Richard Harding - Outrider 1, Premier Volume Read online

  "How many gals do you s'pose he's dancing around on?" asked Starling.

  "He told me five hundred."

  "For tuck's sake. Cooker," shouted Starling. "Would you stop jumping around on that tank with all that fire. You want to kill us all?"

  "What's the matter. Starling? Make you nervous?"

  "Damn right it does. It's what I call taking an unnecessay risk."

  "Awwww, now don't you go worrying about a thing. This old gasoline ain't going to hurt her daddy."

  "I think that fuck's crazy," said Starling.

  Cooker let fly with another blast of flame. It consumed the few pieces of upholstery still clinging to the frame of an old convertible that lay rusting next to the tank. The flames danced over the metalwork, blistering the few remaining chips of paint. Cooker watched with feverish eyes, delighted by his own capacity for destruction.

  "And that, boys and girls, is why they call me Cooker! Do you know they used these things to put out fires?" He cackled. "Can you beat that? They called 'em fire 'stinguishers. What a fucked up place the old world was."

  "I know the fuck's crazy," said Starling. "Get used to him," said Bonner, "he's riding with us."

  "Now I think you're crazy."

  "Come on. Cooker. Stop playing. We got to go."

  "Yessir, Mr. Bonner. Onwards to the Cap." Cooker slipped into the seat and started up his engine. The noise was deafening. He grabbed the lever that slipped the truck into gear and yanked it and the engine started working hard, driving that big chain. The noise doubled in intensity.

  "Only we're not going to the Cap," Bonner shouted, "not yet. We're going to make a stop first."

  "We are," bellowed Starling. "Where?"

  "New York."

  "What for?"

  "Seems to me we could use two things before we visit Leather."

  "Yeah. Ammo's one, right?"

  "Yes. And the other's Harvey."

  "Harvey's in New York? What's he doing there?"

  "He's in jail."

  "Great," said Starling, disgustedly. "And we have to get him out, right."

  "Right."

  "He's not on the island is he?"

  "I can't imagine them putting him anywhere else."

  "Going to the Cap isn't enough for you? You want to hit the island too? Why did they have to put him there?"

  "Well, at least we know where to find him."

  Cooker watched the conversation pass between the two men and smiled. He couldn't hear a thing, but he was happy. He figured he had made a pretty shrewd move. He had hired the two best former Outriders to escort him into the Cap. Well, Starling was one of the best. Leather was better than Starling, but in a fair fight Bonner was better than Leather. But, he wondered, who fought fair anymore?

  Chapter 9

  The lone survivor of the massacre of Drexy and his patrol crawled out of his hiding place the morning after the firelight, miserable, yet glad to be alive. He had sat awake the whole night listening to the thrumming of the rain on the leaky roof of his rusting metal shelter. He emerged hungry, tired, cold and with the pale yellowish look of a man who has spent a long time afraid.

  During the night though, he had managed to focus his thoughts enough to construct some sort of plan in his mind. First he would head toward the camp that he and his fellow Stormers had established at the head of the alley. Once he got back to the camp he was going to grab his bike and head south before turning sharply east for the Cap. Perhaps if he brought Leather news of Bonner's coming. Leather wouldn't freak out, lose it completely and put him away.

  As he started down the highway he remembered that they had taken that gas-hound prisoner. That seemed like days ago. The Stormer hoped the guy had escaped-otherwise he was going to have to grease him. Alone, he couldn't handle a prisoner. Suddenly, the idea of having someone to take down, someone to work out his frustrations on, cheered him. It would be some consolation for having been scared into wetting his pants.

  There in the smoky sunlight, the Stormer, whose name was Bart, thought a little about the possibility of revenging himself on Bonner. Telling Leather would be a start but what he would really like to do is get the big smuggler in the sights of his carbine.

  Then Bart remembered the vicious fire that Bonner had laid down with that Winchester pump and the eerie accuracy with which he directed those huge blades... Bart decided that he would content himself with telling Leather that Bonner was on his way.

  I might be a fuck up, he thought, "but I'm not stupid." Bart knew when he was outclassed.

  He reached the camp and was disappointed to find Cooker gone. His disappointment turned to anger and frustration when he discovered that Bonner had drained all the gas tanks of the seven bikes and had eaten or stolen all the supplies.

  Bart slumped onto the seat of what had once been Drexy's machine and wondered when he was going to get a break. He sat dejected for a minute or two then began wearily trudging down the road. He remembered they had passed a village when they had been headed for the border but he couldn't quite figure out how far back it had been. He hoped it wasn't far. It was. He walked all day, getting more tired, hotter and hungrier with every step. He was crazy with anger when along about dusk Bart began seeing signs of civilization or at least what passed for civilization in the Slavestates. The road had been cleared a little and the barren fields that lay next to it appeared to be under some sort of primitive form of cultivation. Another slow mile passed before he saw, standing in the stony fields, a small group of men, three of them, all leaning on hoes. They watched him.

  "Slave farmers," thought Bart. He stopped on the road.

  "Hey, c'mere," he shouted. The men slowly shuffled from their spot and approached him warily. Bart could feel their eyes on his carbine. Good, he thought, he could use some respect. He had no doubt that if he didn't have that piece they might approach him with something less than diffidence. Lone Stomers cut off from their units had been known to die under mysterious circumstances.

  The slave farmers sidled up to him cautiously, like puppies unsure whether they were going to get a pet or a kick.

  "Come on, granpa," said Bart to the oldest, an elderly man with a long white beard, "nobody's gonna hurt you."

  The three men stood before him and tugged at their dirty, matted forelocks. They averted their eyes, yet kept a sharp look on the carbine.

  "Where's your village?" demanded Bart.

  "Down the road a ways," said the oldest man. "How far?"

  "Not far."

  "You got a tax man?"

  "Yessir, yessir, we do."

  "Got two," said one of the men.

  "That's right, sir, we got two."

  "Where are they?"

  "In the village."

  "Down the road."

  "Nice men," put in the third, as if Bart was a friend of the tax men and wanted to curry favor.

  Bart smiled. Nice taxers? No such thing. If people thought the Stonners were bloodthirsty crazies, they were considered gentlemen next to the tax men. In fact, of all of Leather subjects the most feared were the tax men, except for maybe the Radleps, but there weren't many of them anymore and one day they would all be gone.

  "What are their names?"

  "Uh... we just call 'em master, sir."

  "Good enough," said Bart. "Go back to your shit there."

  Dismissed, the slave farmers shuffled away and watched as he disappeared down the road. Bart could feel their eyes on his back. Pathetic pieces of shit, he thought. If he was in their position he would have lit out for Chi a long time ago.

  Another mile passed and Bart came into a typical rubble village. There had been a town here once, a real town, with neat little all-American houses and little stores and a garage and a post office. Now there was nothing but ruins into which the slave fanners had burrowed until they felt safe from the cold and wind of the long post-bomb night. A scraggly-looking bunch of children watched as Bart picked his way down the main street, a pig snuffled in the garbage that lay
strewn around and some scrawny chickens pecked here and there.

  A gray-looking woman, a baby clinging to a flat breast, stared at him as he passed. She was standing in front of the dark, cave-like entrance of her burrow. The few inhabitants all wore shredded homespuns that hung limply on their thin bodies. Bart, in a genuine pre-bomb leather jacket and well-made denim pants ("genuine leevees," the quartermaster had said when they were issued to him), looked to them like a monarch on a triumphal progress.

  Bart had no problem figuring out which building housed the tax men. In the center of town. there remained one structure that was not a complete ruin. It had stout white pillars in front and wide glass-less windows that were protected by thick iron bars. FIRST NATIONAL BANK OF MIDDLEB---, the rest of the sign had been blown off. A dirty curtain flapped in front of the space where the door had once been.

  Bart swept it aside and peered into the gloom. It was dark inside, but he could make out a broad space that fronted some broken counters that looked as if they had been decked about with the bars of a cage. The wall was lined with miniature prisons, or so it seemed to Bart. A broken sign-"payroll checks only"-lay on the floor. The big room smelled of sweat and the smoke of a wood stove and the rancid bitter odor of meat cooked long ago.

  "Anyone here?" he called into the cavernous space. He took a tentative step into the room. "Hey?" he shouted.

  Very slowly, someone spoke. "Who the fuck is that?"

  "Where are you?" said Bart. The voice sounded mean. But what could you expect from a tax man?

  "If you are a slave and you've come in here, you are dead meat."

  "I'm no fucking slave," said Bart indignantly. "I'm a Stormer."

  "What outfit?"

  "Drexy's," said Bart.

  "No shit," said the voice. "Over here."

  Bart walked in the direction of the voice, skirting the caged-in counter. He held the carbine at the ready. These tax men could get crazy sometimes-it only figured, them being out here in the wilds year in year out. Bart was surprised to see that the tax man was not behind the counter.

  "Where are you?"

  "Here," said the voice.

  Bart turned toward an open doorway. The door was a huge hunk of metal that had rusted open on its hinges. A faint light flickered from within. Bart stepped into the doorway and peered in.

  The room was a narrow one and its only piece of furniture was a dirty bed. Reclining there was a full-bearded man, bare-chested. A dirty sheet covered him from the waist down. Two young women, as thin and as pale as the woman Bart had seen on the street, lay next to him. A kerosene lamp burnt smok-ily next to the bed.

  "Well, a big brave, tough Stormer," said the man nastily. He showed a couple of rows of big yellow teeth when he spoke.

  "You the tax man for this district?"

  "One of 'cm."

  "Where's the other one?"

  "Working."

  "You the night man?"

  He nodded. The tax men were Leather's pro-consuls. They had been sent out from the Cap to oversee the conquered territories. It was up to them to extract the most in the way of food and fuel from the bands of slaves that worked endlessly to support the few citizens of the Slavestates that had any kind of prominence. The Stormers, Leather and his hangers on, the jailers and gas men in places like New York and Boston, all of them lived off the labor of the slaves. The tax men were the law in their districts. Their own income was based on a percentage of the produce they could extract from the district. Naturally, the job made men hard-minded. You couldn't be soft and be a tax man of any importance or wealth.

  In some of the more remote areas, such as the one Bart was in, tax men worked in pairs. A tax man was not beloved of his charges and they had been murdered in their sleep. So labor was divided between the day man and the night man-though it was not uncommon for one to kill the other and double his profit. Leather didn't care who killed whom as long as the food, the gas, the women flowed into the Cap.

  "Where's the Drex?" asked the tax man taking his hands from under the sheet and stretching. In one hand he held a pistol.

  "Dead."

  "No shit."

  "We got jumped by a bunch of raiders..." said Bart, acutely aware of how lame his voice sounded.

  "Awww, that's too bad." There was no love lost between tax men and the Stormers. The tax men were responsible for outfitting the Stormer patrols when they were on the road and that cut into profits.

  "Look, man," said Bart suddenly angry, "1 gotta get back to the Cap."

  "Well get on your bike and ride, man... wait a minute. I didn't hear no bike..."

  "I told you, man, we got jumped. Sliced. All of 'em, except me."

  "Oh yeah and where the fuck were you?"

  "I got lucky."

  "The fuck you did. You hightailed it, more like."

  "Listen," said Bart through his teeth, "if you don't help me get back to the Cap then there's going to be a shit storm around here. I got information for Leather."

  "For Leatherman himself? Wow, I'm impressed."

  One of the women stretched. She had an angry red bruise on her breast. What skags these tax men were, thought Bart. "There's something you should know, man..."

  "Yeah. what?"

  "You got troubles in this district and the sooner I get back to the Cap and let them know about it the sooner you are going to be able to sleep peaceful with these little puppies here."

  "Trouble, what trouble?"

  "Bonner took us down, man. Bonner and one big fucking party of raiders. Bonner's inside your district and believe me, if he comes looking for you, you are dead."

  The tax man appeared to have paled slightly. "Bonner? Are you sure?"

  "I saw him grease seven guys, man."

  "Bonner doesn't work the Slaves, man," he protested. "And he don't work with raiders."

  "He does now, you fuck, he does now."

  "Goddam. Why don't he go raid the Snows? Or the Hots? I'm having trouble meeting my quota as it is. Shit."

  "Leather wants Bonner. You get me to the Cap and this district will be crawling with Stormers, all of them protecting your ass."

  "And eating my profit," growled the tax man.

  "No profits for a dead man."

  The tax man thought a moment. "I can get you over to Scranton. From there you can pick up some patrol or maybe a convoy to the Cap. Suit you?"

  "Just fine, just fine."

  "Bonner, shit." "Yeah man, and you should see that dude work a blade."

  "I don't want to see that, man." The tax man was quite scared. He had never seen Bonner, but he certainly had heard of him. The man was trouble.

  "You got anything to eat?"

  "Eat? You ain't got time to eat. You're getting your ass over to Scranton. Tonight."

  The two girls read the note of fear in the tax man's voice and smiled at one another. They risked a whipping if he caught them, but it was worth it, for they liked to hear him scared and hoped he would die at the hands of this man Bonner. They hated their master greatly.

  Chapter 10

  They hit the big river that bordered New York after dark. A few days' hard travelling had brought them to that point, but trouble with Starling's engine slowed them down in the last few miles. They reached the river late at night, with a pale sliver of moon throwing a thin light on the desolate landscape.

  Bonner had heard that men used to measure time by the moon at night as they used the sun during the day. Back then time. meant something. Now it was just light and dark, day and night. Most preferred the light to the dark, they figured they were safe then, that if they could see who was gunning for them they could get there first. Bonner preferred the darkness. He could move through it, use it, strike from it. Darkness was his fortress.

  Bonner's little party perched on the steep bluff overlooking the river. It had been a wide ribbon of water once, over a mile across, but now it was just a shallow stream a hundred yards wide, maybe, and never more than waist deep. The bluff on the Jersey sid
e was littered with bombed-out buildings rising up on the cliffs like rows of broken teeth.

  Starling, Bonner and Cooker looked out on the dark welt that was the old Manhattan island. It was spread over with the faint outline of jagged buildings, thousands of them, their ruined walls straining up out of the rubble like a stunted, twisted forest. Upriver a ways they could see the collapsed bulk of a huge bridge. The two girder-iron towers lay against one another, forming a tall arch over the lazy river, like great trees stopped in mid-air as they fell.