Thunder Road by James Axler

his back, she blinked rapidly, her eyes streaming. She desperately wanted to wipe, no, to claw at them and stop the irritation, but her arms were too secured around the rider to allow her to do this.
    Still, this brief glimpse had been enough to make her wonder. There was no way that anyone could live in a building like that, especially if the rest of the building was as derelict as the top sections. So why head for it? Perhaps it was just a marker on the route?
    No. That wouldn’t account for the strange maneuvers he had indulged in with the bike. The building had to be the key. Her mind raced. If there were a number of defense systems that couldn’t be seen, then that would suggest a survival of predark tech. And if the ruined ranch house was a front, then that would suggest something hidden, like a redoubt. Gaia alone knew that they had encountered enough of those over the past few years; some other hidden bases, too.
    The mystery rider obviously knew enough about the tech to work it, and there were others where he came from. She wondered if he was in some way allied to the tech-nomads, the elusive and loosely knit bunch of travelers she had encountered after meeting the rail ghost, Paul Yawl. They liked to keep themselves separate from what passed for civilization out in the Deathlands, so it would be unlikely that they would have wanted anything to do with the rider. The last thing he could be accused of was keeping himself apart from the rest of society.
    She was guessing that he wasn’t military. He wore no uniform as such, and remnants of old military had a way about them that he didn’t. Whitecoat survivors like those freak mutie crazies they had once encountered at Crater Lake? Perhaps, but he seemed a little too proactive for those types: they liked to keep themselves apart, like the tech-nomads. So was he, perhaps, part of a group that had stumbled on old tech, much as they had soon after she had first met Ryan and J.B.? Sure, they had used it mostly just to move on from place to place, but what if some bunch of mercies or coldhearts had decided to use it to gain power and jack?
    No, that didn’t make sense. Despite all the damage he had done, the rider hadn’t taken anything. And the way he talked was odd, old-fashioned. He didn’t speak like a mercie, although he did act like a coldheart. But even then, it was like there was some kind of twisted logic at work. He was a coldheart who wanted to do good things. That crazy talk about justice and crime, concepts that she, like Ryan, had heard of only in things that survived from before the nukecaust.
    No, whatever was going on here, it was unlike anything they had ever come across before, which made it even more dangerous for her. There would be no second-guessing and no second chances. If she was to get out alive, then she would have to get it right first time.
    In the time it had taken her to think this through, they had crested the small rise that ringed the valley holding the ruined ranch house, and were now descending toward the building itself. Every part of it looked derelict, and the outbuildings were little more than matchwood and rubble. No one would ever think of looking twice at this place. It looked as if it had been empty since skydark.
    But it wasn’t. She knew this was their destination, and she figured she’d find a few answers before too long.
    Whether she wanted them or not.
     
    T HE FIVE COMPANIONS HAD BEEN traveling in silence for some time. There was nothing to say, and idle talk would only have cost them energy that they needed to conserve. So they traveled, wrapped in their own thoughts.
    The horses had been affected by the nerve gas, but had recovered before their human masters. They had been at a greater distance from the point of impact, and by the time the gas had reached the point where they were tethered, its worst effects had been dissipated in the air.
    While the friends were still weakened by the time they had gathered the