Winter's Edge: A Post Apocalyptic/Dystopian Adventure (Outzone Drifter Series Book 1) (3 page)

It wouldn’t do her any good.

Moments later, he was riding alongside her. He yelled at Nooge to pull out his pistol.

“I got it!” Nooge shouted back, waving his nine-mil Sig Sauer in front of him.

“Stop!” Ritter shouted across to the girl. “Or we’ll shoot you down!”

It was unlikely she could hear him above the sound of her galloping horse and the roar of the motorbike engine, but she knew exactly what he meant. Instead of slowing, the girl turned the pistol held in her right hand across the saddle and pointed it toward them.

“Nooge!” Ritter yelled.

Nooge fired twice. The two rounds hit the horse in the chest and neck. Whinnying a high-pitched shriek, the animal stumbled to its knees, throwing the girl high off the saddle. She sailed through the air and landed in a patch of heavy grass, tumbling a couple of times before coming to a stop. Ritter grinned across at Brick, who had just arrived. The two motorbikes came to a halt on either side of the girl.

She lay panting on her back, a look of shock and fear on her face. Nooge jumped off the back of Ritter’s machine. The girl had managed to hold onto her pistol during her fall. She sat up and pointed it at him as he got closer, his own pistol pointing straight back at her.

Behind them, Brick had raised his machine up on its stand and was walking stealthily up to her. Swiveling around, the girl aimed her gun at him.

“Stop or I’ll shoot!” she yelled out.

“Plucky girl,” Ritter said softly, still sitting on his motorbike, all three now with their pistols pointing at her. “But you pull that trigger and you’re a
dead
plucky girl.”

The girl scrambled around again, this time aiming her gun at Ritter.

“Th…then shoot,” she stuttered, her lower lip quivering. “I won’t let you take me.”

While the girl waved the gun uncertainly in her hand, Nooge had taken a step closer.

He swung out his boot and caught her on the elbow. Her arm spun away and a shot fired off. Ritter heard the whine of a bullet whiz past his ear. Nooge jumped down and grabbed the girl, and a moment later wrenched the gun from her fingers.

Holding onto her tightly, he turned to Ritter with an oafish grin. “Shit, Haiden, that was close.”

“You fool!” Ritter snarled at him, furious at how close he’d come to being shot. “You nearly got me killed.”

Nooge shrugged. “She had the drop on you. What else was I supposed to do?” He was no longer smiling. “Besides, I thought I better do something before you went and killed this one too,” he added sullenly, referring to the two women Ritter had killed in a rage a month before when his carefully planned raid into the State had gone wrong.

Ritter’s upper lip twisted into an ugly scowl. “That was different. This one was about to give up if you’d given her another moment.”

“Who knows, Haiden? I’m not so sure,” Brick said, shaking his head, anxious to prevent yet another argument between his brother and Ritter from breaking out. “Anyways, we got her now. No need for you two to keep squabbling.”

Ritter composed himself. He cut the engine of the Honda and dismounted, walking over to where Nooge knelt in the grass still holding the girl firmly on the ground. Reaching down, he put a hand under her chin and pulled it up toward him.

“Well, who’d have thought such a pretty face would nearly get me killed? Makes it all worthwhile now.” He glanced over in the direction of Riverdale. “Pick her up,” he ordered Nooge. “We need to get going. Somebody’s sure to have heard all the commotion.”

Nooge grabbed the girl by the arm and dragged her to her feet.

“Turn her,” Ritter said.

Nooge took the girl by her shoulders and spun her around while Ritter fished out a pair of plastic flexicuffs from his jacket pocket. He slipped them over her hands and pulled the strap of the zip-tie tight around her wrists.

The two grabbed the girl by each arm and led her to the Honda.

Ritter got on first. Picking the girl up by the waist, Nooge placed her up on the seat, scooted her forward, and got on behind her, sandwiching her between himself and Ritter. It was a well-practiced routine. On a motorbike it took two men to take a captive, to prevent them from jumping off. Sometimes even that wasn’t enough, and they had to be knocked out too.

“Where are you taking me?” the girl asked, her voice trembling with fear.

“North,” Ritter said. “
Way
north. That’s where the money is for someone like you.”

He started the engine. Swinging the machine around in a tight loop, he headed back toward the trail.

Strata-3 Zone, Metro New Haven

For the few days following his operation, Brogan didn’t venture out of his house. He just rested, washing down a handful of pills every few hours that Weiss had prescribed for the headaches, and allowed his brain to begin the process of what the surgeon called its
neuroplastic cortical remapping
—a fancy name to describe the fact that the severed neural connectors previously attached to his implant were now desperately crawling around his skull, looking for some other part of his gray matter to cling to
.
Wherever they were going, it hurt like hell and he hoped they found a new home soon.

The after-effects of the procedure gave Brogan fantastical dreams; of his family, of the Outzone, of murder and revenge.

There was a recurring nightmare too, one where he was back on the operating table. Dr. Weiss stood over him, his surgical cap and mask on, a look of intense concentration in his eyes. In one hand, he held a soldering iron, in the other, a tiny screwdriver. Next to Weiss, upturned on a stainless steel medical tray, was a bloodied section of Brogan’s skull plate, a roll of electrical wire beside it.

“Something’s not right,” the surgeon was muttering to himself. “I’m not sure if I can fix it.”

During his waking hours, Brogan became wracked by another bout of intense guilt. Although Sarah and Jessica’s deaths had not been directly his fault, he couldn’t help but come to the awful conclusion that had he been communicating better with his wife—had he been communicating with her
at all
—he would have insisted on escorting her and Jessica to Providence that day, as he had done on the two previous occasions since her father’s stroke. Or at the very least, arranged secure transport for them.

Over the past year, his relationship with Sarah had slowly but surely deteriorated. His wife simply didn’t share Brogan’s increasing dissatisfaction with the State, the lies, the string of broken promises it made to its citizens. Now that peace reigned in New Haven and most of the country, their family prospects were good and she couldn’t understand his cynical attitude.

Perhaps it was because it was Brogan’s job to do the State’s bidding that he felt things so strongly. And while he managed to hide his feelings at work, at home he became increasingly more surly and morose.

He took to drinking in the evenings, even earlier on his rest days, sitting in his armchair with the back of his head plugged into some violent VR app until he passed out.

Plunging into an ever-spiraling dysfunctional stupor, bad tempered, and flaring up at the slightest provocation, he took his anger out on his wife for her lack of understanding.

Why couldn’t she believe what he told her? What he saw every day as a police officer? The increasing intrusions into people’s lives, the unjust detentions, the harassment of political dissidents. Is that what he had spent five years fighting a war all over the world for? Then another two fighting his own kind during the bitter Secessionist Wars? It made his blood boil whenever he thought about it.

After several months of trying to convince him to seek professional counseling, Sarah had simply given up and moved out of the bedroom and into Jessica’s room. Brogan had barely noticed, and that morning, when Sarah received news that her father’s condition had deteriorated, the two hadn’t lain together in over two months.

As soon as Brogan left for work, Sarah had packed some overnight clothes for herself and Jessica, left a brief note on the kitchen table, and headed off.

What was she thinking?

The highway passed too close to the Exclusion Wall. It just wasn’t safe. There were simply too many miles of border for IBP or state police to patrol. Nonetheless, Sarah had gone there, taking Jessica with her. Now they were both dead, and his life had changed forever.

One thing the event had done was force Brogan to clean up his act. He had quit drinking the very same day, and later that evening after he had gotten home from the morgue to an empty house, had stomped on his BMI game connector, crushing it into tiny pieces under his boot.

While none of this would bring Sarah or Jessica back, it did bring Brogan back. A week after returning to work, he handed Henderson his resignation letter.

Other than to gaze mournfully at the ceiling each day, alone with his thoughts, Brogan used the time to get ready for his departure, packing up all the things he would take with him to the Outzone. On one of the days he gathered up Sarah and Jessica’s stuff and shipped them down to Sarah’s parents’ house in Providence. Everything else, he’d let the State take care of. It would be their property soon.

Packing up Jessica’s possessions had been almost unbearable. After he sealed the last cardboard box with masking tape, Brogan sat on the floor, his back drenched in a cold sweat. He closed his eyes and made a vow to Sarah and Jessica that he would find their killers, even if it took him the rest of his life.

Solomon’s Point, Outzone

Ritter headed north, in the direction of Solomon’s Point. Riding hard, though not so recklessly as to risk an accident, Brick on his Kawasaki following right behind him. He didn’t intend staying on the main trail for long, and had a route mapped out that would take them off it soon. It wasn’t safe to be seen riding with a local girl wedged between two strangers, her hands tied behind her back.

Once they were out of the area, they could ride more openly, though even then it would be wise to stick to the back roads. Not everyone turned a blind eye to their trade. The code of the motorcycle warrior chapters disapproved of it. They would free the girl and kill the three men. Most likely escort the girl home too.

The warrior chapters weren’t the only danger. Many roving biker gangs who rode by no code would be only too happy to relieve the trio of their captive, especially a pretty one like this. Bounty angels commissioned by the girl’s desperate family might come after them as well before they got to the north, because once in slaver’s territory, there would be little chance of getting her back.

He felt a couple of hard taps on his shoulder. Turning around, he saw Nooge gesticulating with his arm back down the trail.

Fifteen hundred yards away, coming over the rise of a hill they’d passed minutes earlier, was a group of motorbikes bearing down on them, and fast. Ritter counted six machines. Someone inside the farm had raised the alarm.

He cursed loudly. Another five hundred yards away, to the right of the trail, was the densely wooded area through which he had planned their escape route. In another few minutes, they would have been hidden from sight from anyone in pursuit.

Behind him, Brick increased his speed and pulled up alongside. “Come on, Haiden!” he yelled. “We gotta shift it!”

Leaning against Ritter, the girl sensed her chance. She began to struggle, twisting her body wildly from side to side, her movement causing the motorbike to wobble dangerously on the uneven road.

“Control that bitch!” Ritter screamed. Nooge slapped the girl hard across the face, then threw his arm around her neck. With the other arm, he squeezed tight, putting her in a choke hold. A moment later she stopped struggling.

They reached the turnoff. Ritter dropped a gear and negotiated his machine down off the main trail onto a deeply rutted track that ran along the edge of the forest. Taking a quick look behind him, he cursed again. Even on a powerful machine such as his, the weight of three people meant the group of riders had gained ground.

They rode parallel to the tree line for a few hundred yards until they came to a small footpath leading into the forest, one Ritter had scouted out the other day. He nearly missed the turn and had to brake hard, steering the motorbike sharply to the left before heading down it. Another quick glance and he saw that a motorbike from the chasing group had pulled ahead of the others. Someone was desperate to save the girl.

As soon as they entered the woods, the light became gloomy beneath the tall larches and pines. Ritter guided them unerringly through a network of trails no wider than a couple of feet. Though he might not be the hardest
hombre
in the Outzone, his mind was razor sharp and cool under pressure.

They rode for ten minutes, the trail becoming more and more overgrown until it was practically impossible to distinguish it from the rest of the undergrowth. Finally Ritter slowed down. Riding at a crawl and staring intently to his left, he soon veered off the path and rode another thirty yards through dense forest until the trees thinned out and they arrived at a small clearing. Above was a patchwork of gray rainclouds, and Ritter felt the rain on his face again.

He came to a halt by a huge larch, next to which was parked a red Kawasaki 250. It was Nooge’s bike, the twin of his brother’s green Kwacker.

Ritter killed the Honda’s engine as Brick pulled up alongside him.

“Turn off your engine,” Ritter told him.

Brick looked over at him, a dubious look on his face. “What for? We should keep moving.”

“We need to listen first. I got three routes out of here.”

Brick cut his engine and the three men listened carefully to the sounds of the forest. From somewhere close by, they heard the sound of an engine. It was coming in their direction.

“Nooge!” Ritter hissed. He made a motion with his hand.

Nooge had gotten off the motorbike and was standing next to the girl, still on the seat behind Ritter. Grabbing her quickly, he pulled her in close to him and clamped his hand over her mouth.