The companions jumped from the cargo bed and closed ranks, barring access to the cannie.
“Looks like we got ourselves some entertainment tonight,” one of the male drivers said as he peeked under the wag with his torch.
“You don’t wanna mess with our fun,” his shotgun-ner advised the companions.
The 6x6 driver put in her two cents. “Let’s soak the cannie in gas and light him up,” she said. “We can take bets on how many times he makes it around the circle.”
“Slice him open and feed him his own guts,” was another suggestion.
“Stake him outside the circle,” said a skinny crew-man in his late teens. “Use him as live bait to draw in his kin. We can nail a bunch of the bastards that way.”
Ryan understood the depth of their hatred; he shared every millimeter of it. The crews wanted to exercise their power over this pure evil creature. Not just for vengeance’s sake. In a situation of terrible, unknowable threat, there was nothing like a little mindless brutality to take the edge off one’s fear.
“You better stand aside quick, One-Eye,” the 6x6 driver warned, her hand dropping to her holstered Beretta 92.
“Back off, now!” Sprue shouted, clearing a path for himself by shoving the intervening bodies aside. “Cut this droolie bullshit. That cannie ain’t yours to play with. You all got work to do. Set up the defensive perimeter and get dinner a-cooking. Move it! It’s gonna be another long night.”
The would-be disembowelers drifted away without comment. The fat man didn’t have to touch the butts of his Desert Eagles. None of his crew had the guts to try to take him out. Their continued survival depended on his experience and judgment.
A couple of the men set up an iron tripod in the middle of the circle. While one of them built a roaring fire under it, the other began pouring ingredients for supper into a big metal caldron—water, dried beans, root vegetables, wilted tops and all, and unidentifiable chunks of meat and bones. He then dumped handfuls of seasonings into the pot and stirred them in with a long spoon.
Sprue noticed Ryan’s interest in the fixings. “Don’t worry, it ain’t human,” he joked.
It took both cooks to swing the fully loaded pot onto the tripod over the flames.
The convoy master set out a couple of shabby folding lawn chairs upwind of the fire. “Come over here, Cawdor,” he said. “Have yourself a seat while we wait for dinner to boil. You and me need to parlay.”
“Don’t worry about the flesheater,” J.B. assured Ryan. “We’ll hold the fort here.”
As Ryan walked over to Sprue, the convoy master picked up a blue plastic antifreeze jug and twisted off the cap.
“Go on, sit,” he said. He offered his guest the jug. “Swig?”
Ryan sniffed at the contents and frowned. “About ninety octane, I’d say.” He passed the jug back without sampling it.
“How about a nice cee-gar, then?”
Ryan declined, then said, “Your folks look mighty jumpy.”
Sprue’s crew scurried to complete their assigned tasks. They set out extra weapons and ammo, and manned the perimeter, some crawling to firing positions under the wags.
“They’ve got good reason for that,” Sprue told him. “Over the few last weeks, the situation in these parts has been going downhill fast. Cannies have been hitting us almost every night. Half my crew sleeps during the day so they can fight all night. The other half tries to get some rest at night so they can go all day. We’ve kept the bastards out so far, but I gotta tell you it’s starting to wear us down.”
“Where are they coming from?”
“Hard to say for sure,” Sprue answered. “But they’re following the same trade route we are, between here and Slake City. We’ve caught them riding around in wags, just like norms—except for the goddamned sides of smoked meat packed in the trunks. These ain’t no dum-bass muties, for sure. They fight just like us, with blasters. They learn from their mistakes. That’s something a stickie can’t do. Stickie follows instinct, even if instinct says to jump off a cliff. Cannies use their brains.”
The convoy master took a deep swallow from the blue jug, gasped as the alcohol burned its way down his gullet, then shuddered and said, “I want to hear the whole story about your pet flesheater.”
The whole story was something Sprue wasn’t going to get. Ryan had no intention of mentioning their destination, the Hells Canyon redoubt. The companions kept such things to themselves. It’s what gave them a leg up on the competition.
“Have you ever heard of a queen of the cannies?” Ryan asked the bearded fat man. “Down Louisiana way?”
Sprue paused to scratch his chin. His hand disappeared up to the wrist in the tangle of coarse hair. “Can’t say that I have, but it’s been a couple years since I run wags there,” he admitted. “Louisiana norms are good folk for the most part, but they’re shitpoor. Not enough jack thereabouts to make me wanna go back. Don’t like the humidity or the gators, neither.”
“Incoming!” someone shouted from the perimeter.
Suddenly everyone took up the cry. “Incoming! Incoming!”
Ryan and Sprue vaulted from the lawn chairs as streaks of light arced in from the darkness. Streaks of light that hissed as they fell almost lazily into the convoy’s midst.
Crashing to earth, the Molotov cocktails bloomed orange, their explosions sent flaming fuel flying in all directions. It sprayed over wags and a few unlucky crewmembers. Men and women screamed and batted at themselves as they ran and burned. Their comrades immediately caught them and knocked them down. They smothered the flames with blankets and dirt, then dragged the still-smoking, still-screaming victims to cover beneath the wags.
Gunfire roared around the defensive perimeter. Every blaster was cutting loose at once. The din was tremendous; the chill zone a complete circle.
But the gasoline bombs kept falling, turning the center of the ring into a lake of fire.
“It’s all flat ground out there,” Sprue snarled into Ryan’s ear as they crouched beside a van. “There’s no cover for 150 yards in all directions. The throwers should be chopped down by now.”
He was thinking arm toss; he was thinking short range.
He was thinking wrong.
“Catapults,” Ryan told him. “The cannies are using catapults.”
Chapter Seven
As the Molotovs rained down, Mildred stuck to Junior Tibideau like grim death, her fingers gripping the back of his trouser waistband.
Krysty, Jak, J.B. and Doc had also taken cover under the 6x6. On either side of them convoy crew was firing longblasters through gunports and gaps in the wheel well armor. The clatter in the narrow space was earsplitting.
J.B. crawled up against the steel skirt and had a look for himself. He immediately turned on the nearest of the two riflemen. “What the hell are you shooting at?” he shouted. “You can’t see anything out there!”
The prone crewmembers ignored him. He and his pal continued to rattle off frantic, full-auto bursts from their AKs. They had plenty of ammo to burn. Rows of 30-round mags were laid out beside them.
From their panic, Mildred guessed they hadn’t encountered a cannie attack like this before. Up until now Convoy Master Sprue’s strategy for surviving the night had been to pick a campsite he knew they could defend. The response to attacks had been to hunker down and fight back until dawn. Unless the present situation changed radically, by dawn the circled defenders would all be dead. The only option was to pull up stakes and make a run for it