Vengeance Trail

“We’re deserters,” Ben said cheerfully.

“Deserters?” Krysty said. In her mouth the word sounded like a marvelous thing. Like a baron combined with an old-time movie star. But better. “Does that mean, like from an army?”

“Sure does,” Matt said proudly. “The Provisional United States Army!”

“Well, that’s what they call themselves,” Ben said. “They’re really just a bunch of coldhearts under command of the General. But they like to play like they’re an army.”

“That’s why we run,” Matt said. “Got tired of all the bullshit. Get out of bed when somebody else says. Haul our asses all over this sorry-ass desert rounding up limp-dick civilians to work on the line.”

“The line?” Krysty asked.

“Railroad line. Same one runs out back of this shithole.”

“See,” Ben said, “the General ain’t just any old asshole like one of your bug-heap barons. He’s got himself a train.”

“A train?” Krysty asked.

“A train. But not just any old rail wag. It’s an armored train.”

“MAGOG,” Matt said. “That’s what he calls it.”

“What’s that mean?” Krysty asked.

Ben shook his head. “Don’t mean nothin’. It’s just what the General calls it.”

“He found it,” Matt said, with something like pride. “Scavvied it out of some big ol’ underground bunker somewhere. All fulla weps and food and everything. It’s only the biggest, most powerful rail wag ever built. The General, he says it was built for something called the War on Drugs. Gonna be sent down to someplace called Columbus—”

“Colombia, nuke breath!”

“Colombia. Except the world blew up. Everybody knew about it got iced. But it was all protected and everything. In perfect shape when the General found it. And it runs off fusion batteries so it don’t never need to refuel. Got all the power a body’d ever want.”

“Sounds…impressive,” Krysty purred. “What’s this General doing with this train of his?”

“Says he’s trying to put America back together,” Ben said. “Don’t put much stock in that myself. I think he wants to be just another baron, but mebbe carve himself out a bigger empire.”

“Sounds like a pretty big job.”

Ben shrugged. “That’s another reason we run,” Matt said. “He been at it years, conquered himself a mess of little villes along the line, keep him supplied and shit. Still just like taking a piss in the ocean.” He had another drink. “I saw a ocean once.”

“Weren’t no ocean, stupe,” Ben said. “It was the Gu’f of Mex.”

“That’s a ocean. I couln’t see acrost it, anyway.”

“You mean this General can travel anywhere he wants in this armored rail wag?”

“Not exactly,” Ben said. “Lotta breaks in the line.”

“That’s why we was stuck out here in nowhere,” his partner said. “’Nother washout in the fucking line. Had to go round up a mess of dead-ass civilian stupes to fix it. Buncha bullshit.”

“Our scout wag busted an axle a few miles down the road from here,” Ben said. “We was basically out on our own at that point. So we decided what the hey, threw away our talkies and took off. Heard us a rumor from some of the workers there was a big old buncha coldhearts gathered out in the scrub somewheres ’round here. Fixin’ to hook up with ’em, give that a roll.”

“Man got to start to think about settlin’ down, puttin’ down some roots, build him a future,” Matt said. “Can’t spend your whole danged life rollin’ aimlessly along a old steel rail to nowhere.”

Ben nodded sagely. “General says he’s looking for something called the Great Redoubt. Supposed to be where the old guys stored up everything needed to put the whole country back together after the war. Even before the war, this was. Communications, supplies, weps—the works.”

“Crazy old nukesucker.”

“No shit. Like the boy says, man gets tired chasing after phantoms. Needs somethin’ more substantial. Something with meat on the bones.”

He cocked his head and looked at Krysty. “Speaking of meat on the bones, why’n’t you hurry up there, little mama? I’m getting a real appetite worked up myself now, and not just for that chow that’s smelling so good.”

“Well,” Krysty said slowly, “since you’ve been such good boys, and told me what I needed to know, it’s time you got what’s coming to you.”

She turned quickly, her right hand filled with her .38-caliber Smith & Wesson blaster. She was already squeezing the double-action trigger, timing the lengthy pull so that the hammer released just as the short barrel came to bear on Matt’s bangs. The gun roared, making a shocking racket for such a small weapon.

Automatically, Krysty stepped sideways left, away from Ben, in case he made a grab for her. He didn’t. But he was sharp and fairly quick; he was leaning forward and trying to reel up his longblaster by the strap.

She swung her right hand around, arm still straight, bringing her left hand up to wrap the fingers and brace her grip on the piece. She fired two shots, blinding fast, into his torso at a downward angle. His leaning motion carried him off the stool and hard onto the ancient cracked linoleum.

Krysty swung her blaster back toward Matt, in case he needed another dose of what he had coming. Then she noticed the old sign by the door, a square frame on a skinny metal post, its message Please Wait to Be Seated barely visible for the years of fading—and also Matt’s blood and brains, the color of the half-baked biscuits rising unattended in the pan, dripping down the front of it.

Almost at her feet, Ben groaned and stirred. She aimed her blaster down at him.

But he was no threat. One of her bullets had smashed through his lower jaw on its way down into his chest. It was still about half-attached, his breath bubbling like a well of gore from somewhere within the mess.

Ben’s lower jaw seemed to be working with a purpose, and his half-moored tongue moving as if trying to shape a word.

“Mercy.” That’s what she thought he was trying to say.

“Of course,” she said, and shot him between the eyes.

Krysty reloaded her blaster. It would’ve been more frugal to cut the coldheart’s throat, but she had scavvied plenty of .38 Special ammo from the luggage left behind by Ben and Matt’s former comrades. No point in making things harder on herself than they already were.

She walked to where Matt lay. He was spread-eagled on the filthy, cracked, sand-gritty linoleum with his longblaster fallen across his thighs. Instead of the sky, he was staring at the diner’s cracked, discolored plaster ceiling. His cap had been flipped clean off his head, possibly by the impact of the bullet that had evacuated his skull. She knelt and picked it up. It looked new, crisp and scarcely faded by sun or sweat, meaning it had to have been salvaged from storage fairly recently. It was black. The front bore a picture of the face of a man wearing an odd cap or hood with a black stripe down the center. Curvy-blade machetes or short swords with nonstudded knucklebow guards were crossed behind his head. Above it was the word “Raiders.” Around the whole was a sort of shield.

She stuck the cap on her head. She had miles of open desert to walk. It would be good to have something to keep the sun out of her eyes.

Her biscuits had burned on the bottom. Indifferently, she flipped them over. She finished cooking the biscuits and put them and the hash on the counter, still in their respective pans. What she was making looked as if it would have been enough for all three, in fact, but she had planned to eat it all herself and still did. She was a tall, muscular, extremely active woman who generally had a hearty appetite. And even if she didn’t have much appetite this night—and doubted she ever would again, beyond sheer pangs of hunger—it had been a calculated decision to fix herself a large and proper meal. Her vengeance trail stretched long and hard before her. She would need every ounce of strength she could muster to see it through to the end.

She seated herself gingerly on the stool. The red-ant bites no longer throbbed with that weird, expansive intensity such acid-laden bites left in their wake, but the wounds still felt raw, and the muscles of her groin and thigh ached from the venom’s aftereffects. Ben’s cooling corpse was softer than the floor, so Krysty rested her boots on him while she ate.

As she ate, she thought about what she had learned and what it meant to her quest.

A train! she thought wonderingly. She’d seen the tracks her whole life without thinking much of them—just another artifact from the strange lost days before skydark. A track even ran right behind the abandoned diner and gas station and she had never even taken note of it, except as a terrain feature, and the fact that the endless miniature ridge on which it was laid offered potential cover and concealment. It was just part of the landscape. She had never really thought somebody might be able to use the rails to travel any particular distance. Sure, she’d heard the legends of wild tribes of folk who actually traveled the lines on marvelous wags, paying no mind to the world to either side of the narrow right of way, and of course discounted them as legend.

And here was this General with his giant train, armored and fusion-powered, trying to reconquer America—and killing her man and kidnapping her friends to do it.

She shook her head. Her locks writhed sympathetically around her shoulders. Matt and Ben were right about one thing: he was a crazy old nukesucker.