Thunder Road. James Axler

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      IT WAS A DAY like any other day. But not for long.

      The ville of Casa Belle Taco was clustered around the remnants of a mall left from the days of predark. It was named after the gaudy house, which had been housed in the remnants of an old fast-food restaurant, and had grown over the years to cement its reputation as the finest gaudy in New Mex. Trade convoys and parties of marauding coldhearts would make special journeys to drink the psychotropic brew that was the house speciality, and to watch the sluts perform in shows with each other and selected members of the audience before offering services to the highest bidders. Not many men would bid for a gaudy slut, but these were no ordinary girls. It was said that they could do things that most men could only dream were possible.

      Casa Belle Taco was a small ville. Rich in jack because of the gaudy house, those who lived there worked in some connection with the focal point of the ville. They either catered the gaudy, worked as staff or were sec. Even those who ran the local stores and ran sec on the perimeter were under the command of Mad Jack Flack, the baron of the ville—although baron was, in truth, a big title for a pesthole like Casa. Predark, he would have been the biggest pimp in the area, but no more.

      The first indication of trouble had been the approach of the vehicle. Traffic in and out of the ville was no strange thing, but never before had the patrolling sec crews seen a single vehicle. Never before had they seen one that had eaten up the dirt and dust at such a pace.

      “Sec force” was too dignified a name, in truth, for the two men in a wag, blasters idly at their sides, who watched the approach almost with disinterest.

      Any danger from such a rapid approach was lost on them: the ville’s reputation was such that no one wanted to upset the baron and get banned from the Casa.

      The stranger burned rubber as he entered the ville. Astonished men with blasters at their sides were reduced to chilled corpses as the stranger pulled his blaster and fired indiscriminately. He was an expert rider on his machine, and it was almost impossible for the befuddled, bemused and still stoned men of the ville to get a bead on him. For the most part they ran for cover. Discretion was not so much the better part of valor as the chance to stay alive. All the same, many of them were chilled by stray slugs as he switched to a high-powered blaster. Then the first of the grens hit home, reducing much of the ville off the main drag to smoldering rubble, which meant most of the ville, as Casa Belle Taco was nothing more than a few buildings leading off the road to the gaudy house.

      The sec force that manned the gaudy was a little more together than those who patrolled the outreaches. Even so, roused as some of them were in a stuporous sleep, they were still a ragged force as they rushed out to meet the oncoming danger.

      Tactics and strategy weren’t even words to them. They all arrived at the front of the building, following the sound of the vehicle, not even thinking of what an easy target they presented.

      If they hadn’t thought of this beforehand, they had less than no time to think of it when the stranger took advantage of their clustering to take them out with ease.

      Baffled and scared, those still alive watched from hiding as the stranger dismounted and strode into the gaudy house. Inside, the gaudy sluts hid, also. Who knew what the triple-mad freak wanted from them.

      The last thing they expected was his little speech, and for him to bow to them and leave them confused and staring with bemusement at the chaos around them.

      Who the hell was this triple-stupe bastard? And what was the idea behind blasting their livelihood to shit and then telling them they were free? What use was that with no jack? Shit, they’d been happy with their lives until this asshole rode into town and screwed everything up. Now they had a gaudy house in a mess, and no sec to keep the customers in order.

      Might as well have slit their throats and have done with it.

      As one of them walked to the door and watched the cloud of dust recede into the distance, she wasn’t to know that they were just the first call of the day for the man who called himself Thunder Rider.

      Chapter One

      “Hot. Boring. Need action.” Jak was sullen, hunched over at the front of the seat, holding the reins loosely in his grip while the emaciated horses tethered to the wag plodded on across the scrub and desert.

      “My dear boy, I should have thought that we’d all had more than enough action to last us a lifetime,” Doc replied laconically from the rear of the wag. He was lying propped against a rough hessian sack, once full and now alarmingly depleted. His shoulders slumped uncomfortably against the cans, self-heats and withered fresh produce that still lay within. His lips barely moved as he added, “Speaking for myself, I would welcome this respite from a life of constant peril. The merits of an adrenaline rush are, in my humble view, much overrated. Oh, for the balmy days when I could relax beneath the New England skies with a slim volume of poetry—”

      “Not talk,” Jak interrupted pithily. “Prefer you when crazy to this.”

      Doc СКАЧАТЬ