Hell Road Warriors

Six tore his eyes off Mildred for a moment. He looked like he didn’t give a spent shell whether Ryan forgave him, but the big man grunted and nodded. Ryan nodded back. Six went back to openly eyeballing Mildred, who put her fists on her hips and glared back.

Toulalan gestured back at his wag. “And allow me to introduce my dear friend Florian Medard, he’s our, how would you say…scholar?”

Florian nodded and touched a pair of fingers to his head in greeting. His eyes ran over each member of the companions and seemed to be cataloging them.

Ryan shrugged. “What do you want?”

Toulalan blinked in surprise. “I believe the question is, what do you want? You have driven off our enemies. For that we are deeply in your debt, but by the same token, you could easily decimate our convoy with your autocannon. I merely ask, what are your intentions?”

“I don’t know.” Ryan shrugged. “Head south mebbe.”

“Well, would you care to join us in our evening meal? Six shot a wild boar just this morning.”

“We just had pizza.”

“We had pizza for lunch!”

“We noticed.”

Toulalan gave Ryan a very shrewd look. “We have more beer.”

One corner of Ryan’s mouth quirked against his will. “Bastard.”

Toulalan threw back his head and laughed. “Florian, go tell Cyrielle we have guests for dinner tonight.”

Chapter Three

Ryan gnawed contentedly on a rib of barbecued wild boar. Little more than reconstituted Diefenbunker olive oil, salt and fresh-picked herbs had worked glory over the fire spit. The convoy had broken out predark folding picnic tables, lit fires, candles and storm lanterns, and it was a full-on feast. A woman played a mandolin, accompanied by flute, and several people were dancing. Toulalan’s sister pressed a fresh can of Diefenbunker beer into Ryan’s hand. She was nothing like her brother. She was small and dark with black hair, olive skin and huge dark eyes. However the twinkle in her eyes, the penchant for smiling and similar mannerisms made their kinship unmistakable. Ryan chewed the arc of bone more out of habit and for pleasure than anything else. In the Deathlands one often never knew where the next meal was coming from. Gorging was a reflex. The pig had been accompanied by green beans and something called potatoes au gratin that had sent Mildred to sighing with joy. The convoy had spent several days resuscitating large quantities of the Diefenbunker’s cryo-frozen fresh food. Six’s pig had also been accompanied by beer.

The convoy was celebrating survival. They celebrated Ryan and his friends as conquering heroes. They had moved the convoy to a little hill surrounded by flat plain. The convoy formed a loose defensive ring around the hill. Sentries had been sent out, and Ryan’s LAV sat on crest with a 360° view of the landscape, ready to rain doom on anyone who approached. Jak was taking the first watch in the turret.

Krysty leaned her head against Ryan’s shoulder. “You think they’re fattening us up for the kill?”

Ryan spoke quietly into her titian tresses. “No, they lost their fighting LAV because they barely know how to operate it. If we hadn’t shown up, they’d be dead. They’re laying out the spread because they want us to join up.”

“And?”

“I haven’t made up my mind,” Ryan whispered. “And Toulalan looks like he’s about to get down to recruiting.”

Yoann Toulalan raised an ancient piece of plastic picnic stemware full of wine in Ryan’s direction. “Salut, mon ami!”

Ryan raised his can along with everyone else at the table and sipped the brew.

“So,” Toulalan began, “you’ve been in the bunker, no?”

Ryan looked up at the LAV on the hill and back at Toulalan.

The man shrugged sheepishly. “Yes, but of course. But we have access codes. May I ask how you gained entrance?”

“You can ask,” the one-eyed man replied.

The irony wasn’t lost on the Canadian. “Yes, I see.”

“Let me ask you a question,” Ryan said.

“Anything,” Toulalan replied.

“That bunker is still loaded with food, blasters and goods, and you’re driving away from it.” Ryan lifted his chin and pointed. “Quebec is that way. Why aren’t you loaded to capacity and running for home?”

Toulalan shrugged. Ryan was beginning to believe the man’s shoulders, hands and eyebrows were connected to his mouth. “Well, my friend, there’s more to life than bullets and beans.”

That struck a sympathetic chord with Ryan. “And so?”

“I’m an explorer.” He shot Ryan a very shrewd look. “Like yourself.”

Ryan kept his poker face. More times than he could count he and his friends had found places as decent as the Deathlands got to settle down in. But in the end Ryan always kept moving on, always exploring. He was more than an explorer, knew in his heart he was a searcher. Many people, even some of his companions had accused him of searching for something he would never find; and that he really didn’t even know what he was searching for anymore. Nevertheless, his friends followed him, willingly.

Toulalan pursed his lips in thought. “Would you care to hear some Canadian history?”

There was nothing at the moment Ryan wanted to hear more. He took a sip of beer and idly considered the can. “If you want to tell it.”

“Well, skydark came. This we all know. But Canada, we had no nukes and far fewer—how do you say…high-value targets? Oh, we got hit, but for the most part surgically. Capitals, military bases. It wasn’t like the horrific exchange that created the Deathlands. We have been south. We know. Few earth-shaker bombs, tailored viruses or, as we say, orgy weapons like the United States and its prime enemies flung at one another.” Toulalan sipped wine. “Nevertheless, the weather changed, the Earth changed. Tailored viruses will spread, and fallout and chem storms, well, they know no boundaries. When the big freeze happened, well…” Toulalan shrugged. “This is Canada.”

“And?”

“And so. In the Deathlands, people left the cities because they were radioactive. In Canada, the cities were abandoned because in the nuclear winter they were freezing and there was nothing to eat. You have thousands of ruins. We have thousands of ghost towns. Winters were always long in the north and summers short. Now the winters are longer and the summers shorter. Spring and fall? Beautiful respites, but I warn you, do not blink. They are ephemeral. And come Father Snow, we have, what we call, the hard freeze. You can literally see it come toward you, like an avalanche across the horizon. Pray you never see it, except from behind thick stone walls with a roaring fire at your back.”

“Speaking of that, isn’t it getting a little late in the season,” Ryan questioned, “to wag it cross country?”

“Indeed.” Toulalan leaned forward. “We’re behind schedule. We must push hard.”

“Where are you headed?”

“West.”

Ryan ran his eye over the collection of wags. “I noticed you don’t have a tanker. You got tanks and cans loaded on every wag, but not enough fuel to cross country.” Ryan crushed the empty can in his hand. “You’re going from bunker to bunker.”

Toulalan tossed off a postapocalyptic French-Canadian shrug and considered the one-hundred-year-old wine in his glass by candlelight. “Will you tell me how you got into the bunker?”

Ryan was starting to believe that Yoann Toulalan had no idea what the mat-trans chamber was. “Codes can be broken.”

“The computers are locked.”

“Trade secret.”

“Ah.”

Ryan threw his cards on the table. It might be for an ephemeral moment, but Ontario was green. His rad counter told him this was the cleanest land in North America he’d seen in a while. His friends didn’t want to jump again, and despite his every effort he found himself liking Yoann Toulalan. “What are you proposing?”