and bang the man’s head repeatedly against the cage until blood poured from his slack mouth and his eyes rolled back into death.
“Son of a bitch!” Henry yelled, and clawed for a wooden whistle tucked into his belt. But before the slaver could sound the alarm, another gob of dung hit the whistle, and it tumbled out of sight.
“Mutie fuckers!” Henry snarled, reaching for his machete.
Moving fast, Ryan lashed out with his stolen whip, slicing open the slaver’s forehead. Blinded by the flow of blood from the minor wound, the driver flailed about with the machete, hitting nothing. Ryan rushed to the front of the cage and shoved his arm through to lash the whip out sideways. The knotted length coiled around the slaver’s throat, and Ryan yanked back with all of his strength. There was an audible snap of bone as Henry flew out of the seat to crash into the bars. Gurgling horribly, the man could only feebly twitch as Krysty held him hard by the hair, and Mildred grabbed the machete to chop down twice and end his misery.
Freeing the whip, Ryan tried to get the reins and failed, the leather straps having fallen over the side of the wag in the tussle. Knowing that time was short, the companions dragged both of the corpses closer and looted them of anything that could be used as a weapon: both machetes, the other whip, a massive flintlock blaster with a barrel large enough to serve as a gren launcher, a canvas pouch filled with black powder, shot and cloth wadding. Plus a big iron key.
Using the long handle of a whip to snatch the reins, J.B. shook them gently and whispered soft words to the team of horses, making them maintain an even speed. If this wag fell behind, or the companions tried to make a break, they would be spotted instantly, and the other slavers would slaughter them with those longblasters. Meanwhile, hauling the dead men up against the cage, Krysty and Jak held them in place to make it look as if they were still alive. The trick wouldn’t fool anybody paying close attention, but all they needed was a few minutes. Speed was their best chance at survival now. Speed, and some triple-savage chilling.
Still bleeding, Doc passed the flintlock and ammo pouch to Mildred, and she started to quickly reload. The physician longed to help the wounded man, but this wasn’t the time or the place.
Going to the middle of the cage, Ryan went down on his hands and knees. As the strongest person there, he would be the foundation. Climbing barefoot on top of him, Doc reached up high and just barely managed to ease a hand around the bars to start fiddling with the key in the lock.
“John Barrymore, it will not fit!” Doc whispered, his legs trembling from the effort of standing. His face was pale and sweaty, the blood still flowing freely from the deep laceration across his torso.
“Probably just rusty!” J.B. whispered back tersely, furious over not being able to do the job himself. “Lube it up!”
“With what?”
“Piss, blood, spit—anything ya got!”
Having no other source of lubrication, Doc spit on the key and tried again, with an equal lack of success. Suddenly, raised voices came from the other wags, and a shot rang out, the wood near his fumbling hand sprouting jagged splinters. Jerking back in surprise, Doc cursed as the key went flying to clatter off the bars and land in the hay below.
“Here they come!” Krysty shouted, releasing the corpse.
“Yee-haw!” J.B. bellowed, shaking the reins hard, and the horses obediently took off to a full gallop. But even pressing himself against the bars, the man could just barely make out the grassland before the animals and had to rely upon the innate good sense of the horses.
Letting go of his own corpse, Jak dived for the key just as the racing buckboard jounced through a dried gully, and the key jumped into the pile of hay.
“Krysty, Mildred, cover fire!” Ryan shouted, rocking to the wild motions of the rattling transport.
Going to the side of the cage, Krysty grabbed a bar tight and leaned far to the left. Resting the long barrel of the flintlock handblaster on the stable platform of the other woman’s arm, Mildred clicked back the hammer, gauging for wind and droppage.
Clawing the green hay aside, Jak revealed the old straw and the key sticking out of a small pile of drek. Without hesitation, the albino teen grabbed the key and spit on it twice before wiping it clean and passing it up to Doc.
Holding her breath, Mildred braced for the recoil and gently squeezed the trigger. The hammer moved downward, scraping the flint along a worn piece of steel throwing off bright sparks that ignited the loose powder in the flashpan. There was a brief hiss, then the primitive blaster roared so loud that Mildred thought it had exploded in her hands. Then the physician saw with cold satisfaction the driver of the second wag fly off the buckboard to be trampled under the pounding hooves of the horses pulling the third wag.
“Hell of a shot,” Krysty grunted, shaking her hair to ease the sting from the fiery discharge of the weapon.
“I was going for the horses,” Mildred growled, already starting the laborious process of reloading the big bore blaster.
Shots rang out from the third wag, several of them smacking into the wooden bars of the cage with remarkable accuracy. Krysty grunted at that. Clearly, somebody over there really knew how to shoot. With no choice, the redheaded woman stepped in front of the frantically busy physician to offer what protection her body could.
Steering around what sort of looked like a pile of boulders, J.B. grimaced to see it had actually just been a stand of cacti. Dark night, he thought, I’m going to get everybody aced unless I get this nuking thing under control!
A flurry of gunshots rang out from the second wag, and Krysty flinched as a miniball scored a hot line across her thigh. Jak was thrown backward into the loose pile of hay, his arm gushing blood.
Trying the key once more, Doc was delighted when the spit proved sufficient lubrication and the lock clicked open easily. But the hatch was incredibly heavy, and try as he might, Doc couldn’t get it to budge an inch.
Shaking the reins for more speed, J.B. could see a couple of longblasters tucked into a gun boot along the side of the buckboard. But trapped inside the cage, those were completely unreachable at the moment, so he simply concentrated on trying to control the horses. Dodging the cacti was easy, as the horses knew better than to run through it. But there was a forest coming up fast, and J.B. would soon have to turn left or right. That would slow the wag, making them an excellent target for the furious slavers. It all depended on whether the slavers wanted to try to recapture them alive or wanted to chill the companions to recover the stolen wag. Either option wasn’t very good. Nearly naked and trapped in a cage was not the way to survive a fight. Especially if you only had a single working blaster.
Rising again, Mildred placed the flintlock on Krysty’s strong arm, the other woman’s animated hair coiling away from the expected pain of the muzzle-blast. Aiming through the roiling dust clouds, Mildred lost sight of her target for a moment, but as the horses charged back into view she instantly fired. The lead horse of the third wag screamed as the soft lead plowed into its neck, crimson squirting out in a high arch. The other horses in the team reared in fear at the terrible smell, almost tearing loose from the wooden yoke beween them. The buckboard wag shook hard from their reaction, and the gunner went off the side to land in the stand of cacti, his high-pitched wails of agony cutting through the rattling wags, clattering wheels, pounding hooves and blasterfire.
Suspiciously fingering the jamb of the hatch, Doc gave a humorless smile when he found a second bolt. Clever bastards! Tearing it aside, Doc then easily swung the hatch open
