Desolation Crossing

Chapter Four

Say what you like about LaGuerre, Mildred mused, he’s not as big a fool as you’d take him for. He didn’t survive as a trader by being stupid, and if—as they suspected—the firefight that had deprived him of nearly half his crew had less to do with being attacked than with being the attacker, then he wasn’t the complete idiot he seemed. No, it seemed to her that he had a certain cunning, a certain base instinct that could kick in and override the tendency to let his mouth run away with him. A garrulous yet cunning fool. It was a combination that was volatile, and could only end one way.

The question was, when?

In the meantime, he had been smart enough to keep the friends apart. He had something he wanted from them, and he had found a way to get it without allowing them the space and time to confer, to make plans of their own and put them into action. Did he realize that they didn’t trust him? Or did he just assume that no one trusted him, and in their turn were to be trusted themselves?

Ultimately, she figured that it didn’t matter. The result was the same, no matter what you may surmise. The friends had been divided among the wags of the convoy, and the salvaged bikes had been put to use. It made sense from a sec point of view to use a newly recruited group of proved fighters in such a manner. Hell, she would have done it that way herself. But there was something…Maybe it was just that she didn’t trust LaGuerre. No, screw that, there really was something about the man that suggested he knew this was a good move for him as much as for the convoy. Keep them apart, and they couldn’t conspire.

So it was that Ryan and Jak rode the motorbikes at the back of the convoy—the leader and the most dangerous and quick of the fighters. A coincidence? She didn’t think so. It made sense for the two of them to ride at the rear of the convoy as they were the best suited to combat and the demands of instant response from such a position. But still, it seemed too convenient.

Krysty and herself were now riding shotgun in the refrigerated wags. Doc rode the wag at the rear of the convoy. One of LaGuerre’s men had been shifted from the armored wag to the one directly behind. The purpose of that had been to allow J.B. to ride the armored, lead wag, which was suspicious in itself. At least, it seemed so to Mildred. If they had replaced sec at the rear of the convoy, and in all the other wags, then why not put J.B. in the wag directly behind the armored leader? That would have been consistent. The action that LaGuerre had taken was anything but.

Mildred couldn’t help wondering if this last course of action was due to LaGuerre, or at the prompting of Eula. For now J.B. was in the wag with her, which would give her plenty of time to…Well, to what? What was her link to John; in what way were they connected? Mildred knew John well enough. When he had said that he had no idea who the young woman was, or why she knew so much about him, Mildred had believed him.

So who was she? What did she want? And how would that affect J.B. and the companions?

Whatever the outcome, it was impossible to do anything while they were separated. Come to that, it was proving impossible to get anything in the way of sense out of her current companion. Reese, the driver of the refrigerated wag, was a large woman. Probably 250 pounds of her was crammed behind the wheel of the big rig. Not an ounce of it fat. Her knees looked cramped, even in the space of the cab, as she was over six feet tall. She was dark and heavyset, with crude tattoos on her upper arms and multiple piercings in her upper lip, brow and ears. Hell, she probably had her nipples pierced, but Mildred wasn’t about to ask.

That piercing in her upper lip should have gone through both, sealing her mouth shut. Might as well, for all that Mildred had gotten out of her. When they had first been introduced, and Mildred had clambered up into the cab, Reese had shown her the weapons bay under the dash area and explained tersely that her duty was to keep her eyes open and her trigger finger ready. That was all. Anything to do with the rig itself she was to leave to Reese. The woman made that clear with a propriatorial tone that left nothing to doubt.

And since then, silence. Mildred had tried to ask a few questions—nothing too deep, just general conversation about the convoy and the way in which they usually traveled; would there be rest stops, and when did they generally occur? This last was the kind of question any newcomer to convoy sec would ask, leaving aside Mildred’s real reason of wanting to know when she would be able to communicate with the others.

“Not anyone’s business. Happens when it happens.”

Reese wasn’t hostile. Just so taciturn as to make John seem like that old buzzard Tanner, Mildred thought. Reese kept her eyes firmly fixed on the wag ahead, and on the road ahead of that. Anything else she seemed to view as an irritating distraction.

Mildred noted that the cab was fitted with comm tech, and was in touch with all wags on the convoy. Not that you would know it so far, as it seemed that radio contact was kept to a minimum.

She wondered if the bikes were also fitted with this tech.

RYAN AND JAK RODE the edges of the road, trying to avoid the backwash of dust and dirt as much as possible. A five-wag convoy kicked up a hell of a cloud in a land like this, and it would have choked them to kick in too close to the end of the line. They had masks and goggles, but even these only cut down, rather than eliminated, the problem. Most important was their breathing and their sight. Without those, they would have been chilled either by suffocation, by riding too fast into the back of a wag in front, or by riding themselves into the treacherous blacktop.

The other problem, once you’d solved the simple matter of staying alive, was to do your job. If you couldn’t see jackshit, then how could you expect to see any incoming? In this territory, where wild riders skirted the ribbon in favor of the dense-packed dirt off-road, you had to keep your vision as clear as possible for a 360-degree sweep. So you didn’t just hang in behind—you kept out of the dust cloud that hung over and around the convoy, and you veered off in complex figures that would enable you to double back, get a look behind, and get back into line without hitting a pothole, a crevice, or each other.

Both Jak and Ryan wore headsets that would keep them in touch with the armored wag on point. Trouble was, it was so bastard noisy on the bikes, with the roar of their engines, the rush of the air, and the noise of the five heavy wags, that each man had little hope of hearing any message that may come his way.

They carried on their maneuvers, kept up their guard, each isolated in his own bubble of dust and noise. The only way they’d know if the convoy stopped was by overshooting it.

KRYSTY HAD THE OPPOSITE trouble to Mildred. While Reese was the strong, silent type, the driver of Krysty’s wag was an emaciated old man called Ray. Short, skinny and anywhere between the age of forty and eighty for all that his wrinkled skin could tell her, he was stronger than he looked. It seemed as if she could blow on the old man and knock him down, yet he handled the heavy steering with an ease that was shown in the way he ignored the road and looked squarely at the red-haired woman, speaking in a long stream of consciousness that hardly allowed her the chance to ask him anything. He was obviously relishing the chance to speak to someone again, as the twinkling brown eyes beneath the battered baseball cap betrayed.

If only what he was saying had any real value…

“You come from the east, babe? I used to spend a lot of time in the east. That was back before I joined this crew, mind you. I always say that you can’t beat a real friendly team, and I’ll be frank with you, this ain’t a real friendly team. Not that they’re bad people, mind you. Not at all. I’ll say that for them. Really loyal to Armand. And he does treat us well in return, you have to give him that. But I miss the days when I’d be driving and I was with people who didn’t mind a chat. You ever hear that old word, babe? It means a talk. A talk about nothing. Least ways, a talk about stuff that most people don’t think is really important. See, I use to love being in the east ’cause there were a lot of villes there that still had some of the old tech working in some way. That’s what I will say for Armand, he gets that old tech working. Real good for me as I can have old music and stuff. I love all that. You don’t get that out here so much. The old tech that still works like that, I mean. See, that was good about being back east. Old movies. Gee, it was a different life back then, wasn’t it? But what am I saying, you might not have seen any of that stuff. Ah, you don’t know what you’ve missed. All those old songs. I loved it when they had tech that could still play all that old stuff. I’ve got this real good memory for that sort of thing, and I like to sing while I’m driving. It kinda helps to speed the road along a little, and gives me something to think about…” He began to sing in a cracked tenor.

Krysty was beginning to get a headache.

DOC WAS GETTING along just fine. He was in the wag at the rear of the convoy. If he looked out of the ob slit at the back of the wag he could just about see Ryan and Jak as they weaved in and out of the dust.

“I did not know that young Jak was such an accomplished rider,” he said to himself, “though I would imagine he’s a wow on one of those—dammit, what were they called…Ah! Skateboards. Yes.”

When he turned back to face the interior of the wag, he took in both the view and the warm fug of people forced to live close together. Too close. There were two other inhabitants, one of whom was currently trying to sleep. Her name was Raven, and when he had expressed surprise at her being a redhead, and not jet-black, she had looked at him as though he were insane. Doc, of course, was used to this, and let it slip over him. As of yet, he did not know from whence she had derived that charming name, but no doubt he would elicit this information sooner or later. When her temper improved.

“She’s not normally like this,” said the other inhabitant of the wag, eyes fixed on the road ahead. “It’s just that we’re not really letting her sleep. Tarran, the guy you replaced, he was real quiet. Never used to talk to me much at all, which was a pain in the ass as it gets real lonely and dull on some of these drives. We used to have an old tech disk player, and I’d play some old tunes from before skydark. She used to moan about that, too, so I gave it to Ray in the end. You’d like Ray. Not just ’cause he’s old, like you. But ’cause he never shuts up. Talks kinda odd, like you.”

“Yeah, like you don’t,” Raven moaned from the bunk. “You don’t get me talking nonstop when you’re trying to sleep.”

“No, you had other things on your mind…” The driver spun to face Doc briefly, so that she could lock eyes, convince him of her veracity, before turning back to the road. Her name was Ramona, and she was dark where Raven was pale. “I tell you what, Doc, her moaning used to wake me up. Sometimes she’d let Tarran play with her pussy while she was driving. Damn near could have driven us off the road. Worse, the bitch used to let him drive sometimes, swapping while the wag was still in motion, and suck his dick while he was driving. Damn unsafe.”

“You wouldn’t have said that, you saw the size of his dick.” Raven giggled, her anger subsiding. “No way something that small could have caused any accidents.”

Doc was beginning to get used to the girls. They obviously liked to bicker. Perhaps it passed the long hours on the road. They had both slept, and changed shift, in the time that Doc had been in the wag. And both had questioned him on the connection between Eula and J.B. Both being equally disappointed when he had been unable to offer even the slightest of theories.

“Both begin with an R,” he said by way of nothing. “That’s interesting. Does LaGuerre do that on purpose, I wonder? In the same way that most of his convoy crew are women?”

“Ya know, I take it back,” Ramona replied. “Doc, you’re way crazier than Ray. ‘Begin with an R,’” she said, imitating his tones badly. “What kind of a question is that? You wanna know something about Armand, baby, then you just ask outright.”

“Very perceptive, I must say,” Doc said, amused. “But nonetheless, it was a genuine question. Is it something to do with the way his mind works that he places in the same wags operatives who have identical initials?”

“Man, how many ways and how many words can you use in that question?”

“Whoa—okay, keep talking, this is sending me to sleep all right,” Raven added.

Their words may have been harsh, but their tone was not, and Doc pressed the matter.

“It’s all to do with psychology, madam. Are you familiar with that term?”

“Not as familiar as I hope to be with you, you old hunk o’man, you, sweet talking me like that,” Ramona mocked. “Si-wha’? Listen up, the only reason we’re both on this wag is because we’ve been with Armand the longest, and this is the wag with the jack. He trusts us.”

Doc eyed the interior of the wag once more. There was one seat up front, for the driver. Another at the rear, for the sec man, which he occupied. The bunk on which Raven lay was along one wall, with a makeshift kitchen area—no more than a hotplate and a small icebox—at the foot. A small comm unit and some tech reception equipment was on the wall opposite. An old safe with a combination lock was beside it. The rest of the space in the narrow wag, apart from an even more narrow channel they all used to negotiate the interior, was taken up with the stock that could not have been fitted into the front wag.

“It’s a combination safe,” Doc noted. “You may not know the combination.”

“Yeah, we do,” Raven said, obviously not as bored into slumber as she had made out. “Someone got to know it other than Armand, in case he buys the farm before we get to destination. He changes it every time. Don’t know how he does that, though. Guess he trusts us, but not that much. Must do some, otherwise we could just take the bastard and blow it with plas ex.”

“A fair point,” Doc conceded. “LaGuerre seems to be a deeper thinker than perhaps—if you will excuse me—he appears.”

Both women laughed.

“Armand ain’t exactly what you’d call sharp in some ways,” Ramona mused, “but in others he is, kinda. Guess he’s like all of us, he’s good at some shit, and, well, shit at other shit.”

“His secret, seemingly, is that he knows the dividing line,” Doc suggested.

Ramona thought about that for a moment, pausing only to swear at a particularly deep fissure in the road that she nearly missed. Then she said, “I guess you could say that about anyone, honey. And ya know, you’re right. Most of the driving crew have always been women. ’Cept Ray, but I kinda don’t know about him, sometimes. Quartermaster and sec have always been male. Quartermaster, couldn’t say why. Sec, I guess it makes sense. Most guys are stronger like that. I know I couldn’t have beaten Tarran in a fight of any kind, and Raven there always got herself pinned down…But mebbe that was different. Anyways, Armand does like to use women more than most traders I’ve seen. Course, as we’re all so grateful for work and jack, and it does mean the boy has pussy on tap….”

It gave Doc a mental image that was far from her intent, and for a moment he was transported into a world of surrealism. But Doc was feeling sharp at the moment, and was determined to stay as such. Shaking this from his head, he asked, “And that would include the young woman Eula?”

Both Raven and Ramona laughed at that, the former so hard that she almost fell from the bunk, cursing as she caught herself in time.

“You have got to be shittin’ me, Doc, baby,” Ramona wheezed between gasps of laughter. “Think if he dared to pull it out near that one she’d damn near whip it off with her knife. Mebbe not right off, just leave him something as a reminder of what a bad boy he’d been.”

“Something about her that is real scary, though,” Raven said quietly. “Tell you, Doc, me and her over there have been together in this convoy for some time now, and we get on okay. Hellfire, everyone in here gets on okay with one another, really. That’s what Armand likes. A happy crew does good work, he says. What the sneaky fuck means is that a happy crew ain’t gonna slit his throat and run off with his jack. Anyway up, Eula comes in, and things ain’t quite the same anymore. She don’t talk none.”

“I would suppose that would make you distrust her, as you all seem to be a little on the garrulous side,” Doc murmured.

“Honey, I dunno what that word means, but it ain’t nice, I can tell,” Ramona said. “Ain’t true, either, if it means what I think. ’Cause you ain’t met Reese. She don’t say more than five words a year, and mostly that’s to tell you to fuck off.”

“Reese?”

“Big muscle fucker, traveling with the sister.” Ramona sniffed. “Lucky her…No, Reese is okay, just a little quiet. And scary. But openly. Unlike our gal Eula. She’s too damn quiet in the wrong way. It’s like she’s always brooding on something. Something to hide. She looks at you like you’re shit on her shoes, like she’s got some little list in her head where she’s adding up the good and bad.” She snapped her fingers. “I know what it’s like—it’s like when Armand adds up the jack and stock he’s got and that’s he’s got rid of, see if it balances. That’s what she’s doing. She got something on her back that’s weighing her down, and some fucker’s gonna get it big when she finds out who it is.”

Doc was concerned by that. “And you think it may be my friend?”

“We dunno, do we?” Raven muttered sleepily from the bunk. “But she sure as shit seems to know him. Even if he don’t know her. Think he does and he’s not letting on to you, Doc? No offence, like, but are you sure?”

“I have known John Barrymore for some time now,” Doc said stiffly, “and in times of emergency, the man has always been straight.” His tone then softened as he bit his lip. “No, if he does know anything about her, he is truly unaware of it. It may be a mistake on her part. There was certainly no mistaking the bemusement on his face. Our good Armorer cannot hide certain things. He is controlled, and can mask emotion in combat. But he can be caught on the quick, and this was such a time. Tell me, ladies, what do you know of this Eula?”

“’Bout as much as you, hon,” Ramona answered. “She says she comes from the east, and sure we picked her up there. But she don’t say where, or how she learned so much about blasters and shit. Don’t say much about nothing. Tell you, don’t think even Armand knows much about her. Tell you something else, though—he thinks she’s powerful medicine, and he trusts her judgment.”

“And you do not?” Doc asked, sensing that in her tone.

Ramona gave a guttural laugh. “Hon, I’d trust that bitch even less than I could throw her scrawny ass.”

Raven stirred on her bunk. “See, thing is, we ain’t really got no secrets from each other, any of us. Can’t do if you travel like we do, and for as long as we have. Secrets you’d like to have sometimes, sure, but it don’t work that way. That’s part of being a team, right? Sooner or later it comes out, or you walk. Now, you take Eula. That bitch is so tight it even pains her to piss. But no matter how hard she wants to keep it in, sooner or later it’s gonna come out. And she ain’t the type to walk if even the wildest guess comes close. And that’s what we’re kinda afraid of, right, Ramona?”