Vengeance Trail. James Axler

stopped busting caps himself, leaned low between his high curved bars and accelerated rapidly.

      As a result, he was past the killing zone when a strip of four Claymore mines mounted along the side of the armored car were initiated remotely from within. They went off with a rippling, ear-busting crack that spewed the roadway with about ten thousand steel marbles. The four riders behind Hogan simply disintegrated in shreds of flesh and steel, blood and gasoline, that all instantly began cooking in a hell-stew on the road as the gasoline lit off.

      That was enough for Hogan. He was braver than most, man or mutie, but he knew when his match had been met. He kept the throttle cranked and went rocketing along the rest of the train, past the armored wags at its tail, relying on speed and surprise to keep him untouched by the sprays of bullets and 40 mm grenades that hosed out after him, until he vanished safely through the smoke from two downed wags, all blazing away on the road barbecuing their occupants who hadn’t been lucky enough to bail, some of whom were still bitching about the fact with wild screams.

      Of course, the bullets weren’t stopped by the smoke. And MAGOG’s gunners, who had a whole freight car full of them, didn’t stop shooting them blind. But as soon as he was well within the smokescreen—steering around the furnace wrecks by sheer road-weasel instinct—he cranked the bike ride and lit out cross-country, passing quickly between a low rise and getting clean away.

      J.B.’S EYES WIDENED again as flame blossomed in four yellow petals from the flash suppressor of Mildred’s M-16. A vicious crack left his left ear hearing nothing but a loud ringing. Hot air stung his cheek like a red ant’s bite.

      He turned. A squat man in a filthy grayish sweatshirt and baggy sweat pants loomed over him with a fire ax raised over his head in both hands. He had a weird bowl-shaped haircut and was looking cross-eyed at a small, neat blue hole right through the bridge of his nose. He collapsed at the tip of the Armorer’s boot, the back of his head missing.

      J.B. blew out a long breath, then threw himself down behind Moredock again to take stock of the tactical situation.

      Shots were still cracking in both directions. The heavy weapons still split the sky overhead. They mostly seemed to be working the far ridgeline, trying to hose off any snipers the Barrett gunners had missed. But nobody was charging.

      J.B. grinned at Mildred and gave her the thumbs-up. She grinned and bobbed her head back. He dropped the empty mag out of the Beretta’s well, stuffed in one of the extras he’d gotten from the corporal, then shoved the weapon down inside the back of his waistband. He scuttled around Moredock and the bike that had almost run him over, to snag the machine pistol its rider had no further use for. J.B. had a particularly soft spot for that particular piece of Israeli ironwork, overly heavy as it was and shit-for-blowback besides. It was reliable, and it got the job done; he frequently carried one. He was pleased to find three full—he hoped; no time to count rounds now—magazines stuffed in the pockets of the coldheart’s vest.

      “Jak,” he shouted, looking around through the smoke and dust that hung in the air. There was a breeze, as always, but the embankment and the train caused it to eddy right here and do a piss-poor job of clearing the air. “Jak, are you all right?”

      “Fine.” The Armorer saw the youth staggering toward him through the smoke, holding a trench knife with a spiked knuckle-duster handguard in one hand and a baseball bat studded with cut-off nails in the other. He looked as if he’d bathed in blood, then rolled around in the dust to dry it off. Which was probably about what happened. It made him look even more menacingly unearthly than usual.

      “Find a blaster and follow me,” J.B. called. “You, too, Millie.”

      “Got him covered, John. Catch, Jak.” She tossed him a Marlin lever-action carbine with brass brads pounded decoratively into it, outlining the stock and foregrip. He dropped the bat and caught it deftly.

      He led them up the railway embankment, which, while steep, was climbable. Bullets kicked up little spouts of dust near them, none near enough to pay attention to.

      Once at the top he went to his belly and rolled right under the train. Mildred and Jak goggled. They looked at each other, shrugged and followed his example.

      ROCKING IN HIS PLUSH CHAIR out of fear for his friends he couldn’t quite suppress, Doc watched the battle unfold on a bank of monitors mounted in the command center in the car just behind MAGOG’s engine. Escorted by a pair of guards armed with MP-5 machine pistols in pristine condition, the General had led him forward through a flexible armored gangway that connected his personal car to the headquarters wag. They had then sat in climate-conditioned comfort, sipped sherry and watched the ultimate in reality TV.

      Guilt panged him at sitting there in safety while his friends risked their lives. He wasn’t the greatest asset in a fight, he knew, but he held his own and longed at least to share their peril. But there was nothing he could do.

      As with the General’s quarters, the soundproofing was almost perfect. He could hear nothing of the shooting outside, much less the shouts of rage and screams of mortal anguish. He could sense the vibrations of the heavy guns firing outward from the train, weird harmonics weaving subsonic melodies he felt in his bones rather than heard. One sound unnervingly not blocked out was the irregular thunk, thinkthunk, like hail on a rooftop, of bullets striking the armored shell right by their heads and bodies.

      “Don’t worry,” the General had said, when Doc’s head had jerked away reflexively from the sound of an early impact. “Nothing’ll get through this baby. And the walls won’t spall, even from point-blank hits from a 30 mm chain gun.” Doc wasn’t sure what that meant, but it sounded duly impressive.

      Doc had been far more impressed by the volcanic outpouring of fire from the train. He was also impressed by how surprisingly ineffective it was, comparatively speaking. To be sure, he could see scores of bodies, or sizable chunks of them, strewed across acres of desert. But that kind of outgoing firepower should’ve scoured the land, not just of all life, but everything, right down to bedrock. Or so it seemed to him.

      Still, the carnage had been quite exemplary. He had to admit that. He hoped he hadn’t turned too green.

      Something beyond worry and incipient nausea began to bother him as the volume of fire began to diminish.

      “If I may be so bold as to speak, General—”

      “Go ahead.”

      “I notice that all our attention is being drawn to the south side of the train.”

      The General nodded crisply. “I was just noticing the same thing. You’ve an acute military eye along with your other accomplishments, Professor.”

      He uttered orders. His words broke off crisply and decisively without being barked or snapped, and men obeyed them, it seemed, because it never occurred to them that they might not. Whatever else one could say about the man, he had a gift of command, which Doc couldn’t help but admire.

      The techs pressed keys and the views on the monitors rearranged themselves, so that the largest ones showed what the hardpoint-mounted cameras on the train’s north side showed. Even as they did so, the hailstorm thumping suddenly began to sound from that side of the train.

      The monitors showed muzzle-flashes sparking from the brush hard by that side. Doc could make out forms prone or crouching in concealment. He realized they were too close for the train’s mounted weapons to touch them.

      The General grunted. “I should’ve ordered that brush cleared back at least two hundred yards,” he said. “I’m getting lazy in my old age. Still, we can’t clean up the whole Deathlands.”

      He smiled. “At least, not until we find the Great Redoubt. Then what won’t we be able to accomplish? It’ll be a great day, Professor, eh? What’s that?”

      Apparently some of the cameras were dirigible. An operator had swept one back to look along the side of the train, then panned back out again. He swung the remotely operated camera inward once more to reveal the heads and shoulders of three people, lying on their stomachs firing outward at the coldhearts attacking