Chapter 12

With dawn approaching the witch-finder’s caravan of faux-slavers continued westward down what was once MacArthur Road and encountered no obstruction from the guards at the checkpoint at Hwy 15. With just grunts and pointed fingers the trio of armed horde soldiers directed the convoy north. Here the old pre-disaster highway had been nearly entirely cleared of impacted ash, and the wheels of the wagons could make better time than had been possible earlier. With every additional step farther to the north the Witch-finder could smell the taint of evil in the area growing nearer. From her perch on the first wagon seat, even Brock’a, the wounded dire-badger, could tell that they were approaching their destination. They soon reached the floodplains of the Arkansas River, swollen with nearly black water, the taint of evil becoming ever closer as they continued north. The ruins of the city began to surround them on all sides, mostly old residential housing. Still half covered in ash and most without roofs or buried nearly entirely. Upon examination many of these house carcasses bore signs of recent entry and paint marks, showing that scavenger work parties had already searched these places. The sight of some of these forager groups became more common as the caravan headed north. And with them, clusters of guards and even armed soldiers became a more common sight. All of them left the party of apparent slavers well-alone but the increase of horde guard posts and patrols here made the Witch-finder increasingly uneasy.

They soon crossed I-135, the well-known interstate that led straight north to the imperiled city of Ft. Salina, and from here the road turned more northwest. Two hours later their surroundings began to change to an older, more commercial and industrial neighborhood, perhaps the start of the old city. From here the horde patrols were increasingly frequent and some guards even began to show an interest in the slavers.

“Your papers,” the impatient guard demanded. “I said to hand them over to me!” It was the second time that he’d asked and at first I just tried to placate him by waving the scanty paperwork at him in the most bored manner that I could simulate. Full of his own self-importance that day, the sergeant in charge of the Lincoln Street security post was looking for some sort of trouble ... or maybe just an even bigger payoff. I’d already given him what I’d thought was a suitably acceptable bribe and he’d pocketed it quickly enough, but still he was playing the hard-ass!

For leaving and entering the city, the original party of slavers that we had ambushed had been given a letter of passage complete with some sort of official seal that even most illiterate guards could understand. The only problem was that this letter included a written physical description of the head slaver, Brandon, which did not bear much resemblance to me.

Besides the head sergeant, there were three other guards at this checkpoint. The road north was blocked with a five-foot high wall of black ash slabs, except for the gate. One other guard by the partially opened gate was holding a military style rifle; the other two younger looking sentries didn’t have any weapons showing.

I tossed my hands up in seeming exasperation and produced again the requested travel documents from the box from under the front wagon seat.

“Grampy, get ready to shoot that second guard by the gate with your crossbow if he even twitches,” I whispered. “I’m pretty sure there’s going to be unavoidable trouble.” Grampy was a dead shot with his small hunting crossbow, which he had well-hidden down by his feet. He wasn’t going to miss.

There was trouble ... that damned gate sergeant could read quite well and was intently looking me over, comparing me to the dead slaver’s description. Nope ... not a good match at all!

“I guess now is a good time to mention that our boss, big dumb Brandon got himself gut-shot by some damned sod-buster up at some piece of shit village called Hutton’s Commons. He’s laid out half-dead already in the back of the last wagon, go check on him if you want. Wound is turning pretty bad though, you might not like the smell.” I shrugged and hoped that the sergeant would find other things to occupy his time, like yet another small bag of old loose coins that I pressed quietly into his hand.

If any sort of luck had been on my side, that should have been the end of it. Bribes taken, the over-zealous sergeant should have now just waved us on through, but no. The smart bastard just smirked and pocketed my second attempt at a bribe and then marched down to the end of our wagon caravan, pistol out in hand, eager and ready to go looking for trouble. Fuck!

“Elijah!” I shouted out clearly but seemingly casually, “guy’s coming back to check on that dumb fuck Brandon. See if you can get him conscious enough to talk sense?” It wasn’t much of a warning, but it was the best I could offer without making any of the guards even more suspicious. None of the refugees from Hutton’s Commons were of much use in a fight, the reason exactly why the entire town was taken by the slavers without much, if any, shooting. They had all been farmers, not hunters. There being fuck-all to actually hunt in our area around our old village. Elijah, though, was the best out of a rather poor lot, so I had appointed him rear guard. Back home, he was skilled at trapping Dire-Rats in baited woven cages, cutting their throats with a single, swift, well-practiced knife stroke before they in turn could tear out his. Dire-Rats could grow to over three feet in length and had a head about the size of a man’s, complete with large razor sharp teeth.

I just hoped that Elijah would remember his orders and take his time to strike just as the sergeant was most vulnerable, climbing into the back of the wagon. We did have several sick, weary and wounded villagers back there with him, so at first or even second glance the over-ambitious guard would see just what he’d expect to see. The next closest guard was starting to level his rifle towards me.

“Count to five, slowly, and then take him,” I whispered to Grampy, then walking up to the gate to wave my mostly useless letter of passage before the two guards remaining just inside the gate. I needed to see if they had side arms or any other ranged weapons close at hand. These two didn’t appear to have any firearms on them, but I saw a spear and a couple of crossbows lying up against the side of the wall, close but a bit out of reach at this moment.

“Look at this,” I jabbered in an annoyed manner and tone of voice, waving the document around, “you’ve got to open the gate and let us through!” By then I’d counted to about six and then I heard the twang of Grampy’s crossbow followed by a loud grunt and the sound of a man falling hard to the ground. That was my cue to take care of the remaining two. I wished I owned a silencer, but they were largely ineffectual when used with revolvers anyway, and useless on my powerful Blackhawk Special. I should have thought to have bought one for my 1911 Nighthawk ... an oversight that I now very much regretted! Instead, I was going to have to improvise with magic and try a technique that I had only recently considered, but had not even tested. The timing was far from ideal. I really needed to kill these two remaining guards quietly. If Jodi had been present, I could have used our shared magic to kill them both neatly with some quick fancy knife work, but without her knack flowing in me, I was pretty certain that I’d botch the job.

No ... I’d need to improvise, and if this didn’t work out then we’d have a lot of company coming down on our heads soon!

The idea itself was simple; I knew the fundamentals for bending light waves around me so that I could be functionally invisible. What about the idea of bending the sound waves around me then also? Would it work?

From my duster jacket holster I drew out the Ithaca short-barreled shotgun and tried to imagine the layers of air around me and the two guards thickening, firming the tight bubble of compressed air all around us as I gently pulled both triggers, firing together the two sets of shotgun rounds from the barrels. Inside the air bubble the blast seemed compacted, several times louder than the dual-discharge ought to have been, but could it be heard outside my air bubble? That I didn’t know yet.

The widespread shotgun blast had immediately killed the nearest guard, but the second guard fell only wounded, and reluctantly I had to bend over his young quaking body and finish the job with my belt combat knife.

Pulling the gate wide open now to admit the caravan, I started to call out to Grampy to ask him how loud the shotgun blasts had been, when a very loud rifle shot sounded out. It was Nancy, firing off her hunting rifle from just outside the tent flap of the first wagon, the gun barrel just a foot or so away from Grampy’s head. Well outside of the range of my air wall and way too damned loud!

What the hell had she just shot at? And more importantly, how much bloody noise had that rifle shot just made? Lately we had heard some sounds of small explosions, probably as salvage work crews blasted their way into old lava-crusted buildings, but no gun shots had been heard anywhere near us. I could tell in an instant that this was going to be bad.

“More guards ahead of us, two streets down and on top of that building on the right. There was a shooter leveling his gun down on us, probably you!” She called out. She was right, and there was another shooter now just standing up now to aim at us from the roof of the building on the left side of the street opposite his dead partner. I could sense him fairly clearly as I holstered the Ithaca, and moved to pull my Marlin Lincoln rifle from my back shoulder holster, but before I could aim, Nancy’s second shot rang out. A moment later that life-sign had faded too, she had killed them both!

“Nice shooting,” Grampy agreed, with a note of admiration. I had to agree. Even with a scope, which her .308 hunting rifle had, a pair of perfect shots like those directly into center mass, the chest of each lurking sniper, was very remarkable. They were shots that probably only I could have made with such ease ... but how had Nancy suddenly gained my witch-talent for accuracy?

The three young former sorceresses had mingled their talents with me and each other, but I had not had any sort of sexual contact with my former fiancé. She had dozed last night with us, lying down next to me and my rescued charges last night. Could that brief connection have been enough or did Nancy have some other sort of magical link or connection to me? Or perhaps it was something that the rogue Witch-finder had imprinted on her before I’d killed him?

Interesting, but a problem for another time.

I didn’t need Tania’s sense of precognition to know that trouble was heading in our direction, fast!

With the security gates now open, we now entered into an older original part of the city, from when Witchita was once just plain Wichita. Here most of the streets had been completely cleared of the usual several feet of compacted lava ash, and many of the former structures had been cleared, cleaned and repurposed as well. Encountering people, both soldiers and laborers, was going to be increasingly common and it was no longer safe for us to stay on this main northern road, even though I could sense the evil we had been searching for was not that far ahead of us.

I sent a pair of the healthier Hutton’s Commons young men up into each of the two buildings that had housed the snipers. A few months ago they had been my village mates, guys who had been smirked and laughing openly about how Nancy had cuckolded me with the rogue Witch-finder. Now, the tables had been entirely turned and they were each in equal amounts agog with wonder at my new abilities and terrified that if they defied me in even the smallest degree that each would be certain to face my magical wrath, and certain destruction. I found it amusing ... and I wasn’t going to entirely placate their apprehensions. We were a very long way from safety and survive I was going to need everyone’s complete and utter obedience.

I’d given each of the lads a revolver in case any other enemies were still in either building, but thankfully no shots rang out. The side road here was cleared and wide enough for our wagons, and I directed our drivers to turn east, going right down this side street for a few blocks. My pair of scavengers returned about five minutes later, each now loaded down with a good quality hunting rifle, a semi-automatic sidearm, and matching belt packs of ammunition for each set of weapons. Now that these two young men were decently armed, I had them join the other armed six villagers we’d assigned to be our walking guard and directed them to be vigilant and to watch the rooftops for us. The two spare revolvers and the captured guns from the checkpoint guards were given to the a few of the healthiest villagers, riding in each of the two rear wagons. We were still quite under-prepared for any significant shootout, but it was the best we could do.

The small checkpoint at Grover Street, the already nervous guards apparently panicked by the prior gunshots, began to fire at us at long range without attempting to determine who or what we were. The incoming fire was wild and quite ineffectual, coming from over a block away. Nodding to Nancy, I let her snipe the guard on our right side, and I took out his flustered companion on the left. I tried to use the air bubble around us, and our small group of armed villagers walking behind us with the first wagon. Afterwards, the driver of the second wagon agreed that the sounds of our shooting were quite muffled and would be unlikely to be heard from more than a block away, at most.

That, of course, wouldn’t cover the four or five gunshots that the panicked street guards had fired off. More trouble would still be heading our way. We paused only for a minute at that checkpoint only to hastily hide the two bodies in a nearby building that wasn’t being currently used and we tried to move fast. This gave us two rifles and some ammo for two more villagers, but neither of them had much experience with guns. Still the extra sense of security of being at least armed gave their weaker companions in the wagons a bit more hope for the future.

Turning left, now heading once again north from this fairly large side street, we tried to act casual to the increasing number of onlookers who peered at our passage out of various windows and small groups of bystanders lurking at most of the street corners that we passed. We entered a residential area consisting of fairly nice, clean and restored multistory houses. I wouldn’t say that all of the renovation work had been expertly done, but most of the streets here were cleared up to the doorways and most of the roofs had been repaired enough to make the buildings habitable. It made me wonder just how many civilians lived here under the mastery of the horde and its evil priestesses?

No one attempted to stop us. Probably no one here had any guns, even if they were in the least suspicious of our passing.

At the major crossing of another former great roadway, a great cement overpass still painted as highway 600, we hit the largest security guard post that we’d seen yet. The north roadway under the overpass was blocked by two guard towers and a sturdy welded, metal fence made from scrapped automobiles. We could see a half-squad of six soldiers outside the gate, two pairs of guards on each the towers, and indications of another dozen or more on the other side. A shootout here would be extremely foolish, and would probably alert every patrol inside the inner city that we were here.

We were going to have to talk our way in. I loudly shouted out for my caravan guards to point their weapon downwards and let out a rousing cheer that the end of our long journey seemed done. Home at last! Or so we tried very hard to portray ourselves.

The outside patrol was alert. They’d heard distant gunshots from the direction we’d come from, but their head corporal just looked casually at the sealed document I waved at him and waved us through to the main gate.

“Something going on down that way?” The rather grizzled corporal asked, “We heard a few gunshots about twenty minutes ago.”

“Yeah, we were at the checkpoint down there when it happened. Some big ass black hounds had been stalking us since last night. We’d winged one of them this morning, but that really only just pissed it off and its two buddies. The guards saw them too and started shooting at them. Not sure if that was a good idea or not...”

“Definitely a ‘Not’,” he laughed, knocking on the gate to signal them to admit us. “They don’t come this close to the great Temple of Life, but yeah I heard that they’re a few wild packs of them running around all over the place, especially to the south, if you came from that way. No ... bullets just usually make them angry. I’d better tell the captain that he’s going to need to check that guard post and other nearby ones as well. They’re probably hound-chow ... not a good way to go!”