James Axler - Hell Road Warriors

“I can see that.” Six turned his glare on Ryan. “Somehow I thought you had a plan.”

“I do.”

“Oh? I would very much like to hear it.”

Ryan lifted his chin toward the other hill. “We kill that guy.”

“Oh?”

Ryan looked at the laser range-finding binoculars Six wore around his neck. The one-eyed man almost never carried battery-operated devices himself, simply because in the Deathlands the rads, electromagnetic anomalies and the nearly universal lack of recharging facilities made them a dangerous crutch to become dependent on. However, since Six happened to be carrying one…

“Yeah, range me.”

“Ah, your magic rifle,” Six scoffed, but raised his optics to his eyes and pushed a button. The laser aligned with the glass gave him an exact distance. “The range is nine hundred and seventy-five meters,” he reported dryly.

Ryan dropped prone and deployed the Scout’s internal bipod. The blaster had proved to him it could unleash lightning during the boar attack. Now it was time to see if it could hurl the thunderbolt. Ryan tilted his cheek into the stock of his rifle. At 2.5 power, the magnification was low and at nearly a thousand yards the range was long. The man on the opposite hill was still doll-size in Ryan’s scope. The Deathlands warrior considered his target very carefully and raised his aim until it barely occupied the lowest visible point of his crosshairs.

“You think you can hit a man at a thousand meters, in this light, with that—”

Ryan’s fingertip gave the trigger a slow kiss and the Scout bucked against his shoulder. The man on the other hill jumped in alarm.

“A miss!” Six spit.

Ryan flicked the bolt and fired again.

“Miss! You are wasting your am—” Six suddenly shifted his binoculars. “No! Hit! Hit!”

“Six!” Ryan put a final round into the other man’s bike. The coldheart didn’t dare try to jump on as bullets kept cracking against it. “Get him!”

Six jumped onto his bike as the coldheart broke and ran. The big man popped a wheelie and tore across the grassland separating him and his prey. Ryan snapped his bipod shut, slung the Scout and got in the saddle. The Nighthawk snarled and spit blue smoke.

The Quebecer flew over the hill and disappeared. Ryan came to the crest and spun to a stop. The sec man quickly caught up with the coldheart. His longblaster flashed in his trademark big spin. The running man turned only in time to scream and take a big .45-70-caliber bullet through the sternum. Six swept past the fallen man and turf flew as he spun in tight circle.

Ryan unlimbered his longblaster once more as massed engines rumbled like thunder in the distance.

Six knelt over the man and drew his huge bowie knife. Despite the slug in his chest, the coldheart managed a thin scream as Six scalped him. Ryan looked at the coldheart’s motorcycle. The tailpipe was torn, tufts of wool batting stuck out of the bullet hole in the buckskin seat. Ryan had hit the tank, and he could smell the home-stilled alcohol the coldheart had been burning for fuel. Ryan took a precious butane lighter out of his pocket, then pushed the stricken bike over with his boot. In the Deathlands you didn’t mess with another person’s ride. Most likely it was the same in Canada.

This was war.

He took a rag from a pocket, touched the flame of his butane lighter to one end, then tossed the rag onto the bike. Pale blue flame played across the engine block.

“Six!” Ryan shouted. The big man leaped onto his bike and rode back to the top of the hill and spun to a stop next to Ryan. From their vantage the one-eyed man saw a mob of motorcycles cresting the next row of hills to the east. He took out his Navy longeye and extended it, counting about a dozen. The two forces stood and regarded each other over the half mile between them. A thin plume of black smoke rose from the burning bike beside Ryan. Six slowly held aloft his grizzly trophy. The scalped man was a bloody rag lying between the contenders. Ryan waited for the cavalry charge and hoped for it. If the coldhearts were hot for revenge, they would roar down in a swarm, and Ryan and Six would drop prone and shoot the riders out of their saddles as they came on.

The coldhearts didn’t take the bait.

Ryan was pretty sure they had taken note. Six had made his bloody mark, and the one-eyed man had made his point. Stalking the convoy had turned into a much rougher game. Unfortunately the enemy had made a point, as well.

For roving coldhearts they had a sense of discipline that Ryan didn’t care for at all.

BARON MACE HENNING wasn’t pleased. He sat on his camp tool with his cluboss his knees like a samurai warlord. “What’s that you say, Shorty?”

Shorty scuffed the toe of his boot into the ground nervously. “Said Jimmy Pickering’s been chilled.”

“Oh yeah?” Jimmy had been one of Mace’s better scouts. “How’d that happen?”

“Old Vinny scalped him.” Shorty cleared his throat. “Burned his bike.”

“You saw it?”

“Saw after. Old Vinny was up on the next rise. Wavin’ Jimmy’s scalp at us.”

Mace’s eyes went to slits. “So what’d you do about it, Shorty?”

Shorty started paying intense attention to his boots again. “Nothin’…”

“Nothing?”

“Vinny was up on that hill, like I said, ’bout a klick away with that big shiny blaster of his and nothin’ ’tween us and it but a lot of real open ground. And there was another guy with him. I saw him real good. Through my ’noculars. Guy was one-eyed and had some kind of funky-lookin’ carbine. I don’t think he’s from around here, or Val-d’Or neither. Real coldheart-lookin’ prick. Lookin’ like he might even give old Vinny a hard time. ’Cept they was standin’ side-by-side and Vinny was smiling. We had ’em numbered, Baron, but I didn’t like it. I didn’t like that stranger or his blaster, and I sure didn’t like the smile on Vinny’s face.”

Mace stared at Shorty. It was undoubtedly the most intelligent thing the sec man had ever said. Mace looked to Red, who was one of his sons. He was nowhere near as big as his father; indeed he took after his mother in being short and thin. Mace neither denied Red nor acknowledged him, but the red hair, green eyes and ugly features were absolutely unmistakable. When Red had first come to his father and asked for a job as a sec man, he didn’t bring up his blood. Mace had told him to go to a rival ville and bring him three ears. Red had come back with ten. He was unlikely to ever win a stand-up club or tomahawk fight, but Red was a nightcreeper extraordinaire, a decent shot with a blaster and could think on his feet. The chunk of change he wore around his neck was proof. “Red?”

“Like he said, Baron. Those two just stood there waitin’, and Jimmy all laid out on the killing ground between us with the bedsheet pulled off his skull. No one sneaks up on Jimmy. That means they picked him off at range, and that says somethin’ right there. Some of the boys wanted to go straight in. Shorty said no.” Red met his father’s eyes. “I backed him.”

Mace had been working very hard the last few years to instill some sense of tactics into his men. It had taken some head cracking, but it was starting to pay off. Baron Henning still wasn’t ready to start handing out compliments. “Don’t suppose anyone retrieved Jimmy’s change?”

“No.” Red flinched. “Vinny’s got it. Added it to his collection.”

Mace slowly rose. His club hung loose from his wrist by its thong. Tag rose behind him. His gaudy-house fancy autoblaster wasn’t quite pointing at anyone in particular, yet. The baron looked at the arc of men arrayed in front of him on the other side of the campfire; his eyebrow permanently cocked in judgment. The men stared back, mentally laying bets on whether Shorty, Red or both would get their skulls crushed and lose their change. Would Mace really put his club through his best friend’s brain? Or his own redheaded bastard son?