James Axler: Hell Road Warriors

The armored vehicle was painted a dark military green and looked like it had just rolled off the factory floor. “You remember, Ryan? When we wagged it up to Seattle in one?”

Ryan remembered. “LAV 25.”

“Nah, this is a LAV III.”

Ryan didn’t see much difference other than the red maple leaf painted on the prow.

J.B. was shaking his head, only he wasn’t smiling any more. “Ryan?”

Ryan was shaking his head, too.

It was too much. No one would leave this kind of wealth behind. There were only three explanations. One, it was a grotesquely well-baited trap. Two, something horrible was lurking in this Canadian redoubt that they just hadn’t run into yet. Three, and most likely, there was simply too much loot here for whoever had been visiting to carry or wag away, and they would be back. Though that did beg the question, why didn’t they leave anyone to guard it?

“Ryan?” J.B.’s eyes glittered behind his glasses in pure avarice. “Tell me we’re taking that wag.”

Jak looked around the Diefenbunker meaningfully and said what everyone was thinking. “Stuff it full,” Jak voted. “Run south.”

Ryan knew Doc’s vote but he asked anyway. “Doc?”

Doc sagged with visible relief at the idea of not having to go through the mat-trans. “I believe a cross-country jaunt across Canada might be edifying to both mind and body.”

“Mildred?”

“Doc’s right. We’re all tired of jumping. Last few things we jumped into were bad. In a vehicle at least we can see what’s coming. Plus I’m thinking Canada couldn’t have got hit anywhere near as hard as the States. Maybe clean air, clean water.” Mildred’s eyes got faraway like Doc’s sometimes did when he thought of the past. “I remember Ontario being beautiful.”

Ryan looked to Krysty. “Lover?”

“I’m going whichever way you’re going, jump or drive.” Krysty ran her eyes up and down Ryan’s long, hard, scarred frame and then smiled at the Canadian Land Force LAV III behind him. “But I’ll tell you something. That wag looks good on you.”

One of Ryan’s rare smiles crossed his face. The vote was unanimous.

“J.B., you and me load it and check it. Cannon, coax, top blaster, gren launchers, spare fuel everything. Full war load. Everyone else, food, trade goods and supplies. Blasters, ammo, ration packs.” Ryan nodded at the external cleats and equipment cages. “Load it to the gills. I want to wag out of here within the hour.”

Chapter Two

“Clear!” Krysty called. She tracked the security periscope. All the computers were locked down, including those controlling the sec cameras. The Diefenbunker did have several periscopes strategically placed around the facility. “Got some daylight left!” She let go of the periscope’s handles.

Ryan stood in the commander’s hatch of the LAV behind the pintle-mounted Minimi Squad Automatic Weapon. “Mildred!”

The physician hit a big red button and the blast doors began grinding open. The two women ran and jumped in the back hatch.

“Jak! Button her up and take us out!” The LAV’s rear ramp whined up while red light spilled into the vault of the Diefenbunker’s entry bay from the outside. Gears ground as Jak sent the LAV rumbling out into Ontario. The sun wasn’t quite setting yet, but it was a low red ball in the sky. The sky pulsed with sheets of red and green light as if it were on fire. Ryan had seen the Northern Lights before, but not often while the sun was still shining. In the lurid light Ryan saw a plain of low rolling hills broken up by stands of pines. Ryan also saw a war going on about a mile away.

“Jak! Hold up! J.B., up top!”

The gunner hatch clanged open and J.B. stood from behind the cannon. Ryan pointed. The Armorer took up his binoculars. Almost a mile ahead the land dropped into a shallow depression. Within it a sizable convoy was pulled up into a defensive circle. Outriders besieged it on every side. Ryan ran his Navy longeye over the encircled wags. He counted about a dozen vehicles of all different descriptions with men firing out of, from underneath and between them. Diefenbunker gear and supplies were strapped to the outsides of the vehicles. Most interesting were the convoy’s two LAVs. It explained the empty bays in the bunker. One was like the one Ryan and his companions were in, and it was burning out of control.

“Attackers.” J.B. grimaced. “They got some kind of tank buster.”

Ryan scanned the other LAV. “That one doesn’t have a turret.”

The Armorer’s eyes went wide. “That, is an engineering-recovery vehicle. Check the crane folded down on the back, the dozer blade and the winch.” J.B. sighed. “How many times could we have used one of those when we were with Trader?”

More times than Ryan could count. In the Deathlands a vehicle like that was worth its weight in anything, including human life. Ryan noticed it wasn’t attracting much in the way of fire despite the fact a man in the top hatch was firing a machine blaster like the one Ryan stood behind. The one-eyed man scanned the enemy ringing the convoy. Most of them had off-road bikes, but they had laid their bikes down and were firing prone from behind rocks and folds in the earth. Some of the pits were clearly man-made. They had chosen their ambush site well. They had probably blown the LAV before the convoy knew what was happening. The convoy had been surrounded in plain sight of the sanctuary of the Diefenbunker and cut off. Ryan picked out some 4x4 pickup wags pulled far back from the fight. The attackers were numerous, heavily armed and equipped for cross-country speed. Most had painted their faces with skulls, abstract designs or swathes of color. It wasn’t camouflage. It was war paint and designed to terrorize.

They were coldhearts.

J.B. pointed. “Watch there.”

A coldheart rose up with broad length of pipe over his shoulder. A man behind him touched a flame to the fuse in the back and ducked. A rocket hissed out of the pipe and shot out of the tube. The object arced and twisted in flight and exploded into the ground in a blast of orange fire and gray smoke a dozen yards from one of the caravan’s flatbeds.

J.B. snorted derisively. “Home made. Black powder. Not even spin stabilized. Real close you could take out a wag, even a big one, but nothing like what we’re sitting in. They still got a tank-killer we haven’t seen.”

The driver’s hatch clanged open. Jak’s head popped up. His eyes were the same color as the sinking sun as he surveyed the scene. “Pickin’ sides?”

Ryan was about the closest thing to a decent human being that could survive in the Deathlands. He could see there were women in the convoy, and the attackers looked like they were doing what they liked to do best. Nightcreeping and ambushing.

“Not our fight, and they got something down there that can kill us all.” Ryan shook his head wearily. It was a scene he had seen far too many times in his life. He was reluctant to walk away, but his friends came first. “We’re out of here and— Fireblast!”

Ryan’s hand crushed the top of J.B.’s fedora as he shoved him back into the turret. Three men had crept up out of a fold in the terrain and a rocket hissed straight at the LAV. Jak slammed the driver’s hatch shut. Ryan dropped down the commander’s hatch as a thunderclap backhanded the LAV. Mildred yipped as the armored war wag rocked violently on its chassis. The brimstone stench of black powder filled the air from the open hatches. The coldhearts howled with bloodlust outside. “Die! Die! Die!”

“Jak,” Ryan snarled, “we just picked sides!”

Jak answered by stomping on the gas. The LAV lurched forward. Bullets whanged and spalled off the hull. Ryan rose out of the hatch and leaned into the light machine gun’s stock. He rattled off a 5-round burst into a shrieking, painted face. Dust flew from the chest of a second coldheart as Ryan hammered him down. The last man dropped his rocket tube and turned to run screaming. He was still screaming as he went down beneath the LAV’s wheels.