James Axler - Vengeance Trail

This bunch knew exactly what they were doing. Every step along the path.

If they didn’t need to worry about food and water, they weren’t far from replenishing the same. It followed as inevitably as night was about to follow the desert day.

Granted, a wag could cover ground a shitload faster than a woman afoot, even one as strong and driven as Krysty Wroth. But another thing her subconscious worked out, and allowed to seep osmotically into the white void of her conscious mind, was that a job that took a lot of hands generally took a fair stretch of time to do as well. Wherever the marauders delivered their captives, they probably wouldn’t be moving on for a spell.

The knowledge, slowly assimilated, added energy to her step. It might take a few hours or many days, but she had at least some solid ground of reason on which to base a belief that she would find her friends and Ryan’s killers.

A scrub jay yammered abuse at Krysty from a bush. The sound brought the woman back to the here-and-now with a jolt of alarm. She had been in zombie mode, total whiteout.

She was lucky. In the Deathlands, if you zoned that far out, you usually came out of it about the time a stickie was pulling your face off.

She raised her head and took stock of her surroundings. The sun was falling toward a shoal of mesas with wind-scooped faces, tawny and rose. There was no sign of the raiders, and the marks their tires had left in sand were lost to the eternally restless wind. But there was something, a squat blockiness ahead at the bottom of a broad valley. Buildings. Studying her surroundings, Krysty could make out patches of dark pavement showing through drifted sand, the remnants of a flanking ditch. There had been a hard-top road here. Mebbe even a highway.

Bad news, in that if the raiders turned off along it, they’d make at least somewhat better time than along the unimproved dirt track they, like the caravan, had been following. It remained unlikely the raiders were going farther than she could walk in a matter of days.

Meantime, the buildings offered possible shelter for the night. This wasn’t the seething gut of the Deathlands, with monstrous beasts, humanoid muties and acid rain storms ready to destroy the traveler caught in the open. But there were still plenty of nasty things that came out at night. To hunt.

She began walking toward the structures.

J.B. WAS ROUSED from sleep when the stakebed wag began to slow. Despite scowls from the guards the other captives were scrambling to their feet to peer forward toward whatever awaited them.

A brown hand, strong but altogether feminine, appeared before his eyes. The Armorer grinned at Mildred as she helped him up. She gave him a taut smile back.

He couldn’t see much over the cab, so he leaned his head over the wood side of the bed and peered forward. What seemed like a couple hundred people were laboring away in the middle of the desert. And parked next to them, gleaming like polished silver in the sun’s slanting rays—

“Well, I’ll be dipped in shit and fried for a hush-puppy,” J.B. said in admiring amazement. “It’s a train!”

The screen door of the derelict diner banged open. Two men were suddenly among the cracked-vinyl booths and the peeling Formica tables, longblasters in their hands.

Both aimed square at Krysty Wroth.

“Freeze, bitch!” the younger, taller intruder shouted. Blond bangs hung in his sunburned face from beneath a turned-around ball cap. His partner, who was darker and whose dark-brown hair was beating a hasty retreat from his own forehead, just grinned a nasty grin.

After only the briefest hitch in her motions, and her breathing, Krysty calmly went back to doing what she was doing—cooking corned-beef hash made from the supplies she’d brought from the massacre site over a fire built of brush and driftwood in what had been the little kitchen’s deep-fat fryer, once upon a time. The pot was one she’d found hanging behind the counter. A handful of the fine sand that had drifted against the diner’s east wall served to scrub out the accreted dust and gunk of the past century.

“Hey,” the blond intruder shouted. “Din’t I tell you to freeze, bitch?”

“Easy, Matt, easy,” his pal soothed. “They’re so much more fun when they’re warm.”

He sidled around the periphery of booths, holding his remade M-16 with one hand. In the light of the kerosene lanterns she was working by, she could tell that both men wore retread U.S. Army blouses, both OD green, both with unfamiliar round patches on the breast. Just like the men who had killed Ryan and hijacked the caravan.

The man came right up beside her. She smelled his stinking breath, felt it defile her cheek. His dirty-nailed fingertip followed it, unwinding a scarlet lock down to the line of her set jaw.

“Well, well, well,” he murmured, “what have we here?”

She didn’t shy away from the touch, just kept stirring and tossing.

“Bitch-slap the skag, Ben,” Matt said, shifting weight from left boot to right with poorly checked eagerness. “Show her who’s boss.”

“Naw, naw, gently now. She’s a cool one, aren’t you, honey? I like that. I bet a girl like you could show us a good time. Big nasty redhead like you.”

He grabbed her, lowered his face to nuzzle her neck. She fended him with the back of his hands. He yanked his head back, anger flaring in his dark eyes.

“Now, now, don’t be in too much of a hurry, boys,” she said in her throatiest voice. It was a voice guaranteed to raise wood on a week-old stiff. “Why don’t you’ll just relax and make yourselves comfortable while I fix you a nice big dinner?”

The rage drained from Ben’s eyes. He smiled. Nodded. Laughed a little laugh.

“You know, hon, you’re right. Been a long, hard day, getting shut of that asshole General and his merry men. I’ll feel a lot stronger once I get around a good old home-cooked meal.”

He let her go and went back around the counter. Matt was almost vibrating with outraged horniness. “What are you doing? What? Why are we waiting?”

“Relax, kid,” Ben said, hoisting a cheek onto one of the round pedestal stools at the counter. There had been three; one was missing entirely, the other had been uprooted and lay against the foot of the counter.

“And quit waving that damned blaster around. You make me nervous. Our little redheaded bedwarmer is a smart one. You can tell just by looking at her. She knows better than to try to run on us. Don’t you?” He propped his own blaster next to his stool.

Krysty gave him a zipper-busting smile. “Now, why would I want to run anywhere, sugar?”

“But, but—” Matt sputtered.

“Sit your ass down,” Ben commanded.

Matt complied. He sat at a table in the middle of the little room. He didn’t put his longblaster down, although he did aim it at the ceiling. “What are we waiting for?” he asked peevishly.

Ben chuckled indulgently. “Didn’t you ever hear the story of the old bull and the young bull, boy?”

“No.”

“This old bull and this young bull came upon a fence. And on th’ other side of that fence, what should they see but a whole herd of fine young heifers swishing their tails over their nice firm fannies.”

“This one’s got a nice ass,” Matt said, staring at Krysty and almost drooling. “I can tell.”

“She surely does. Now, pay attention to my story. This young bull sees them heifers, and he says, ‘I got an idea! Let’s jump the fence and fuck us one a’ them heifers.’ And this old bull just shakes his head and says, ‘No. What we gonna do, we’re gonna walk down to that gate, walk through it nice and peaceful, and fuck all them heifers.’”