Doc and Dean did the same, and another bike fell. Instantly, the other two drivers turned off their halogen headlights, and soon the noise of their engines could no longer be heard.
“Easy as pie,” Dean said triumphantly. “Keep going!” Ryan shouted over the roar of the Harley. “That was too easy. It’s a trick to make us slow down!”
“Trap ahead?” Krysty yelled.
“Could be! Everybody, stay sharp!”
The noise started soft and low, a distant beating of drums. But it quickly increased in tempo and volume until a steady whomping sound was heard, and the companions craned their necks about to find the source. Unexpectedly, a dark shape swooped by overhead, silhouetted by the lightning flashes in the rumbling storm clouds.
“That’s a bastard helicopter!” Ryan growled, buffeted by the wind of its passage. The chopper was the first flying machine the Deathlands warrior had ever seen. Silas had to have found the mother lode of all redoubts to loot. Maybe even a Deep Storage locker!
The Trader told stories around the campfires about predark vaults full of dry nitrogen gas, the temperature lowered to below freezing. Designed to keep ammo and food fresh for hundreds of years, Deep Storage lockers were supposed to be fully stocked with everything. Not the occasional box of ammo or handful of MRE packs, but literally tons of food, tanks, missiles and enough ammo and blasters for the predark Army. Silas with a Deep Storage locker—that would explain a lot.
The helicopter passed by again, lower this time.
“Why isn’t it shooting?” Dean demanded, tracking its passage, but withholding fire. The boy hated to admit it, but he was terrified. Machines that flew—it was unnatural!
“He’s getting our range!” J.B. shouted, firing some rounds into the sky.
“That’s a Bell bubble chopper,” Ryan stated. “It has no armor, and no blasters.”
“Gives us a fighting chance to live,” J.B. said. Dark night! A helicopter. What else did the blues have in their arsenal?
“The vehicle is unarmed?” Doc demanded. “Then it is merely here to frighten us, or track our location for others?”
“Hell, no!”
A powerful explosion ripped about the night, the ground shaking as a column of boiling flame reached into the sky.
“That’s dynamite or TNT,” J.B. said, sticking both weapons through the bars of the safety cage and firing, the winking muzzle-flashes illuminating the man in the darkness. “The pilot is tossing out sticks like bombs!”
Another column of strident fire blossomed directly ahead of the companions. The concussion slapped them hard, and they fought to keep the bikes upright as they narrowly skirted the steaming blast crater, clumps of hard soil under their wheels making the bikes shake madly. A fall now meant sure death.
“Figure eight for sixty!” Ryan shouted, leading the others sharply to the left, then to the right in evasion tactics. “We go on the next blast!”
Another blast roared, and Ryan killed the headlights. The companions spread wildly across the field, only to meet again farther away.
“Volley fire,” Ryan shouted. “Go!”
Doc, Dean and J.B. cut loose with their blasters, filling the sky with a hail of bullets. As a clip was emptied, they tossed it away, slapped in a fresh one and continued shooting. Speed and luck were their only chances now. A single stick landing in the middle of the bikes, and they would never hit the ground alive.
“Forest ahead!” Ryan shouted, dodging a primitive plow. A ville had to be close by. He only hoped they weren’t friendly with the blues.
The subgun finally empty, Doc dropped the useless weapon and triggered the LeMat. In the darkness, the muzzle-flash reached out for more than a foot, the detonation sounding like a peal of thunder.
In throbbing majesty, the helicopter angled away and moved fast into the night until it was gone. Tense minutes passed as they waited for its thundering return on another bombing run, and then the companions broached the forest and were riding under its canopy of branches. Slowing, Ryan listened carefully for the pre-dark machine, but only the hushed silence of the woods could be heard.
“Why did it leave?” Krysty asked suspiciously.
“Mayhap I hit the infernal contraption,” Doc rumbled, studying the sky dubiously.
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