierce rep, doesn't do any harm to take precautions." He muttered, "And all this crap just proves my point." His mind shot back again to the war wag, which triggered off another thought. "How the hell did Strasser manage to get his hands on you, anyway?"

"I didn't keep taking the tablets. Your medic kept giving me tabs, said they'd calm me. I didn't want to be calmed, so I didn't take them. She kept saying it was crazy to think of heading on for the Darks. How was I going to do it, how was I going to travel? All that. So when she breezed off I snuck out and hitched a lift."

"You what !"

"You had two container rigs, arctic. I climbed aboard of one of them. It was getting dark, so no one spotted me. When the convoy parked I slipped off into some bushes. I watched you drive out in the buggy, thought of hitching onto that but there aren't too many hand holds. So I walked to Mocsin. Had to keep in cover because a lot of buggies started passing me, heading out of town, back the way I'd come..."

Ryan thought, his stomach suddenly souring, Yeah, backup for the guys Strasser already had watching the train, the guys watching us. Probably what she saw was the bunch that actually tranked the Trader.

"Then I bumped into some kind of patrol on the outskirts. They were all right at first. Oafish, but all right. I could handle them. What they couldn't figure out was where I'd sprung from, so I told them I was with the Trader, with you. I mean, I figured that was okay. But then they started getting heavy, pushing me around. I told 'em that if they didn't quit pissing me off they were going to be in deep with the Trader."

Ryan heard her voice change, heard a slight catch in it.

"And that was when it hit me," she said, "that maybe I hadn't been so smart. They started laughing, told me to forget about the Trader. He was finished. Everyone with him was kaput. No more Trader. I got a touch of the horrors then because they seemed so sure of themselves..."

"They took you to Strasser?"

"Yeah. He's..." There was a definite change in her voice. Now it was almost a whisper. He had to strain to catch what she said over the truck's engine rumble. "Ryan, he gives me a chill. Maybe I was stupid. I didn't really take in what you said about him, all that shit about getting off on pain, humiliation, perversion. But it's in his eyes. At times they're like, I dunno... No feeling, no emotion. Like pebbles on a beach. He said — well, among a lot of other things he said I'd be a fine taster before the main course." She laughed suddenly. It sounded like a nervous hiccup. "I guess I must've panicked because I didn't feel the presence of Earth Mother right then and there. Not at all. Not for one damned second. He had a bag with him, with... shit, really weird gear in it. Nozzles, rubber tubes, plastic spatulas, shit like that. But before he could really get busy, some guy rushed in and gave him a message. Then he said maybe I'd be more useful for the moment... unblemished."

"Must've been when they told him I was on the loose somewhere," muttered Ryan.

"Whatever. After that, it was okay. I got my head together. Sometimes I can cut off. That helps." She said, faint bitterness coloring her voice, "I guess you think that was all pretty dumb..."

"On the contrary," Ryan replied. "If it wasn't for the fact that we're shackled up like this, it could have been the smartest thing you've ever done."

"I don't get you."

It hit Ryan that she really didn't know. Of course she didn't know.

She didn't know that Strasser had destroyed every single human being on the land wag train. That they were all, without exception, dead meat, and that but for the grace of some god or other — presumably, he thought, her Earth Mother — she'd have been wiped with them.

Not that that made much difference to their current lousy predicament.

"Strasser gassed the train. Leastways, that's what he says, and I see no reason to disbelieve him. We're all that's left. You and me for sure. J.B. and the rest, probably. And the Trader and the other guys on the convoy. They've been tranquilized, but I don't know for how long. And their survival is entirely dependent on me getting my blasted hands free, and even then it's gonna be touch and go because..."

The truck lurched to a halt, engine throbbing.

Krysty said, "Oh, hell" fiercely, although Ryan couldn't figure out why she said it in quite the tone she did. After maybe a half minute the rear doors of the truck were unhitched and flung open.

"Out!" said Kelber. Then he guffawed harshly, and this made him cough, and he choked for a while. "C'mon, c'mon!" he managed. "Hurry up outta there!" He erupted in another paroxysm of hoarse, wheezing laughter. Now he couldn't speak properly — it was too hilarious for him, so he jabbed at them with one hand and two sec men vaulted up into the truck and proceeded to roll Ryan and Krysty out.

Ryan forced himself to relax as much as possible — which wasn't a lot in the time he had, about a half second — and as he hit the ground he managed to shove himself with his boots so that for a second he hopped on them before keeling over sideways. That broke his fall. What terrified him was landing hard on a shoulder or arm and cracking it. That would truly write finis, as the Lost Language said, across any possibility of ultimate survival.

Talking to Krysty, though bruised and battered and wrench-tied as he was, had had the effect of soothing him, calming him when he needed calm most. Now he felt not too bad. Not too bad at all. At least the idiot who'd been using his brain as an anvil seemed to be tiring of the sport.

Above him was a pale red moon, not full but nearly so. Up there, so he'd heard and read, somewhere, were orbital stations careering endlessly around the world. Full of old bones now, their crews long, long dead. They might hurtle like that forever, until the universe contracted. Or maybe they were sinking all the time, orbiting lower and lower as each century passed, and at a certain time would all at once be gripped by the planet's gravitational pull and would bucket down through the layers of atmosphere exploding into fireballs, raining death and destruction on a world that was choked already with death and destruction.

It was chilly. Far away, high and to his right, he caught a glitter of fire in the sky and thought: Look at that! Whatever I think comes to pass!

But it was only a chem cloud, spontaneously combusting. More clouds gathered, cloaking the moon. An eerie scarlet glow illuminated the land. Green wildfires crackled and hissed high above. A warm rain began to fall.