Maiden Amerika: Symbols

They were surprised.

Usually when they attacked a caravan, the hits were clean and quick. Their lightning strikes with their makeshift bazookas took the fight out of the escorts, leaving them stunned and bewildered, if not dead.

This stretch of territory was often avoided except by the stupid or desperate, and the bandits cared little of either. It was just fresh meat to them.

When they came upon the smoking wreckage they saw that a large majority of the passengers were children, ranging from the ages of seven to fourteen, ten in all. Some were battered and singed, but not seriously damaged. The blast had torn open the side of the transport van and they were tossed onto the sun-dried clay surface. They would still be able to get a good price on them. How they survived such devastation was a mystery and a blessing. No matter.

The ten were already dressed in the classic grey slave tunics.

As the mutant pirates closed in the distance, they let their weapons slide down to their sides. There was nothing to fear from these children. In fact, Korgo, the mutant with the misshapen head decided to have a little fun with a few before they were turned over to the slavers.
That was before she decided to have a little fun with the descending mutant quintet.

She came out of the smoking wreckage of the vehicle cockpit at a dead run, on a beeline towards them. The five froze for a moment at the sight of her, before they quickly lowered their guards.

This girl was a small thing. Thick of leg and hips, yet she moved with a surprising speed and agility and she was not dressed in the traditional slave garb. Her red and white striped stockings covered all of her legs, almost up to her, navy colored bikini shorts, which had white stars. The navy colored suit jacket was apparently three sizes too big and the tails flapped furiously in her wake. The cuffs barely allowed her hands exposure, but she managed well otherwise. The unbuttoned front revealed her bare breasts, and covering her aureoles were red stickers shaped like stars. A large top hat adorn with stars and stripes kept its place, perhaps by her fiery copper locks. Despite the dirt and the soot from the ambush, she was still a dominating vision. Her last step propelled her skyward. They watched in silent awe as she soared in a graceful arc.

It was like she moved in slow motion, so captivating was her form, resembling a flag in a breeze. In fact, she was the only colorful image in the otherwise bleak scenery. Even the dusty hued mutant raiders were drawn to the brightness she brought. When the girl landed, it was in a ready crouch.

They didn’t notice at first the worn baseball bat that she clutched in both hands. The weather beaten faces regarded the newcomer with a mixture of amusement and annoyance. She was a small thing, standing less than five and one half feet, but had a full-figured dancer’s body.

She stopped for a scant second before she unleashed her own version of Hell. In that moment, the raiders had made the assessment that she posed no threat. In a split second, that misconception was quickly dispelled.

The flag girl sprang straight up into the air and a powerful leg shot out a blue school uniform shoe into the face of the mutant before her. The meaty contact reverberated in the closeness, hurled the flailing form backwards into the sun-hardened clay.

The self-same shoe touched down only to be recycled into a sweeping arc that knocked two of the remaining four off their feet. One man took a clumsy swing at her with his rifle. As the star-spangled girl ducked beneath the blow, she responded by a drop kick to the unprotected chest. He did a backward Somersault.

The fifth member raised his gun, only to have his hand swatted with the baseball bat, causing the weapon to sail and skitter away in the distance. He barely had time to verbally react before the bat returned to smash into his temple. He dropped like the sack of shit he truly was.

The first man who was knocked on his backside scrambled to his feet, his face a mask of fury. Regardless, it did him no good as the girl brought the wooden truncheon down like a sledgehammer on the top of his head. The crack of his skull blended with the impact of the bat. He drifted blissfully into oblivion and his anger left along with his life in a scarlet stream that pooled onto the dry ground.

A wild shot was fired from another gun, but the faulty mechanism jammed. Her swing was swift. First it was downward, knocking the rifle free from the hands that held it, but in a continuous figure eight it ended its journey by breaking the bearer’s neck. He crumpled in a twitching heap.

A calloused hand gabbed her ankle, making the girl lose her balance, but it was the first man that she kicked, while the second tackled her to the ground. The two men joined forces as one straddled her while the other began to kick at her exposed limbs furiously. In his frenzy he occasionally missed and kicked his partner, but their frustration was focused on the girl.
She squirmed and flailed with her fists and feet, luckily catching the unprotected groin of the one standing. He doubled over and bumped against his ally, who angrily shoved him away with another vicious punch to the balls.

This distraction allowed her to roll to her stomach and reach her bat. The next moment, the mutant who mounted her saw a wood-colored blur fly to his face and then as series of flashing stars blew him into the afterlife. She angrily shoved the lifeless body off her and rose to her feet, still clutching her bat.

Standing over the remaining attacker, she wiped away the trickle of blood that spotted the corner of her mouth. Her eyes were slitted into hazel pools of hatred. Her decision was made and she swung her bat in a deadly downward path into the head of the whimpering marauder. His days of ambush were over. The copper tressed girl stood silent and surveyed her surroundings.

The group of children slowly approached her; the small girl in the lead clutched the star spangled top hat that had been knocked off in the skirmish.

“Miss Siobahn, are you okay?’ she asked in a tiny voice.

The girl called Siobahn gazed at the children, a look of relief washed over her dirt-smeared face. She was glad that the children were unharmed. She couldn’t explain how they escaped injury. Siobahn merely knew that whenever people were close to her in a disaster, there was always a good chance for their survival. Perhaps it was a guardian Angel or the reservoir of untapped luck that she had acquired during her harsh life.

The young girl offered the red haired girl the article and she smiled while accepting it. Siobahn had no intention of letting any harm come to these children. She also did not want to let them know that they were stranded in the middle of nowhere, without a clue of what to do next.

“Yes Pia, I’m fine,’ she beamed.

Siobahn always told Lincoln that he was a bright, perceptive boy, even at the age of eleven. Perhaps he sensed the inner fear that she tried to hide as he added matter-of-factly “I wonder where these raiders hid their transport. Or if they didn’t have to go far, I wonder where their base is?”

Siobhan gave him a look that was a silent ‘thank you’.

Linc’s words were words of hope and she had not considered the fact that five men would not mysteriously appear in the desert instantaneously, without provisions or a spot to retreat to. And it was clear that these men were not novices. They had expected an easy kill, so relaxed was their approach. This was probably something that they had done countless times before and the fight that she had given them was something they had never encountered. It was good fortune for her and her charges that this was their last unsuccessful venture.

It took over a half hour to find the mutant’s provisions. Their tracks were difficult to follow in the hard packed Earth, but they were rewarded with the sight of the vehicles and food rations and water bottles. They helped themselves to the unimaginative supplies of bread, dried fish, water and wine. It was enough to satisfy the appetites of the children, but hardly enough to sustain the five men for over a day, considering that they were all fat or overweight. Which meant that they were only expected to be here for less than a day. The labels on the food and bottles meant that they were purchased at some outpost store.

As the children ate, Siobahn looked over the vehicles. They were beat up and battered. Someone had cannibalized them into a weird conglomeration of parts, mutating them into Tricycle-jeeps. She looked over the largest one that appeared to be the supply transport. Its flatbed had wooden crates, which contained the ammunition for the guns and bazooka.

The Sun was starting its western descent by the time they were ready to begin their journey anew. The gas tanks were removed from the other machines and sealed, retaining the precious fluid, as reserve fuel, just in case. They salvaged what materials they could out of the wreckage of the vehicle they first occupied before they cast off.

Everyone agreed that since the transportation was originally pointing in a direction away from the ambush site, it was assumed that they were preparing for a hasty retreat to a designated sanctuary.

The flag colored girl had a little trouble in figuring out the workings of the machine, but soon they were bouncing along their way, leaving the dead and a cloud of dust in their wake. What lay ahead of them became apparent when the long shadows receded and lights winked over the crest of the last dune.

It didn’t look like a fortress. What lay before them was a Trader outpost.

They were in luck.

End of Part One

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