James Axler – Road Wars

“Ryan?”

The door opened wider and the one-eyed man walked out, his face puzzled.

“Anyone in there?” J.B. asked.

“Yes. And no.”

Chapter Twenty-One

Abe was on the move. The deflating raft at his heels sounded like a posse of angered cottonmouths. Bullets whipped into the mud around him, the noise of the rifles from the flank of the hill behind them almost drowned out by the thunderous roaring of the river.

“Make for the bridge!” Trader shouted, his long legs taking him ahead of Abe, who didn’t actually need the suggestion of heading upstream toward their only chance of safety.

The two men that they’d killed had obviously been part of a larger group. Hunters, perhaps, or trappers.

And their companions had returned.

The bridge was covered in a glistening patina of bright red rust, the strongest color in the dark, damp gorge. It was suspended across the torrent on slack cables, weakened by age. The center of the bridge drooped so low that it was only a foot or less above the frothing surface of the river.

Trader had the wicker basket of stolen food slung over his left arm, and gripped the Armalite in his right. Both men knew that there was no point in trying to stand and fight. The little cabin would keep them safe for a short while, but it would inexorably prove to be a death trap, with nowhere to run, leaving them helpless, like a pair of bottled spiders. To try to return fire against their unknown assailants would be plain triple stupe. They had no cover, and the men with the long blasters would have the advantage of numbers and height and plenty of places for them to hide among the rocks and stunted trees.

A bullet gouged a furrow in the sodden turf a few inches to the right of Abe’s feet. From the size of the hole it looked like a large-caliber musket ball.

“Cover me while I cross, Abe!” Trader flung the words over his shoulder.

Another round whined past the little gunner’s ear, almost trimming the end of his straggling mustache, smashing into the basket carried by Trader.

The container exploded in a mess of burst eggs and mildewed potatoes that spilled all over Trader’s pants and boots, leaving him, for a moment, holding the curved, splintered handle and nothing else.

“Fuck it!”

There was shouting behind them, angry, ragged sounds that bounced back off the cliffs opposite. The spray from the falls was so dense that it drifted like fog, making it almost impossible to see anything clearly on the other side of the river. But Abe was sure he’d spotted a path of sorts.

He hoped there was a path over the swaying, ramshackle bridge, just ahead of them.

“Let ’em have it!” Trader shouted. “I’ll cover you from the far side.”

Abe found, to his surprise, that he was still holding his .357 Colt Python, the stainless-steel metal gleaming with tiny drops of water.

Fighting to control his breathing, he dropped to his knees, looking, for the first time, behind him. For a few lung-bursting moments he couldn’t see any sign of the enemy that was shooting down at them. Then there was a muzzle-flash and a burst of white powder smoke. And another. And a third.

Trader was on the bridge, the wire stays singing and groaning at his weight.

Abe gripped the butt of the big Magnum in his right hand, steadying his aim with his left, pointing up into the swirling clouds. He fired one round, brought the four-inch barrel back onto the target, waited a moment, then shot again.

He risked another glance behind him, seeing that Trader’s gaunt figure was almost across, his pants wet above the knees where the bridge sagged at its center.

A bullet struck the earth right in front of Abe, showering him with mud and tiny, sharp splinters of stone, making him gasp with shock and wince at the sudden stinging pain.

“Shit a fuckin’ brick!” He fired the last rounds from the Colt, spraying the cliffs opposite without even bothering to aim.

He bolstered the warm gun and started to scramble back toward the bridge, jinking from side to side, boots slipping in the cropped, sodden turf, aware that the attackers would eventually get the range right.