Devil's Vortex

Chapter Six

In a single panther-like leap, Hammerhand sprang into the bed of the rebuilt pickup truck. For all his bulk he landed lightly enough that the Buffalo Mob sentry, leaning over the roll bar onto the Tacoma’s cab roof to enjoy a smoke under the cold, starry sky, was only alerted to danger when he felt the vehicle rock on its spring beneath his feet.

By then it was too late to dodge. Or even to scream.

Hammerhand felt the man’s bearded chin dig into his biceps as he wrapped an arm around the coldheart’s throat. He snatched hold of that chin with his free hand and violently torqued the sentry’s head to the right.

His thick neck snapped with a sound loud enough to turn even Hammerhand’s bowels briefly to ice water. He froze as he felt the dying bandit convulse and his nostrils filled with the rich, wet reek of his sphincter letting go in his camo pants.

Inside the circle formed by the score of power wags parked on the nighttime prairie, the Buffalo Mob’s rowdy reverie continued unabated around a dozen or so campfires. The woman playing on a harmonica with surprising skill never missed a beat. Neither did the pair of women dancing drunkenly to the tune.

Hammerhand had spent an hour crouched in the scrub nearby, scoping out his target. So had twenty of his best Bloods, split up into three teams led by himself, Joe Takes-Blasters and Mindy Farseer. It was a risk taking the whole top leadership to a single raid, but this was all a high-risk gamble for high stakes.

That was the point. Not just to score a number of power wags and start a serious upgrade on the mobility of his insurgent Plains nation, but also to do so with sufficient demon style to act as a beacon to the bold and ambitious by its very own self.

That had been part of what the Glowing Man told him. Not giving him the idea. Far from it. Telling him that the idea he had was righteous, as was his dream of establishing a Plains empire in blood and fire, and that he was destined to go for it.

And succeed.

When Hammerhand was certain no one had heard him inside the camp of more than a hundred coldhearts, not even the sentries posted in the other circled wags, he slowly lowered the chill to the pickup’s bed. As he did, he eased the slung M16 off the dead man’s back. A quick check showed a round in the chamber and a full magazine of 5.56 mm ammo in the well.

After another look toward the campfires, Hammerhand gave the corpse a quick toss, relieving him of a crumpled-up, greasy wad of local jack and a nice Cold Steel lock-back folding knife. Then he stooped, grabbed and, with a muffled grunt of effort, deadlifted the considerable weight high enough to roll over the wag bed’s wall on the dark side. Then he hunkered down again.

The Buffalo Mob, as they called themselves, had certainly been exercising diligence in securing their wags and their scarcely more valuable own personal asses. Every other wag had a guard in it, constantly casting watching eyes across the surrounding grassland for just this kind of sneak attack. At least theoretically. The chill’s slackness—going so far as to actually smoke on sentry duty, spotlighting him to any sharp-eyed watcher within hundreds of yards and any decent nose downwind—showed how little the Buffalo Mob’s sentries regarded the possibility that any prairie pirates would be bold and skillful enough to try creeping on them and seizing the precious vehicles by stealth.

But bold and skillful were the criteria Hammerhand used to pick his Bloods, even in those rough first days when he, an outcast without a clan and without a reputation, had been struggling to get by with whatever he could scrape together. He had always been picky about who he chose to ride with him—at least as picky as he could afford to be.

Of course, crazy was another trait he selected for. But that kind of fell into the general territory of bold, to his way of thinking.

And of course, those without the proper mix of boldness and skill tended to get winnowed out of the band fast. With mebbe a bit of a push from Hammerhand’s own hands. He hadn’t had to chill any of his own for stepping out of line, past the occasional feeb who turned up thinking he might challenge the big man for the role of boss cock. But before he’d got his size and strength in the middle of his teens, he’d had to rely on his wits to get his ass out of the cracks his rough, rebellious nature and smart mouth got it stuck in. Early on he’d figured out how to talk the overly bold into throwing their own stupe lives away and even how to goad the overly cautious into taking fatal risks.

And when it came to fatal risks, apparently the invading coldheart mob never reckoned on a local gang with the patience to spend ten days shadowing them and scoping out their ways and numbers before making a move.

From his left he heard a strange, soft, gobbling cry. He grinned. Joe Takes-Blasters did a piss-poor impression of a prairie grouse. Not that these tenderfeet would know the difference. Or even notice over their own noise.

The Buffalo Mob ran somewhere north of a hundred strong. Well armed, well mounted and surprisingly well fed, they had in recent weeks made a move into the North Plains west of the Misery River, seeking richer pickings than what was offered by the deeper Deathlands to the east and south, where the land was parched and pocked with deposits of still-lethal rad-dust.

But they weren’t looking to live by hunting the herds of bison that roved the prairie. Life wasn’t easy for those who lived out here—settlers, traders or nomads alike. But by the standards of the day they did pretty well.

Nor did it matter a bent shell casing to Hammerhand what their business was. They were outlanders—interlopers. Meaning they had no family or other allies in the area to concern him. More to the point: they had something he wanted.

Needed.

He slipped over the side of the wag bed, carefully holding the plundered longblaster so that neither it nor the plastic buckles on the sling would clack against the wag. Then, quietly, he opened the cab door and slipped in.

At least the Buffaloes had the sense to park their wags in a counterclockwise nose-to-circle tail, meaning the driver’s-side doors faced inward toward their fires.

A quick check by feel revealed the dangling wire bundle of the ignition. Like most wags left over from skydark these hadn’t come with keys. So the owners had set them up for quick, efficient hot-wiring.

He rolled down the left-hand window and leaned the M16 against the driver’s door with its muzzle brake pointed up. Then he settled in to wait.

He didn’t have to wait long. From the far side of the coldheart camp he heard a sudden shout of alarm cut short by a blaster shot. One or more of his raiding party had been detected. Bad luck, sure, but it was nothing that he, and his plan, hadn’t counted on. They had hoped to get away with every last wheel of the Buffalo Mob’s rolling stock in one stroke. But they were prepared to take what they could.

He quickly fired up the engine, which started right away. At least the Buffalo Mob had competent wrenches and kept their fleet ready to go.

As soon as the engine caught, he picked up the longblaster by the pistol grip, shoved it out the open window with its nylon forestock resting on the sill and triggered a burst.

He aimed deliberately low, so as not to endanger his own people on the other side of the circle. The point wasn’t to hit anybody anyway. It was to panic the coldhearts, to encourage them to keep their heads down while he and his band made their getaway with whatever wags they’d managed to snag.

Firing another short burst into the grass, he gave the pickup some gas, or at least the alcohol fuel the vehicle had been modified to run on. The wag’s deep-cleated tires dug into the grass and the vehicle started to roll. Muzzle flashes flared orange from the camp itself and points along the perimeter of parked wags. One bullet cracked through the planking fixed crudely over the busted-out rear window on Hammerhand’s side, to add a second star to the glass on the passenger side.

“That best not have been one of mine,” he said aloud.

He triggered another burst. “Eat that, you mutie fuckers!” he screamed joyously.

Behind him he was pleased to see several other wags pulling out of the circle behind him. Like him, the Blood drivers were leaving their lights off. They knew the surrounding land well enough not to need them. Or he’d know the reason why.

Laughing aloud in sheer exhilaration, he drove toward the rendezvous spot at reckless speed. Mere unseen obstacles meant nothing.

He had Destiny on his side. And more, he had a Vision.

* * *

A TERRIBLE, RINGING scream ripped Ryan Cawdor awake.

He snapped at once into full consciousness and was already in the act of rolling from his bedroll and reaching for his longblaster, which lay on a drop cloth beside it. Whatever had made that sound wasn’t human.

But it was at least as big. A 9 mm handblaster wasn’t going to be enough to deal with it.

It was their last night on the road to Duganville. Baron Hamar was paying a good amount of jack and supplies in exchange for them delivering a wax-sealed pack of documents to the baron. Both J.B. and his hero-worshipping apprentice, Ricky Morales, had begged to be allowed to winkle the papers out, claiming they could do so without breaking the seal or leaving any sign Baron Dugan or his wiliest sec men could detect. Ryan had told them no. It wouldn’t load any blasters for them that he could see. Whereas if they screwed up—unlikely as he had to admit that was, as skillful, meticulous and sneaky as the two of them were—they could get stiffed of their pay. Or worse. He had no fear they’d use those traits to try it anyway. When his word was freely given, the Armorer kept it. And the kid was too in awe of his mentor—not to mention stone terrified of Ryan—to try to pull anything on his own.

Aware and alert, Ryan rose to one knee. By habit he wrapped the loop of the sling around his left forearm to give added stability to any shooting stance he may need to assume, however rapid and ad hoc. The night was dark and clear, the sky infested with stars. The low, brushy hills they’d chosen to camp among for security, rather than the mostly flat surrounding lands, brooded dark and silent.

Dead silent. The usual night sounds, of birds and early insects, had been cut off by that scream. Even the breeze seemed to be holding its breath, and his friends, awake, alert and armed around him, made no more noise.

Beside Ryan, Krysty gave him a quick squeeze on the arm with her left hand to reassure him that she was unharmed. Her other hand held her Glock 18. But Ryan heard Mildred mutter softly, “Ricky! The kid’s on watch.”

He could hear the consternation in her outburst—soft-voiced instead of whispered, since whispers carried as well as conversation at least and attracted double the suspicion when detected. As much as Ricky exasperated her at times, he was part of this group, this family, and she cared for him.

Jak sprang up and went bounding off into the night, clutching his trench knife. He hated leaving his self-appointed duty of watching over the others at night, but Ricky was his close comrade, as the only member of the group younger than Jak.

But here, through the middle of the camp, vaulting the carefully buried remnants of their campfire, came Ricky. He clutched his Webley handblaster in one hand and his dark eyes were wide and wild. He was racing from what Ryan realized was the opposite direction the scream came from.

“Where’s Mariah?” Krysty asked softly, despite the boy’s noise.

Ryan shrugged. He wasn’t sure why the girl was still with them. It had been his full intent to drop her off at Hamarville. But somehow she was still tagging along, keeping the pace, keeping her mouth shut unless spoken to and taking on the bulk of the camp chores.

Plus Krysty seemed to be growing attached to her. Mebbe too attached. Ryan would have to speak to his flame-haired mate, who had already set off in Ricky’s noisy wake. The youthful sentry had jumped over a low bush and disappeared. Ryan could only grunt and follow her, aware that J.B. was right behind with his M-4000 ready, and Mildred and Doc were following the Armorer.

Past the bush, as Ryan knew from giving their environs a thorough recce before settling down for the night, the ground sloped quickly to a shallow, sandy-bottomed dry wash, winding down through the hills to the cultivated fields Mariah had told them they’d find near Duganville. The girl herself stood in the gully, arms held rigidly down by her sides, fists clenched.

Jak was crouched on the bank, gazing intently at the sandy bottom. As the others came down the slope, he held up a white palm to them, to stop them from coming any closer.

Krysty ran to Mariah’s side. “Are you all right, sweetie?”

Sweetie? Ryan’s mind echoed. This has definitely gone too far. Krysty had a huge heart, and he loved her for it.

But if this weird inward kid was starting to make her maternal instincts get the better of her survival ones—that could be a problem for all of them.

“I’m fine,” he heard Mariah say as he pulled up alongside her and began to scan the night and darkened landscape beneath with his lone eye.

He could not help but feel a thrill of alarm that with them all gathered there in the arroyo they were making themselves ace targets for anyone or anything ill-intentioned that happened to pop up on top of its banks. Then he spotted J.B. standing guard from atop the slope the rest of them had just rushed down like triple stupes and felt reassured. If not less stupe.

“What was it?” Mildred asked.

“A tiger,” Mariah said. She never looked up, nor did she change the near-flat, quiet tone of her voice. She might as well have been remarking that the water for their chicory-and-tree-bark coffee sub was commencing to boil.

“A tigre?” Ricky asked. He stood just up the bank from her, where his buddy Jak had stopped his forward progress. “You mean, like a mountain lion?” In American Spanish, tigre—tiger—could mean any kind of big cat, including a cougar or a jaguar, although it was way too cold up here this time of year for the latter.

“No,” she said. “Tiger tiger. Big, stripes.”

“Bengal,” Jak said. “Real tiger. See prints?”

At that positive verbal outpouring from the reticent and cryptically spoken young albino, Ryan squinted his eye harder at the sand above which Jak was hunkered. He saw them then, plain enough: tracks as big as hands with fingers splayed.

“Fireblast,” he said.

The others muttered surprised concern. He felt the tension rise as they all looked harder at their surroundings, lest the giant bastard come springing down on them. Descendants of zoo beasts released by compassionate, or perhaps foolhardy, humans in the wake of the Big Nuke, some breeding populations of big exotic cats like leopards, lions and tigers, had taken root in various parts of the Deathlands. They were nowhere common, but where they ranged, they were nowhere rare enough—the big cats were not hesitant to snack on human flesh.

“But where did the brute go?” Doc inquired. He had both his swordstick and his outsized LeMat drawn and ready. Ryan reckoned all of the companions might just be enough to heat a leaping tiger past nuke red by the time its five hundred pounds landed on one of them.

Mariah shrugged as if the question bored her. “Away.”

“‘Away’?” Mildred echoed in alarm. “Just ‘away’? Where ‘away’?” She started whipping her head left and right.

The girl just shook her head.

“Nowhere,” Jak said.

Everybody looked at him.

“You care to be more specific?” Ryan said.

Jak stared at him if he were a complete feeb, which was how Ryan had commenced to feel the moment the question left his lips. What could be more specific than “nowhere”?

Not that “nowhere” made a lick of sense.

“Mebbe you could explain that a bit more to us mere mortals, Jak,” J.B. suggested.

“Tracks come. Don’t leave.” A white hand waved his Python handblaster in a semicircle. “No tiger.”

“By the Three Kennedys, he is right,” Doc said. “An impeccable syllogism, as well.”

“Congratulations,” Mildred murmured. “You win a cookie.”

“So where did it go?” Krysty asked Mariah.

“He was just there,” the girl said. “Then he wasn’t. I don’t know where he went. He just did.”

Ryan let go of a breath he wasn’t even aware he’d been holding in a long, exasperated sigh.

“This would have to make triple more sense than it does,” he said, “to make none at all. Jak, don’t you have anything?”

“No.”

“You don’t see any sign of where it disappeared to? Mebbe like it jumped off into the bushes out of sight?”

“Looked.”

“Look again.” Ryan was on the verge of telling everybody else to keep their eyes skinned and their blasters up. Then he realized that’d be a waste of words.

Frowning resentfully at the imputation he might have missed something—especially something as large as tracks made by a leaping tiger—Jak started to turn away to make another circuit of the area where the prints led and stopped. Then he froze and looked back to the bottom of the bank. His white features were still knotted around the brows and tight round the mouth, but it was no longer a frown of anger.

It was plain puzzlement.

“There,” he said, pointing at a small fourwing saltbush sprouting right on the verge of the empty streambed.

Ryan, still unwilling to move forward and risk disturbing tracks that he couldn’t see but Jak perhaps could, hunkered down and looked hard at the bush.

“What is it?” he asked.

“Blood,” Jak said. “Fresh. Still shiny.”

Then Ryan saw it: a few dark patches spattered on the branches and skinny little leaves. He could just make it out by a glint of starlight.

“Some there.” Jak pointed to the grass across the bed. “Drops fell there.”

He pointed at three randomly spaced depressions in the sand. They were smaller than even baby ant-lion larva traps. The albino’s red eyes hadn’t missed them—they didn’t miss much—but he had dismissed them as insignificant. Before he recognized blood spill.

“Tiger blood?” Mildred asked.

It was her turn to be on the receiving end of Jak’s furrowed-brow, tight-lipped glare.

“We don’t have any way to know,” Krysty said, compassionately throwing herself on that hand grenade of pointing out the obvious for the sake of her best friend. “Seems like the best bet, though, doesn’t it?”

“Could it be from a kill?” Ricky asked.

Ryan grunted. “Could be.” He tended to take the kid for granted, even though he had proved his value to the group by saving everybody’s life several times over. It occurred to Ryan that he was the last stray orphan they’d come across. Before the strange girl.

Doesn’t mean I’m not dropping her off at the next ville, he told himself sternly.

“That’s a possibility, too,” he said. “But we need a clean sweep of the area to make sure the bastard’s gone. All together, vee formation. Me on point, Jak scouting up ahead so he won’t pout.”

“And when we’re done, double watches the rest of the night.”

Mildred scoffed.

“Ryan,” she said, “after something like this, do you honestly expect any of us will sleep?”

Chapter Seven

“Did you see the way I counted coup on that bastard coldheart?” Hammerhand was pumped and strutting back and forth between a pair of pickups parked twenty feet apart with their noses facing each other at the rendezvous spot. “I broke his nuking neck. Bang! Like that.”

“Yeah, yeah,” Mindy Farseer, leaning against the other truck, said. She had boosted it and driven to this low mesa several miles from the Buffalo Mob’s camp. Two other stolen wags were already parked a little farther off. A fifth was just pulling up, a big cargo wag, well loaded from the way it rode low on its suspension. “We saw it, Randy Macho Savage.”

“Uh, it was ‘Macho Man’ Randy Savage,” Joe Takes-Blasters said as he got out of the newly arrived wag and started walking over. He was literal minded and had a fondness for predark professional wrestling. He had the tattered remains of several wrestling magazines in his pack.

“I meant what I said. Like I always do.”

Hammerhand showed Mindy his teeth. “You could keep in mind the ‘Macho’ part and do something about the ‘Randy.’”

His lieutenant gave him the finger. “In your dreams.”

She was the only one who could get away with that. Just as she was the only one who could get away with calling him a “savage.” He knew she’d never put out for him, which was a slagging shame because she was a thermonuke fox. But he had to give her shit about it.

That sort of thing could not be permitted to flow only one way.

The other Blood raiders were acting more visibly excited, dancing in circles, whooping and high-fiving. Hammerhand joyously joined them.

“How many more did we get away with?” Mindy asked Joe, louder than necessary and looking at Hammerhand. A couple more wags were just pulling in.

“Not more than half,” Joe said. “Somebody blew our shit up.”

“Us or them?” Hammerhand asked, suddenly interested in how it had happened.

Joe shook his head.

“I don’t know yet. But I hope we get more skinny when the others get here.”

“If they get here,” Mindy added darkly.

But as she spoke, several more wags arrived.

“We’re it,” said a woman named Steeltongue, jumping from the bed of a Dodge Ram with several other raiders. It wasn’t exactly a traditional First Nation name, but the Bloods were all about the present. Anyway, not even Hammerhand’s home tribe, nor the rest of the Blackfoot Confederacy, really stuck to their own ancient traditions, and they hadn’t for generations.

“That’s, what, ten wags?” Joe said.

“Outstanding,” Hammerhand stated.

“Not quite half,” Mindy said sourly.

Hammerhand shrugged. “Everybody accounted for?”

“We lost Cody Blackfeather,” said Lou Shine, a lanky, dark-skinned man with long, tightly curled hair.

“How did it go down?” Hammerhand asked.

“That’s what blew up the surprise,” Lou said. “Cody ran smack into pair of coldhearts slipping off to get it on in the bed of a pickup. Dude gave a warning shout before Cody blasted him. Then the woman gave him both barrels of a sawed-off in the gut.”

“Ouch,” Joe said.

“Where’s Cody, then?” Mindy asked.

“He killed himself,” Lou told them.

“Ace,” Hammerhand said. “He acted right. Like a Blood warrior!”

Mindy wasn’t so sure. “If you say so.”

Along with the ten wags, it turned out they’d come back with six longblasters, three full-auto—including the M16 Hammerhand had liberated himself—and a Smith & Wesson .357 Magnum revolver, all in good shape. The Buffalo Mob apparently tended to their weapons as scrupulously as they tended to their wags.