Moonfeast

“Keep the riders between us and the machine guns!” Ryan shouted, firing his longblaster twice. “They’re not going to ace their own people!”

With a cry, a sec man clutched his arm while the horse next to him buckled with a wounded knee. The riders were so tightly packed, the horses collided with one another, sending three more riders down in a tangle of limbs and cursing. However, the rest of the hunting party arched around their fallen brethren and kept coming, bent low over the necks of their horses, now even more grimly intent upon reaching the hated runaways.

As the companions sent hot lead at the sec men, Jak steered the jouncing bus into a swatch of shadows thrown by the ville wall from the setting sun. Once inside the darkness, he hit the headlights to see, then cursed and aced the lights. Their glow would only silhouette the wag and make them a perfect target. The teenager would have to do this the hard way. Shaking his head, Jak sent the sunglasses flying away, then squinted hard into the darkness ahead, starting to zigzag around what seemed to be bushes and tree stumps. Most villes kept the area around their walls completely clear so that an enemy would have nothing to hide behind during an attack. However, one good-size rain gully, or a tree stump, and the bus would be smashed, leaving them stranded and helpless at the mercy of the brutal ville sec force.

Reloading her blaster, Krysty started to aim at the riders once more, when she had the oddest sense of danger from ahead of the bus. Acting on impulse, she flipped on the headlights again, the beams showing a large griz bear sitting directly in the path of the racing vehicle eating a wiggling rabbit with too many legs. Triggering her S&W a fast five times, the woman wounded the giant beast, as Jak arched around it from the other side.

“Why do?” the teenager demanded angrily. A seasoned hunter, the albino teen didn’t chill animals for fun, only for food.

“Watch,” Krysty replied, reloading once more.

Seconds later, the riders encountered the bear. Bellowing a strident roar, it reached out with both paws and slammed two of the sec men out of their saddles to start mauling them. The other riders slowed for only a moment, then resumed their pursuit of the outlanders in the bus. But the gap between the two was significantly wider now.

The rapidfires in the towers spoke again, louder and longer this time, then stopped as the thick greenery of the forest closed over the companions, removing them from sight.

“Okay, give some cover, Doc,” J.B. snarled, biting the fuse on a pipe bomb in two, then flicking alive a butane lighter.

Surging to the rear of the vehicle, Doc yanked aside the locking bar and lifted the rear shutter, then fired the LeMat twice, the booming reports vomiting forth a dark cloud of gunsmoke. Safely out of sight of the riders for a single instant, J.B. quickly lit the fuse and simply dropped the bomb in their wake. Then both men ducked as a fusillade of blasterfire came from the riders, their assortment of handblasters, predark blasters, longblasters, scatterguns and zip guns making them sound like an army. The lead hit the louvered shutters like a hailstorm, rattling them hard and chewing the green wood into splintering ruination. More than one slat broke apart and simply fell away, leaving a wide gap in the protective shield.

“Bah, wooden armor,” Jak snorted, swerving around a tree stump and crashing through a bush to just avoid slamming into an oak tree. There was no road, or even a path, in this direction through the forest, which was both good and bad. The companions would have thicker cover faster, but it also meant they would be traveling a lot slower. Jouncing over a hole, Jak heard a headlight shatter, but kept his boot pressed hard against the rubber floormat. Speed was their only hope now.

“Herd them in!” Ryan yelled, and started shooting from the right side of the bus. Krysty was close behind him doing the same thing, and everybody else went to the left.

Assailed from the sides, the sec men rode their horses a little closer together, then a sec man shouted a warning and they began separating once more. But it was already too late. In a thunderous blast, the pipe bomb violently detonated, throwing aside ragged pieces of men and horses in a boiling hellflower of fiery destruction. A dozen sec men were aced in the explosion and several more thrown from their mounts to slam into the nearby trees, their bones breaking.

Whinnying in terror, the remaining horses reared high, throwing additional sec men to the ground before bolting away, leaving their former masters sprawled unconscious among the dead and the dying. Then the bushes parted as the griz bear arrived, its long teeth shining brightly in the dappled forest.

As the bus rattled away into the greenery, the screaming began and didn’t stop.

“Okay, that should do it,” Ryan stated, working the bolt on the Steyr to clear a spent brass from the breech. “But keep a watch for any stragglers. There were too many of the bastards to count. I have no idea if we got them all.”

“Not catch,” Jak said confidently, turning on the remaining headlight. “They on horseback, we in wag!”

The blue-white light of the halogen beam stabbed into the murky forest, brightly illuminating the trees and bushes. A score of inhuman eyes blinked in surprise at the intrusion, then quickly disappeared, leaving the wag to rattle through the wild greenery in relative peace.

“Hatred always makes a man fast,” J.B. countered, pulling an empty clip from the pocket of his leather jacket to start thumbing in live rounds from the loops on his gunbelt. “And these boys have a real hate-on for us.”

“Then more the fools they,” Doc replied, his hands already busy in the laborious process of reloading his black-powder blaster. A stiff brass brush first purged each chamber in the cylinder, the spent powder sprinkling down like black snow. Next, he began to carefully charge each chamber.

“We’re probably the first people to ever leave the ville in ages,” Krysty added, leaning back in the seat, her hair moving against the wind blowing in through the louvered shutters. She was still rather tired from the single instant of mentally sensing the unseen danger of the bear. Gaia offered her followers many gifts, but afterward the woman was always exhausted. Krysty really wanted to catch some sleep, but that would have to wait until they were inside the underground redoubt, safe behind the nukeproof blast doors.

“Yeah, we’re gonna have to do something about Hobart one of these days,” Ryan stated, taking down a canteen and unscrewing the top to take a long drink. The water was warm, but it cut the tang of the gunsmoke from his throat.

“Derby Joe?” J.B. asked, holding out a hand.

Nodding, Ryan passed over the canteen. If Baron Harrison was turning into a slaver, that was bad enough, as Hobart was fairly close to Front Royal. However, Joe had also run with the Trader, the same as Ryan and J.B., and the man might know where their former boss had hidden his caches of predark supplies—weapons, wags, fuel, even some nerve gas. Front Royal was heavily defended, but those predark mil supplies could easily tip the outcome in favor of Harrison if the man ever decided to expand his territory.

“Don’t want to ace Joe,” J.B. said, taking a drink, then putting the cap back on with a twist. “But if we have to make a choice, my vote goes to Front Royal.”

“Indeed, sir, as does mine,” Doc intoned, finally holstering the LeMat. “Blood must be defended. Your nephew, my dear Ryan, is family.”

“Speaking of blood, is anybody hurt?” Mildred demanded, looking over the companions. They were slumped in their seats, loose brass rolling on the floor-mats under their boots. But nobody was showing any red, or seemed to be cradling a wounded limb. Good enough.

Softly a wolf howled in the distance, and then quite unexpectedly the forest ended. Flat grassland stretched ahead of the wag, the single halogen beam bobbing along to illuminate tufted tops of the low weeds and reeds.

“Where now?” Jak asked, relaxing slightly in his chair.

“Tell you in a sec,” J.B. answered, pulling a compass out of his munitions bag. Impatiently the man waited for the spinning needle to settle down. “Okay, we’re heading due west toward the Sorrow River, so head to your right. We should see the foothills in about fifty or sixty miles.”

It was closer to a hundred miles, and dawn was tinting the eastern sky when the tired companions encountered the foothills of the Rockies. Before skydark rearranged the topography of much of the world, these mountains had dwarfed the Darks. But the rain of nuclear bombs had hammered the Rockies down to merely rolling hills, occasionally adorned with a live volcano.

Retracing their original route down from the hills, the companions found the small section of predark road that still existed along the edge of a ragged cliff. The crevice was deep, the bottom lost from sight by the mist of a nameless river not on J.B.’s predark map. Just more nuke-scaping, as Mildred liked to call it. A hundred cars and trucks were piled in jumbled heaps on the road, some of them in fairly decent condition, the all-destroying acid rain cut off from reaching them by an overhang of solid granite that extended from the hills like the eager hand of a beggar.

This was where the companions had found the necessary parts to assemble the bus in the first place for the long journey to Front Royal. Now, it was where they had to leave it. If Baron Harrison sent more sec men after the companions, or worse, those mountain hunters, the tire tracks could easily lead them someplace the companions didn’t want anybody else alive to know about—a redoubt.

Buried deeply underground and powered by nuclear reactors, the massive military bunkers were proof to the killing radiation of the ancient bombs, but more importantly were interconnected with a series of mat-trans units, top secret machines that allowed people to jump from one redoubt to another in a matter of seconds, no matter how far apart they were located. Sometimes Ryan and his people found clothing, tools or edible food in the rooms of the subterranean bases. Occasionally there were caches of condensed fuel and working vehicles, or even better, military weapons, a vital necessity for maintaining life. But most importantly, the mat-trans units gave the group mobility, the ability to quickly escape a dangerous area as they searched for some small section of America that could someday again be called home.

“Everybody out,” Jak said, pulling the lever to open the door.

It resisted at first, the frame bent slightly from the ride through the forest, but the albino teen put some muscle into the task and the door finally yielded, squealing loudly as it cycled aside for the very last time.

Gathering their belongings, the companions clambered outside, adjusting their clothing against the morning chill. Winter was coming soon, even though it was early August.

“Hate to let her go,” Mildred said, affectionately patting the battered machine. “Took us a week to build her.”

“Can’t leave it for the others to use,” Ryan said, his breath visible in the cold air. “Remember when we were attacked by the Leviathan? I’m not going to let that happen again.” Lifting a louvered shield, the man reached in through the window and yanked the gear-shift into neutral, then released the handbrake. The bus rolled back a few inches, then stopped.

“Okay, put your shoulders to it, people!” Krysty ordered, flexing her hands.

All together, the companions started pushing and soon got the wag creeping along. Slowly, it began to build some speed along the slight incline, and they promptly let it go. Steadily gathering speed, the homemade war wag rattled and clattered as it jounced along the cracked pavement until reaching the end of the cliff. Sailing off the edge, it began to tumble end over end, and they watched as it vanished into the white mists below. If there was an explosion when the wag crashed, nobody could hear it over the murmur of the unseen river.

“Now we walk,” Ryan said, shifting his backpack to a more comfortable position.

It was noon by the time they reached the small arroyo set amid a craggy span of outcroppings. There was nothing to mark any of them as special in any way.

Drawing their weapons, the companions assumed combat formation and eased into the arroyo, half expecting to be ambushed at every step. It had happened once before, and they were grimly determined that it would never happen again. Jak stayed in the rear and used a tree branch to erase their footprints.

At the end of the arroyo a huge black door towered more than twenty feet high, the metal as smooth and perfect as the day it had rolled out of the foundry more than a hundred years earlier.

An old enemy of the companions had boasted that nothing known to modern science could damage the blast doors of a redoubt. Ryan and J.B. had no reason to doubt the statement, but privately they had discussed whether an implo gren might do the trick. However, that was an experiment neither man wished to try unless it was absolutely necessary, and even then they’d want to be very far away from the event.

Going to a small keypad set into the jamb, Ryan tapped in the access code. There was a pause, then the colossal door rumbled aside to the sound of smoothly working hydraulics. Now exposed was a long, dark corridor, the terrazzo floor clean of any dust or dirt, much less scratches or wear.

A warm breeze wafted over the companions as they stepped through the opening, and at the touch of their boots on the floor, the overhead lights flickered into life bathing the entryway and showing the first of many turns. Ryan quickly pressed the required code to close the blast door.

Warily, the companions watched for the strings they had rigged just before leaving the redoubt to see if anybody, or anything, had gotten inside the subterranean fortress. But the strings were intact.

“We are alone,” Doc said with a sigh, holstering the LeMat. “It would seem that the only real danger in this redoubt is hunger.”

Ruefully, the others agreed. The contents of each redoubt were different, and this one had been particularly annoying. The arsenal had been well stocked with automatic rifles, but no ammunition whatsoever. There were hundreds of pairs of combat boots, without laces, while the pantry was full of condiments—salt, pepper, catsup, mustard and such—but no actual food, and the freezers were working perfectly, endlessly making ice cubes.

“At least Millie didn’t have to make some more of her infamous boot soup.” J.B. chuckled, nudging the woman.

Trying to hide a smile, Mildred nudged him back. “Don’t complain, John. It kept us alive long enough to find real food.”

“Tasted like used sock.” Jak snorted, then felt his stomach flip at the realization that that was an accurate description.

Past the last turn, the companions finally entered the top level of the redoubt. The garage was huge, fully capable of parking dozens of civilian wags, or half that number of bulky military vehicles. Except that the rows of parking spaces were empty, devoid of even an oil stain. Workbenches lined the wall, the pegboard covered with the silhouettes of tools to show exactly where each one should go. But the board was empty, along with tool cabinets and drawers. There wasn’t a spare fuse in the garage, much less any engine parts. Even the supposedly limitless fuel depot had proved dry. The pumps worked fine, but only delivered a stale air that smelled faintly of chems. Whether the stripping of the base had occurred when the military personnel departed, or long afterward by some intruder, nobody could say. It didn’t matter. Empty was empty, the details of who and when were thoroughly unimportant.

“I was looking forward to a shower,” Krysty said, stroking her flexing hair. “But we might as well jump, and then wash at the next redoubt.”

“Sounds good to me,” Ryan stated gruffly, rubbing his stomach. “Mildred, what’s the food situation?”

“Nine cans of stew, one self-heat of hash, four assorted MRE packs and a couple of smoked gophers that should be good for another week or so,” she replied, without even glancing into her backpack. “I was expecting to purchase more food at Hobart, but after seeing their slaughterhouse…” She gave a shiver and didn’t bother to finish the sentence.

“Gopher.” Jak frowned, putting a wealth of meaning into the single word.

“Agreed, my young friend. If our choices are gopher for dinner, or risk a jump, then suddenly a journey through the mat-trans sounds like an exceptionally fine idea,” Doc declared, casting a sad glance at a soda machine standing mute in the corner. Just like the fuel pumps, it still worked, but the hoppers were empty. “I always did like the odd taste of Dr Pepper,” he said unexpectedly.

“Me, too,” Mildred said in surprise. “Good Lord, we actually agree on something?”

He shrugged. “It had to happen eventually, mad am.”

“Not had,” Jak replied, dropping his backpack onto the floor in front of the elevator. “Taste like shine or caf?”

The man and woman exchanged glances, each completely unable to even vaguely explain the amazingly complex mixture of flavors of the delicious predark soda.

Tapping for the call button, Ryan was pleased when the elevator doors opened immediately, the cage having waited there patiently for them for the past few weeks. It was another good indication that the redoubt was totally deserted. Some of the underground bases had devices that provided protection from unauthorized intruders, and the companions were as unauthorized as they could possibly be. More than once they had encountered a sec hunter droid, a robotic guardian. The machines came in several different types, each more lethal than the next, and were hard to chill. True, J.B. had a stash of pipe bombs, but it was highly doubtful those homemade bombs would be powerful enough to stop one of the deadly machines. Running away was usually the best tactic. Except that this time, the companions had nowhere to run but another redoubt.

Stepping over the threshold, Ryan waited until the rest of the companions had hurried inside before hitting the button for the middle level. The ride down was smooth, silent and uneventful.

Leaving the elevator, they proceeded down a long corridor lined with doors and entered a room full of comps. On the other side was another door. Stepping through the doorway, the companions closed the portal behind them and walked across a small antechamber to the mat-trans unit.

“Okay, this time we each take a drink before leaving,” Mildred directed, holding aloft a canteen.

The battered container sloshed as she removed the cap. There came a strong smell of coffee, shine and something sweet. For some time now Mildred had been working on a remedy for the jump sickness that always hit some of the companions after arriving at their destination. So far, the physician had achieved scant success, but she still tried.

“What is this, coffee and…honey?” Krysty asked, taking a sniff.

“Close enough. The best results I ever had against jump sickness was with a crude form of Irish coffee,” Mildred said apologetically. “I figure the relaxing effects of the shine, combined with the mental stimulant of the caffeine in the coffee, is what does the trick. But since I don’t know how these damn things work, it’s just a guess.” She gave a wan smile. “For all I know it could be the water content that keeps us from getting dehydrated, and the sugar.”

“Credo qua ab, sur dom est!” Doc announced dramatically.

Mentally, the physician translated the garbled Latin into, “I believe you, because the idea is absurd.” She wanted to snap back at the time traveler, but sadly, he was right.

One at a time, the companions took a drink, then stepped into the hexagonal chamber and found a spot to sit. There was an alphanumeric keypad set into the wall where a person could tap in the code for their next destination, but since they had never found a directory, Ryan, the last person in, closed the gateway door, which would automatically trigger a random jump.

White mist flooded the chamber, swirling around the companions, faster and faster. A powerful hum started to build as tiny sparks appeared inside the mist like a billion imprisoned stars, then the floor seemed to vanish and the companions dropped through infinity, accelerating beyond logic and reason. Each of them had related that it sometimes felt as if their skin pulled away from the bones, and that knives shot painfully through their bodies, piercing every organ. Other times there was no pain, but the companions experienced vivid jump “nightmares.”

Slowly, the noise faded, and there was only the sound of the friends’ harsh breathing. But a few minutes later a warm breeze started to blow from the wall vents, the sterilized air helping considerably to revive them.

“Eas…easy…jump.” Ryan coughed, then stopped talking as his stomach roiled, its contents threatening to leave.

Concentrating on his breathing, Ryan managed to ride out the usual wave of nausea and carefully sat up to inspect the others. Everybody else seemed fine, just limp and exhausted, but that was how they always arrived. Except for Doc and Jak. For some reason the jumps hit them harder than the others, and Doc was sprawled on the floor, clearly unconscious.

“At least…not bad sick,” Jak panted, wiping some drool off his face. “New juice helped.”

“Th-thanks. B-but I h-have no f-fragging idea if it h-helped or not…” Mildred wheezed, laying on her back to stare at the ceiling. She knew the unit was motionless, but it felt like it was spinning around and around, and standing at that moment was completely impossible.

It was often this way after a jump, and it took the companions several minutes to recover, during which they were almost completely unable to defend themselves. As a physician, Mildred thought this was a purely natural reaction, merely random synapses firing in their brains from being reduced to their component molecules being disassembled. Doc philosophically considered it merely a side effect of their disintegrated bodies being without a soul for a little while until it found them again at the new destination. Mildred considered that total nonsense, of course. However, as a scientist, she was forced to honestly admit there really was no way of knowing for sure which answer was correct. Or if the truth was somewhere in the middle, a sublime combination of both answers, with maybe another element unknown to either science or religion.

With a low groan, Ryan forced himself to stand, one scarred hand pressed to the smooth wall to help him remain upright. In a sheer effort of will, the one-eyed man took a shuffling step forward, then collapsed inadvertently on the lever that opened the door to the mat-trans unit. The portal opened, spilling Ryan into the antechamber. Blinking hard to clear his vision, he looked up to see that the armaglass walls of the mat-trans were colored a pale flesh tone with a diagonal black stripe. The theory was that each mat-trans was different so that a traveler instantly knew where he or she had arrived, but that was only a guess. The redoubts were as jammed full of the mysterious as they were advanced technology.

“Peach and black,” Ryan muttered, brushing back his damp hair. “We’ve never been here before.” A quick look showed no one lying in wait, but oddly the door leading to the control room was a closed oval hatch.

Sluggishly joining his friend, J.B. removed his glasses from the shirt pocket where he always put them for safekeeping during a jump.

“Yeah, this is a new redoubt,” he said, a gloved hand resting on top of the Uzi machine pistol. The man wasn’t sure if he had the strength to control the bucking 9 mm Israeli blaster, but it was better to have a blaster ready and not need it than the other way around.

Surreptitiously, Mildred made a note of the colors in her journal. Someday the information might come in handy.

“Something’s wrong here,” Krysty said with a scowl, a hand going to the blaster at her side. The woman seemed perfectly normal, but then she had always recovered faster than anybody else.