James Axler – Road Wars

But there was a dramatic change, an hour after their midday break.

RYAN WAS AT THE CONTROLS, looking through the ob slit, cruising at a comfortable fifteen miles an hour and watching for any sudden end to the pavement.

J.B. sat on top, his hat clamped firmly between his thighs, not wanting to risk losing it to the light northerly breeze that had sprung up.

There was a sudden metallic rapping on the arma-plate above Ryan’s head, and he immediately slowed to a walking pace, waiting for J.B. to tell him what the warning had been for. He blinked as the Armorer’s face appeared, upside down, in front of the driver’s ob slit.

“Folks ahead, fifteen or twenty on foot, spread out both sides the highway. They’re in a dip. You won’t see them from this low down for another couple hundred yards or so.”

J.B. was right. Ryan eased off the gas until the LAV was barely moving. “I see them.”

He heard the hatch of the turret clanging open and J.B.’s boots clattering on the ladder. “Just taking basic precautions, Ryan. I’ll keep the lid up unless they look hostile. Can you make them out, yet?”

There was a small magnifying periscope to Ryan’s right and he used it, focusing the cross hairs on the group of men and women standing still, right across the blacktop, around five hundred yards ahead.

“Look a raggedy bunch,” he said, using the mike now that he knew that J.B. had plugged himself in again.

“How do you want to play it? Drop the hatch and sail on through?”

“Negative. They might have some news of what it’s like farther down the line.”

“Yeah. I’ll buy that, Ryan.”

The big eight-wheeler crawled cautiously forward, with J.B. waiting patiently, his index finger on the trigger of the M-240 machine gun.

“I make it fourteen,” Ryan said, hearing his own voice crackling on feedback through the ancient earphones. “And I think all male.”

J.B. had his own scope. “Agreed.”

“See blasters?”

“No. Doesn’t mean there aren’t any. Finest pie crust can easy hide ”

“Stinking fish. I know, J.B., don’t I? One of Trader’s best sayings.”

They were stationary, eighty long paces from the silent group of watchers.

“One’s carrying a big cross,” J.B. stated. “The one near the back on the left. Down on his knees.”

“And some of them got whips.” Ryan whistled through his teeth. “Fireblast! They’re penitentes, I reckon. Some kind of religious crazies.”

“Flagellants! Dark night, remember how much Trader used to loathe them? I never seen him do it, but there was talk he’d personally flogged a half dozen of them to death.”

“Said he was speeding them to their own Paradise and how come they kept screaming and not thanking him. Yeah, I heard that story, too.”

“Believe it, Ryan?”

“Put it like this, J.B.I don’t exactly say it happened. But I reckon it might have happened.”

“One in front’s shouting something.”

“Should I cut the engine?”

“No. I’ll put my head out the top and relay what he says down to you.”

“Fine. Switch the automatic relay for the machine gun through to me.”

Ryan edged forward another fifty yards, bringing them within easier hailing distance. He knocked the engine out of gear, and held it on the hand brake.

Now it was possible to see the men much more clearly. All of them wore torn cotton pants or skirts, with their feet bare. Each had a multithonged whip at their belts, some with tips of plaited wire or tiny knots, clotted with black blood. Most of them were stripped to the waist, their chests and backs baked deep brown by exposure to the southwestern sun.

Ryan noticed something else, which didn’t surprise him at all.

The bodies of the flagellants were seamed with countless scars and weals, most old, layered upon older wounds. A few were obviously new, open cuts, like dozens of hungry red mouths, each one leaking fresh crimson.

Their leader was very tall and lean, his thinning hair and long matted beard a gingery color. The skin of his face was peeling from too much sun.

He carried a long staff with what looked to Ryan like a twisted and tortured figure of Christ at its head.