James Axler - Tainted Cascade

Pulling a knife, he wildly slashed at them when the wag passed the point of no return and thunderously slammed into the ground. Dirt and leaves exploded from the shattering wreckage as horses screamed and people shrieked in unimaginable agony.

Walking through the predark ruins, the Pig Iron Gang kept in a tight group, their new blasters held up and ready.

The remains of the ville were mostly crumbling brick and cracked pavement, thickly covered with a lush blanket of foliage from the nearby jungle. Here and there, oak trees and birch were starting to appear among the banyan trees, the branches reaching out to mingle overhead, forming a sort of canopy over the ancient highway. Slowly, the jungle gave way to a proper forest, the creepers becoming ivy, and the Spanish moss replaced with mulberry bushes and laurel.

“I remember when this was a swamp,” Charlie said, adjusting his new glasses. The hammerless S&W Model 640 was tucked into the pocket of his bearskin coat, the Czech ZKR held tight in a fist. The man was delighted over the find of the wire-rimmed glasses. He had just assumed that everybody saw the world in a kind of foggy blur, but with these he could see things hundreds of feet away as if they were at arm’s reach. It was nuking amazing!

“Yeah? Well, my daddy said he was alive when it was a desert, and my granddaddy said he swam in it as a lake,” Rose retorted, hefting the compact Uzi rapid-fire. “That don’t mean drek to me or mine.”

A camouflage jacket hung loose on her shoulders, the collar heavily festooned with feathers and bits of metal, perfect for a nightcreep in the ruins. Rose had discovered the hidden razor blades just in time to keep from losing another finger, and now the woman slept in the jacket, she liked it so much. A minisextant dangled between her pert breasts, the purpose of the thing completely unknown. But Rose liked how it shone golden in the sunlight.

“It is good to know what has happened, so that we may prepare for what will occur,” Thal rumbled, shifting the med bag to a more comfortable position. A rad counter was clipped to a knife sheathed on the canvas gun belt of the huge man, and he was carrying a Colt Python .357 Magnum blaster in his right hand, a .44 LeMat in his left. His pockets bulged with spare brass, spare socks stuffed in there to keep the ammo from jingling when he walked.

“Shut up and watch for jumpers,” Petrov commanded, clicking off the safety on the Steyr longblaster.

A battered old fedora was perched on the back of his head, and fingerless gloves covered his hands. A frock coat swept out behind the man like soaring wings, the silver toes of his cowboy boots glinting in the cathedral light streaming in through the dense foliage overhead. The ebony cane was thrust into his gun belt on the side, and the S&W M-4000 shotgun was slung across his back.

The outlanders at the waterfall had been carrying a baron’s treasure of blasters, brass and tech, a lot of it unknown to his crew, but Petrov made them take it all anyway. The poisoned waterfall was one of Big Joe’s best traps. He had them laid out all over the countryside to gather in a steady supply of prisoners to sell to the slavers. Petrov and the others had been poaching the traps for years. They hit the traps every now and then, never very often, and only took the belongings of the unconscious victims, but otherwise leaving the people unharmed. They didn’t even rape the women because that would have lowered their value to Big Joe. Slavers liked fresh meat. Petrov knew that Big Joe wanted them aced something fierce, a man could load that into a blaster for damn sure. Nothing pissed off a thief more than getting robbed himself. But so far Big Joe and his bone troopers had never been able to find out who was jacking the traps, and so the Pig Iron Gang lived a comfortable life, stealing a little, staying low and staying off the radar. Ghosts in the fog. Masters of the nightcreep.

Reaching the outskirts of the ville, the gang found the roadway covered with leafy vines, which made them wary of a puppeteer hidden inside one of the buildings. But Charlie identified the plant as just a form of kudzu, and the gang happily plucked some leaves to chew upon and ease their thirst as they probed deeper into the ancient metropolis. There were plenty of pools of cool water among the trees, but the moss on the rocks tainted those, making it a hundred times more potent than shine, or even jolt. The mossy water was what Big Joe used to poison the waterfall near the Great Salt, and a score of artisan wells. In this part of the Deathlands, nobody sane drank water until it had been boiled for longer than a man could hold his breath, and most folks did it twice, just to make sure.

Rising no higher than five stories, the buildings were neatly sheered off at exactly the same height, a sure sign that a nukestorm had swept across the land, the flying bridges, and warships and megatons of debris simply annihilating anything they encountered. However, the town of Trevose had been built inside a sort of depression in the ground, not quite a valley, and not quite an arroyo. So the thundering maelstrom merely passed by overhead, cutting off anything that reached above the height of the surrounding hills.

“Do you really think that we can do this?” Rose asked, hefting the Uzi. “Hit at Big Joe on his home turf?” It had taken her hours to figure out there was no safety switch. The handle of the rapid-fire had a sort of lever along the back that was depressed when making a fist. When it clicked, you could shoot, but not before. It was the damnedest thing she had ever heard of.

“We’ve never had a better chance,” Petrov stated, working the bolt on his longblaster.

Turning a corner, the gang moved past a church covered with thick moss, and abruptly stopped in their tracks. Unexpectedly, the streets were clean of any ivy or kudzu, even the leaves had been swept away. The lush greenery on the sidewalks was chopped neatly off at the curb. A wide, smooth boulevard extended directly to a large brick building that dominated the rest of the ruins, even though it was only four stories tall.

Encircling the building were old, rusty pikes topped with the decaying heads of the people and muties who had been stupe enough to cross Big Joe and so had paid the ultimate price. The walls had been painstakingly patched with different color bricks from a hundred buildings until the outside was a strange mosaic of conflicting colors, and rumored to be thicker than the defensive wall around most villes. There were no windows. Those had also been bricked shut until there were tiny slots where the people inside could fire out with blasters and crossbows.

The only visible door was solid bronze, heavily deco rated with eagles, flags and other totems of power. The metal was covered with countless small dents from blasters. Flanking the door was a wooden catapult and an iron cannon so old that the metal had turned green in color.

However, the truly terrifying aspect was the intact USAF jet fighter perched on the rooftop. Angled downward, the sleek skykiller looked as if it was about to do a bombing run and unleash untold horror on the denizens of the Deathlands.

Easing back around the corner, Petrov and the others moved back into the shadowy foliage before daring to speak. The sight of the aircraft disturbed the four people more than they wished to admit.

“So, that’s the Boneyard, eh?” Charlie said in false bravado. “I’ve seen better.”

“In your dreams.” Petrov snorted. “That fragging—” he paused before saying the ultimate curse word “—that…that plane scares the ever-loving drek out of me.” The man tried not to shiver, and failed. Death from above. During the past nuclear war that had been more than just a colorful phrase: it was a painfully accurate description of how the world had ended.