Chapter One

 

"Black dust!" the man screamed, pointing toward the horizon. "What the hell is that?"

A dozen people at the campsite stopped whatever they were doing and turned to look in the direction indicated. Cresting a hill far down the road was a wag of some sort—no, it was a rolling box of metal, with a stream of faint bluish smoke coming from its rear. The sides were sloped at sharp angles, no windshield or windows were visible and it had numerous big black wheels. There wasn't a single visible piece of wood in the whole contraption.

"A wag," a teenager murmured, wiping his mouth on a dirty sleeve as he placed aside his plate of stew. Standing, the teenager grabbed a longblaster from the top of a woodpile and worked the bolt, chambering a round. He licked dry lips as a soft wind ruffled the thin rags that were his clothing.

Another man stood and pulled a crossbow into view from his nest of clothes. "A metal wag. I never seen one that moved before!"

Leaning heavily on a repaired crutch, an elderly man glanced over his shoulder to a nearby grassy field. A crude wall of thickets and sharp sticks formed a defensive barrier around the clearing, and in the middle stood a faded yellow school bus, its many windows heavily patched with gray tape and bits of plastic. The wheels were sunk into the hard ground, and a tilted stone chimney rose from the back. The rusted remains of a few other wags doted the field, the grass thin enough in spots to see the cracked black material underneath. Way off by itself, the rounded shell of a beetle-shaped vehicle was surrounded by weeds, the open front door showing that the interior had been completely stripped except for a cushioned seat that had a hole cut in the bottom. The opening continued through the chassis and deep into the ground. Fat flies buzzed around the battered wag, and for an unknown reason, a half moon was painted on the door.

"A working wag," Tant breathed excitedly. The young man drew a bulky revolver from the belt holding his buckskin jacket closed, and lovingly ran his hands over the Parkerized finish of the big-bore weapon. The wooden handle had been replaced with bone long ago. "Must be some baron," a pretty blonde suggested, and she pulled a long carving knife from her sleeve.

"Or slavers," another man grumbled, touching a ragged scar that completely circled his thick neck. In his massive hands, he held a metal rod tipped with a razor-sharp radiator fan. The ends glistened, mirror bright in the morning sun. "They got wags. Well, sometimes."

"We best leave it alone," an old woman stated. She hobbled a bit closer to the roadway but didn't cross onto the gravel of the berm. She knew her place. That honor was for menfolk only.

"Let them leave without a toll?" an old man snapped angrily, watching the wag come steadily closer. His face was deeply lined, but not from hunger, and a puckered star on the right cheek marked where he had been shot in the face at close range. His boots were patched, his jacket was lined with the fur of mountain lion and a brace of oiled revolvers jutted from his wide leather belt. "Black dust, what for, woman?"

Her weak eye wandering aimlessly, the old woman scowled down the road and gestured at the strange vehicle. "Are ya daft, Spector? That ain't be no civvy wag. That's a war wag, a tank!"

Raising a hand to strike her, Spector held his anger at the outburst, knowing she was only doing so for the good of the collectors. Dimly, he recalled hearing the word before from Grandda. His father's father had been a great leader of the collectors, siring fourteen children before dying. A mutie had leaped from the belly of a deer they killed one winter and tore off his arms before the others could bludgeon it to death.

Drawing a blaster, Spector squinted against the distance. Naw, couldn't be a real tank as the wag didn't have those metal belts on either side that chewed up the streets. It had whatyacallems.

"Tires," Tant said, loading a massive crossbow. The quarrel was of green wood, but the barbed tip was steel, lashed into place with human hair.

"Blasters," he added, scowling. "Them there be fancy autoblasters on its top!"

"Autoblasters?" asked a pregnant girl brandishing an ax, a naked child hiding behind her voluminous skirts.

"Fire more slugs than a hundred sec men at once!"

A young man with only the wispy hint of a beard on his jaw curled a lip. "Horseshit," he declared.

"It's the truth."

"Let it pass, Da," a redheaded boy suggested, the glass bottle in his hands sloshing slightly. The whiskey bottle with its burning rag of a fuse was actually only filled with urine, but most folks thought it to be a Molotov and steered clear of the pretend firebomb.

Pushing back his cap, Spector stood firm before the steady advance of the war wag. "Anybody can pass," he stated, shifting his grip on his wheelgun. "Long as they pays a toll. This be our road, child! Don't we sweep away the leaves in the fall and fill in the holes after the snows? Our grandies guarded this here road for the eagle god, and so do we. Ain't nobody pass 'less they pays a toll. One can food, one bullet or a day of work."

The group took heart from the ancient words and formed a line across the long expanse of concrete. Only the faintest suggestions of ruins marked where the mighty booths stood, but those had been destroyed in skydark. There were cracks in the surface, but those had been carefully patched. Every weed was pulled, the loose gravel along the east side raked into neat order and the grassy strip to the west trimmed neatly. Beyond the strip lay the broken remains of shattered concrete, trees growing wild from the cracks, and most of the surface masked by decades of grass and vines. But that wasn't their side. That was the north, and they were the southbound. The war between the two rival gangs had ended many winters ago in a bloody fight still referred to as Death Day. Now only the south remained to rule the great road of exit that stretched from the mountains to the terrible ocean.

The big wag was a lot closer now, its speed unchanging. Spector could see it was a lot bigger than he'd first thought, and the body was made of different colors, not painted camouflage like hunters did to hide in the bush. No, sir, the metal itself was a clean green in one area, and blackened with fire damage in another, as if the machine were pieced together from a dozen damaged wags. Surprisingly, it made excellent camouflage. Once in thick bushes, the machine would be damn difficult to spot. Big cans and bags were strapped to the sides under layers of fishing nets.

"Loot," Tant said greedily, releasing the safety lock on his crossbow. "Look at it! They got so much they can't keep it all inside!"

Spector stepped between the man and the approaching wag so that the needle tip of the quarrel touched his chest. "We ain't be thieves or coldhearts," the older man stated. "This be our road, and we take tolls. That be all. No raping the women or taking more than usual. Understand?"

Tant felt a rush of heat to his face, partly from shame but the rest from anger. His hands tightened on the stock and trigger of the crossbow, the muscles in his arms hardening as he fought conflicting emotions. Spector stayed motionless, letting the younger man decide the matter for himself. A good leader didn't always command, but sometimes listened. The engine noise of the war wag was discernible when the younger man finally relaxed his aggressive stance.

"Sorry," he apologized, and fired.

At point-blank range, the shaft went completely through the old man's chest. Staggering backward onto the road, Spector fell to his knees and Tant swung the stock of the crossbow like a club. Spector's head broke apart, one eye flying off into the wood, bones and brains spilling onto the pale concrete.

Retrieving the blaster from the dead man's clothing, Tant turned to face the rest of the collectors. The butt of the weapons were still warm from the dead man, and somehow that gave the killer a rush of courage.

"Now I am in charge!" Tant shouted, thrusting a blaster into the air. "And I say we take everything from everybody who tries to pass! Why should we starve when food comes to us by itself?"

Eagerly, the rest of the family took up the cry and several stepped closer to spit on the sprawled form of Spector. Only a few of the older women and younger children didn't join the rally against their fallen leader and quickly moved away from the others. Their brethren seemed like outlanders to them, strangers drunk on the freshly spilled blood.

"Rules, reg'lations," one man slurred, brandishing a glass tipped spear. "What mean they? The strong live, the weak die. That be the rules here!"

"So speaks Ben, my new lieutenant," Tant shouted. "For I am the leader now."

The collectors roared their approval, and Tant threw his crossbow at the man. The weapon landed at his feet, which were swaddled in plastic and rags in place of boots. Passing his spear to a man with a club, Ben knelt before his new leader and lifted the gore-smeared weapon with a grim reverence.

"Death to the outlanders," Ben said, bowing his head.

"Death to all!" Tant shouted, staring hatefully at the wag coming straight toward them. The vehicle hadn't attempted to swerve into the trees or stop and turn. More fools they, for this was where they would die, and that machine become his to command.

"Positions!" Tant ordered, cocking both hammers on his warm blasters.

The collectors scrambled to their pits and dropped out of sight as Ben raced into the bushes to kick at a block of wood half-hidden amid the greenery. With the block gone, a weight dropped out of sight into the ground and from the trees a barrier swung into the sky on squealing hinges and slammed down hard across the roadway. The heavy beam was a chiseled tree trunk, bristling with rusty nails and bearing the eight-sided metal disk of the tribe painted the magic colors of red and white. All travelers stopped at the sight of the sign of power.

"Hold for a toll!" Tant shouted with an amiable smile, tucking one blaster into his belt.

The wag didn't slow.

"There be muties ahead!" he added in warning, his smile dropping into a sneer. "Much danger! Death everywhere."

As if in reply, brilliant headlights flashed into operation, the beams temporarily blinding the collectors. Cursing in rage, most dropped their blasters to cover their eyes. Only a few managed to wildly fire their weapons at the invader. Fletched arrows struck the side of the vehicle, the wooden shafts shattering on the armor. A spear smashed on the turret, the glass tip exploding into glittering sparkles. Homemade bullets musically ricocheted off the chassis, leaving gray smears, and the one round that hit a tire simply sank into the resilient material and disappeared, doing no visible damage.

Then the powerful engines of the war wag revved louder, and it surged forward with renewed speed, covering the last fifty yards to the gate in only seconds. The wag smashed into the stout barrier headfirst, and the wood exploded into splinters, a rain of nails spraying from the impact.

Baring his teeth in rage, Tant stood firm and steadily fired his revolvers at the looming wag until they clicked on empty chambers. For the briefest flicker of time, Tant saw a single eye looking at him through a tiny slit in the metal hull of the incredible machine, an eye of icy blue. That was when his resolve broke, and the killer dashed for the safety of the berm, but it was already too late.

The great machine leaped forward in a surge of speed, and the prow slammed into him with the force of an avalanche. Pain filling his world, Tant dropped to the roadway and went directly underneath the juggernaut.

For an electric moment of time, he waited to be crushed flat, when Tant realized in a rush of clarity that there was space below the wag. The bottom was almost a yard off the ground! He started to laugh in relief, when the machine sharply turned and the last two wheels went straight for his head, missing his face by an inch but rolling over his left arm, mashing it flat, every bone pulverized from the colossal weight. Shrieking at the pain, Tant tried to pull away and the bottom of the wag slammed against his head, sending him into blackness. Seconds later, the sprawled body of Tant appeared behind the transport, with a small cut on his forehead and his entire right arm bloody pulp. Tears streaming from his aching eyes, Ben rushed over and shot Tant in the heart with a crossbow quarrel, making himself the new leader.

"TRIPLE STUPE BASTARDS," Ryan Cawdor muttered, easing his foot off the gas of the LAV-25 armored personnel carrier. "Guess they never saw an APC before and didn't know what it could do."

"Well, they sure know now," J. B. Dix said, tilting back his fedora as he watched the tiny outpost vanish into the distance behind them through an aft blaster port. When satisfied the danger was over, J.B. removed his finger from the trigger of his Uzi submachine gun and slung the deadly weapon over a shoulder. Lying on the deck between his boots was a bulging satchel of explosives, with a Smith & Wesson M-4000 scattergun tucked between the straps. Even in the tight confines of the APC, the Armorer never let his weapons get far away from a ready hand.

Ryan nodded in agreement as he steered the wag around a fallen tree and some large potholes. The driver's seat of the predark machine was designed for soldiers from that time period, large men loaded with lots of equipment. Ryan was barely comfortable in the chair, and his wild mane of black hair brushed against the control panel set in the ceiling directly above the Plexiglas ob port used to see outside. The man's face was seamed by a long scar, courtesy of his brother Harvey, and a crude leather patch covered his left eye. A SIG-Sauer blaster, with a built-in baffle sound suppressor, was tucked into the leather holster at his right hip, the curved handle of a panga knife jutting from its customary sheath, within easy access. Hanging nearby from hooks set into the rough metal walls were a bolt-action longblaster and a sleek AK-47 machine gun.

Sitting against the aft doors, Jak Lauren merely grunted in reply as he continued to strop a knife on a whetstone with steady strokes. The pale teenager was dressed in camou-colored military fatigues and a battered vest decorated with feathers and bits of mirror and metal sewn into the seams and collar. But that was a trick; razor blades were sewn inside the collar and any enemy grabbing him soon discovered that the hard way when they lost fingers. The youth was a true albino. His skin was dead white, and ruby-red eyes peered from a cascade of snowy hair. A massive Colt Python .357 jutted from his belt, and at least a dozen leaf-bladed throwing knives were hidden on his person.

"Fools die," Jak stated coldly, tucking away the leaf-bladed throwing knife and, like magic, another appeared in his hand. "What else new?"

"I saw wags on the side of the road," Dean Cawdor said, a Browning Hi-Power blaster held casually as he watched the horizon for any signs of pursuit. "Think they might try and come after us?"

"Those wrecks? Even if the wags worked, they'll be busy squabbling over who's in charge now that we killed their leader," J.B. stated, adjusting his wire-rimmed glasses to a more comfortable position.

"Good," Dean said, clicking the safety on his blaster with a flick of his thumb. The boy tucked the blaster into his belt. Although only eleven years old, going on twelve, Dean already carried himself with the deadly assurance of a seasoned warrior and seemed to look more like his father with every passing day.

"I just thank Gaia they thought a wooden beam would stop us," Krysty Wroth said gruffly. "Could have been a lot worse."

The shapely redhead squatted comfortably on the steps leading to the overhead turret, checking the loads in her Smith & Wesson .38. Krysty had lost the blaster in that hellish garage at Front Royal when she'd gotten caught by Overton's sec men. But J.B. had found the blaster under a bench when he'd done some work on the LAV, the weapon discarded there, apparently, by one of the blue shirts. The neat .38 handled better than the powerful .357, and she was happy to have it once again in hand.

Krysty was a beautiful woman, her complexion flawless, her abundance of fiery hair gently moving as if stirred by secret winds only she could feel.

"Those coldhearts could have smashed a hornet's nest against the side of the LAV," she continued. "And then we would have been in real trouble."

"Hornets?" Jak asked, pausing in his work.

A tall man with silver-gray hair was resting against the ammo locker and raised his head at the conversation, arching an eyebrow. "Indeed, madam, I do understand," Doc Tanner rumbled in a deep stentorian bass. "Once the nest hit us, the hornets would target our wag as an enemy and come swarming in through every blaster port and vent. Their painful stings would soon drive us outside where the others could easily slay us in the confusion."

Wearing a frilly shirt and an outlandish frock coat, the old man would have been a strange sight even in his own time period, and his resplendent crop of hair made Doc appear much older than he really was. A slim ebony swordstick was laid casually across his lap, and a massive double-barreled blaster jutted from the cavalry gun belt around his waist. The Civil War museum piece seeming incongruous with the rest of his dapper attire.

Krysty gestured with an open palm. "Old trick," she said. "My mother used it often against the big muties."

The old man pulled a few inches of shiny steel blade from within the ebony stick, then slammed the sword back into its sheath. "Deuced clever, I must admit."

Ryan glanced over his shoulder at Krysty. "Hornets," he said after a while. "Glad you're on our side, lover. That would work even better on folks in an open cart, or on horseback."

"Pretty good," Jak agreed, tucking away his whetstone.

Biting off a piece of beef jerky, Dr. Mildred Wyeth chewed and swallowed the mouthful before speaking. A stocky black woman with bright, intelligent eyes, her lightweight denim jacket was unbuttoned, showing a heavy flannel shirt and a gun belt supporting a sleek target pistol, the ammo loops on the side of the belt filled with oily brass cartridges. A rare predark field-surgery kit holding medical supplies lay protectively between her boots, the canvas lovingly patched here and there.

"For some reason, that reminds me of a war story I once heard," the physician said. "Way back before skydark, some nation, I forget which, sent a battalion of their best tanks into northern Africa to establish a supply base for their troops. They expected little resistance from the locals as the farmers had almost no technology. They carried stone knives and went hunting with blowguns. It was supposed to be a slaughter, and it was. But for the other side."

Both hands steady on the steering levers, Ryan barked one of his rare laughs. "So the tanks got destroyed, eh? Good for the Africans."

"How?" Dean asked curiously, resting both elbows on his knees and leaning forward. Mildred and Doc came from before skydark and knew all sorts of things. Some of the information was useful for staying alive, but some was just fun to hear about—wild stories about things like airplanes and supermarkets.

Wrapping the remaining piece of jerky in a clean handkerchief, Mildred tucked the dried meat into a pocket for later. For once, they had plenty of supplies. Front Royal had given them all the food, fuel and ammo they could carry for this trip. Their mission was too important to chance failure over a can of beans or a handful of bullets. But as her Baptist minister father drilled into her as child, waste not, want not. Life in the radioactive hell of Deathlands was bitterly harsh, and every morsel of food saved could mean another day of life.

"How did they stop the invasion of armored tanks? Simple, really," she answered. "The locals would run away from the tanks, carefully luring them near the edge of a high cliff. Then when the tank was in the right position, hunters hidden in the bushes would use blowguns to shoot a poisoned dart into the tiny slots in the armor that the drivers used to see through. Blind and paralyzed, the soldiers couldn't change course, and the massive machines would roll off the cliff and smash to pieces when they hit the bottom."

"A veritable David-versus-Goliath story," Doc rumbled in wry amusement. "Good for the hunters."

Dean stole a glance at his father. "So the fancier the tech, the easier it is to smash," the boy concluded.

"Usually," Ryan answered, busy driving. "But not always, son."

"Everything has a weak point, but sometimes Goliath still wins," J.B. added, pulling a fat cigar from the breast pocket of his jacket and placing it in the corner of his mouth. "Sad but true."

"Ahem," Mildred said, leaning forward in her seat until almost touching noses with the man. "It smells quite bad enough in here with seven sweaty people packed like sardines. We don't need you adding to the pollution by smoking a hundred-year-old cigar."

"This is a brand-new one," J.B. retorted, pulling the stogie free and gesturing. "Hand rolled on the thighs of expert virgins exclusively for the baron of Front Royal himself!"

Everybody in the APC burst into laughter.

"My dear John Barrymore," Doc chuckled. "Expert virgins?"

"Nice work if you can get it," Krysty said, smiling.

As the military transport easily rolled over a low hill, Ryan merely snorted as he shifted gears.

"Didn't mean it that way," J.B. said with a frown.

"Horseshit," Jak scoffed.

Quizzically, J.B. took a sniff. "Seems to be mostly tobacco," he said slowly. "But yeah, I think there's a little horse in here, too."

"Also makes your breath taste awful," Mildred added softly.

J.B. winked at the physician and tucked the cigar away. "Don't want that, do we?"

Blushing slightly, Mildred started to add something, but was cut off when the wag jounced over some rough ground and the companions were nearly thrown from their seats. Desperately, the friends grabbed for anything welded solidly to the frame of the APC. The interior of the LAV-25 had been badly damaged by fire when its prior owners died, and the seat belts were only ashen smudges on the bare metal skeletons of the wall seats. Layers of blankets cushioned the seat struts enough for them to sit on for long periods, but every serious pothole threatened to throw them to the floor.

"Need rope," Jak muttered, releasing his grip on the belt of linked 25 mm rounds going into the electric cannon in the turret. "Make belts."

"Good idea," Dean said, massaging a bruised elbow. "But we already used it all tying our extra supplies to the outside."

"Hold on to your ass harder," J.B. suggested with a grin.

Extracting herself from a jumble of fallen supplies, Krysty ducked around the ammo belt feeding the machine gun and walked to the front of the wag. "Have we lost the road?" she asked, resting a slim hand on the back of the chair in an effort to stay upright.

"Ten miles ago," Ryan answered brusquely, concentrating on the task of driving. A strange rustling noise came from the outside as the LAV plowed through some bushes. "We're crossing a field at present, heading straight for a blast crater. J.B., give me a rad count!"

Quickly, the man checked the predark device pinned to his collar. "No rads," he reported. "Must have been a clean bomb."

"Clean?" Doc asked in surprise.

Reclaiming her seat, Mildred answered, "The isotopes used have a short half-life. There would be no residual radiation remaining after only a few years."

"Clean," Jak snorted. "Right."

Dean pressed his face to a defensive blaster port and saw only a rippled expanse of glass stretching in every direction. "Must have been a big nuke."

"No such thing as a small nuclear blast," Ryan stated.

Curiously, the boy studied the unearthly landscape surrounding the APC and tried to imagine what the area was like before everything was vaporized in a microsecond flash. Had there been a thriving city here, or a military complex? Or was this a lost strike, a bomb that missed its target and destroyed only woods and fields? There was no way to ever know. Nothing remained but the solid slab of slightly bluish glass, the soil fused crystalline from the extreme heat of the hellish detonation. Distorted objects were almost visible within the translucent material, broken buildings forever trapped in the middle of toppling over, and some charred human figures who would spend eternity desperately trying to swim to the surface of the solidified pool.

The boy turned away from the blaster port, lost in thought. None of the other companions spoke, the sterile vista outside affecting even these hardened warriors. Hours passed with a low hum filling the wag from the tires under the vehicle as the APC raced across the wide expanse of the cracked glass lake. Only the soft crackle of static from the radio marred the near silence. The electronic device had been salvaged from the ruins of another APC, and since it was tuned to the command channel of the blue shirts—the invading force at Front Royal—Ryan brought the radio along just in case. But with the heavy blanket of decaying isotopes in the planetary atmosphere, even the most powerful radio transmitters had a range of only a mile. Nearly useless, but it took up little space.

Shifting gears, Ryan guided the APC up a sharp incline and off the fused soil onto dead earth, not even weeds growing from the gray, sterilized soil. Slowly, over the miles, streaks of dark earth reached into the dead zone, and soon tufts of grass dotted the land. Trundling through a shallow river, the LAV broached some gentle rolling hills, and soon the black ribbon of an ancient road was visible in spots through the dense covering of weeds.

"Get hard, people!" Ryan ordered, downshifting so their speed was more manageable. "We're past the crater, so Shiloh must be close."

With trained ease, the companions prepared their weapons, sliding off safeties and making sure spare ammo was available. Jak climbed into the turret of the APC and checked the action of the 25 mm cannon, while Doc took the gunner's spot and readied the 7.62 mm ultrafast chain gun.

"Gaia, I hate crossing nuke craters," Krysty muttered, unwrapping some tape from the handle of a gren and placing the live charge in the pocket of her shaggy coat.

"Bad vibrations from all the death?" Mildred asked, closing the cylinder of her Czech ZKR Olympic target pistol. The physician knew that Krysty could sometimes perceive things beyond the usual five senses of other people. Her early warnings of unseen danger had saved their lives more than once.

"Just the opposite," Krysty said. "I can't feel anything in those cursed areas. Absolutely and completely nothing."

"Sort of like going blind," Mildred suggested.

Krysty nodded and gave a shiver. "Very much so, yes."

Glancing at a map taped to the wall, Ryan followed the ancient road to a lush forest of trees. Turning eastward, he started a long sweep around the obstruction until reaching a wide field. He braked to a halt, but didn't turn off the engines, and for a few minutes, the companions studied the area carefully with weapons in hand. A few hundred yards ahead of them, the ground seemed to stop abruptly, and beyond was the limitless vista of the open sea. The sound of distant waves breaking on a rocky shore could be faintly heard over the rumble of the engines.

"Clear," Jak said from the turret.

"Clear," Doc agreed.

Waiting another minute, Ryan finally turned off the engines and silence filled the transport. Rising from the chair, the one-eyed warrior took his Steyer longblaster from the wall and worked the bolt, chambering a round for immediate use. "Jak, stay where you are and cover us in case of trouble. When we move out, I'll be on point. Dean, stay with Mildred, Krysty, then Doc. J.B., take rearguard."

Leaning the rifle against a stack of crates, Ryan worked the slide on his SIG-Sauer 9 mm pistol and holstered the deadly blaster. "Stay sharp," he ordered, reclaiming his rifle. "This is just a recce, not a stand-up fight like at the caves. Keep a two-yard spread, and no noise. Overton's blue shirts could be close, and we want to take them by surprise."

"Ready?" J.B. asked, jerking back the bolt of his Uzi. "Go," Ryan said.

J.B. unlocked the aft double doors and kicked them open. The armored slabs swung aside on squealing hinges, and a wealth of fresh air poured into the vehicle. Hopping to the ground, J.B. gratefully stretched his legs as he listened to the sounds of life. Crickets were chirping, and a bird sang softly. Good—their presence meant there were no big predators.

The rest of the companions watched from the blaster ports, the barrels of their weapons sticking out of the APC like porcupine quills. Satisfied there was no immediate danger, J.B. slung the Uzi over a shoulder and pulled the minisextant from under his shirt. Centering the mirror on the dim sun, he cut the horizon in two, adjusting the focus with tiny movements until satisfied. "This is Shiloh, North Carolina," he stated, tucking the device away.

"Good." Ryan stepped to the ground and the men moved away to clear the way for the rest of the companions. The last person exiting, Dean closed the double doors and heard Jak bolt them from the inside.

Sweeping across the field in a standard search pattern, the companions found nothing of interest, which annoyed and disappointed them at the same time.

"Any signs of military traffic?" Ryan asked, feeling the tension of expected battle flow from his body. "Campfires, spent shells in the grass, a used latrine?"

"No signs of anything," J.B. answered, tugging his fedora down tight as protection from the wind.

Going to the edge of the field, Mildred found herself looking down at the ruins of a predark city partially covered with sand dunes. The beaches were festooned with driftwood and seaweed, and the ragged stumps of concrete pillions—the decaying remains of a once mighty seaport—jutted from the waves like the broken teeth of a sunken corpse. A telephone pole without wires rose from a sand dune, its crossbars filled with bird nests. Off by itself, a rusty stop sign waggled in the gusting wind.

Overhead, the purple sky was slashed with streaks of fiery orange, black clouds racing by as if moved by private hurricanes. Sheet lightning flashed, and distant thunder rumbled in natural majesty above the rattling stop sign.

The other companions joined Krysty at the edge of the cliff, and scowled at the ruins below.

"Son of a bitch. You sure this is the right place?" Ryan demanded gruffly.

Behind the companions, the main engine of the predark wag ticked softly as the metal slowly cooled. Then the top hatch of their armored vehicle squealed open on stubborn hinges, and Jak rose into view. Even with the armor and weapons of the Bradley APC surrounding him, Jak was clearly uneasy amid this desolation.

The youth said nothing, but his expression was one of intense scorn.

"This isn't their base," Krysty stated, lowering her blaster. "This isn't the home ville of anybody."

"Obviously, madam," Doc announced lugubriously, easing down the hammer of his gigantic LeMat pistol. "Nobody resides at this location but ghosts, and mayhap a few sand crabs. It is a simple village returned to its primordial state, with nary a humble cottage remaining to be balanced by a river's brim."

"Walt Whitman?" Mildred asked, squinting, thumbs hooked into her gun belt.

"No. Me," the man said, smiling broadly. "Just me this time."

Removing his hat, J.B. grimaced as he smoothed the brim. "Crap," he announced. "There's not a blaster or a war wag in sight, and the blues were lousy with pre-dark military supplies. Seemed like Overton had more weapons than Wizard Island and the Anthill combined!"

Dean scratched his head. "Mebbe this is the wrong Shiloh," the boy suggested. "We knew it wasn't the one in Virginia because that town got nuked in skydark."

"Could be the Civil War battleground we once visited in The Smokies," Mildred offered. "There's even a redoubt nearby, the one with all the tunnels. That could be where they're getting the weapons and wags from."

"Makes sense," Ryan said, nosily sucking on a hollow tooth. "But Tennessee is a mighty long way from Front Royal. If their home base is there, why choose a ville in Virginia as their capital city?"

"A diversion," J.B. stated, as if it were obvious. "Or mebbe Overton lied."

Mildred fiercely shook her head. "No way. He was in too much pain to be inventive. The home base of the people who attacked Front Royal is someplace named Shiloh. That we can count on as a fact."

The salty breeze from the Lantic felt good on his skin as Ryan stepped closer to the cliff for a better view. He heard a stick snap under his boots. Only the noise sounded more metallic than wooden.

"Everybody freeze," he ordered softly.

The companions went motionless, straining to detect any possible dangers. The field was empty, and nothing could be heard but the waves on the beach below.

"Now listen to me very carefully. Back away from the cliff and only step in the exact same spots you did getting here," Ryan continued in a deceptively calm voice. His heart was pounding in his chest, and suddenly his palms were damp with sweat.

"What's wrong?" Dean asked, worried. His father looked so strange, every muscle was straining, yet he was poised as if in the middle of walking.

Not daring to even turn his head, Ryan spoke to the ocean. "I just stepped on a land mine."