I wouldn't have cared, if he'd been honest.
I don't care, even now. Don't give a shit what he does to himself.
I just don't like being wrong.
He opened and closed his mouth like a fish.
'Parasite,' I said.
I stood up and walked away.
I went for a walk.
Took a look around. Found Malice and sat down to talk and draw maps in the sand. Scheming. If she was pissed about the Inferno and the others, she didn't show it.
Around midnight I went and fetched Robert Slowbear, and he took me to the Tadodaho. I politely declined anything to eat or drink.
Around four o'clock the camp moved, all at once, across the great concrete bridge spanning the sinuous lake, and by six I was up to my armpits in cold water.
By seven we were ready.
They didn't keep us waiting.
The Meander Reservoir was a twisting strip of spilled water, dividing Youngstown from the green ocean of fields surrounding it. On the Tadodaho's map – an ancient and laminated thing, long-faded and well-worn – the lake was an obvious part of a chain, connected by creeks and ditches, that ran south all the way from Lake Eerie. It wasn't a huge watercourse, I suppose. Maybe five or six miles, tip-to-tip. It wouldn't have taken too long to go around either, if someone'd had to, but what was perfect about it was this:
The I-80, straight from New York, spanned the lake dead across its centre on a single, exposed, vulnerable and oh-so-deliciously-narrow bridge.
If ever there was a better place for an ambush, I would've liked to have seen it.
For the record, somewhere – deep down at the rotten core of my mind – I shouted and cussed at myself, waggling a subconscious finger at this daft display of time wasting.
Not my problem, it kept shouting. Focus on the mission!
And my response, my considered reply to this seemingly watertight argument, went something like this:
Fuck off.
The Clergymen came out of the QuickSmog on the horizon at dawn, and the sound of engines reached us long before we saw them. The air went electric.
There were three other bridges too – two smaller roads, a mile on either side, that forded the water at its narrowest points, and a larger bridge far to the south where the Ohio turnpike turned northwards, with no easy access or turn-ons. We could ignore that, at least.
At about the same time we heard the engines, the Haudenosaunee vanished. All of them, dipping out of sight without so much as a word. It was incredible to watch.
Vehicles bundled off rapidly to the west, to be parked behind knots of trees and dips in the road. Bikes were laid-down on their sides and covered with grass and leaves. Men and women lugging improbably huge weapons squatted on the banks to either side of the central bridge, and simply – disappeared.
One moment there was an army, hundreds strong, arranged silently along the banks of the lake, staring off into the fog. The next: nothing.
Well.
Almost nothing.
The Inferno had been dragged to the centre of the road on our side of the bridge. It was a sad sight, mangled and unsteady, lolling to one side with its cockpit torn open and its sides dented to hell. But the guns still worked, oh yes, and wedged-up on either side of it there stood a pair of Iroquois caravans, untidily blocking the road, holding it upright.
It looked like the world's crappiest blockade.
Rick – Hiawatha, whoever he was – had volunteered to man the Inferno. He'd done so with the chin-jutting defiance of someone too young to know better, trying to prove something; to himself, I guess. If it'd been down to me I would have told him to stop being a macho prick and leave it to someone more capable.
'Good.' The Tadodaho had said. 'Good.'
The youngster opened-fire right on time.
Down in the shade cast by the bridge, covered in a loose mesh of twigs and brambles, I had a perfect view. Malice grinned openly to my left, and even Nike – sprawled in a mess of splints and crutches behind, with Moto mothering him wordlessly – chuckled to himself. Could've just been the painkillers, I suppose.
The bikes came first.
And went down like dominoes.
Outriders; scouting ahead of a far larger convoy that could barely be seen amidst the far fringes of the QuickSmog; Clergy corsairs with white helmets and dark robes, some on military bikes with sidecars containing Uzi-waving idiots, others sprinting ahead on powerbikes re-sprayed grey and white.
Rick exploded them one by one.
The shape of the road funnelled them naturally, drawing them together, bunching them like skittles. As they ripped onto the far span it was to be greeted by a wave – a wall – of lead and fire and shrapnel. They should have been more cautious. They should have looked ahead at the obstruction and taken their time, but no. Straight in. Still accelerating when the ordnance closed on them and the world shook.
Thunder and smoke and muzzle-flare, and two bikes skidding in hot rubber and screaming chrome, and torn leather and blood on the road, and the next idiots flipping head-over-saddle as they smashed into their fallen comrades, and then – only then – did the brakes slam on and the situation slow.
By which time it was far too late.
The kid aimed with only the vaguest accuracy. He simply poked a cautious head through the Inferno's turret, steered the great mass of oiled death mounted there towards the far edge of the bridge, and held down as many triggers as he could.
It was like…
Bonfire Night. Or the Fourth of July, depending.
Or maybe just a war zone. Maybe just a field-spotter's guide to hasty death.
The Mk19 lobbing its tumbling shells, spit-crack-flare-smoke; a brace of machineguns vomiting spent cases and angry tracers; dust and tarmac rising-up; splinters of air and rock tumbling; bikes shivering in haloes of sparks then dissolving – just going away – behind great balls of incandescence. The whole bridge shook with each grenade-flare, and underneath it all came the sharp ring of Rick's voice, shouting and laughing.
On the edge of the bridge, through curtains of hot smoke and fire clinging to shattered bodies and disassembled bikes, the blunt shadows of blockier shapes nudged at the edge of the QuickSmog. Beside me, Malice's face dropped. The rest of the convoy, perhaps.
If Rick had noticed, he didn't care. The Mk19 spat its last grenade then whirred on, empty chambers cycling uselessly, but the rest of the arsenal kept going. Throwing curtains of dust and sparks at the far shore, as if daring the knot of bikes that had turned aside and backed away to come get some…
Nobody seemed keen to oblige.
The blocky shape began to solidify; angular panels and reinforced glass, painted sky-blue in defiance of camouflage. I recognised the boxy nose of an armoured vehicle – some ex-military ground car or other, heavy with ablative plates and sensor-gear – and let my eye wander quickly to the gun in its rear. Autocannon. 25mm, maybe 30. Against a crippled fire truck with armour made of corrugated iron, frankly, it wouldn't make much difference.
The bikes zipped off in either direction, clearing a corridor. Rick's petulant salvo rattled uselessly off the AFV's hull, and after a second or two he allowed the guns to fall silent, uncertain, letting smoke waft across the bridge.
Everyone held their breath.
The autocannon opened fire.
A lot of fire.
Somewhere deep in the tedious equip-details drummed over the years into my mind, I recognised the sound. The angry rattle, the hollow retorts of heavy calibre shells thumping – stamping – against the Inferno.
