Prodigal's Return (8 page)

Wrapping her arms around his waist, Althea rested her head against his back.

“Got any family?” Dean asked in a whisper.

“Some,” she replied in confusion. “My mother got aced on the wall, but my father used to be the ville potter, and I have a cousin named Bill.”

“Old?”

“Young. A sec man.”

“Too bad for him. We’ll find your father, and he’ll be the first of the five set free.”

Hot tears welled in her eyes, and Althea hugged Dean a lot tighter than necessary to merely stay on the horse.

“Yeah, I know.” He sighed, shaking the reins to start the horse into an easy walk. “Wish I could free everybody. But at the moment there’s nothing we can do but wait, and stay sharp.” Dean kicked the horse into a hard gallop and headed toward the long line of chained slaves.

Checking over everything one last time, the companions prepared their meager supply of weapons.

“Everybody ready?” Ryan asked, loosening the panga in the sheath at his side.

“Born ready,” Jak said confidently, flexing his hands.

“That must have surprised your mother immensely,” Doc quipped,

Jak grinned. “Nope. She born ready, too.”

“Okay, we go on my mark,” Krysty said, stepping out of the cobbled-together war wag, and walking over to the keypad alongside the blast doors. “Three…two…one…go!” Slowly, she tapped in the access code.

At the sound of working hydraulics, she turned and ran for her life back down the tunnel as the blast doors started to ponderously move aside.

As the first thin crack between jamb and door appeared, a glowing green mist issued into the redoubt, and the howler cut loose with a hellacious wail, the noise echoing along the tunnel until it sounded as if there were a thousand of the things waiting outside.

Scampering up the front grille of mismatched car bumpers, Krysty reached the top of the chrome-plated barrier, and just barely managed to squeeze between it and the ceiling. The fit was deliberately tight and, for a split second, Krysty thought she wasn’t going to make
it. Then her snagged belt buckle came free and she slid forward to land on top of the domed cage.

Grabbing a bar, she swung through the open roof hatch and dropped into her seat as Jak moved forward to close the hatch. He then rammed home a thick bolt, locking it tight.

“Welcome aboard Flight 666, leaving for the ninth level of hell,” Mildred muttered, tightening the safety harness around her chest. “Please extinguish all cigarettes and prepare to kiss your ass goodbye.”

“What did you say, Millie?” J.B. asked, furiously working the hand pump on a pressurized container.

“Nothing, John. Keep working,” she said, raising the modified broomstick. “I’ve got your back!”

“Hope so,” he replied, redoubling his efforts.

As the flexing tip of an armored tentacle crossed over the threshold, the antiradiation systems surged into operation, hammering the howler with powerful streams of orange foam and blasts of live steam. Shrieking insanely, it struggled to gain entrance, but as the door continued to move, additional wall vents added their contents to the disinfectant torrent. Once more the howler was forced out of the entrance, but no farther. Its writhing tentacles latched on to any irregularity in the fused earth outside, holding the creature in place, until it started to inch forward once more.

“Fireblast, here we go!” Ryan cried, stomping on the gas pedal and shifting into gear. The rumbling diesel and gasoline engines struggled to synchronize their speeds, then the transmission engaged with an audible grind, and the wag lurched into action, the dozen exhaust pipes issuing thick plumes of oily smoke.

At barely a crawl, the cumbersome vehicle inched forward, the grille of the car and truck bumpers scraping along the walls and throwing off sprays of bright sparks.

“Onward, the mighty
Hercules!
” Doc bellowed, waving a fist.

“What Hercules?” Jak asked with a scowl.

“From Greek mythology, a famous slayer of demons!”

“Would have preferred
Xena,
myself,” Mildred snorted.

Doc blinked. “Who is that, madam?”

“Lucy Law… Tell ya later!”

Sitting among the laboring engines, the companions were tightly strapped into chairs firmly bolted to the corrugated floor. They were draped in crude ponchos made from plastic shower curtains, and completely surrounded by a lumpy metal cage composed of driveshafts and axles, reinforced by dozens of shock absorbers.

In spite of the cascading deluge from the walls and ceiling, the green mist began creeping around the bumpers, extending tiny tendrils into the
Hercules.
With a sputter, the front two engines died, and the rear four struggled to take up the slack. After checking the play on their hoses, Doc and Mildred stabbed out the broomsticks to sweep the cloud with the acetylene welding torches duct-taped to the ends, the thin stilettos of blue flame brighter than the sun. As the cloud retreated, the engines struggled back to life.

“Goggles!” Ryan shouted, pulling a sheet of window glass into place.

Moving fast, everybody did the same, with J.B. peering
owlishly through his double layer of wire-rimmed glasses and car window.

As the makeshift war wag entered the defensive jets, the wall vents tried to change their angle to stay concentrated on the howler. However, that was soon impossible, and the powerful torrents of deadly steam eased, leaving only the sticky orange foam. In seconds, the companions were drenched, and a welding torch went out with a pronounced hiss.

Keening louder than ever, the howler shambled over the threshold and into the redoubt, only to slam into the moving wall of car bumpers. The
Hercules
jerked at the collision, and the companions were almost torn from their seats, but their safety harnesses held. Then a diesel engine coughed and stopped.

Kicking the starter on the Harley-Davidson motorcycle, Krysty got the Twin-V 88 auxiliary engine working, and a set of car generators attached to the tireless wheels revved into furious operation.

As the chrome started to peel off the bumpers, exposing the soft iron underneath, Ryan flipped a switch on the dashboard, and the full power of a dozen car batteries cut loose, augmented by a score of alternators and generators. Fat electric sparks snapped and crackled across the grille, and the moaning howler hesitantly retreated.

“Holy shit, it’s working!” Mildred shouted, using a road flare to ignite her torch once more. Then she glanced at the pressure gauge. The repaired tank was already down a third. Damn it, the hose was leaking again! At this rate they’d never reach the nuke crater.

“Only hurt, not chilling!” Jak shouted, trying to get
the diesel working once more. A wrench slipped from his hands and dropped through the open gridwork of the floor.

“Don’t need to ace it! Just move the big bastard back a hundred feet!” Ryan replied, frantically working a choke, a throttle, stepping on a clutch and finally shifting into high gear.

The wag was almost at the blast doors, but a glance at the dashboard told Ryan the bad news. The power was dropping again, almost as quickly as the fuel supply. If there had been just one fragging nuke battery among the crashed mil wags, the
Hercules
would have been unstoppable. Now it was a contest between mutie and machine, with all of their lives riding on the outcome.

Reaching down among the complex array of controls on the floor, J.B. twisted a valve, then pressed a button. There was a low hiss of gas, then the gasoline engines revved with power, the
Hercules
surging forward as if jet-propelled to slam into the howler with prodigious force.

“Nitrogen gas!” he shouted, keeping a hand on the valve in case the engines started melting. “Found a bottle in the dentist office! Only a few pounds of pressure, but while it lasts…”

With a lurch, the howler fell back. The companions’ wag erupted from the redoubt and started streaking across the glass bottom of the nuke crater.

Twisting the steering wheel hard, Ryan banked sharply in a tight circle and headed straight back at the howler as it tried to reach the closing blast doors.

“You’re not getting inside!” he snarled, sweeping in from the side.

Just for a second, the world disappeared as the companions were engulfed by the swirling cloud. Then the grille of bumpers exploded off the front of the
Hercules
as they rammed the unseen mutie at full speed. Yellow blood splashed across the front of the wag as a pale, misshapen mutie flew through the air to land sprawling amid a cluster of crystal spires. Twinkling shards blasted everywhere, masking the mutie, and before the companions could get a clear view of the creature, the strange green mists returned to obscure it once more.

Covered in golden blood and orange foam, Ryan swung the war wag around again for a second pass, the four car tires losing traction on the slippery surface, but the six military tires holding on tight. However, at the very last moment, the nitrogen ran out and the engines decelerated, the wag drastically slowing as if hitting an invisible wall. Easily, the howler moved aside. But there was a smear of inhuman blood on the fused soil behind, a contrail of lost life, and the protective cloud was much smaller than before.

Circling the creature, Ryan deliberately slowed this time, and the companions cut loose with their blasters. Then J.B. added a Molotov that had been poured into a vinegar bottle. Sounding almost human, the howler screamed in pain from the rear assault, and more blood spurted from the cloud, splashing across the crystalline earth.

Jouncing over a shallow ravine, Ryan snorted as he studied the dashboard. Every dial was either busted or giving wildly inaccurate data, with engine temperatures showing in the thousands of degrees, the wag’s speed
at less than five miles an hour. The ground underneath flashed by in a blur.

“Blast doors?” Ryan shouted, swinging past an out-cropping of slagged bronze that bore a vague resemblance to a man riding a horse. It had to have been an airburst for anything on the ground to survive a thermonuclear explosion.

“Almost… Okay, they’re closed!” Krysty answered. “There’s no way it can get inside now!”

Grunting in reply, Ryan turned away from the howler and started across the bottom of the blast crater, soon leaving the wounded mutie far behind. Even if they had the spare brass, there was no reason to waste it on something they could easily outrun.

“Then good night, wretched boy, parting is such sweet sorrow!” Doc yelled, triumphantly brandishing the broomstick. “Let us say good night, till be it morrow!”

“Stop misquoting Shakespeare.” Mildred laughed in relief, turning off her torch to save gas. The cracked dial said that the tank was empty, but the flame was still bright and strong.

“Ah, but the Bard of Avon had no objection to his actors doing a bit of ad-libbing,” Doc replied haughtily, doing the same to his own torch.

“You’re old, but not that old!”

He grinned mischievously. “Am I not, dear lady?

“Not unless your real name is actually Dr. Methuselah Tanner,” Mildred answered back.

With a roar, the
Hercules
raced across the nuke crater, Ryan effortlessly dodging the spiky, jagged crystals that rose irregularly from the vista of rad-fused
soil. Soon the rad counter on his lapel eased out of the red zone.

“Go left!” J.B. commanded, pulling out his compass to check the heading.

Shifting into a lower gear, Ryan took off in that direction. The sloping walls of the crater were noticeably lower there, and he started up the glass. But the going was extremely treacherous, and every couple of yards the top-heavy wag slid back a little. Only the military tires gave the
Hercules
any purchase, the civie tires spinning uselessly on the slick material.

“Walk faster,” Jak declared, removing his face shield to wipe the sweat off his face. Then he caught a reflection in the glass and turned around. “Incoming!” he growled, pulling the Colt Python and thumbing back the hammer.

“I see it. Save your brass!” Ryan ordered, both hands white on the steering wheel. “Only shoot when—if—the bastard gets close!”

“Lead doesn’t do anything unless we shoot it in the back!” Mildred reminded them.

“I know that!” Ryan snapped. “But mebbe we can…” However, he was out of ideas. If they didn’t reach the crest of the crater before the howler got ahold of them, it would be all over.

Only one choice then, Ryan dourly noted. He’d shift into Reverse and ram the bastard mutie, driving it all the way back down to the redoubt, then try to crush it between the machine and the blast doors. He would buy the farm, but the others could jump out along the way and might survive. Unlikely, but possible.

“Lighten the load!” J.B. commanded, ripping free
the useless nitrogen tank and shoving it through the bars of the cage. It hit the fused soil outside with a ringing clang, then skittered away, rapidly increasing speed until it vanished in the distance.

“Doc, get the rear hatch open!” Krysty added, unearthing a wrench and kneeling alongside the Harley. She started undoing the restraining bolts.

“At once, dear lady!” Slapping open the buckle on his safety harness, Doc slipped free and lurched to the rear of the war wag by holding on to the overhead cage.

Ryan fought the shuddering, fishtailing wag yard by yard up the wall of the blast crater. The howler continued after them, steadily moving faster, as if its wounds were healing.

With a creak of tortured metal, Doc got the rear hatch open and pushed it aside, only to have it come swinging right back and almost clip off his hand. Scowling in annoyance, he pushed it open once more, and J.B. tied the hatch to the bars of the cage with a length of fuse.

“Give me a hand,” Krysty grunted, trying to lift the Harley-Davidson from its cradle.

The other companions stumbled over to assist, then awkwardly manhandled the motorcycle to the rear door.

“Careful! We only get one chance at this…” Krysty said through gritted teeth, trying to estimate trajectory and speed amid the constant waggling.

By now the howler was only a hundred feet behind the war wag, the green cloud pulsating as it expanded.

Suddenly, Jak shoved the bike through the door. It hit with a crash, loose parts breaking off to fly randomly away as the machine tumbled down the smooth slope, rapidly building speed. Caught between a ravine
and a stand of crystal spires, the howler paused for a spit second in confusion, and the Harley slammed into the creature, pushing it down the crater wall, careening helplessly through an endless array of shattering crystals. Reaching the bottom, the cloud slid along for quite a while before finally coming to a rest near the bronze statue. The ancient metal immediately began to change color.

“Nice shooting, Tex!” Mildred said, patting him on the shoulder. “Ever done any professional bowling?”

Arching a snowy eyebrow, Jak could only stare at her in a complete lack of comprehension.