Cannibal Moon

The Steyr punched Ryan hard in the shoulder. Tensing his muscles, he rode the recoil, swinging the scope back on target. In the field of view, fringed tree limbs shivered as a body fell heavily through them. Then they were still.

The other two long blasters continued to rage. Jak’s odds of being hit increased with every passing second.

Cycling the Steyr’s action, Ryan quickly located the second target up the highway to his left on a high outcrop that jutted like the bow of a vast black ship from amid the tall trees. A more difficult shot because of the solid cover.

Ryan settled into position, adjusting his aimpoint through the scope. As his finger tightened on the trigger, as he was about to ice the crossfire and open the way for the companions’ escape, he heard crunching sounds coming toward him.

Footfalls.

Hard, running footfalls from the other side of the highway.

Swinging the rifle barrel down, he looked over the scope and saw three figures dashing along the hump, straight for him.

He snapfired and hit the lead cannie in the midsection, blowing him off his feet and flat onto his behind.

As Ryan worked the bolt to eject the spent shell, handblasters blazed and bullets chipped the concrete rubble on either side of him. The cannies were trying to reach and control the hole in the pipe.

Ryan fired again and the 173-grain, M-118 slug blew through the flesheater’s chest, taking most of his heart with it. The cannie’s momentum sent him crashing, spread-armed onto his face.

The third cannie was undaunted by the deaths of his pals. On the run, he dumped an empty mag. As he slapped home a fresh one, he stumbled on a loose bit of rock. It took only a second for the cannie to regain his balance, but by the time he snicked his blaster’s action closed, Ryan had cycled another live round into the Steyr’s breech and pushed up to his knees.

Before the cannie could bring his blaster to bear, Ryan shot him in the front of the throat, just under the chin, taking out three inches of his spinal column. Instant chill. The body dropped rag-doll limp, its head connected to torso by glistening threads of muscle.

Concrete exploded ten inches from Ryan’s nose, peppering the side of his face. As he ducked, he heard the hollow boom. The sniper up in the rocks was now targeting him, trying to pin him down. At the far end of the pipe, he could see more cannies filtering out of the trees. Swarms of them. They knew where he was, too. Their bullets zinged all around him.

Under concentrated fire, Ryan backed down the hole and hit the water running.

He shouted the bad news to his waiting companions. “They’re closing in quick. Light’s fading. We’ve got to break out. It’s now or never. Move fast, move low. Jak, you take the point.”

J.B. rammed his fedora tight onto his head and pushed his spectacles against the bridge of his nose. “Let’s do it,” he said.

As Jak lunged for the culvert entrance, the distant crash of steel on steel, of breaking glass, and the screech of bending metal stopped him in his tracks. Then from down the highway they heard the rumble and roar of powerful wag engines.

A second later came the unmistakable, full-auto, rolling thunder of an M-60 machine gun.

“It would appear we have company,” Doc said.

Chapter Six

Ryan led the others out of the pipe. They peered over the top of the concrete rubble as the chatter of machine-gun fire and the howl of engines got louder. This while cannie return fire dwindled to nothing.

The wag convoy lumbered uphill toward them. Huge, hulking forms bounced over the ruts, headlights off in the gloaming. The M-60 atop the second wag swept the far side of the roadway, streaming white hot tracers over their heads.

“Keep down,” Ryan warned the others. “They might mistake us for cannies.”

With nothing to distinguish them from the enemy, rescuers could quickly turn into executioners.

It turned out not to be a problem.

The convoy crews had already assessed the situation and singled out the good guys from the bad.

The lead vehicle was a dually tow truck with a high cab and a wedge-shaped steel snowplow attached to its front bumper. Overlapping steel plates protected the cab and windows. The tow truck pulled past the culvert entrance and stopped, giving the companions cover with its broad flank. Then the driver and passenger cracked the armored doors and opened fire over the hinges at fleeing cannies with night sight-equipped, Russian SKS semiauto longblasters.

From the clatter of the sustained gunfire, their rescuers had deduced what was going on up the road. As a rule, cannies didn’t wage all-out war on one another. The wag crews knew what an unfolding ambush sounded like.

A gray-primered Suburban 4x4 rolled up behind the tow truck and parked. The Suburban’s chassis was jacked up for two feet of additional ground clearance. The windows, grille, hood and wheel wells were covered by crudely welded sections of steel plate; gaps left between the plates served as view and firing ports. A hole had been cut in the roof amidships, providing a gunner access to an M-60 mounted on a circular track. The 7.62 mm machine gun’s arc of fire encompassed an unobstructed 360 degrees.

A vehicle for the serious, postnuke entrepreneur.

The back doors of the SUV popped open and a burly giant of a man jumped out. He shouldered the RPG he carried and took aim at the edge of forest on far side of the road.

With a blistering whoosh the rocket launched and seconds later came the whump of explosion. Trees along the opposite shoulder fireballed. In the hard flash of light Ryan saw cannie silhouettes cartwheeling through the air and the survivors scattering like rats low and fast into the forest.

The tow truck crew continued to peck away at cannie wounded and stragglers. The crews from the other wags joined them, raining fire on the enemy caught out in the open. The convoy was the usual jumble of predark makes and models, but they all had horsepower to spare. Serious muscle was required to move the weight of cargo, armor and personnel over the wasteland.

“Look at the bastards run!” the RPG shooter said with pleasure.

He was a mountain of a man, nearly as tall as Ryan, but a hundred pounds heavier, solid muscle covered with a thick layer of jellylike blubber. Most of his weathered face was hidden by a full brown beard. He wore stained, denim bibfronts and a black leather vest with no shirt underneath. He didn’t need one. The layers of fat and the mat of hair on his back, shoulders, arms and chest provided plenty of insulation.

“You the convoy master?” Ryan asked, checking out the man’s personal armament. The twin, well-worn, bluesteel .357 Magnum Desert Eagles in black ballistic nylon shoulder holsters looked like peashooters tucked under his massive arms. The mountain reeked of joy juice, stale tobacco and gasoline.

“Harlan Sprue’s the name,” he said. “You look mighty familiar to me. Mr…?”

The one-eyed man hesitated a moment. “Ryan Cawdor.”

“Not the same Cawdor what used to run with Trader?”

“Same.”

“I locked horns with you and your old crew once, back east,” he said. “We had ourselves a little disagreement over ownership of some predark knickknacks. You probably don’t recognize me now. I was quite a few pounds lighter back then.”

“I remember you, Sprue,” Ryan said. “You weren’t any lighter in those days and as I recall, you lost the argument.”

“Memory is a funny thing. I recollect just the opposite.” Sprue looked over the other companions. When he got to J.B., he stopped and grinned broadly. “Four-eyes was with you then, too,” he said. “One mean, sawed-off little bastard.”

“You got that right, fat man,” J.B. said, shifting the weight of his pump gun on its shoulder sling. “Only I got even less patience nowadays.”

When Sprue took in Junior Tibideau, his hairy smile twisted into a scowl. “You caught yourselves a cannie?” he said incredulously. “Looks like a sick un, too. Are you out of your rad-blasted minds? That’s like taking a mutie rattler into bed. For a thank you, he’ll bite you in your ass first chance he gets.”

“He isn’t going to bite anybody,” Ryan said.

Then a single sniper round skipped off the Suburban’s hood and whined into the trees.

Which drew a volley of answering fire from the wag crews.

When the shooting stopped, Sprue said, “We’ve got to move a ways up the road before the bastards regroup. You can pile in the 6x6 at the end of the line. All of you but that cannie. My crews won’t share a wag with a goddamned, oozie-drippin’ flesheater. They’ll blow him out of his socks soon as look at him. If you want him to keep on breathing, you’d better tie him to the back bumper and let him hoof it.”

To lead a wag convoy through the hellscape, to deal with Nature run amok at every turn, to face coldheart robbers and mutie attacks, a person had to be one hard-headed, pedal-to-the-metal son of a bitch, the kind of leader who never buckled, never bent, who kept on pushing until he or she got where he or she wanted to go.