Thunder Road

For Krysty, it was much the same. Except that she did not have to rely on empirical evidence. Her ability to sense danger was almost infallible, and it was sounding alarms in her head that were impossible to ignore. Yet the landscape was deserted, and the sense seemed to fade in and out, like a badly tuned old transmitter picking up white noise that was almost—but not quite—decipherable. When it was strong, it was impossible to ignore it. Yet just as quickly it would fade out, before returning with a great intensity. And so she kept quiet about it, figuring she would wait until she could pin it down a little better.

It was nonexistent when they got their first view of Station Browns ville. Across the flat plain, it was still several miles away—a good two or three hours by horse-drawn—and the ville looked to be undamaged.

It was only as they got closer that the truth became apparent.

HIS SUSPICIONS HAD FIRST become aroused as he sped away from the folks in the horse-drawn wagon. Regular types, the sort who could help to build a new world. That was what had come to mind. But why? That was what had nagged at Thunder Rider all the way back to base. What had made him think that of a random encounter that lasted only a few seconds? He knew there had to be something else, a trigger that had started that thought. The question that faced him was how to discern what that trigger might be.

Back at base, he had the technology that could help him. In the lab, there was a brain wave decoder. It had been built for him, and in truth he did not fully understand the principles on which it worked; but in essence, it took his brain waves from the memory sector of his brain and translated them into images that were digitally recorded, so that he would be able to study them in detail. The persistent nagging made him hit the throttle even harder: there was no way he could rest until he had laid his mind to rest.

When he reached base, he docked the bike, leaving maintenance and refueling until later, and went straight to the lab. The LED was simple to set, and he selected the decoder option, plugging the headset into the jack on the console before carefully positioning it on his skull. Seating himself, he relaxed, taking deep breaths as he had been taught, before punching the key that would set the program in operation.

The trick was to think about anything else other than what you wanted to capture. If you tried too hard, and bought it to mind, then you would be dragging it from the memory center, making it hard for the computer to scan and collect.

He diverted himself by thinking about his favorite video. The one where the cowboy found the underworld kingdom ruled by the ice queen. She was merciless to begin with, but only in the protection of her people. She had taught him that to do good, you had to be prepared to sometimes do things that would be bad…unless, of course, you were doing them to people who would do even worse. His sister had told him of that old saying “you can’t make an omelet without breaking an egg.” He knew what they were, of course, but he wondered what they tasted like. He had never seen one, other than in pictures.

The console hummed and a monitor screen flickered to light, a message appearing to tell him that the scan of the area was complete, the images captured. Letting his mind wander had worked, as he hoped it would. Sometimes he found it hard not to think of the things that concerned him.

He took off the headset, unplugged it and put it carefully away. He was mindful of the fact that he was fortunate to have this legacy of equipment with which to execute his mission, and he did not wish to waste or damage it with carelessness.

The computer program did it all for him. He had merely to key in the sequence to play, and then watch. The events of the past two days played out before him. He hit the key to fast forward to the relevant section, not wishing to view all of his life over again so soon. When it came to that section, he marked it on the toolbar: where it began, where it ended. He cut it out and played it over and over again, switching the angles, enhancing the image, zooming in and out. He wanted to try to catch as much of a view of the inhabitants of the wagon as he could.

It was far from easy. They had adopted defensive postures that were so accomplished that little of them could be gleaned. However, he could tell that there were six of them. One of them was small, pale. He had white hair, as did another. One was dark-skinned. And one…For a moment his breath was taken away. A flash of hair, a brilliant red, waving in a nonexistent breeze, as though alive of its own accord.

It could not be…He saved the best images he could and left them on screen. Each of the six images centered on one of the people hiding behind the wagon.

Swiveling in his chair, he went to another monitor. This archived all the reports, visual and verbal, that had been collected by the base’s intel-gathering equipment since the time of the Long Night. There was, in truth, very little. This system had been designed for use in the days before the darkness, and it had a vast capacity for memory. It was a sign of how things had degenerated that only a fraction of its vast storage capacity was in use. This made it simple for the search facility to scan intel for correlation with the people on the screen.

The search bought several matches, recorded over a period of time. There was precious little to go on, as there were very few facilities capable of broadcast and communication technology in these days. But these sparse mentions added up to a picture, one that Thunder Rider had noted while he had scanned the outside, preparing for his entrance.

This group of people—who seemed to have added and lost a few members over time, but remained with the same core nucleus—had, like himself, been pillars of right. They were the kind of allies he sought.

More…The vision of the red hair floating in a nonexistent breeze stirred something within him. It was something new, something that he had never felt before.

He was determined. When he had completed maintenance and refueling, when he had rested himself, then he had to find them.

He had to find her.

THEIR FIRST INDICATION that all was not well came with the burst of fire that seemed to erupt from nowhere, kicking up the sandy soil a few yards ahead of them. The horses reacted, moving erratically enough to throw off balance those who were in the back of the wag. It was as well that the horses had proved themselves calm to the point of stupidity under fire, otherwise Jak, currently at the reins, would have dropped them with a slug to each head. As it was, he was able to pull them around, giving those in the back the chance to find their feet and grab their weapons.

The burst of fire was followed by silence, the echo on the still air, mocking them. With the wag sideways-on to the direction the burst had come from, they lined up behind the shelter of the vehicle, just as they had when the mystery rider had skirted them. There was no other cover in this barren landscape.

“What do you reckon?” Ryan asked J.B.

The Armorer scanned the land between the wag and the horizon. Only the first few buildings on the edge of Station Browns ville broke the unrelenting flat.

“It didn’t sound like serious ordnance, or rip up much dirt. It had to have come from someplace between here and the buildings, some kind of hide or shelter. No way something that weak got that distance otherwise.”

Jak had been scanning the ground ahead of them, blotting out the conversation beside him. If there was anywhere they could hide, then he was determined to spot it. With no cover, it had to be some kind of dugout. Even the best-made hide would show somewhere against such a featureless surface.

It wasn’t well made, and it didn’t take him long to locate it.

“Ryan, there. Forty degrees,” he whispered, directing the one-eyed man’s gaze along a line prescribed by his bony white finger. Ryan followed and saw it immediately. Once you knew where it was, it was obvious: raised by the side of a cactus, dust-and dirt-covered canvas over a hole with a built-up ledge. Just enough of a slit between dirt and canvas to see out of, to direct a blaster.

Ryan beckoned Mildred and indicated the hide. “Just frighten the fucker out,” he said simply.

Mildred nodded and focused her aim. Her Czech-made ZKR was a specialist target pistol, and she had once been a specialist target shooter. This was simple. She placed three shots around the lip of the hide. One kicked up dust in the center, while the others knocked out the tiny supports that gave the hide its view of the world. With a puff of dust, the hide closed up.

“So we know where you are, you know where we are. We could have taken you out, but we didn’t want to. You come out, we won’t shoot. We aren’t your enemy…but we might know who is. We’re chasing a coldheart with a freaky motorcycle—”

“That fucker. Okay, I’ll trust you ’cause I’m pinned. Don’t let me down.”

The woman was an unlikely sec sniper. Dressed in a dirty camisole top, shorts and combat boots, long blond hair tied back, the large-busted and curvy young woman looked more like a gaudy slut who’d been given a blaster and thrown into the wrong job.

Showing good faith by holstering his SIG-Sauer and walking out into the open, Ryan prompted her to introduce herself.

“Name’s Anita. Long time since I hefted a blaster. More used to handling other kinds of weapons,” she said with a grin, “but I figure that we need all the skills we can get after what happened.”

“Which was?”

“Bastard you described…” Briefly, and with more cursing than even Jak would have thought possible, she outlined a situation similar to the one that went down in the last ville. By the time she had finished, the others had joined Ryan in front of the wag.

“So where the fuck do you fit into it?” Anita asked in what they had discovered to be her usual forthright manner.

Ryan told her briefly about their experiences, and about the pact they had made in the last ville.

“Should be glad we aren’t the only ones,” she said at the conclusion, “but then I wouldn’t wish that asshole on anyone. So I guess you’d better come on back with me, see if mebbe you can find out something else that would help.”

“You think there could be something?”

She shrugged. “Dunno. Can’t hurt to ask. ’Sides which, we’re pretty much on top of clearing up now. Weird fucker thought us girls were all prisoners. Didn’t touch any of us, just chilled all the men and blew up a lot of shit.”

“Where did a gaudy slut learn to shoot like that?” Krysty asked her.

The smile vanished. “My daddy.”

“He was a good shot?” Krysty prompted.

Anita sniffed. “Fucker wanted me to be mommy to my new little sister. Would have been if he’d got his hands on me. Sweetest shot I ever made, right through the bastard’s dick. Now, you gonna give me a ride back, or do I have to walk in front of that wag of yours?”

Doc gathered the horses and drove the wag into the ville, Anita sitting beside him to indicate that all was well. They made the short journey in silence, the friends gleaning what they could from the view out the back of the canvas wag cover.

There was little to see that wasn’t familiar to them. Station Browns ville was almost too small to have a center as such; rather, it had a few buildings that radiated from the hub, which was a cluster of about five buildings. It was difficult to tell, as they hadn’t been well-constructed, and the rider’s ordnance had wreaked more havoc here than the ville they had recently left.

The ville had looked fine from a distance: no smoking wreckage, and now they could see why. Any fires had long ago burned themselves out. The flattened center section of the ville was nothing more than rubble and corpses. Some of the gaudy sluts, incongruously still dressed for trade, were working to clear the corpses.

“How many of you are left, my dear?” Doc whispered.

“No more than fifteen, all women and girls. Every male, young or old, is chilled. Criminacs, or somethin’, that was what he called them.”

“Criminals, my dear. An old word, of no real meaning now.”

Anita sniffed. “Figure it must mean somethin’ if it makes him chill all our menfolk. That what he did where you come from?”

“Almost. A larger population, perhaps not enough time for him. We must find out all we can, I think, and quickly,” he said over his shoulder at Ryan.

The one-eyed man was in agreement. They had another two villes to get to. Chances were, on this evidence, that the coldheart rider had already paid them a visit. It was not a time to stand on ceremony.

Their approach had attracted the attention of those still left alive, and it was no problem for Anita to gather them together to explain who the strangers were and what they wanted. There was no shortage of information. What emerged was that the mystery rider’s visit to Station Browns ville followed the same pattern as the other event: ride in, speak of arcane things in a strange pattern, and when he didn’t get the reaction he wanted, he started firing—except that he refused this time to fire on any women, believing them to be innocents. As employees of the gaudy house, they weren’t allowed to carry blasters. A pity, as his leaving them alone would have given them a clear shot at him, and maybe avoided this destruction…and the destruction where they had come from, as it seemed that this attack had occurred before the one they had stumbled on.

The only other thing of note was that there was no sign of the napalmlike substance in this ville. Had he considered this ville too small to make that necessary, or was he limited by numbers as to how often he could use it? That question would only really be answered if they found the next ville had also been attacked.

There was little they could do to help here. The women had the situation as under control as was possible, and there was little medical help needed. The stark truth was that those who would buy the farm had already done so by this time.

There was little else they could do but leave, with the words of the gaudies ringing in their ears—pleas to wreak revenge.

It was when they were out on the empty expanse of desert once more that Krysty started to get that sense of being watched.

IT WAS WITH A SINKING HEART that they made the slow trek across the wastes to their next destination. The ville had been wiped out. No survivors.

But at least one important thing was evident at their last stop: this ville had been attacked in the time between the other two attacks, which meant that the rider wasn’t working his way around an arc, but was more likely to be at some point equidistant to all three villes.

Two down, one to go. They set off with a little more information, but not enough to reach any real conclusions. After a two-day drive across the desert and dustbowl, they found themselves with a ville that had been the first to be visited by the rider. Those that had been chilled had been disposed of. The infrastructure had been restored as much as was possible, and there had been no orange chem here. Again, the people talked of the rider’s strange language and undreamed-of ordnance. Their descriptions were sketchy, as had been those of the other villes, but they were enough to tell J.B. that the man had been using a limited range of weaponry so far. It didn’t mean he didn’t have a wider range available, but it did say much about his thought process.

They left the final ville on their arc with a little more information than when they had started, but not as much as Ryan would have wished.

“Not much good,” Jak commented tersely.

“On the contrary, dear boy, I would say that we have something that John Barrymore could work with,” Doc commented.

J.B. grimaced. “Okay, so if he starts from one point and attacks them, but not in any order of progression, then if we drew a line from the villes, we might get a central point, but only if the four villes form enough of an angle from which—”

“Yeah, okay, I get it—it won’t be accurate. But it would give us an area to start looking,” Ryan pointed out, “and that’s better than where we are now.”

“Mebbe,” J.B. breathed, “but you figured how big that area could be?”

Ryan sighed. “It’s about all we got right now.”

Jak exchanged a look with Krysty. “Ryan, head right direction, figure scum look for us. Knows where are,” the albino said.

“You sure of that?” Ryan questioned, dividing his gaze between them.

“Oh, yeah, I’m sure of that,” Krysty said with a shiver, her hair flicking around her shoulders nervously. “I don’t know where he’s hiding out there, with no cover, but he’s been watching us. All the while. I can feel it.”

Ryan nodded, almost to himself. “Okay. Let him bring it on, then. We plot a rough course, and we start out first thing. If that’s how it’s gonna be, let’s draw the bastard out.”

Chapter Four

“I am on a line going thirty-three by seventeen. The fourth quadrant. They are at rest for the evening, operating a watch rotation system. They seem to be very lightly armed, which has surprised me given their reputation. However, I shall still use long-distance search and recover tactics, and take no chances. Further reports after operations commence, which should be at 0400 by my chronometer. Message ends.”

Thunder Rider flipped up the slim mike that came down from his goggles and adjusted the long-range infrared recon scope before lifting the eyepiece to his left eye. The darkness of the surrounding desert now became a relief in grays and greens. The figures and the wagon in the distance, barely visible by the naked eye even in the light, now came into sharp focus. He adjusted the range with the slightest touch of his index finger, and the figures grew larger in the scope. He could see that the small albino and the famed Armorer were on watch. The others were sleeping, clustered around the fire. The red-haired woman was close up against the one-eyed man. For a moment, Rider felt a twinge of something in his chest, and was baffled. He truly had no idea what bothered him, only that something did. No matter, it did not fit in with the plan.

The scope had a long-range directional mike attached. Thunder Rider activated the facility. The receiver was attached to a small speaker in the goggles, relaying directly to his ear all that could be heard from such a distance. Not that there was much. The old man and the black woman were snoring. The albino was silent, and prowled like a wolf ready to spring. He was the most immediate danger. Not relevant now, but a point worth noting. The Armorer was muttering softly to himself, possibly as an aid to concentration. It was almost inaudible, and certainly under his breath. Rider doubted that the others would be able to hear him. It was testament to the power of the recon equipment that he was able to discern this.

So: two on watch, the others sleeping. Reflex times would be reduced. They would, of course, know before the strike hit. In this silence, even the best of stealth weapons would be detected, certainly by the albino. Even with an advanced warning, there would be little they could do against the weaponry he chose to use. However, no one won a war without caution and care. Preparation, thinking ahead, and the ability to be flexible. It was easier to do this when training than out in the field, as he had discovered. There were aspects of his recent activities that needed review and improvement.

Nonetheless, that made him all the more determined to be precise in this operation. To get it right.

The chassis of the bike was made of a polycarbon fiber, surrounded by titanium supports. The polycarbon enabled the frame to be strong and lightweight, the titanium supports forming an exoskeleton over the top to which were attached the pods that contained equipment, and the holstering that held his ordnance.

Thunder Rider crouched over one of the pods, snapping it open. All of the pods were self-contained, ready to be attached and removed to the frame as necessary. Their interior design was specific to whatever they were carrying, enabling him a secure storage system for ordnance and equipment that could be easily changed on the bike at a moment’s notice, back at base. He had thought long and hard before preparation for this mission, and as he inspected the contents of the pod he had just opened, he had no regrets for his decisions.

He had chosen the recon equipment from the stores with care. Knowing the reputation of the people he was about to trail, he wished to ensure that he would not have to engage them in direct combat. He had a twofold purpose in this: the first was that he had no desire to fight those he would wish to make his allies. The second was that he was outnumbered by six-to-one: not odds that would bother him in the usual run of things—had not his missions to those small towns shown this?—but when he was against an adversary with such a reputation as this group, it would bode him well to show some caution.

His basic plan was to take the redheaded woman, show her the base and support systems, and discuss with her the basic philosophy of his mission. He felt sure that if he were to do this, then she would help him convert the others to his cause. There were other, stranger feelings that he could not explain coursing through him. He chose to ignore them for the moment.

He focused his mind on the task in hand. The recon equipment had served him well so far. He was pleased by that as it was the first time that he had been called upon to use this in an operational capacity, and it had proved as effective in the field as he had hoped. The night scope was augmented by a long-distance digital imager for use in daylight. Between them, these two devices had enabled him to keep a close watch on the group without going too close. Similarly, the long-range directional mike had helped him to try to understand what was going on in the dynamics of the group, the better to adapt his tactics to the situation. In truth, there were certain elements of this operation that were completely new to him, and as such he was treating this as an exercise that would make him a better operative in the future.

The recon equipment was one thing: what lay in the pod in front of him, nestled comfortably into its protective fittings, was another matter entirely. It consisted of a series of small polycarbon rods that fitted together to form a barrel of variable length. There were overlapping supporting rods to reinforce the barrel when assembled. A small, electronic sight and laser target finder sat within a soft protective base, ready to be switched on and attached. The battery unit powering the target finder had a half-life of five hundred years. A triggering mechanism was also comfortably fitted into the pod, ready to be attached and deployed.

Most important of all were the small black eggs that sat in a line, snugly arrayed in a rack fitted into soft material. From the computer files back at base, he knew that these had been derived from a prototype that had never been called into commission. The design had been perfect, but the costings had been deemed prohibitive at the time. The report on file had been sidetracked into a rant about the wastage in military spending. The gist of the report had, however, been clear: this was a highly effective weapon, to be used sparingly and with great caution.

Again, he took this to be a good thing. Not only would it achieve its purpose, but he would be learning as he progressed in the mission. Thunder Rider was always looking to be better.

Dismissing such thoughts from his mind, he set to assembling the weapon. Using the range and directional finder on the recon equipment to set the coordinates on the directional and firing unit, he attached it to the long barrel he had constructed. The trigger unit came next, and remembering what the files had advised about caution, he did not deploy it until he had taken one of the small black eggs and inserted it into the chamber that was formed within the now fully assembled weapon.