Free Thunder Road by James Axler

sand around the campfire, all of these served to bring him out of his slumbers. But it was a slack-jawed Doc, eyes open but blank and uncomprehending, who greeted the night. His sleep, as ever, had been disturbed by nightmare visions. Sleep was a necessary evil, where pale demons emerged from the recesses of his mind to torment him, to remind him of that which had tortured him, of that which he had lost. On waking, he was never sure if it was still part of a dream or whether it was little more than an extension of the hellish vagaries of his own mind.
    “Doc,” Mildred blurted, sleep clearing from her eyes, mind racing, catching sight of the disoriented man. She stumbled toward him, pulling at his arm to try to lever him up. He yelled incoherently, pulling himself away and stumbling from his half-standing position so that he sprawled back on the ground, raising a cloud of dust.
    “Jak—” Ryan barked. The albino knew the one-eyed man’s query before he even voiced it, and pointed to the red dot.
    “Coming fast,” he added, indicating to his rear.
    With a speed far in excess of the time it would take to voice such thoughts, Ryan realized that whatever it was that was coming for them, it would be locked onto the laser dot, and it would be quick. It had to be from a great distance, otherwise they would have seen their tracker—for he had no doubt that whatever it was, the source was the mystery rider—but it was likely to be traveling at great speed.
    So if it was locked onto the dot, then they needed to get as far away from that bastard red mark as possible. He knew that Krysty, Jak, J.B. and himself stood a chance if they set off at a run, but he could also see that Doc was still on the ground, and Mildred was slowed by her efforts to aid him. Run, or go to her assistance. There wasn’t time to think about the choice, just act. He took a step toward Mildred and Doc, could see that J.B. was doing the same.
    The gas egg wasn’t visible in the darkness until the last moment. As it entered the ring of light cast by the fire, its dark shape was thrown into relief. Even then, it was hard to track as the speed at which it descended made it little more than a blur. It was audible from farther out, a high, whistling scream in the air as it was propelled at great speed toward its target. In what seemed like time slowed to an almost infinitesimal degree, all who turned their gaze could see the egg fall toward the red dot on the ground, the smart circuit in the gren making it follow the perfect arc to land and impact. It seemed to slow from its great speed until it was almost possible to see the rotation in flight that guided its direction. It fell toward the red dot with an inevitability and slowness that made Ryan feel that he could dive across the sandy soil between his feet and the red dot and pluck the gren out of the air, stopping it from hitting the earth and exploding, letting out whatever lethal load it may carry.
    The one-eyed man tried to carry the thought through, forcing his sluggish limbs to move, feeling his muscles tense and wobble as though pushing against quicksand rather than air. In a flash of insight that was faster than real time, he realized that it was only normal air resistance that he felt, that, in truth, his danger-honed mind was trying to make him move faster than was humanly possible.
    It had to have been imagination or hallucination, but he was almost sure that he saw the gren take one final wobbling turn in the air before hitting the sand. Felt sure that he saw the puff of dust raised by impact before the gren splintered into a thousand pieces, unleashing the payload. He flinched, squinting his good eye for fear of flying metal.
    But it was no frag gren. A puff of smoke—or so it seemed—was all that issued forth, a white that shone incandescent against the red glow of the fire before spreading and dissipating into a mist that seemed to fade and die before it reached Ryan.
    He was aware of a