James Axler – Road Wars

“Be gone at dawn,” Jak said.

Mildred nodded. “Hope so.”

Chapter Nineteen

“End of the day, the gas gauge’s going to be down to the red line, Ryan.”

“Figures. We’ve done well so far.” They were taking a break in the late morning, allowing the overheating engine a chance to cool.

“Sure. Long ways to go.”

Ryan nodded. “Yeah. Too far to foot it.”

The Armorer picked at his teeth with the needle point of his knife. “Bit of gristle from that ham the ladies gave us,” he explained.

“Weren’t they something?” Both men laughed quietly. “What would Trader’ve said about them?”

J.B. considered the question. “Never quite comfortable around powerful women, was he? Hunaker was one of the only people riding the war wags that he didn’t scream at. Not often. Reckon he was afraid that she’d have crawled up on him in the night and sent him to live with the geldings.”

“That’d be the day, pilgrim,” Ryan said, imitating the Trader’s voice.

J.B. stood, pushing the fedora back on his head. “Guess we might as well move on.”

The land they’d reached was high plains country, flat acres and plateaux of good pasture, riven by steep, wooded valleys. Tree-lined mountains, dappled with all-season snow, rose all around them.

“Good country,” Ryan said, getting up off the cropped turf, breathing in deeply. “I guess that this was always real good country.”

“Yeah. Grazing and water. Shelter in the low places for the winter.”

“Thinking of retiring here, J.B., to raise cattle? Get a decent spread, you and Mildred. Few little ones to carry on the dynasty. How’s it sound?”

His oldest friend had been just about to climb aboard the LAV-25, but he paused and turned to stare at Ryan, his face unusually solemn.

“My thoughts a thousand times, Ryan. And yours, too. That’s right, isn’t it?”

“Yeah. I remember Doc quoting some old Chinese proverb about how difficult it is for a man riding a tiger to ever dismount safely.”

“God himself must’ve lost count of all of the men and women and children that you and I have personally sent across the black river, Ryan.”

“Fill a decent-sized ville, I reckon.” He hesitated. “Or a big graveyard.”

“And all of them was some mother’s son or daughter. Every damned one.”

Ryan knew precisely what J.B. was driving at. Deathlands wasn’t anywhere near a big enough place to hide in. Not when there was as much old blood on your hands as there was for the Armorer and himself.

“Doesn’t stop you wanting,” he said.

A long pause. “No.”

THE WAG WAS SHOWING ominous signs of mechanical deterioration, which wasn’t surprising considering that the eight-wheeler was the better part of a hundred years old.

Ryan had taken over the driving controls, discovering that the brakes were sticking and the gears had started to get sloppy, like stirring a bowl of watery grits. Several of the main comp repeaters on the dash had malfunctioned, meaning that they’d lost important sections of information.

“Looks like a serious chem storm.” The Armorer’s voice whispered into Ryan’s ears through the phones. “High thunderheads, northeast.”

There was a radar scanner on the armawag, but it was one of the pieces of equipment that had gone down.

“Do I need a look?”

“No point. Reckon if’s about an hour away. When it gets closer, Ryan, we should think about finding a good place to park. Keep out of the bottoms of dry rivers.”

Ten minutes later J.B. had called through that he could see dust, rising up to their right, from the far side of a tall bluff. They were driving slowly across a rough, boulder-strewed spur of land, where a major quake had taken out the highway.

Ryan slowed and then put on the hydraulic brakes, the LAV halting with a hiss of compressed air. J.B. shouted for him to turn off the engine.

“Hear thunder, but the storm’s still some way off.”

Ryan switched off the ignition, sitting for a few moments in the welcome stillness. But he narrowed his eye, almost instantly aware of the noise that J.B. had mentioned, distant rumbling that made the big wag vibrate.

He picked his way to the turret, finding that his companion had already climbed out on top. Ryan joined him, looking toward the east, seeing a pillar of dust swirling a thousand feet high. And the sound was swelling, so deep that it felt as though it were dissolving the marrow of the bones.