“Wait for it,” Ryan commanded, as the tapping of the pinchers grew until it sounded like rain on a tin roof. Watching the second hand move on his wrist chron, the one-eyed man waited until the sixty second mark and shouted, “Now!”
Covering their ears, the companions opened their mouths to equalize the pressure and try to save their hearing when the entire world seemed to erupt. The APC rocked violently from side to side from the concussions of the explosions as the dynamite charges in the coffee cans detonated slightly out of sequence.
The blasts punched through the air vents like Invisible fists knocking the companions about, Ryan slamming into a hatch and crumpling to the floor. Outside, the chittering of the muties swelled into screams for a split second and then was gone as the reverberations of the trip-hammer explosions and stilettos of flame stabbed through the air vents and blaster ports, and a monstrous crunching sound filled the garage. Screeching as it scraped along the concrete floor, the wheelless APC was shoved sideways and brutally slammed into another vehicle, then flipped over sideways, tumbling the companions together into a heap and extinguishing the candles.
In the smoky blackness of the APC nothing moved, aside from the slow drip of blood.
Chapter Five
With the coming of the dawn, the Devils rolled out of the box canyon and headed north along the dried riverbed to finally reach a scraggly plain of scrub brush that slowly changed into a grasslands and finally to forest.
After the heat of the desert, it was a very welcome change for the bikers. The line of chained slaves didn’t seem to notice the difference, their every thought concentrated on placing one foot ahead of the other.
Passing a copse of trees, a group of stickies charged at the biker gang, hooting and waving their arms like the mad things they were. The Devils hit the muties with firebombs made from glass bottles, rags and shine. Several of the muties were engulfed by the chem flames, but still chased after the escaping food, until they simply toppled over dead, their brains literally cooked through.
“Black dust, those are hard to chill,” Denver Joe said, returning a Molotov into his saddlebag. “Is it much farther to this cannie ville?”
“Another day’s ride,” Cranston growled, glancing sideways at the newbie. “You’ll know it when we get there.”
That sounded rather ominous to Denver Joe, but he made no reply as the miles steadily rolled underneath the purring bikes, and the frantically running slaves.
High above, the purple and orange clouds crackled with sheet lightning, warning of a coming storm, mebbe even a twister. But there was no smell of acid rain, so the bikers kept their leisurely pace along the forest trail. Dead slaves were of no use to anybody, so every couple of hours the bikers would slow and let the people walk a few miles to catch their breath. For the hungry slaves, food would come at the end of the day, but the Devils ate while they drove, tearing off greasy chunks of dried dog wrapped in oily cloth, and drinking warm water cut with juniper-berry juice from battered aluminum canteens.
The trees were becoming thick in the heart of the forest, and soon the gang was rolling along a narrow trail through the tall evergreens and oaks, the ground covered with a thick carpet of pine needles that sweetly scented the air. Without warning, there was a loud crunching noise to one side and a thick tree snapped off at the base to come crashing down across the path, blocking it completely.
“Razor up,” Cranston ordered, drawing his longblaster and thumbing off the safety.
The bikes eased to a halt and the point men instantly slipped longblasters off their shoulders, while the women pulled levers to draw their crossbows and nocked iron arrows into place.
Resting both legs on the uneven dirt road, Cranston throttled down his bike’s big engine and listened to the silence of the forest.
“Whatcha think?” Ballard asked, his good eye sweeping across the trees.
Paying no attention to the man, Cranston leaned over the handlebars to inspect the soil. The ground here was moist, but not swampy, and there was no sign of rot on any of the other trees in the area. There was no reason for a tree to just fall over like that.