Richard Harding - Outrider 1, Premier Volume Page 4

  "And I guess that Hatchet told every raider, smuggler and street-worker between the cap and here that Leather wanted me dead. Coldchip and his men tried to collect and I always thought he was a friend of mine too."

  "Well, if it sets your mind at rest, Bonner, I ain't going to try to collect. I mean you got to be pretty stupid if you think that for hauling you in Leather is going to say: 'Good job. Here's your cash.' Besides which, I don't want to try and take you. I like you alive."

  "I'm relieved to hear it."

  "Let me guess," said Starling, "you are inbound to see your old friend Leather and see if you can't work out this stuff about having a price on your ùhead."

  Bonner nodded.

  "Let me come with you."

  "I thought you just said you got your ass blasted for a hundred miles."

  "Yeah, so what?"

  "And you're outbound for Chi, so why do you want to go and get yourself shot at again?"

  "I'm bored."

  "That's all?"

  "And I love to travel. I have a hunch that you are going all the way to the Cap and that when you get there you are going to need some help. Besides, I haven't seen Leather since I don't know when. It'll be a nice Outrider reunion."

  Bonner hesitated a moment.

  "Come on, Bonner, don't tell me that you can make it all the way in and all the way out and think you're going to do it yourself. I don't have to tell you that I'm a pretty tough bring-down myself."

  "Beats me why you would do this if you didn't have to."

  "Why do you have to, Bonner? So Leather's put a price on your head? Big fucking deal..."

  "I heard he's got Dara."

  Starling looked somber all of a sudden. "Oh shit, this is going to be a hot one, isn't it?"

  Bonner nodded. "If you want out..."

  "No, I'll go. You know me, I'll do anything to be liked."

  They rode for a good twelve hours before stopping for the night. Before falling asleep Starling said: "I met a guy who said that a Starling was a kind of bird. What I wanted to know was what the fuck was a bird. He said they were little things that flew around and just, you know, hung out in trees. Can you imagine that? What a fucking world it used to be."

  Bonner was asleep already.

  Chapter 6

  You could always tell where the Slavestates began. If you were coming in due west, like Bonner and Starling, you detoured way to the north into the cut that Pennsylvania made into Ohio because it was only at that point could you skirt the Firelands. From just south of there stretched a barrier of flame and smoke five hundred miles long. They said that the bomb had set fire to the old coal belt that ran from Pennslyvania to Tennessee.

  The land there burnt hot and burrowed deep into the ground like a fiery serpent. In some areas, where the coal was high quality, the flames shot into the air. In the poorer veins the fire crackled beneath the surface turning the earth into a hot swamp of smokeholes and firepits eating out the ground until it was a red hot honeycomb. Some said there were safe trails through the Firelands, but they were impossible to find. Others said that once you were in, you weren't coming out. Where Bonner and Starling crossed the border they could look to the south and see a continuous column of smoke, like the high pillars of steam thrown up into the air by a vast waterfall.

  The Firelands made a perfect shield for the Slave-states as the point at which Bonner and Starling now stood was the virtually the only safe way in. It was there that Leather concentrated the greatest number of his stormtrooper patrols.

  Although they were a good forty miles north of the beginning of the firebelt the air that Starling and Bonner breathed was thick with smoke and heavy with the gritty, dirty taste of coal. When passing through the gap Highway 6 a man had to be c.areful. Some of the Stormer's easiest bring downs were made there. They would sometimes stretch a wire across the road and slice a man's neck like a cheesecutter. Other times they would wait outside the smoke and start blasting as the riders came out of the fog.

  Starling wasn't worried. "I'll bet I'm the last rider on this road. I came through a day or two ago. There were a couple of wire traps, but I took 'em down. I don't think the Stormers have had time to put 'em back."

  The land in the first few miles of Slavestate territory was black with the grime of the smoke carried by the wind. The sky was always dark and threatening as if promising a ferocious thunderstorm that would never come. Vegetation was dark and grotesque-ly stunted, black reminders of violent times passed. Bonner and Starling were picking their way through a part of the road that riders called Trash Alley. The last fifty miles of highway before you hit where Pittsburgh used to be was jammed with the rusting hulks of old automobiles, a rotting museum of pre-bomb hardware. There were family sedans, pickups, huge eighteen-wheel tractor trailers, sports cars, station wagons. All six lanes of the highway were clogged, all the cars were facing in the same direction: away. Year after year of riders heading east had carved down the center of the rusty canyon a narrow central path. It was a tight pass, like those dangerous paths through mile-high mountains and it was a favorite spot for Stormers on the border to wait for raiders and riders.

  Starling and Bonner couldn't ride two abreast. They entered the alley single file, Bonner leading. As he slowly negotiated the passage the same thought ran through Bonner's mind. He couldn't ride the alley without thinking the same thing, every time. In his mind he could imagine the whole scenario, the whole terrible drama that had brought all those cars to the highway, all those people doing the same thing: fleeing.

  There they all were one day, Bonner thought, those people, doing the jobs that people did in Pittsburgh before the war. Living their lives, just as they always had... Then reports start to come in. A war. The information whips through the city like the wind from a hurricane. People snatch a few seconds to rush to their homes, gather their wives and chil- dren and head for the road, the taste of panic harsh and metallic in their mouths.

  Where were they going, Bonner wondered, what place had they heard of? What shred of hope drove them out onto that crowded highway?

  Then a car breaks down, or runs out of gas, or collides with another scared citizen. The whole long river of cars grinds to a halt. All they know now is that behind them, the east, has been pounded into ruins, that flames now lap at the very edge of their world. They get out of their cars-the kids are crying, the men are bellowing empty threats at angry strangers. Fear had taken root in that doomed column and like a choking vine it hobbled them, bringing them all down. They died. Caught in a sweeping tide of death-fate, history, the past and the future fusing in one terrible moment to exterminate them.

  In the old Outriding days Bonner had seen bones scattered around the alley. Who had killed them, Bonner wondered, and what goal, what ideal, had their miserable deaths served? Was the world a better place for it? In that long rusting corridor Bonner could see the design of a failure so immense it sickened him. Who were those men, the ones who so arrogantly led the country to suicide and mired the whole world in a swamp of death? Bonner looked around him, his lips set in a tight line. His world just might be a better place...

  Sure, bullets flew and death was dealt casually and men like Leather kept slaves and held terrible sway over a whole kingdom of fear, but no one, not Leather, not Bonner, nobody could sweep away a whole nation with the flick of a wrist. Leather could kill, but not even he could destroy on such a scale. That talent had died with the civilized world.

  Bonner had cut his speed way down and the sound of the big Lycoming caromed dully off the rusting walls of the big semis he was passing between. Up ahead stretched a narrow valley of steel. He stared down it, but he didn't really see it, so lost was he in the thought of the foolish past.

  A millisecond before the first blast of gunfire, Bonner's brain kicked backed to the present and a single thought seared his brain: if it's going to happen, it's going to happen here.

  Bullets splattered around him like hot heavy pellets of summer rain and Bonne
r and Starling reacted in precisely the same manner. Both slammed on their brakes and before they stopped moving, both dove for cover, abandoning their machines to the murderous raking fire that suddenly filled the tight channel like water shooting through a millrace.

  Bonner and Starling squatted under the eaves of the big trailer of the old truck. Starling inched forward.

  "Goddamn it to hell," he whispered, as if the Stormers didn't know where they were, "where was your fucking brain, Bonner? We sailed right into that one. We are in deep shit."

  The firing stopped. "Sorry, Star," said Bonner. "Did you get a look at any of 'em? Who's working this sector?"

  "I didn't see shit. Drexy is supposed to be out here and someone said that Sallow is out here too..."

  "Any Radleps?"

  "Naww..."

  "Okay, then," said Bonner, "no problem."

  In spite of the danger they were in. Starling couldn't help smiling. "No problem?" He laughed. "No problem? Are you fucking crazy? It doesn't matter who the Stormer leader is. We're caught. Sure Drexy's a pussy and Sallow is stupid, but they have been alive a mighty long time..."

  "It'll go like this," said Bonner. "Five or six of them will come down the main alley. A couple more will be on the outside traffic lanes..."

  "Which way do we go?"

  "Up," said Bonner.

  Starling and Bonner crawled flat on their bellies under the truck. Starling was in the lead and Bonner kept his eyes fixed on the long leather quiver on Starling's back. It was stuffed tight with those murderously effective steel arrows. Bonner hated the things but Starling was a master in their use and they would probably be the dominant factor in the firelight that was just minutes into the future. Hooked over the quiver was Starling's bow.

  They snaked their way forward until they lay directly under the truck's engine. They climbed out from under and swung themselves up over the radiator and hunched down on the hood, just in front of the old cracked windshield. Bonner noticed that the radiator was capped by a tough looking metal bulldog. Starling peered cautiously down the alleyway. In the split-second look he got he saw the hunters. They were dressed, like all the Stormers, in a fuck-you tough uniform. Tight black pants, leather jackets worn without shirts. They were dirty and mean looking. They enjoyed their work. Starling figured, but how smart could they be if they worked for Leather? Starling caught Bonner's eye and held up seven fingers.

  Bonner nodded: seven coming down the middle. How many on the outside? He looked quickly to his right, out over the rusty outrigger mirror of the driver's side of the cab. Two Stormers crept up holding their rifles in front of them, as if the barrels were sensitive snouts that could sniff out the whereabouts of their prey.

  Starling motioned to his left and then pointed at his arrows. I'll take the main force, he was saying, you get the other two. Bonner nodded.

  Noiselessly, Starling unslung the short steel bow from his shoulder and slowly dragged an arrow from his quiver. The head of the shaft was three fingers in length and razor sharp. When it slammed into a man's body the pin in the head touched off the explosive charge set behind the point. It packed enough power to blow a man clean in half. No, thought Bonner, clean was the wrong word. There was nothing clean about getting hit by one of Starling's arrows.

  Almost as if he was controlled by strong sprung steel coils. Starling snapped into action. He stood up-he seemed to Bonner to be eight feet tall-and brought his bow up in front of him. Bonner watched the muscles in Starling's arm flex as he pulled the bow back as far as the string would go. Silently the arrow flew. The shaft slapped into the chest of a Stormer and detonated. The blast threw his companions to the ground and they lay there as pieces of the dead man's body rained down around them.

  It seemed to Bonner as if the smoky morning had turned a bloody, hazy red. He had whipped his Winchester from its holster and pumped two shells into the Stormers that stalked him on the right. As the bullets smashed into their chests their expiring faces took on a peculiar, astonished look-as if surprised by the ease and haste of their own deaths.

  A second, a third arrow whipped through the air and exploded and the screams of the living Stormers were harsh and hot and scared. One-Bonner could see him clearly-had reacted well. He had dived for cover and was returning fire. He was carrying an old M-16, a mark of great prestige in the Stormer army. It was Drexy, one of Leather's colonels. Drexy was returning fire like a pro. Short rips from his automatic tore into the rusty sides of the truck cab.

  Starling scrambled up onto the roof of the trailer and Drexy's sights followed him. Bonner's hand slipped to his thigh and with a throw that carried all of his strength behind it, whipped one of his knives deep into Drexy's wide, white forehead. The Stormer's tongue shot out of his mouth, as if he had been strangled and his face quickly became a mask of blood. Suddenly, all was quiet.

  Starling was crouched on the trailer roof like a cat. He was looking about him, ready to strike again.

  "Bonner!" he yelled.

  "Yeah?"

  "How many'd you bring down?"

  "I make it three."

  "Me too. It was Drexy."

  "I know. Bonner."

  "What."

  "We're missing one."

  The remaining Stormer had crawled under the truck on which Bonner and Starling were standing. Very quietly, with.a whisper of a wimper, he wet his pants. He closed his eyes and wished himself dead. When he opened his eyes he realized that there was a chance-just-that he might be able to save himself. Above his head was a dark gaping hole leading directly into the trailer of the truck. If he could just climb into it, perhaps, just perhaps they wouldn't find him...

  Carefully, slowly he climbed up into the blackness leaving a dark damp spot on the cracked old roadbed. Once inside the trailer he wrapped his arms around his knees and cowered there in the dark.

  "There's one more," said Starling.

  "You sure?"

  "Yes, I'm sure."

  "How can you tell? With those damn arrows there looks like there are pieces of twenty bodies here." "Well fuck it then," said Starling, "if he got away then he's lucky."

  The Stormer sat shivering in the darkness for hours, long after he heard the two powerful engines burst into life and drive off. Slowly he uncurled himself and crept from his hiding place. The sky was darkening and he felt alone and scared. The night would be heavy with menace. Through his fear, though, he suddenly realized something. Bonner. He knew the name. Bonner was inbound. Leather would want to know that.

  Chapter 7

  Cooker heard the sounds of the firefight and twisted against the ropes that bound his wrists and ankles. He rolled around on the ground, kicked his legs and shook his shoulders in an effort to free himself. His, exertions he accompanied with loud, strident curses. He was lying prone on the ground in the middle of a circle formed by the vehicles that the Stormers had left in the broken forecourt of an old motel. A smashed neon sign stood out on the old pitched roof of the office. Shady Rest Motel-Cooker could just make out the faded lettering, and he cursed that too, just for the hell of it.

  The Stormers had left him there with their vehicles when they went on foot into the traffic alley to set up the routine ambush.

  Cooker listened to the gunfire and he knew exactly what was going on. The Stormers were probably getting pasted-although Drexy was generally held to be no easy bring down-and if they got sliced, they wouldn't be coming back. And that left Cooker trussed up on the dirty cement in the middle of the motel's parking lot.

  He lay there and scared himself. Who knew what the hell came out at night? And besides, if he didn't get free he could starve to death or die of thirst or 'something equally nasty. A horrible thought hit him and he shuddered: rats. There were always rats in ruins. How long after dark would they pick up his scent then come sniffing around?

  Sure, Cooker had spent nights on the road before, plenty of them, but sleeping in your truck with your thrower at your side, well that had a way of making you feel s
ecure... But now, tied up-he was a sitting duck.

  Abruptly the shooting stopped. Cooker lay still. He didn't know what to hope for. Had a raiding party taken down the Stormers? Maybe. That was good, but that was bad too. At least he wasn't a prisoner anymore. If the Stormers won then they would come back and at least he wouldn't get eaten alive out here in the border lands.

  But they would take him to the Cap and that meant Leather and Leather meant trouble. But, Cooker reassured himself, they were a good six days from the Cap and anything could happen in six days. He decided to hope that his captors had brought down the raiders. That was what Leather paid the fucks to do anyway.

  "I never thought I'd see the day I'd be rooting for a bunch of scaly fuckin' Stormers," Cooker bellowed at the silent ruin of the Shady Rest Motel.

  In a funny kind of way, Cooker wanted to go to the Cap. There was something there he always wanted to see, he had heard about it, but he couldn't quite believe it actually existed. Maybe he would go all the way with these Stormers...