THE
OUTRIDER;
Fire And Ice: Chapter 9
If you weren't looking for Bonner's car, you
wouldn't have been able to find it. The trouble was the snowmen were looking for
it and they were searching the wild, snowy underbrush very carefully.
Bonner and the Mean Brothers sat motionless
in the vehicle, listening to the snowmen as they thrashed and cursed in the
bushes. Bonner tried to figure out where they were based from the sounds of
their voices; he tried to gauge their distance from him and the direction their
search was taking them. They were very close and he figured it was only a matter
of time before one of them—all of them—stumbled onto the car and their
quarry.
Bonner quickly added up and analyzed the
factors that were working for him: the snowmen were on foot, having left their
bikes fifty or so yards back at the edge of the road. If Bonner got out of this
jam in one piece, he would be able to outrun them easily. He could think of only
one other factor that might make life easier for him: he had a fair idea where
the snowmen were but they had no idea where he was. It was the old element of
surprise, the most valuable weapon a man could have, but its worth lay in
knowing when—exactly when—to use it. There was a point in every encounter
when the right blow delivered at the right time tossed the balance of the fight
right into your hands. Strength, firepower, courage— they were worth very
little if you didn't use your brains.
The snowmen were drawing closer. The bushes
rattled and shook a few feet away, sending little mattresses of snow fluffing
onto the damp ground. Bonner felt his muscles key. It was not yet time to reveal
himself: it was time for a quick, silent kill. His hand dropped to his knives.
The handles were deadly cold, passionless, like the death he was about to deal
to a man whose name he would never know.
The bushes thrashed again. With a crackling
of branches and ice a snowman burst into the little thicket occupied by Bonner.
He stood there a second looking down, unbelieving, into the car. The big knife
sailed through the air, like a flesh-eating fish, and whacked to mid-length into
the snow's forehead.
The Mean Brothers had had their own plans
for the big soldier, but they had been too slow. A split second after the blade
entered the snowman's brow, a Mean swung his shovel and hit the knife handle,
driving the blade deep into the man's brain,
like a spike.
The Mean shrugged and smiled his idiotic
crooked smile.
The snowmen continued to comb the area.
They stumbled and cursed and shouted out to one another. Bonner could tell, from
the tenor of their voices that they were uneasy, unhappy at being caught in the
gloom of the forest. The snowmen were open-country fighters. The enclosed,
dripping forest spooked them. All they wanted to do was find Bonner, kill him,
and get back on the open road.
"Hey," shouted one suddenly,
"where'd Georgie go?"
"He's around here someplace."
"Georgie! Hey, Georgie!"
Bonner assumed that it was Georgie who lay
sprawled next to the car with a smashed face and a
blade in his head. His blood was oozing out
onto the bracken.
"Where'd he go?"
"He was over here...." The
crashing in the underbrush was moving closer. Bonner readied himself again. The
noise increased in volume. There were more coming his way; this time perhaps
three. The main snowman force was spread across the whole area. Bonner wondered
where Starling was.
The approaching squadsmen caught sight of
Georgie's legs, stretched out in the underbrush.
"Hey," said one. It was his
epitaph. As one, Bonner and the Mean Brothers reared up. Bonner's blades flew.
Both silver darts cut into the chest of one of the snowmen, slicing into his
heart, severing the hard working organ into two pieces. It pumped
once or twice more, then failed.
The Mean Brothers handled the other two. The
ax swung and chunked into the meaty rib cage of the snowman. The Mean Brother
felt the tightly packed bones split and splinter through the shaft of the ax.
The shovel cracked into the back of the head of the remaining snowman. The man's
brown hair was suddenly a caved-in mass of gray matter and brain fluid. The
terrible thud of ax and shovel on human bone seemed to Bonner to fill the
forest. How could the
others not have heard it?
As he went down, the snowman who had been on
the receiving end of the hideous wound delivered by the Mean Brother's ax pulled
the trigger of his rifle. It was a purely reflexive gesture, bom of a final,
tiny, misguided spark of life. A single bullet tore through the underbrush and
buried itself in the heavy
carpet of snow and pine needles.
Bonner didn't wait to discover the
consequences of that single aimless shot. He sparked the big engine into life,
its throaty roar echoing through the forest. He slammed the machine into gear
and gunned the engine, praying as he did that the car hadn't rested too long on
the soft forest floor. He couldn't get stuck now. Fortunately the faithful iron
warhorse did not disappoint him, and with the first blast of gas into its eight
huge cylinders, it leaped from its leafy lair.
The
sudden movement and the screaming roar struck the dumbfounded snowmen as if
the car was not steel and rubber but some sort of forest monster, a sleeping
creature awakened by their probings. It seemed to be emerging to defend its
turf.
Bonner whipped the elegant shotgun from its
holster and blasted two snowmen who stood nearby, rooted to the spot by the
sudden noise. Their mouths were wide open. The beautiful old Purdy spoke with
authority, peppering their surprised faces with shot. Bonner caught a quick
flash of red as their faces opened down to the unnatural white of their
jawbones. Teeth flew like confetti.
His engine screamed in protest as Bonner
took it up to speed on the soft, uneven ground. He changed gear and
yanked at the wheel, turning the car in a tight circle. He silently prayed that
there were no rocks buried under the snow that would tear out the undercarriage
of the valiant vehicle.
He was making for the road. The snowmen were
scattered, and since Bonner's sudden, deadly reappearance, they were running
hither and thither like ants around a broken nest. But Bonner knew they would
regroup soon enough. He wanted to get back onto the road and bomb off into the
forest as fast as he could. The car lunged through the underbrush, rocking like
a boat in the clutches of a terrible storm. The Mean Brothers hung on to the
rollbar and looked around them with interest. The limited emotion they always
displayed seemed to suggest that they were enjoying themselves immensely.
The road loomed up ahead. Parked neatly in a
row on the snowy avenue were a dozen or so motorcycles. Bonner pointed the prow
of his monster car directly at the orderly rank of bikes. He slammed into the
first one and the rest fell like dominoes. The car lunged up onto the tangled
heap of bikes, crushing frames and engines, puncturing gas tanks, and snapping
delicate spokes under its weight. The car lurched to the top of the
metal mountain, rocked there for a moment, then Bonner threw his machine into
reverse, backed off, and turned onto the road. A piece of a motorcycle snagged
on the underside of his car and it was a hundred yards later that it snapped
off.
Bonner shot up to speed while bullets
snapped through the snow-heavy branches. A snowman stepped out onto the road and
stood directly in the path of the onrushing car. Bonner slipped down in his
seat, stamped on the accelerator, and smashed into the fool. The force of the
blow lifted the snowman off his feet and threw him over the car. He slapped down
onto the road behind the fast-disappearing car.
A motorcycle roared up next to Bonner. The
Purdy Special jumped into the Outrider's hands. He swung I it over the side and
looked down its short barrel directly into Starling's horrified face. Bonner
low-ered the gun. Starling shouted something, lost in the scream of the engines.
Bonner could imagine what he
was saying. . . .
Behind them, the snowmen were getting
smaller
and smaller.
They drove all day and by the coming of
night they were still in the forest. They found a campsite that had a few
crumbling brick fireplaces dotted about. They had been placed there many years
before and were little monuments to a time when Mr. USA wanted to get away from
it all and rough it in the woods. Bonner set the Mean Brothers the task of
finding some firewood.
A tattered bathhouse stood in the middle of
the clearing. It was a two-room affair, one side marked "men" the
other "women." Bonner smiled at the delicacy of the old days.
It was musty inside; the rows of chrome
shower heads had long since tarnished themselves into rusty dust. The ceramic
sinks and toilets were dry and dusty. A fragment of mirror still hung on the
wall. Bonner leaned forward and examined himself. Deep hollows, as purple as
bruises, showed under his eyes. His skin was sallow and drawn, a night of hard
riding and a day of hard fighting showing plain on his hard face. He ran a
callused hand through his hair and onto his forehead, as if to erase the
fatigue.
Bonner examined the faded writing on the
walls, There were crude sketches of naked men and women, artlessly executed.
None of the writing made any sense to him: "Disco sux," "Bobby
was here 12-19-97," "Amy and Bill 4ever," "Steelers!,"
"sex and drugs and rock and roll". ... It seemed to have been a sort
of tradition back then, writing on bathroom walls.
Bonner emerged from the room and into the
fresh, dark night. "I don't think we want to stay in there
tonight," he said.
Starling stood by the fire. "We ain't
gonna get the
chance to make up our minds."
With that, a man with a rusty old rifle
stepped out from behind Starling. Before Bonner could react he felt the
authoritative press of a gun muzzle in his back. The man with the gun on
Starling wore a ratty-looking suit of fur pieces and what appeared to be
deerskin leggings. Neither man was wearing white so they weren't snowmen.
"Who are they?" asked Starling.
"Beats me," said Bonner. The gun in his back nudged him to silence.
Bonner glanced around him and could sense that there were more figures moving
around in the dark just out of the circle thrown by the fire. Had there only
been two of them Bonner would have considered trying something, but without any
idea of the numbers he was dealing with he decided to wait for a better chance
to strike for freedom.
As it happened, he didn't need one. From the
dark nearby came a deep and very amused laugh.
"Bon, mes enfants,"
commanded the voice. "These men are my
friends." The guards relaxed and stepped away from their captives. Bonner
relaxed and spoke. "Hey, Jean Baptiste, we're still friends, right?"
"You know these guys," asked Starling incredulously. Figures were
crowding into the light, all as peculiarly dressed as the first two. They looked
like cavemen with guns.
A heavily bearded man pushed his way through
the crowd. He was covered from head to foot in bearskin. "Ah," he
said, "Monsieur Bonner." He seized Bonner's hand and pumped it up and
down warmly. "Bonner," he said, his voice heavy with an accent that
Starling didn't recognize. "Forgive me. My men did not know you."
"No harm."
Jean Baptiste rapped out some orders to the
men that had moved in from the darkness. Starling looked quizzically at Bonner.
"What did he say?"
"Jean Baptiste, I'd like you to meet a
friend of mine. Starling, this is Jean Baptiste, but mostly down here people
call him J.B."
The two men shook hands. "How do,"
said Starling.
"J.B. is the head of this band of
riders; they call themselves Les Habitants—"
"The who?"
"They're from way up north, places that
make the Snowstates look good. They don't speak the same language as us: French
Canadians, they're from the country that used to take up the top half of the
continent."
"I heard about people from up north, but I never seen
any."
"What are you doing down here J.B.?"
The northman shrugged his burly shoulders.
"It is horrible up there now. There is no food, no gas, no powder. We were
raided by Stormers and they took the supplies we collected for the winter."
He spat. "Now we look for the Stormers and the food. We are not like the
people you have down here in Chicago. We have the families and we care for
them." "How many men do you have down here?" "Including me,
eighteen. Without me, about ten." J.B. roared with laughter at his own
joke. "I am a
terrible fighter."
"Terrible?" said Starling.
"He means good," translated Bonner. Starling was aware of the
inquisitive looks of the Habitants. They were staring at his and Bonner's
equipment; he could feel their eyes on his Steyr and his Dan Wesson on his hip.
"Bonner, you don't suppose these guys ... 1 mean, I know they're
friends of yours and all."
J.B. pulled himself up to full height.
"Les Habitants do not take the things which are not theirs to take already.
Unless it is the things of the Stormers,
then we take."
One of Les Habs spoke quickly and volubly.
He
was a tiny man with long drooping mustaches
and a knife so long it seemed to stretch from his belt to his knees. At the end
of his unintelligible speech he held
his gun out in front of him.
J.B. laughed. "Louis says that his gun
is as good as yours and that with his gun he has killed more Stormers than you
have. He says that you will see his skill when we run into Stormers the
next time."
"Lemme see that thing," said
Starling, taking the gun from the little man. It seemed to weigh fifty pounds.
Starling held it close to the fire and examined it carefully. It was the crudest
firearm he had ever seen. A heavy length of pipe—the barrel must have been an
inch and half wide—had been fitted into a crudely carved stock. The thing
appeared to be muzzle-loaded but at the breech a hole had been cut out of the
barrel. There was no trigger. "How the hell does he fire the thing?"
Louis understood the question instinctively and pulled a heavy hammer from his
belt. J.B. explained:
"He takes the hammer and hits that
little hole at the end of the barrel and sets off the charge." "And what
does it fire?"
"Anything he can find," said J.B.
with a shrug. "Make sure he stays away from me if we get into a
firelight."
"Many of my men have the same such as
these." "Sheesh." said Starling.
"So, Bonner, you and your friend are
out late for men who live in the sun all the time. I thought you 'would be back
in the Chicago all nice and warm and safe."
"We're looking for supplies too, and
for Stormers." J.B.'s grimy face lit up. "So my friend Bonner is also
looking for the same thing as Les Habitants. But this is perfect and magnificent
for you and for us also." He turned to his men and started telling them of
the marvelous capacity that Bonner had for killing Stormers. They looked
impressed. "What do you say Star?" asked Bonner. "You want to
ride with the Habs for a piece." Starling stage-whispered: "They fight
with those things."
"They're
good, Starling."
"I'll take your word for it. I guess we
could go along for a piece of road. . . ."He sounded uncertain.
"Excellent," yelled J.B. "Now
we must have some food. Louis with his gun he shot a great bear. It is at the
camp we have. It is close by here, down
way the road."
"Bear," said Starling.
"Oh," said Bonner, "that reminds me. I must tell
you about the Mean Brothers. ..."
"The qui"
Hearing their names, the Mean Brothers
wandered in from the darkness where they were watching the parley between Bonner
and Les Habitants. The northerners would never know how close they had come to
tasting the steel of the Mean Brothers' terrible weapons.
J.B.'s eye's widened when the giants walked
up.
"Ah," he said, "the Mean
Brothers." "That's what we call 'em," said Starling.