Desolation Crossing. James Axler
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by those who ran the gaudy houses, it was a fair assumption. A safe assumption. And better safe than chilled.
The progress of the old school bus became that bit more tortuous, the road that bit more treacherous: at least, that was how it seemed as translated through the steering grip of Ryan Cawdor. Maybe it was tension. Maybe the road really had worsened. It didn’t matter: all that counted was that it was that little bit harder to cling on and keep rattling eyeballs in focus.
“Nearer,” Jak murmured. He spoke low, but his voice carried to them with the authority of one who was never wrong. None of the others could distinguish the sounds he could hear, but they knew he was right.
They waited….
As though in slow motion and as though materializing from nothing, the pace of the pursuing vehicles caused them to shimmer and take shape as they broke the distance barrier and penetrated beyond the heat haze. There were three of them: two low-slung wags, like old cars that had been cut down and opened out to allow the shooters easy access and aim. Not that they would need it, judging from the size of the side-mounted machine blasters, each of which looked as though their weight could drag the vehicle to one side without the counterbalance of their opposite mounting.
The third vehicle was a motorbike bearing two men, the man on pillion carrying what looked to be a rocket launcher.
“Ryan, would it perhaps be possible to squeeze a little more pace from this vehicle?” Doc queried. “I fear they are starting to gain with some rapidity, and will soon be able to test their range.”
Ryan couldn’t look round—the road was in bad shape. But he knew one thing for certain. “It doesn’t matter how quick they are, or what kind of firepower they’ve got. There’s no way I can squeeze any more speed from this bastard. We’re gonna have to fight.”
Doc had suspected as much, but figured it was worth asking the question. Too much speed and the Lord alone knew how much precious fuel they would waste. Too much speed and the Lord was equally the only one who would have any notion of how the wag would stand up to the road surface.
Besides, it was too late to worry now. The bike had streaked ahead of the two wags that had previously flanked it, and the pillion rider had risen to his feet, swaying with the movement of the bike as he raised the rocket launcher and took aim.
“Bastard,” Jak hissed, his tone saying far more than just the word itself could convey. As the roar of the discharged launcher reached them, a fraction of a second be hind the muzzle-flash and the unsteady swaying of the pillion rider, the recoil kicking back at him, Ryan had already hauled the wheel to the right, taking them to the edge of the ruined blacktop and onto a dusty soil that was almost harder and surer than the road they had left.
The rocket hit the road about a hundred yards ahead of them, where they would have reached in moments, and where the impact of detonation would have shattered the glass of the windshield into Ryan’s good eye, in all likelihood bringing chunks of rock, soil and softened blacktop with it.
Instead, the impact—now lessened by distance—hit them broadside. Krysty yelped involuntarily as she ducked, slivers of shattered window glass raining on her with some rock and soil. The side of the bus sounded as though it had been pelted with stones, but the damage was minimal.
Jak had already beaten out the glass of the back window with the butt of his Colt Python pistol, and had the barrel centered on the pillion rider, who was reloading while still standing. It was a neat trick, but stupe. With his attention on the rocket launcher, he wasn’t looking at the bus. The rider was, and made to move the bike to one side. But he was hampered by the need to keep the balance of his passenger, and he wasn’t quick enough. Jak snapped off one shot from the .357, the sound of the blaster almost deafening within the confines of the bus, despite the noise out side.
Jak had a hunter’s aim. The pillion rider flew backward as the round hit him, the velocity of the impact multiplied by the forward motion of the bike. A red mist of blood spread around him.
The bike sheered as the rider attempted to cope with the sudden shift in weight and balance presented to him. He was good, but not good enough to deal with both this and the treacherous road surface. The front tire of the bike blew out on something unseen, and the bike slewed viciously out of control, the rider dragged underneath as the weight and momentum pulled it to one side. His torso had been bare, and he was in moments little more than a red slick on the road.
Simultaneously, fate had smiled on the friends. The pillion rider—now minus half of his viscera and quite chilled—had flopped back into the road, causing one of the wags to swerve to avoid hitting him. This attempt to keep hot on the trail would have proved successful, if not for the fact that the rocket launcher that the pillion rider had been carrying had parted company from his lifeless grip and skittered across the road and into the path the wag had taken to evade impact.
It merely swapped one for another; one of a deadlier effect. The front of the wag and the rocket launcher met with an impact that caused the detonation of the explosive that the pillion rider had been in the throes of loading. The resultant explosion rocked the air, causing the remaining wag to skid and veer across the surface of the road wildly before righting itself and continuing the pursuit.
IT GAVE RYAN a little more time to try to pilot the cumbersome wag across the hardpacked earth. It was bouncing and veering less than on the road, but it was still bone-shaking, and difficult for anyone to aim well.
The pursuing wag was almost on them, the machine blasters chattering and tracers of fire kicking up around them. The whine and clang of shots striking home were also a little too close for comfort. Short of stopping, there was little Ryan could do to give his companions a break when it came to return fire.
But maybe he could slow the opposition a little, and use the fact that the wag was large and cumbersome to its advantage. Without even thinking about it, he had been heading away from the ruined road, and had come within distance of one of the groups of eerie cacti that dotted the landscape.
He realized why he had been doing this, and without pause hauled the heavy steering column around so that the old school bus was headed straight for the center of the cacti. As they neared it, he could see that the plants were much larger, much taller than they had appeared from a distance. The actual span of the patch had to have been about 150 yards, and the plants themselves had thick bases at least six feet around. They needed them, if they were to support the branching arms of thick spikes that sprouted on all sides, reaching upward in mute supplication.
Despite the distances and sizes involved, there was no way that he could get the bus through the maze they made without crashing into them.
Good. That was his plan.
“Away from the windows,” he yelled.
Considering they were about to engage the enemy, it may have struck his people as a strange thing to say. One glance ahead told them why. They were in the aisle of the bus within moments.
Ryan slewed the bus into the middle of the cactus patch. The big yellow bus hit big yellow and green stalks that were as hard as wood. The front fender crunched, the headlights splintered, but the bus barged through, knocking some cacti over at a drunken angle, toppling others completely. Sap spurted and dribbled from branches taken off by the impact of the large wag.
The old school bus left a path in its wake, but one that was scattered with spikes like nine-inch nails, trails of sap and listing and fallen trunks.
The wag on their tail had been gaining all the time. The driver was hunched over the wheel, trying to keep a steady path so that the two blasters on either side—both manned—could lay down a barrage, which they had started to do as soon as the school bus had come in range. Their fire had taken out what was left of the back windows, and peppered the hide of the bus with dents and small holes. But they hadn’t accounted for the fact that the old buses were built like tanks, for long and hard use. The main body of the vehicle could stand a lot more pounding than most nontrading wags the machine blasters were used to firing on.
Inside, stray shots ricocheted, and the din of the slugs