James Axler Deathlands 001 Pilgrimage to Hell

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sound from up front. Flame bloomed, the shock wave sending debris hurtling
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through the air.
Ryan brushed glass shards off himself as he scrambled to his feet and ran for
the front of the cabin.
The screen was out except for thick, jagged ridges of glass poking up through
swirling black smoke. The metal surround near where the limpet had been placed
was sagging up top, buckled below. Two of the team began spraying foam at the
flames, killing them, and Cohn was already at his radio again, throat mike in
place, his fingers working switches.
"She's okay. We're still on line, still connected."
Ryan crouched in the dying smoke, squeezing short lead-bursts out into the
night and downward, at a high angle, trying to clean off any stickies that
might still be
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hanging to the war wag's snout, although he guessed that whoever was hitting
them would almost certainly be back underneath, clinging on, waiting to make
the next move.
"Get the gas masks ready, but don't put 'em on."
The smoke was clearing fast, the flames dead. Ches was back at the wheel
again, body armor now buckled over his chest. The spotlights still lit up the
road ahead, and now Ryan could see what looked like fireflies dancing up in
the rocks to each side snipers homing in on them. Above, O'Mara's MG began
stuttering, trying to keep the bastards' heads down.
Ches said calmly, "I've been meaning to tidy up that shelf below the window.
It was getting clogged up with all kinds of crap. Those guys did a sweet job."
"You hit the button?"
"Sure I hit the button and we're still in business. Far as I can tell the
worst damage is to the glass and frame."
"That figures."
"Yeah, well you'd better pray it ain't gonna snow, Ryan, because I don't like
driving in a blizzard, specially if that blizzard's coming in at me." He
glanced around, and Ryan could tell that although the kid had shifted the
vehicle into automatic, he was still putting on a show. "Do I clean 'em off
now? Fry them out?"
"No. Not yet. Wait."
The E-button. A nifty device dreamed up by J. B. Dix for just such an
emergency as this. Plate-metal strips around each war wag, topside and
underside, were connected to the powerful generators at the rear but insulated
from the rest of the chassis and frame. The E-button was a failsafe. Now all
it needed was the tug of a lever and anyone or any thing touching those
innocent looking rods got instant heartburn. Not to mention everything-else
burn.
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But Ryan did not want to blow that one until they had reached a last-ditch
situation. It used up far too much power.
He could hear bangs and cracks outside, short rattling bursts of auto-fire,
the hammer effect of rounds pounding the exterior. It wasn't exactly a
standoff, but he figured their attackers were conferring somewhere, probably
in the tunnels below the road. He idly wondered if they were new tunnels or
old tunnels, tunnels maybe dug out by the guys who'd built the Stockpiles.
They were more likely new ones, excavated for just such ambushes as this. He
half turned, snapping his black-
gloved fingers.
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"C'mon, c'mon!" His voice was laced with urgency.
Two men shoved past him holding a wood frame that enclosed a crisscross of
fine steel mesh. They leaned over Ches, ramming it into place over the buckled
screen frame, and clipped it.
"Now let 'em try lobbing a gas can in."
Everything was smooth, thought Ryan, relaxing slightly. He checked his watch,
noted that there still remained two and a half minutes to go before the booby
in
Four blew.
"Lint. Hooley. Up top."
The two men who had carried the wire barrier followed him at the run down the
cabin. They threaded into the bunk room passage, waited while Ryan slid open a
side door into a ladder well. Ryan mounted the ladder fast but silently,
checked out the view ports at the top. Nothing. He began flicking at
well-oiled bolt levers in the darkness, slicking them back. Then he slid the
hatch sideways softly on its specially fixed runners until it would go no
farther, and stuck his head out into the cool air.
Far to the east the gray twilight was gradually easing into milky dawn, but
here a wash of flame from the now fiercely burning truck was the only light
that mattered, casting a lurid glare over the scene, causing shadow dances on
the
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blacktop, highlighting lurking figures among the roadside rocks and boulders,
There was a gap in the convoy. It was now split into two distinct sections
fore and aft of the blazing truck. Ryan's war wag had pulled well forward, and
Trucks One, Two and Three had followed. Far down the road Ryan could see the
snub-nosed bulk of the second war wag, with the rest of the convoy trailing
behind it.
Auto-rifle fire rattled, weaving its high-pitched chatter around single-shot
cracks and the roar of the flames. Ryan focused his one eye on the roof of
Three and saw that it was clear. Either the guys from Four had managed to
tumble down through the truck's roof hatch into comparative safety, or they
were dead meat on the road.
He could see no one on the other trucks, but that didn't mean there weren't
stickies clinging to the sides.
He crawled out into the roof gully, which ran the length of the vehicle, front
to rear, wide enough for two men to lie side by side and be hidden from view
except from above. Another idea of Dix's: it enabled a war wag commander under
ground attack to slide men up unseen into sniping positions. On each side of
the roof, maybe less than a meter in from the edge, were clamped two long
metal rods running the length of the vehicle on the face of it a stupid piece
of construction since it allowed attackers climbing up the sides an easy
handhold to enable them to pull themselves on to the roof, where a surprise
awaited them.
Ryan crawled to the rear, hearing Hooley follow him. Lint would stay in the
ladder well, rifle ready.
He reached the end of the roof and stared down at Truck One below him.
Truck One was a big trailer rig, its rear end converted in a very special, but
unobtrusive, way. Truck One always followed the Trader's war wag in convoy:
Strict Rule A. Strict Rule B was that it closed up tight to the war wag
whenever the convoy stopped anywhere. Real tight. Strict Rule C was that Truck
Two always pulled well back from One, giving it plenty of space at the rear. [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]

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