James Axler - Cannibal Moon

“Yeah, I’ll be sure and do that,” a hoarse-voiced woman replied. Then she gunned the engine and popped the clutch.

The big wag lurched ahead. Ryan had to hustle to swing up beside Mildred and the others.

No way could the cannie keep up. He fell after a dozen steps and was dragged across the dirt on his belly. Lucky for Junior Tibideau, progress was stop and go as the heavily loaded wags in front maneuvered around the route’s deepest ruts. Before Mildred could hop down to help him, before the wag could roll on, Junior jumped back to his feet, grinning fiendishly.

“Piece of crap,” was Mildred’s terse assessment.

To Ryan, she still seemed normal. On top of her game even. He wanted to make sure.

“You all right?” he asked her.

“No problems as far that I can tell. Got my fingers crossed.”

So had Ryan.

Behind him, a propane lantern swinging from a roof strut cast a wildly shifting light over the interior. On either side of the truck bed were battened-down fifty-five-gallon drums of gasoline and joy juice leaking fumes, and smaller drums marked “Drinking Water.” Between the barrels were stacks of car batteries, long wooden crates of ammo and unmarked boxes of other trade goods. The enclosed space—windowless except for rifle firing ports—smelled like a bear pit. Wag crews had been camping out in back of the truck for months, perhaps years. Five pairs of eyes stared back at Ryan with suspicion and disdain. The other three crewmembers were so disinterested in the newcomers that they had already curled up and gone back to sleep on their rag pile beds among the crates.

The howl of the 6x6’s engine and the groans and shrieks of its springs as it jolted over the track made conversation as well as rest impossible.

For about half an hour, the convoy continued along the shoulder of Highway 84, stop and go. Occasionally a rifle round or two would spang into the truck’s side armor, but there was no concerted attack, no enemy regrouping of any consequence.

When a horn up front honked, the wags slowed to a crawl and circled for the night. Virtually bumper to bumper.

Ryan jumped from the truck bed. The convoy had parked on a flat field of hardpacked earth. The stars were out in force.

Junior Tibideau nowhere in sight, but one end of the rope was still tied to the bumper. Cawdor squatted and peered under the wag.

The cannie cowered on his knees behind the rear axle. He knew how much danger he was in. “You gotta protect me, brother,” he insisted. “If you let me get chilled, your woman friend is gonna die hard.”

Ryan didn’t need the reminder.

When he straightened, some of the other wag crews were already closing in on the 6x6 with burning torches in hand. Their faces were hard and scarred by struggle.

The companions jumped from the cargo bed and closed ranks, barring access to the cannie.

“Looks like we got ourselves some entertainment tonight,” one of the male drivers said as he peeked under the wag with his torch.

“You don’t wanna mess with our fun,” his shotgun-ner advised the companions.

The 6x6 driver put in her two cents. “Let’s soak the cannie in gas and light him up,” she said. “We can take bets on how many times he makes it around the circle.”

“Slice him open and feed him his own guts,” was another suggestion.

“Stake him outside the circle,” said a skinny crew-man in his late teens. “Use him as live bait to draw in his kin. We can nail a bunch of the bastards that way.”

Ryan understood the depth of their hatred; he shared every millimeter of it. The crews wanted to exercise their power over this pure evil creature. Not just for vengeance’s sake. In a situation of terrible, unknowable threat, there was nothing like a little mindless brutality to take the edge off one’s fear.

“You better stand aside quick, One-Eye,” the 6x6 driver warned, her hand dropping to her holstered Beretta 92.

“Back off, now!” Sprue shouted, clearing a path for himself by shoving the intervening bodies aside. “Cut this droolie bullshit. That cannie ain’t yours to play with. You all got work to do. Set up the defensive perimeter and get dinner a-cooking. Move it! It’s gonna be another long night.”

The would-be disembowelers drifted away without comment. The fat man didn’t have to touch the butts of his Desert Eagles. None of his crew had the guts to try to take him out. Their continued survival depended on his experience and judgment.

A couple of the men set up an iron tripod in the middle of the circle. While one of them built a roaring fire under it, the other began pouring ingredients for supper into a big metal caldron—water, dried beans, root vegetables, wilted tops and all, and unidentifiable chunks of meat and bones. He then dumped handfuls of seasonings into the pot and stirred them in with a long spoon.

Sprue noticed Ryan’s interest in the fixings. “Don’t worry, it ain’t human,” he joked.

It took both cooks to swing the fully loaded pot onto the tripod over the flames.

The convoy master set out a couple of shabby folding lawn chairs upwind of the fire. “Come over here, Cawdor,” he said. “Have yourself a seat while we wait for dinner to boil. You and me need to parlay.”

“Don’t worry about the flesheater,” J.B. assured Ryan. “We’ll hold the fort here.”

As Ryan walked over to Sprue, the convoy master picked up a blue plastic antifreeze jug and twisted off the cap.

“Go on, sit,” he said. He offered his guest the jug. “Swig?”

Ryan sniffed at the contents and frowned. “About ninety octane, I’d say.” He passed the jug back without sampling it.

“How about a nice cee-gar, then?”

Ryan declined, then said, “Your folks look mighty jumpy.”

Sprue’s crew scurried to complete their assigned tasks. They set out extra weapons and ammo, and manned the perimeter, some crawling to firing positions under the wags.

“They’ve got good reason for that,” Sprue told him. “Over the few last weeks, the situation in these parts has been going downhill fast. Cannies have been hitting us almost every night. Half my crew sleeps during the day so they can fight all night. The other half tries to get some rest at night so they can go all day. We’ve kept the bastards out so far, but I gotta tell you it’s starting to wear us down.”

“Where are they coming from?”

“Hard to say for sure,” Sprue answered. “But they’re following the same trade route we are, between here and Slake City. We’ve caught them riding around in wags, just like norms—except for the goddamned sides of smoked meat packed in the trunks. These ain’t no dum-bass muties, for sure. They fight just like us, with blasters. They learn from their mistakes. That’s something a stickie can’t do. Stickie follows instinct, even if instinct says to jump off a cliff. Cannies use their brains.”

The convoy master took a deep swallow from the blue jug, gasped as the alcohol burned its way down his gullet, then shuddered and said, “I want to hear the whole story about your pet flesheater.”

The whole story was something Sprue wasn’t going to get. Ryan had no intention of mentioning their destination, the Hells Canyon redoubt. The companions kept such things to themselves. It’s what gave them a leg up on the competition.

“Have you ever heard of a queen of the cannies?” Ryan asked the bearded fat man. “Down Louisiana way?”

Sprue paused to scratch his chin. His hand disappeared up to the wrist in the tangle of coarse hair. “Can’t say that I have, but it’s been a couple years since I run wags there,” he admitted. “Louisiana norms are good folk for the most part, but they’re shitpoor. Not enough jack thereabouts to make me wanna go back. Don’t like the humidity or the gators, neither.”