"Blast the fuckers off! Through the panels!"
The long-armed man felt sweat begin to soak his face. He squawked, "Nuke that idea, Scale. We get slugs zippin' around in this space, we're gonna get scalped if nothin' else!"
"Do it!" snarled Scale.
More thuds, sounding like kicks delivered with strength. The sticky at the window had disappeared. One of the men in the back said, "They's on the roof, Scale, an' we ain't all that tight up there."
Part of the roof had been pierced at some point during the truck's history. Wooden panels had been fixed over the gaps.
Scale grabbed for his rifle, squirmed around in his seat and sprayed at the roof, the sound deafening in the confined space. Yelling, the long-armed man ducked as hot brass flew past his head. Angry ricochets burned the air, snarling around his ears,
Scale fought with the wheel, boot-jabbing at the brake as the truck careered down the sloping track. In front, a misty panorama revealed itself. An angry sun endeavoring to pierce the thickening chem clouds shot scarlet light lances through the murk. A seared and dreadful landscape beckoned, stretching into the unseen, unfathomed distance, dotted with stunted trees, their foliage a sickly yellow.
A short distance away, three clouds of dust choked the already turbid air. Ahead, the buggies were chasing the jeep sure enough.
Scale blazed more lead up at the roof and ricochets whined and buzzed.
"Scale!" screamed a man at the back, blood dripping from his face where something sharp had sliced him — a ricochet or a shard of metal. "You're opening the roof up! Bastards'll get in through the hole!"
Scale had indeed opened up most of the wooden panels, had shattered them with ripping auto-fire. A face appeared in the torn space, greasy skinned, with angry eyes glaring downward. It whipped back out of sight as Scale fired again.
A bulky man grabbed at the rifle, roaring, "You'll kill us all, you shitstick!" and tried to drag the weapon away from the demented mutie leader. Scale triggered a burst at him, point-blank, and slugs chewed him apart, punched him away in a spray of scarlet that paint-licked the walls and most of those in the immediate vicinity.
They flung themselves to the floor of the truck, hands over heads, yelling and screaming curses. In the front, the long-armed man prayed and wondered what would happen if he just jammed open his door and threw himself out of this madhouse. But they were going too fast, and the faster he went and the more he swung the wheel right and left, the greater the possibility that the stickies would not be able to batter their way in.
Ahead the dust had cleared. The speeding vehicles had hit a stony patch of ground. Now the buggies could clearly see their prey, and those in the jeep must know that they were doomed.
The lead buggy was firing. Tracers from its passenger seat MG flamed at the bouncing jeep. Rounds hammered at the jeep's rear.
The tires exploded. The buggy hurtled past at a wide angle, raking the bucking vehicle fore and aft. A line of fire caught the jeep's passenger and the long-armed man saw the guy's head burst open, the driver ducking under the hail of lead. The jeep swerved toward the nearest buggy, hit its rear, caromed away but stayed on an even keel. The long-armed man could almost hear the tortured clang and scrape of metal on metal, the boosting roar of acceleration as the jeep plowed on.
But it could not last, and it did not last. The buggies were coming at the jeep from two different directions, MG fire from both converging. Blazing fire lines met, crossing on the ancient, crudely armored jeep. Metal struts flew away, the front tires were shredded to rubber strips, and the hood blew up and sailed high into the sky. The driver was caught by two sets of fire lines and they tore him apart bloodily, throwing chunks of him up into the muggy air. Tracers sought the juice tank, soon found it. Fire bloomed, punching the jeep spectacularly apart, sending it cartwheeling in all directions.
"Holy nukeshit," muttered the man with long arms. The Trader's men had used nothing but MGs for their kill. They hadn't even started on the twin cannon, mortars and rocket tubes yet.
He wrenched the wheel, pulled the speeding, bucking truck onto a side track that dropped away from the track he'd been on. They entered a narrow, gloomy canyon, high cliffed, stretching away from them, undeviating, straight as an arrow before it rose again to trees, vegetation and less dust.
The long-armed man shot a glance at Scale, who was still twisted around in his seat, his gun pointing up at the roof. In the back huddled the others, four of them now. The fifth lay in a widening pool of gore.
The stickies seemed to have calmed down somewhat, maybe mesmerized by the explosion of the jeep. Stickies liked explosions — the bigger, the more eruptive, the better; they liked looking at the flames. But the bastards never gave in. They'd be up there now, waiting their chance, waiting to create more mayhem. He glanced at his rearview mirror, saw the other truck still clinging to his tail, but his own and its dust obscured the entrance to the canyon. He couldn't tell if the two buggies were coming up behind.
The truck hurtled along the flat of the canyon, swooped up and out of it into a grove of trees that drooped with dirty yellow foliage. They were in a wide natural valley, a part of the mountain's foothills, and the camp was almost dead center, a small hamlet of old huts and cabins clustered along one end of what had once been a huge lake but was now only a dirty little pond of muddy, brackish, just about drinkable water. In the distant past it had been a thriving community, a summer resort for wealthy people who came there to fish the lake and climb the mountains for fun. But of course the long-armed man knew only rumors of such things, was in fact puzzled by the notion that people once crawled up steep precipices as an enjoyable relaxation.
He said, "What we gonna do, Scale?"
Scale, still gripping his piece, muttered, "Gonna fuck me the red-hair."
The long-armed man shot a startled glance at his leader. Had he heard right? The noise and clatter of the speeding truck was not good for conversation but the long-armed man could usually get the gist of something that was not yelled at him. He could have sworn that Scale had said something about fucking the red-haired girl. But that couldn't be right. There were priorities, for God's sake.
"Scale?"
"Uh?"
"What we gonna do? Them buggies bound to find us. They're gonna cream us."
Scale's head jerked around, his thick-lipped mouth gaping, his eyes wide and crazy, the gun in his hands suddenly jammed into the side of the long-armed man's head.
He shouted, "So you do what you wanna do! I'm gonna get me the red-haired bitch!"
The long-armed man slewed the truck to the right and into a narrow bush-lined tunnel. The vegetation all around them was parched, but it was still alive; it seemed able to survive, just, in this hostile environment, fed perhaps by the tiny trickles of water that still infiltrated the earth from off the hills. There were no birds in the valley and the long-armed man had never seen any animals. Anything on four legs automatically got eaten. Just about anything on two, as well.
The truck shot out of the tree-lined avenue and the long-armed man swung the wheel and skidded around into what had once been a blacktopped parking lot next to a ruined building that, a century ago, had been a shop selling guns and fishing tackle. A weather-faded signboard was fixed to the facing wall on which the words McPartland Brothers could just be discerned, if there had been anybody there who could actually have read them.
But this was a decaying ville; the art of reading had long departed it. The roofs of cabins were holed, although that didn't matter much since rain was no problem in this part of the Deathlands. Walls of some of the shacks sagged, unmended. Others had no walls at all, were simply wood frames with rotting bits of blanket draped around them, or tarps, or old animal hides brought from elsewhere when Scale had discovered the place and moved his band in. Maybe a few human hides, too. Smoke drifted from some of the chimneys.