Channel 19

Road Warriors.

The instant that word cut through my mind, a cold current ran the length of my spine. I snatched up the radio without a second's hesitation. The easy banter was over.

What the pack behind us wanted didn't matter. I gave the order.

Nobody argued. They moved as if they'd drilled it a hundred times. Gunner's pickup, which had been running point, changed lanes and eased off the throttle, sliding in ahead of me, while Mike's van up front poured on the speed and took the head of the column.

I checked the rearview again. They were closing the gap—slowly, but steadily. This was no coincidence. It was a pursuit with a purpose.

I keyed the radio.

There wasn't a tremor in Gunner's voice. I shifted my eyes to the CCTV monitor. The screen was filling with their grotesque vehicles, shimmering in the heat haze, drawing closer by the second.

The wide-open Nevada highway had become a giant chessboard, and our lives were the pieces on it.

The Road Warrior pack was relentless, like hyenas that had caught a scent. Before I knew it, their lead vehicle had closed to a hundred yards off my trailer's tail.

I could feel a real fight coming. I looked down at Wolf, crouched on the passenger-side floor. He let out a low whine—nnnnh—and locked eyes with me, his face tight with the kind of unease that meant he'd already smelled the danger.

"Wolf! Sleeper."

It was a command we'd drilled for days, a modified version of the usual House order, meant to put him in the safe sleeper berth behind the driver's seat if things went bad. But Wolf could feel the tension coming off me. He fidgeted in place, whining and whimpering, and didn't move.

I kept one hand on the wheel and put some iron into my voice.

"Wolf. Sleeper."

A whine, then a short, reluctant woof. The hard edge in the command finally got through. He glanced back at me once, as if he hated to go, then gave a brief cry and disappeared into the space under the sleeper bunk.

"Good boy, Wolf."

I praised him and brought my eyes back to the road.

Through the rear camera I studied them piece by piece. Skulls and flame motifs were slapped across the bodywork in crude paint, and some of the bumpers had jagged iron welded on like teeth. They drove as if traffic laws and lane markings were a rumor—owning the whole width of the highway with a violence that left no room for doubt. Even if they weren't Road Warriors, they were an outlaw gang. That much was certain.

Then a Dodge Ram pickup, done up in loud, ugly chrome and paint, peeled out of their column and began easing up on my left.

Here they come.

I checked my weapons—calm, but fast. The VP9 in the holster. The TAC-14 under the driver's seat. The MAC-10. The trap triggers hidden under the dash. Everything was where it belonged.

The pickup drew even with my window. The passenger glass rolled down, slow and deliberate. A bald man with a spiderweb tattooed across his skull leaned into the wind and shouted at me, his face twisted into something ugly.

I could read his mouth as clearly as if he'd been sitting in my cab.

When I gave him nothing, his face crumpled. He reached inside the cab, came up with an AK-pattern rifle, and swung it toward me in a flat, unmistakable threat.

I didn't hesitate.

My left hand found the wire with the red ring under the driver's seat and yanked it hard.

Seven 12-gauge shells hidden under the running boards behind the front wheels detonated as one. A lethal mix of slugs and buckshot tore straight into the passenger side of the pickup running alongside me.

A shriek of tearing metal. The door peeled off like paper and dragged along the asphalt, throwing a spray of sparks. The man who had been pointing a rifle at me a second earlier never even got a scream out. His arm was caught in the blown-out window, and he hung there like a rag on a clothesline, flopping against the ruined door.

The pickup lost all control, spun on the highway like a top, and rolled. It clipped one of the gang vehicles coming up behind it and was shoved out of my view, tumbling toward the rear.

The road became a slaughterhouse of engine roar, screaming, and the sound of metal being ripped apart.

The Road Warriors' chase stuttered—but the confusion didn't last. They left their man in the road and kept coming.

This time there were two of them.

I was running the right-hand edge of the pavement, so they came at the driver's side again. For a moment I considered simply shoving them off with the mass of the truck, then shook the thought away. That would push me into the center lane, and the rest of them would pour into the gap on my right and surround me. The trailer made sudden steering a gamble besides—one hard input and I could lose the whole rig. And there was no world in which I could drive and fight enemies coming from two directions at once.

They know now. That shotgun trap was a one-shot deal.

I set up the next move.

Of the two, the lead vehicle—a beat-up sedan—surged forward like it had lost its mind and came up hard on my driver's side. The window dropped. A submachine gun opened up.

A ragged, hammering burst from a moving car. The shooter's aim was garbage, but two rounds out of the spray still found me, punching into the driver's door with a pair of dull, heavy thunks.

The ballistic plate I'd laminated inside the door took both of them. No damage. But in that instant, every calculation in my head burned down to rage.

"You sons of bitches… you dare put holes in my truck?"

I kept my right hand on the wheel, reached under the seat with my left, and came up with the MAC-10 I'd stashed there. No pause. I ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠shoved the muzzle out the window and squeezed.

The height of the cab let ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠me put the sights on the sedan's roof.

That simple, stupid chunk of steel dumped my anger the only way it knew how, emptying thirty rounds into the next lane in a single roaring breath. Most of them hammered the roof. A few, by luck or by spite, poured into the crown of the man who'd been sticking his muzzle out so clumsily.

I watched the passenger's head snap back, then took my finger off the trigger. The driver had lost it too. The sedan bled speed, weaved, and fell away toward the rear of their column.

I glanced at the left-side mirror—and what I saw there I almost didn't believe.

A man from the pickup behind the sedan had jumped. He was standing on the massive fuel tank behind my cab, clinging to my truck like a ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠leech.

The angle was too ugly to shoot, and more to the point, there was a fuel tank full of diesel right under his feet.

Last resort.

I rolled the driver's window up without a second thought. Sure enough, he had a pistol on his hip and a sawed-off shotgun—stock cut down to nothing—in his hands, picking his way toward my door, balancing like a man on a ledge.

This one was smarter than the idiots before him. He didn't stick his head toward the glass. He stayed low and put the shotgun's muzzle on the door lock.

Trying to blow the door off?

My left hand found the wire with the blue ring under the dash and yanked it.

Three rock-salt loads hidden under the side mirror detonated as one. Add the blast to a truck doing sixty miles an hour, and those salt grains became thousands of tiny fragments that hit him square in the face and upper body.

The scream tore itself apart in the wind. He lost his footing and was flung off the road. Less than a second later I felt the trailer’s rear duals go thump through the seat.

I didn't need to look to know what had happened.

"That cracked his skull."

I swapped magazines on the MAC-10 and dumped a burst at the pickup still hanging on behind us. It was a lousy angle for hits, but watching his buddy's head come apart did the work for me. The truck bled out of my mirrors and was gone.

Three vehicles in a row. The Road Warrior column came apart all at once.

But on the CCTV, one more truck that had somehow clawed through the wreckage was glued to the back of my trailer, refusing to let go. They were hugging the rear doors, and it looked like they meant to climb onto the roof.

I saw a head poke out the passenger window, checking the distance.

That was when I reached under the dash, flipped open the red cover on the switch box Frank had installed at Cyrus's Farm, and hit the switch tied to the trailer’s rear without a flicker of doubt.

Ten shotgun rounds mounted across the trailer’s rear face fired through their loading tubes at once, like a battleship cutting loose a broadside. Five slugs and five loads of buckshot hit the pickup's windshield square.

In a single heartbeat the glass went crimson, as if someone had dumped a whole can of red paint over it. The truck went out of control on the spot, listed hard, rolled, and crashed straight into the Road Warrior vehicles coming up behind it.

That was the last of them.

The chase behind me died completely. I watched their column vanish from the cameras, then picked up the radio.

His joke unclenched every pair of shoulders on the net. That was the exact moment it came.

Static tore across CB Channel 19, and with it a transmission that did not belong to us. The voice on the other end sounded like the man who ran the Road Warriors, and it was thick with rage.

His anger still wasn't spent. The channel filled with noise, a raw, grinding racket, and then he came back on.