"So Gaza is aced?" Kate asked.

 

 "Hell no. He escaped in a wag of some kind. Big thing, eight wheels, loaded with blasters and grens."

 

 Eight wheels, could be a LAV 25. "Any rockets?"

 

 He frowned. "Nope. But Hawk stole the ville 25 mm, along with a shitload of shells."

 

 Kate frowned at the choice of words. Shells, not rounds or bullets. Damn, that was real trouble. The armor plating on the war wags was as thick as they could make it without slowing the vehicles and eating excess fuel. They were tough, but not indestructible. A functioning 25 mm cannon could tear open the war wags like a rusty tin can.

 

 "Now, Gaza has the big wag, but Hawk has the twenty-five, is that it?" she demanded. "You sure?"

 

 "Ya got my word," Red Jack stated.

 

 The Trader had half expected that, and had to accept his oath. If you give your word, it was meaningless unless you also accepted the word of others. At least, to a point.

 

 "Any chance they could join forces?"

 

 "No way!" an old man in the crowd snarled. "Just before leaving, Gaza shot Hawk, and that sorta made Hawk mad."

 

 "Damn well think so," Roberto said from the doorway. "Okay, food is coming. Line up by the other wag and you'll each get a meal and canteen of water."

 

 "After that," the first man asked hopefully.

 

 "After that," Kate repeated, "you leave."

 

 As the hungry people tramped over to get an MRE pack and hot water from a steaming kettle, Trader kept turning the news over and over in her head. Hawk, Gaza and Ryan in Core country. What a shitstorm this was becoming.

 

 "Imagine Gaza with that 25 mm cannon," Roberto drawled, walking closer, then standing alongside the woman. "Shitfire, Chief, that would change everything. Mebbe we should leave. There's nothing holding us here. No treaties, or blood kin at risk."

 

 "You want to go?" Kate asked.

 

 The big man barked a laugh. "Fuck no. I say we take Gaza down once and forever. End it here and now."

 

 "Agreed," Kate said, removing the Stetson to brush back her hair and then replacing the wide brim hat. "Okay, after they're fed, we'll head out."

 

 "Which way? Toward Rockpoint?"

 

 "Straight for the nuke cloud," she said grimly, watching the sunlight play on the rippling salt water lake. "If they're anywhere out there, that is where we will find them."

 

 "The only good point was that Gaza and Hawk would never join forces."

 

 "Yeah, thank God for that."

 

  

 

 Chapter Eleven

 

  

 

 With its antennae quivering in battle frenzy, the sec hunter droid paused in the middle of the littered street, battered and damaged, but nowhere near chilled.

 

 "Head to the left!" Ryan shouted, waving toward the right with his handcannon.

 

 Trying to be as quiet as possible, the companions obeyed, and the machine started going in the other direction, then stopped and spun fast. But by then, the companions had gained valuable yards of safety.

 

 Moving carefully over the corpses on the sidewalk, Ryan noted the actions of the droid in grim satisfaction. Blind, but not deaf, eh? The man thought as much. Okay, he could use that.

 

 Using hand signals, Ryan had Jak throw a knife and smash the windshield of a distant car. As the machine rushed over to the noise, the companions crept through the windowless front of a large liquor store. Ryan would have preferred a paint store, or gas station, but this was the only useful place in sight.

 

 Soon discovering the trick, the sec hunter returned to exactly the same spot it had been standing with machine precision, then started doing a circular recce pattern through the vehicles. As the droid swung past the store, Ryan fired once, hitting it from behind. Immediately, the machine rushed inside with its remaining buzz saw slashing the air.

 

 Firing again, Ryan busted a magnum of champagne on the counter, the popping cork and gush of bubbling wine masking their movements in the store. Then Ryan and J.B. both threw a case of whiskey at the droid. But it heard the clinking bottles coming its way and slashed the box open in midair, shattering the contents and drenching itself completely.

 

 Now the rest started bombarding the machine with bottle after bottle of pungent alcohol. Going behind the counter, Mildred and Dean toppled over a tall display rack to crash a hundred bottles of vodka and rum onto the confused droid. Deafened by the noise, the machine attacked wildly, only managing to shatter more bottles and increase the volume of booze on the floor.

 

 As the machine went berserk trying to find its prey, the companions used the shattering glass to cover their retreat to the rear door. While J.B. oiled the bolt and hinges, the companions kept cover with their blasters as Ryan took a mop from an empty bucket and dabbed it into the liquor covering the floor, then used his butane lighter to set the stringy head of the mop on fire.

 

 The droid paused at the sound of the crackling flames, and Ryan threw the burning mop like a spear across the store. It landed near the front door with a clatter, and the droid attacked as blue flames rose from the igniting alcohol and began to quickly spread, soon covering the droid in flames. As it spun about mindlessly, more bottles began to explode from the spreading conflagration.

 

 Easing out the back door, the companions raced away for several blocks, before climbing the ladder of a fire escape to reach the top of a motel. Then they hurried across the salty roof to jump to the next structure, and then did it again. Several blocks away, the friends finally paused to catch their breath and frantically reload weapons.

 

 "Mother always did say that alcohol was bad for your health," Doc muttered, starting the laborious reloading process of the LeMat. It took about five minutes for the man to properly purge all chambers in the cylinder, then compress black powder, ball and wad using the attached hand press.

 

 "No sign of the machine," J.B. announced, lowering the Navy longeyes and compacting the tube. He tucked it into his munitions bag and began reloading a clip for the Uzi from a box of spare rounds.

 

 "Thank Gaia that worked." Krysty sighed, then suddenly realized she was still carrying the Holland & Holland. With virtually no chance of ever finding more ammo for the elephant rifle, she placed it gently on the roof and checked the load in her .38 S&W revolver.

 

 "This just bought us some time, nothing more."

 

 Ryan growled, thumbing fresh single rounds into a spent clip. Tucking the clip away, he started on the next. "You know these machines are triple tough to chill and never stop hunting their prey. If the machine comes after us again," Ryan went on, working the slide on the SIG-Sauer to chamber a round, "aim for the other blade. Once that's busted, we'll have a better chance to escape."

 

 "Escape, not chill," Jak said with a frown.

 

 "We're going to need something other than blasters to stop this droid," Ryan stated bluntly.

 

 "I can make us some Molotovs," J.B. suggested, removing his glasses to clean them on a pocket rag. "But those only confuse and don't do any real damage."

 

 "Pipe bombs?" Dean suggested.

 

 The Armorer replaced the glasses. "Unless we find a National Guard armory, I'd say that was our best bet."

 

 "A sec hunter in a civilian city," Doc said thoughtfully in his deep bass, holstering his piece. "There must be something here of military value."

 

 Furrowing his brow, Jak got the idea. "Means mil blasters."

 

 "Unless it was for a missile silo outside the city," Krysty suggested pragmatically. "Or an escort for some big gov type riding through."

 

 "True enough, dear lady."

 

 Somewhere distant there came the sound of cannons, or mebbe only a series of fast explosions.

 

 "Trapped in a burning city, with no way out, and a sec hunter on our ass," Mildred grumbled. "Plus, the Core and Gaza waiting above."

 

 "Mebbe not waiting," Ryan said, studying the edge of the cliff rising above the city. "We're going to do this by the numbers. First we get more ammo, then we try for the big stuff."

 

 Moving with a purpose, the companions hit the streets. Finding a bank with unbreakable Plexiglas windows, they located a phone book not eaten by the salt and got the address for a sports store, since there didn't seem to be a military base or National Guard armory in town. A police station was useless, as cops never kept their extra ammo sealed to make it easier to use in case of trouble. Which meant the dead air would have corroded every round. But sport stores usually kept their stock of ammo sealed in plastic wrapped boxes to prevent pilferage. Moving fast and silently, they reached the store without incident and found a wealth of ammo under the counter, securely behind a steel lattice. J.B. easily unlocked that and everybody filled their pockets, taking a few spare boxes of a size used by some mil blasters, just to be sure. In the camping department, they found some MRE packs in acceptable condition, a lot of dehydrated food completely inedible, plus some underwater flares and other items that J.B. happily tucked away into his munitions bag.

 

 "Plumbing store is next," he said. "Then we need someplace secure to hide for the night. I need time to make the explos."

 

 "Already found the perfect spot," Mildred said, patting a pocket now holding a local street map. "Thick walls, heavy doors, small windows."

 

 "Jail or library," Ryan asked, tucking a few candles into a pocket.

 

 "Museum."

 

 "That'll do."

 

 Leaving the store, Dean glanced at the modern lightweight crossbows and fiberglass arrows, started to leave, then doubled back and took one plus a double quiver of razor tipped hunting arrows. The crossbow and quiver combined weighed less than just the homemade crossbow from the ville.

 

 There were several hardware stores in town, and the companions needed to scavenge three before getting every item on the list. However, as they started to leave the building, a sec hunter droid came around the corner, its scissor tipped arms snapping steadily in a mechanical beat. The droid was undamaged, not even scratched. After a moment, it was gone.

 

 "Fireblast, it's another one," Ryan cursed softly. "We hit that museum right fucking now. I don't want to face another of those things without some heavy iron on our side."

 

 Heading away from the second droid, the companions moved from building to building, watching the darkening shadows carefully, their weapons leveled and ready.

 

 The smell of smoke was getting stronger in the air, the growing fires illuminating the center of the city, casting eerie lights onto the rising black plume. High overhead, the chem clouds rumbled with thunder, and lightning crashed down to strike at the city as if offended by its presence.

 

 The group ceased any further explorations for supplies and headed straight for their bolt hole. Reaching the museum, Krysty noted a swarm of scorpions scuttling along the courtyard of the stately building, each carrying a grisly piece of the past—a finger, an ear.

 

 "Didn't take them long to get here." Ryan scowled, watching the scavengers scurry away into the sewer gratings. One arm was full of plumbing supplies, mostly short pipes about a foot long and threaded at both ends, but his gun hand was free and lightly resting on the checkered grip of the SIG-Sauer.

 

 "The smell of this much food is going to attract everything in the desert," Mildred agreed, fighting a shiver of repulsion. "Buzzards, cougars, stickies, everything."

 

 "Millipedes," Dean said with a frown, shifting his load of cleaning supplies. The chems had a lot of uses.

 

 Her hair flexing, Krysty advised, "Let them have the dead. The Great Salt can't support that much life, and mebbe the scorpions and bugs would have wiped each other out by morning."

 

 "At least this might mask our presence from the sec hunter," J.B. said, working on the lock to the steel grille covering the entrance to the museum.

 

 "No," Ryan said grimly, "it won't."

 

 As the grille came aside, they stepped in and J.B. closed the gate, expertly locking it again. Anything that wanted to get to them this way would make a hell of a racket and give them more than enough warning. The wooden front door oddly proved a greater challenge, and J.B. thought he might have to blast for a moment when the corroded lock yielded and the thick portal swung wide.

 

 A rank wind came billowing out like the last breath of a corpse, and the group covered their faces to wait for the building to be flushed with clean air before entering.

 

 Once inside, J.B. bolted the door tight, and the companions spread out to do a quick recce. However, the feeble light of their candles barely touched the vastness of the main room. Then with a cry, Dean turned and fired, the muzzle flash illuminating a snarling mutie coming straight for them!

 

 But the creature didn't react to being shot, and as Mildred shone the yellow light of her handflash onto the creature, everybody could see its shoulder was blown wide open, with fat tufts of some sort of gray foam coming out.

 

 "Oh, hell, it's a museum of natural history," Mildred said, pumping her flashlight to try to brighten the beam. The sign outside had been too badly corroded to read, and the store map had simply listed it as a museum.

 

 "A what?" Jak asked, raising his candle to the other exhibits. More creatures stared at him with dead glass eyes, forever frozen in a tableau of mock ferocity.

 

 "Sort of a trophy room," the physician attempted to explain. "For folks to see the creatures that once roamed Earth."

 

 "All aced?" the albino teen asked curiously.

 

 "Time itself did that," Doc replied haughtily. "For once, the hands of humanity were clean of the crime of slaughtering living things for pleasure."

 

 "No hunt fun," Jak corrected. "Hunt food."

 

 The scholar smiled benignly. "Ah, my dear Mr. Lauren, your wisdom is boundless."

 

 As the group moved through the display of dinosaur skeletons and dioramas of Neolithic life, they came upon a Tyrannosaurus rex rising high above the terrazzo floor, standing dramatically on a raised platform, with velvet ropes holding back the visitors to protect the creature from them.

 

 "This real?" Dean asked, poking at a leg bigger than a wag.

 

 "Real, but long dead," Mildred explained. "Most of the creatures lived and died millions of years ago."

 

 "Millions?" Jak asked, scowling.

 

 "A century of centuries of centuries," Doc espoused, walking around the Jurassic behemoth. "The preDark world, of the preDark world, in a manner of speaking."

 

 "Come on, the offices are what we want," Ryan commanded, and headed that way, leaving behind the killers from the past.

 

 After finding a secure room, the companions dug in for the night, buttressing the doors with marble benches. Once settled in, dinner was cooked over a small fire built in a metal waste can and fed pamphlets and brochures from the tourist shop. When those were gone, they moved on to paper from the desks and then the desks.

 

 "At least we don't have to burn the oil paintings in the executive office," Doc rumbled, contentedly picking his teeth with a paper clip. "It was an unwelcome experience to dine on hundred-year-old military stew warmed by the million dollar fire of a stack of burning masterpieces."

 

 "We saved the Gauguin and Edward Hopper," Mildred added around her toothbrush. Then she rinsed with mineral water and spit into a trash can. "But we should have done the Jackson Pollocks. Never did like the abstract expressionists."

 

 "Agreed, madam." Doc smiled, displaying his oddly perfect teeth. "But the fumes from his depressing works would have only made the food sour."

 

 Mopping his mess kit clean with a piece of bread from the MRE pack, Ryan idly listened to the old timers chat and really could make no sense of it. Some of the artwork had been beautiful stuff, pastoral scenes of flowers. The rest were just splotches on canvas.

 

 After dinner, Ryan and Krysty took the first shift of walking a patrol of the building while J.B. showed the others how to make pipe bombs from the plumbing supplies, mixed with items from a paint store and a garage. If there had been the time, the Armorer could have made much more powerful guncotton from the treasure in most banks. A big stack of money, a sack of silver quarters, a high school chemistry lab and in less than a week he was producing fulminating guncotton at a tremendous rate. The stuff was ten times more powerful than dynamite, yet much easier to make. He and Ryan had tried reloading bullets with the stuff once and even with a half charge mixed with common dirt, the blaster was blown apart. Since then, he never tried again, using the reloads found in the redoubts. They were infinitely safer.

 

 One at a time, each section of pipe was filled with a batch of cooked chems poured from a coffeepot, then the end cap screwed on tight and gently laid aside. While they cooled, the bombs were sensitive to shocks, but once cold, you could toss one down a flight of stairs and nothing would happen. Unless the fuse was lit, and then they detonated with staggering force, throwing out a deadly halo of shrapnel from the lead pipe.

 

 Doc, Jak and Dean took over the production of the explos, as Mildred and J.B. walked a patrol. Ryan and Krysty found the private office of the curator with a comfortable sofa for sleeping and settled in for the rest of the night. Their next tour wasn't until just before dawn.

 

  

 

 Chapter Twelve

 

  

 

 The stars disappeared and the sky brightened as dawn rose in the east, but the preDark buildings stood in shadows until the sun crept over the rim of the crater and shone upon the burning city.

 

 Sleeping on a blanket near the dwindling campfire, Baron Gaza awoke at the infusion of light. The air was chilly, his breath fogging slightly, and the waves of heat from the crackling fire felt good on his face. Dimly, the man could sense something was wrong, but nothing about the area seemed awry. Food was cooking, although there were no frying pans in sight lying amid the burning wood. Kathleen was sitting in the open rear doors of the APC, a rapidfire across her lap. Delia was inside the war wag, wrapped in blankets, and the others were lying nearby, naked limbs intertwined from the previous night's orgy of debauchery.

 

 With streaks of dried blood on her cheek, Shala lay curled into a ball, still trembling under the blankets. Gaza smiled briefly at the memory of the rape. He had been her first, in so many ways, so after his lust was slacked, the baron wasted time giving her pleasure. And his wives had done a superb job removing her tongue, the cauterized stump barely bleeding at all it had been done so quickly. The combination of mutilation, pain and pleasure did the trick as always. She now silently worshiped him like his other wives, although he would have the rest keep a close watch on her for a while. Sometimes there were slips, and he always hated having to slit a throat on the honeymoon.

 

 Rising from his nest of sweat and sex stained blankets, Gaza rose and stretched, luxuriating in the warm morning breeze. Limping over to the edge of the cliff, the man openly relieved himself while Allison stood close by with a longblaster cradled in her arms. She grunted as he finished, then waved a hand at the city below.

 

 The view was murky, and Gaza tried to force the sleep from his sight when cold adrenaline coursed through his powerful body and the man violently cursed. That wasn't the fog of sleep; it was smoke, billowing clouds of thick smoke, with flickers of writhing flames deep within. He tried to wish it away as a bad dream, but as his eyes became adjusted to the growing light he saw the ruins of some smaller buildings on the south side, charred timbers mixed with priceless debris, the perfect wags in the street reduced to smoldering wrecks.

 

 "Blood of my fathers," the baron growled, taking a step toward the metropolis, "it's burning. All of it is burning!"

 

 Fearful for his safety, Allison grabbed his shoulder in a strong grip, and he shook her off, then backhanded her to the ground.

 

 "It's burning!" he screamed, spraying spittle into her startled face. "My empire is on fire and you let me sleep? You feeb slut."

 

 Tears running down her face, Allison used both hands to try to explain she had only discovered the destruction moments before her husband. Watching the hand gestures, Gaza couldn't follow what she was saying and turned away before he struck the ignorant bitch again. The city was burning, the wealth of the preDark world vanishing before their very eyes. There was no time for recriminations or beatings. Every moment counted now.

 

 "Everybody up!" Gaza shouted, striding across the campsite to reclaim his clothing draped over the front prow of the APC. "Put everything back into the wag! We're going in to loot the ruins for blasters."

 

 As he climbed into his clothes, his wives began to hurry about the area, picking up loose items and herding Shala into the vehicle. Shuffling over the uneven ground, the girl dropped her blanket, exposing her pale skin and pert breasts. Yanking on boots, Gaza paid no attention to the battered female, with more important matters on his mind. Who the nuke was this Ryan Cawdor to come out of the Deathlands like some whirlwind of destruction? First, Rockpoint was destroyed by water, and now this nameless treasure trove by fire. It was like something from the fragging preDark Bible. What in hell was coming next, a plague of mutie locust?

 

 As if in response, the fiery clouds in the sky rumbled ominously, making Gaza almost drop his gun belt. Trying to hide the fear in his stomach, the man forced trembling hands to buckle the holster around his waist, and he cleared his mind of foolish worries with the comforting routine of checking the big blasters. His personal handcannons had been bought from that bitch Trader before she decided he was stockpiling too many blasters. As if there was such a thing as too many weapons. She just wanted to keep him weak, unable to leave the desert and expand his domain. But that was changing now, and soon he would have that blond bitch under the knife. Not to make her a wife, oh, no, this time it would be just for the sheer pleasure of bloody revenge.

 

 Going to the rear of the vehicle, Gaza checked the clutch and electric motor for the heavy winch. Designed to pull the wag from swampy ground, the cable was thick and strong. When Gaza had first obtained the vehicle, he had walked out the cable to its full length to learn exactly how long it was. He had used a knife to scratch the framework for every ten paces, and now counted ten such marks. Roughly a hundred feet. The sinkhole was about that deep. Which meant there was no way he could anchor the cable and have the APC lower itself to the ground below. Damn. But he could lower down a couple of his wives to raid the ancient structures before the whole place was leveled by the flames.

 

 "Damn you Ryan!" he screamed at the buildings showing below the cliff. "Damn you to hell!" Strangely, the words echoed among the windowless concrete hives, as if carrying onward forever.

 

 CLOSING THE DOOR to the museum, J.B. locked it with a click and stood to join the others on the front steps. Washed, fed and well rested, the other companions were spread out in a defensive arc with their backs to the museum and blasters held ready. Just for a moment, J.B. thought he heard somebody calling a name, and then it was gone, carried away on the breeze.

 

 The plaza of the building was alive with scavengers, insects of every kind and flocks of rustling birds, mostly black buzzards. They had arrived during the night, hundreds of them, along with some vultures. Normally bitter enemies constantly fighting over every scrap of food, now the birds roosted side by side, stuffing themselves on the dried human flesh that lay sprawled in the streets in such abundance.

 

 Trying to hide it, Doc was repulsed by the sounds. The noise of the feasting was horrible, the ripping of cloth followed by the stabbing of sharp beaks and then the ripping of skin and cartilage. It reminded him of pigs at the trough, and he forced away the madness that welled at that dark memory.

 

 Away from the bloodless carnage, a smoky pall hung over the city, thick clouds swirling along the streets, distant reddish lights showing new buildings burning out of control, mingling with the occasional crash of falling masonry and splintering wood.

 

 "Ryan," Mildred said, licking her lips.

 

 The big man turned. "Yeah?"

 

 "You know how I'm always pushing for us to recce just a little more, and try to salvage more technology, medicine, whatever?" She frowned. "Well, not this time. We're standing in the middle of the powder keg, and we can't leave fast enough."

 

 "I second that," Dean added grimly, adjusting his grip on the lightweight crossbow.

 

 Krysty glanced around at the other buildings and stores near the museum. Her hair was strangely still, its lack of motion showing her deep concern.

 

 "The question still remains," she muttered. "How do we get out of here? A hundred feet straight up is a hell of a climb."

 

 "We've done it before," J.B. stated, tilting back his hat to survey the sprawling metropolis. "But only as a last resort."

 

 Every building seemed to be crawling with birds and other scavengers. More winged creatures were circling the exposed city, some of them soaring between the buildings and roosting amid the gargoyles and spires of a cathedral. The stained glass windows were about the only glass remaining intact.

 

 "Hell of a climb," Ryan agreed, "so we best try and find something else before we go grabbing bastard rock."

 

 Walking along the steps, his presence caused a stir among the birds and he worked the bolt action on the Steyr without conscious thought. As if understanding the action, the buzzards moved away from the man to feed on other corpses. Only the vultures stayed, arching their snakelike necks in annoyance as they gobbled down ragged pieces of dried flesh.

 

 The companions were closest to the northern side of the cliff, the smoke thin enough to see the vertical rock wall of the sinkhole. There were a lot of cracks, and even a few ravines, but nothing that would offer a route to the surface. The sinkhole made a hell of a trap and once inside, there was no easy way out. They were like rats in a garbage can, with the open sky directly above, but no way to reach it.

 

 "Buried alive," Mildred said softly, her words carrying on the morning breeze much farther than she had expected.

 

 Just then, a soft, familiar hooting sounded from the burning city, and the companions turned together, fingers tightening on triggers. A few blocks away, a humanoid figure was clinging to the side of a luxury hotel, holding on to the stonework with one arm while the other was batting at the birds swooping close to feed on the helpless prey. But as one vulture got too near, the humanoid grabbed a flapping wing. As the vulture frantically tried to get free, the manlike being released its grip of the wall but stayed oddly secure to the flat stonework with just bare feet as it tore the screaming vulture apart in an explosion of bloody feathers. Screaming their rage, the other vultures flapped away.

 

 "Stickies." Krysty cursed, frowning. "Mother Gaia, protect us. Everything in the desert must be heading this way."

 

 "When the dust dome cracked, it must have been visible for dozens of miles," Doc stated, both hands resting on the silver head of his ebony stick.

 

 "Hundreds of miles," Ryan corrected, "We need to recce the rockface, and the top of a building would give the best view. Just need some place the fire hasn't reached yet."

 

 "Or stickies," Jak said, checking the clinking bag at his side. The museum had been full of useful items, and now they had eight Molotovs made from wine bottles, carpet stain cleaner, vodka and some odd chems. Since J.B. was hauling the majority of the lead pipe bombs, Jak had opted to carry the heavy Molotovs. Besides, he was a better aim at throwing things than the Armorer.

 

 "Where we came in looks okay," Dean said, pointing in that direction.

 

 As J.B. used his Navy scope to check the building, Ryan squinted at the structure. Sure enough, the central office building wasn't yet on fire, but the flames were close, reflecting on the sides of the structure.

 

 "Too risky," his father declared. "Once we reached the top, the fire could jump and we'd be trapped for sure."

 

 J.B. lowered the longeyes and compacted it before tucking it away. "Nothing else looks any better," he said ruefully. "What ain't on fire yet is blocked by the buildings that are."

 

 "So we walk the skirt," Ryan stated firmly, settling the matter, and the man turned to head toward the section of cliff that was nearest. "It'll be awhile before the fire reaches the outskirts, so anything there we can use to recce, or as a ladder to climb out."

 

 "You really think we're going to find something?" J.B. asked,

 

 The one-eyed man shrugged. "You got a better idea, start talking."

 

 J.B. merely grunted in reply and fell into step with his friend, the stubby barrel of the 9 mm Uzi regularly sweeping the street and sidewalks before them in a steady pattern.

 

 Crossing the street, the companions put the feeding birds in their wake, and maneuvered through a morass of cars all jammed together in neat rows. The machines had to have been in gear, held in place purely by the pressure of the driver's foot on the brake when the world ended. As the corpses went limp, the vehicles surged ahead, but only for a few feet before slamming into one another and forming an orderly crash that stretched for blocks.

 

 Halfway through the crumpled vehicles, Ryan heard a faint moan and walked closer to a black limo to touch the hood. The metal was vibrating slightly under his fingertips. How the hell could the horn still be operating a hundred years later? Unless the engine had a nuke battery for a power source. But that was for mil wags only, and not even every one of them got the unique devices.

 

 Studying the driver and passengers, Ryan deduced it was some sort of a gov wag, loaded with the barons of their day. Oddly, there seemed to be movement amid the passengers, and he instinctively swung up his blaster as protection. A black millipede crawled into view from under the jacket of a corpse, then several more from the other corpses. The bugs were everywhere inside the limo, and Ryan could only guess that the things had been attracted by the mag field of the still working horn. For some reason, they were drawn to mag fields the way a shark was to blood in the water. Mildred had tried explaining it once, but the whitecoat jargon was out of his league. However, the fact remained that bugs liked mag fields.

 

 Away from the traffic jam, a lifeless mob of people filled the sidewalk and street in front of a movie theater, and the companions had no choice but to walk on the dead, the desiccated bodies crunching under their boots like autumn leaves.

 

 Heading for the cliff, Ryan turned a corner and stopped. The intersection was clear of traffic, the bodies of police lying before the side streets full of cars, and some sort of a mil convoy parked forever at a stoplight. Motorcycles flanked an unmarked armored truck, the driver and passenger both openly carrying shotguns. The local cops had been holding back civilian wags for the mil wags to get through.

 

 "Must have been important folks," Krysty said, looking under the vehicle for any more millipedes.

 

 "Or they were carrying something important," Dean suggested, checking the fallen motorcycles. "Prob just gold, or some other useless stuff."

 

 The boy knew that far too many folks had wasted precious time and effort busting open armored wags only to find them stuffed with jack, jewelry or pieces of silver. Totally useless. The paper jack was too stiff to use for wiping your ass, and silver was too soft to make ammo.

 

 Of course, J.B. knew how to make explosives from preDark money and silver coins. But he and Ryan were the only folks still alive who could do that. Dean knew most of the procedure, but it was damn tricky and one mistake put you on the last train west in a fuck lot of very small pieces.

 

 "Gold okay," Jak replied, surveying the rooftops fort any signs of stickies. Many times, he had made reloads with gold bullion from a bank. The yellow stuff was just as good as gray lead for bullets, almost as if they were the same stuff, only different colors. Nothing wrong with finding a load of gold.

 

 Going to the cab of the armored truck, J.B. tricked the lock and cracked the door a hair, allowing the century old air to escape in a whispery sigh. Its passage made the two corpses slump forward slightly as if suddenly tired.

 

 As the ancient death fumes cleared, the Armorer swung open the corroded door with a squeal of hinges and reached in to remove the keys from the ignition and toss them to Ryan. The other man made the catch and started for the rear to check inside.

 

 Climbing onto the step of the front cab, J.B. carefully removed the shotguns from the crumbling hands of the dead men. Working the stiff pump to eject the shells, he got ten before the second shotgun gave a loud crack and jammed solid, the pump no longer able to move in either direction. Eight of the shells cracked apart into dried powder and shot when the Armorer gently squeezed the plastic housing, but the two remained firm and he lovingly tucked those into empty loops on his belt. Checking the seat, he found a box of ammo, but spilled coffee had splashed onto the cardboard and over the decades the brass base of the shells had crusted over, making them useless.

 

 Rummaging under the front seat on the other side, Doc unearthed several road flares in good condition, the waxy cylinders fogged with age but still intact. However, whether they would ignite was problematic, at best.

 

 "The proof of the pudding," Doc rumbled, tucking them away.

 

 "Is in the eating," Mildred said as she located a first-aid kit in the glove compartment, and slipped it into her satchel with the other medical supplies. Most likely, everything it contained was useless, but even the plastic box itself would be good to keep her small supply of bandages dry and clean.

 

 Without a qualm, Jak removed a cap from the driver and took the MP's sunglasses. Sliding them into place on his own face, the polarized lens darkened in response to the bright desert sunlight and the albino nodded.

 

 Reaching the rear of the wag, Ryan stopped short at the sight of the single thick door twisted off its row of hinges, the steel battered and torn. But the metal was bent outward, not inward. Something had escaped from the military vehicle, and he could guess what it was.

 

 "The sec hunters," Krysty guessed, standing alongside the scowling man.

 

 Turning, Ryan frowned at the buildings, cars and stores nearby, searching for any sign of movement. But the area was quiet, with only a creaking sign swaying in the smoky breeze and the ghastly noise of the eating birds breaking the deathly still.

 

 "Damn things must have been en route to somewhere when skydark hit," Ryan said, keeping a sure grip on his blaster. "Mebbe even the Grandee redoubt. And they've been sitting here on their tin asses, warm with juice from the nuke batteries until the dome cracked."

 

 "They probably read that as an act of aggression and activated themselves to repel the invaders," Mildred added, working the bolt on her Remington longblaster. Only four rounds remained, but she planned on making every shot count. Her Czech ZKR pistol would be used for millipedes and stickies. The big bore bone shredders were reserved exclusively for the lethal military robots.

 

 "You mean," Dean said, "to repel us."

 

 Then without further comment, the boy took a stance toward the swinging sign and worked the arming lever of his new crossbow to nock a fiberglass arrow into place. The droids were smart and might decide to try to get close using the noise of the sign as cover.

 

 In a swell of fatherly pride, Ryan noted the boy's actions, then returned to the van, knowing his back was secure. Inside were floor brackets about the size of the base of a sec hunter, power cables dangling impotently from the ceiling, a bank of meters and dark vid screens flanking the two spots. For Ryan, the number was deeply reassuringly. Just the two they had seen so far, then, no more.

 

 There were also some skeletons at the front of the wag, strapped into seats, with steel briefcases chained to their wrists, the dusty uniforms hanging loosely off the wizened corpses of the officers. Holstered at their sides were a couple of plastic boxes like the remote control of a vid. Snapping loose a restraining strap, Ryan slid the device from its holster and it crumbled in his grasp, completely eaten through by the leaking acid of its own batteries. He tried again with the other and got the same results. Chilled by sheer time.

 

 "These must have been the remotes to control the droids," Ryan guessed, tossing the fistful of circuits and chips aside.

 

 "Anything else?" Doc asked, craning his neck to see the interior.

 

 Glancing at the briefcases, Ryan saw a logo on the stainless steel lock and knew better than to waste time trying to get inside those. Most likely it was the best the government at the time had. Even if they were successful, he knew it was possible that the cases were boobied.

 

 "Nothing here for us," Ryan said, coming out. "We better move in case the machines return to check on their masters."

 

 That was a sobering thought, and the companions quickly departed the area and didn't stop until they were a good two blocks away. From there, the cliff rose above the low buildings at the outskirts of the city, loose rubble from the salt dome lying in plain sight, some sections a dozen yards thick, others only broken into a million small crystals the size of a fist. Loose white salt covered the streets inches deep, a few mounds rising over fireplugs and bodies, making the area look like Alaska in the winter.

 

 Crunching through the salt, they reached the base of the cliff and studied the rock face. It was as they had feared—the cliff was a sheer vertical rise, without ledges or cracks to use for climbing. Even worse, the plain of the city seemed to be larger than the cliff above, so that any climb would be partially inverted, the climbers hanging downward.

 

 "Nobody here before us," Jak stated, only glancing momentarily at the pristine salt. Not a single footprint or spoor showed in the loose material.

 

 "Not here anyway," Ryan said. Trying to gauge the slope of the cliff, it appeared that the rock was less angled inward to their right, toward the east.

 

 "This way," he said. "Doc, use your coat."

 

 As the companions started forward once more, Doc removed his frock coat and tied the arms around his waist. Now hanging on the ground, the material smoothed over their prints in the salt to disguise their passing. It wouldn't hide their presence from a human tracker, but might be good enough for the machines.

 

 "Wish we had one working wag," Krysty added, sliding a backpack over her shoulder.

 

 "Pity about those two wheelers," Mildred said, looking at the display of racing bicycles inside a dark sporting goods store.

 

 Bikes were good for doing a recce in a city, and able to go places no motorcycle could because of their weight. But while most of the frames in the front window were badly corroded from the salt air, the better titanium frames were in excellent condition. The problem was the tires. The majority were only tatters of rubber draped over the shiny rims. There might be some in the back storeroom, but finding enough of the right size to fit seven of the titanium bikes would take hours. Time better spent making distance.

 

 "Need a lot of oil to get those moving again," J.B. commented, pausing to look into a crack of the salt before stepping over and across. "A hell of a lot more than I carry, and there's not a garage or hardware store in sight."

 

 "Furniture store on the corner," Dean noted, gesturing with his crossbow. "Got a couple of lamps on display. See 'em? Just drain the lightweight oil on top, and there's enough heavy machine oil on the bottom to lube a hundred bikes. Good for blasters, too."

 

 "An exemplary notion, my young friend!" Doc rumbled in good humor, clasping the boy on the shoulder. "Highly laudable! Is this your own idea?"

 

 "Learned it at Brody's school," Dean answered.

 

 "Head's up," Ryan said, coming to attention. "We found them. Ten o'clock high."

 

 Facing in that direction, the others took a moment to study the preDark buildings, then scanned the top of the cliff. Barely visible against the light colored sand of the desert was a dark shape traveling along the very rim of the sinkhole, a cloudy rain of loose stones and sand falling in its wake.

 

 "Dark night, that's a LAV 25," J.B. said, peering through the Navy longeyes. "Got to be Gaza."

 

 "Or Hawk," Ryan added, backtracking the sand cloud of the war wag's passage. It reached only a half mile or so. Good enough.

 

 "Okay, if they're going left, then we go right," he stated, turning and proceeding quickly in the other direction. "Best to put more distance between us and hopefully cover ground they haven't yet. We've got to locate some way out before they find a way down."

 

 "No prob," Jak stated confidently. "Need cracks to climb. Gaza need highway for big wag."

 

 "The APC has a winch," Mildred reminded him, "and can easily support its own weight."

 

 Walking along the soft salt, Ryan frowned. Fireblast, he hadn't considered that possibility before. Turning to ask J.B. a question, he stopped as something dropped from the bare rocks above to land near the companions. Incredibly, it was a humanoid figure with skin the color and texture of the rock. Male sexual organs dangled obscenely between its scrawny legs, the hands and feet covered with rippling suckers.

 

 "Stickie!" Ryan cried, firing his blaster at point blank range.

 

 The creature recoiled, hooting in pain, thrashing its limbs wildly. Doc and Krysty frantically jerked out of the way to avoid touching the creature, and it fell to the salty ground, a gaping wound pulsating in its shoulder. A thin fluid trickled from the ragged opening, but then it started to close, and the stickie rose again, its naked legs already changing into the color of the powdery salt…

 

 "It's a goddamn chameleon stickie!" Mildred cursed, pumping two rounds into the creature's face, going for the eyes. Both orbs exploded into a gelatinous mass from the arrival of the .38 slug, and the pure white stickie fell to the ground.

 

 Several more of the disguised creatures dropped into the middle of the group from the rocky overhang, and the companions suddenly found themselves attacked from every side.

 

  

 

 Chapter Thirteen

 

  

 

 The eight heavy wheels chewed the ground along the edge of the cliff, sending a salty dust cloud across the preDark city.

 

 Baron Gaza didn't like it. To give away your position before a fight was bad tactics. But he hoped it wouldn't be noticeable mixed in with the smoke from the burning buildings. Besides, there was no other choice. He needed to be this close to the rim of the cliff to see the buildings below. The baron had small hope of spotting the hated outlanders, but Allison was standing in the aft turret, ready to unleash the 25 mm cannon at the first sight of Ryan or the others.

 

 The heat of the rising sun hadn't yet turned the desert into an oven, and the baron had the top hatch raised to admit a pleasant breeze into the war wag. The smell of hot metal, oil, diesel fumes and sweaty bodies had been making the interior of the APC almost unbearable, and he now bitterly regretted ripping out the air conditioner to save fuel. The baron had no idea how the Trader could stand the reek of humanity for those long treks across the nukescape.

 

 In tumbling majesty, the dying city was spread out to the left, the light of the fires fading in the sunlight, but during the night the sky had glowed from the reflected flames. Entire blocks had been reduced to blackened skeletons of twisted steel from the raging fires. Smaller structures were ablaze, filled with flames that occasionally exploded, throwing out a spray of burning debris.

 

 Lines of cars were burning, like knots in a fuse, until the flames reached a preDark gas station and created new detonations, fireballs rising into the sky and fading away long before the sound of their creation echoed to the distant observers.

 

 The sheer waste of the precious materials was a knife in his gut, but the man accepted the loss and concentrated on trying to steal what he could before the rest of the city was consumed by the growing conflagration.

 

 Reaching for the water bag, the baron turned his head for a moment when a descending buzzard jerked his attention back to the metropolis below. What was it?

 

 Slamming on the brakes, Gaza downshifted until the wag slowed to a shuddering halt. Almost immediately, the dust cloud in its wake washed over the vehicle, blocking out the world for a few moments.

 

 Turning in the navigator seat, Kathleen silently asked her husband what was happening. Gaza ignored the woman and, grabbing hold of the overhead hatch, pulled himself from the driver's seat and climbed down the angled hull of the APC to rush to the crumbling edge of the cliff.

 

 Partially blocked by the smoke, he saw a parking lot about a block in filled with military vehicles—4X4 trucks, Hummers, a lone LAV 25 and several huge tanks. It was a convoy of some sort, stopped for lunch or fuel, and caught in the salt fall to never move again. Until now. The machines looked in perfect condition from this distance, and Gaza could barely breathe at the idea of how much ammo and fuel had to be there just waiting to be taken. For a wild moment, he toyed with the notion of trying to get one of the tanks to the desert, then abandoned the idea as impossible. The steep sides of the sinkhole would be tough for even a strong man to climb. And so far he hadn't even found a trail that would handle the lumbering APC, much less a gigantic preDark tank. Those were made prisoners of the city from their own weight and size. But the contents could be scavenged, every drop of fuel and every live round of ammo.

 

 "Wake up, my dears! Time to work!" the baron said, going to the external winch and releasing the cable.

 

 With a bang, the rear doors of the APC slammed aside and two of his wives came running around the machine, with blasters in their hands. As the wife in charge, Allison would stay with the APC, and Delia would keep a watch on Shala, to make sure the newlywed didn't run off during the scavenging. Which meant the task was middle wife work.

 

 "I'm sending down Carol," Gaza announced, wrapping a length of the greasy cable around an arm. "Latch the hook on to anything you can and we'll haul the stuff up here for sorting. Pay special attention for weapon lockers. Those will be large boxes resembling a green plastic coffin. If you find something big, I'll send down Kathleen."

 

 Shifting the boxy Ingram rapidfire to hang out of the way across her back, Carol nodded dumbly. The small brunette was on point for the recce. Understood.

 

 With Allison watching from the turret atop the APC, Kathleen helped Carol loop the woven steel cable around her body, under the arms and between her legs for reliable support. It was a long fall onto hard rock.

 

 Gaza stayed with the winch and kept a hand on the control box, taking his cue from Kathleen when to spool out some slack. Careful of her balance, Carol eased herself over the side until she was dangling freely. The loops shifted position as the metallic length fully supported her weight, and for a heart stopping moment she thought they were coming off. But then the steel hook cinched firm and the cables tightened securely about her clothing.

 

 Glancing up at Kathleen, Carol waved a hand to show that everything was okay. Turning toward the APC, Kathleen wiggled a finger at her husband, and Gaza began feed out the cable nice and slow. Long minutes passed as the woman descended into the city, and the main reel was getting low when Kathleen made a slowing gesture. He complied, and then after a few more yards she clenched a fist and the baron cut the power and set the brake.

 

 Staying in the cable, Carol unlimbered her rapidfire and looked over the area for any immediate dangers. Black birds were eating the ancient corpses, but no other creatures were in sight. However, she made a mental note to stay clear of the sewer grates and any dark shadows.

 

 Releasing the catch on the heavy steel hook, Carol slithered out of the cable and loosely attached it to a piece of salt corroded machinery sticking out of the ground. Whatever its original purpose, the thing would now function well as an anchor. Checking the spare clips in her belt, Carol glanced at the cliff and got a reassuring wave from Kathleen, her husband standing nearby with a longblaster held at his waist. Good enough.

 

 Wary of her footing, Carol headed through the jumble of smashed concrete and sparkling salt crystals to reach the ruins and slipped past a collapsed piece of a building, ducking to avoid having a lamppost hit her head. Once on the street, the woman weaved through the posed corpses, marveling at the amount of metal they wore as ornaments. It was on their wrists, fingers, ears, and one female even seemed to have it in her tongue and nose. She had to have been very bad for her husband to torture her like that.

 

 The corner was free of cars, and Carol paused at the entrance of the parking lot, listening hard, her rapidfire balanced in both hands. On the other side of the fence, the mil wags were parked in a paved lot, and more corpses in fatigues lay on the hard ground, with blasters and clipboards scattered nearby.

 

 The wisps of smoke moved eerily over the streets, the grinning bodies staring out through the closed windows with sightless faces. Carol shivered from the feeling that thousands of eyes were watching her every move. But her unease grew from the shadows of the tall buildings, most of them higher than anything she had imagined—five, six stories tall reaching toward the very stars. Carol fought the urge to say a prayer to the ancient ones and beg pardon for entering their lost world.

 

 And the carrion birds were everywhere feeding on the dead. Although she knew the scavengers were terrible cowards alone, they were brave in a group, and might attack if provoked. The sooner another wife came down the better.

 

 Swallowing hard, the woman squared her shoulders and started for the nearest truck in the convoy. The mil wag was huge, many times larger than the APC, and the rear doors had flopped open, spilling out the cargo. At first she thought they were food packs, those MRE things her husband spoke about so avidly.

 

 Checking inside the vehicle, she found even more of the objects, hundreds upon hundreds of small green squares. Then Carol realized they were actually cubes. A big rig full of plastic cubes! Thousands of them! She had absolutely no idea what they could possibly be.

 

 Listening to the moan of the wind, Carol lifted one and held the cold cube in her hand, half expecting it to vibrate or radiate warmth. But the cubes were as inert as the sec men guarding the convoy.

 

 Reluctantly exiting the truck, Carol went past a couple of empty Hummers and started for the tank. A corpse lying across the top, halfway out of the hatch, showed how to gain entry. But she already knew how to get inside such a war wag, where the live shells would be stored and how to release the catches holding the ammo in place.

 

 Then she slowed, realizing that it was pointless to raid the big machine. Each shell was almost too big to carry, and even if she got it to the APC, there was no way to shoot the ammo. Forgetting the heavy brass, Carol went to the rear of the tank and rapped on the spare fuel cans strapped to the side. She was rewarded with an answering slosh. Fuel to spare!

 

 Dragging a can over to the cable, she attached the hook and watched as it was hauled upward and out of sight. As the empty cable started snaking downward once more, Carol got the next two fuel cans and sent them up together, the winch handling the load effortlessly. Good, this would save a lot of time. Choosing the next target, the woman headed directly for the APC sitting on top of a smashed Hummer, a pile of corpses wearing camou uniforms crushed beneath the war wag. Even from here, she could see the sealed plastic tubes of the LAW-givers amid the wreckage. Those were the best. PreDark rocket launchers that could destroy even the largest war wag. With only one of those her husband could ace the Trader from a safe distance. Those she had to have immediately.

 

 Then she could do the LAV 25. Since it had a rapidfire and a 25 mm cannon mounted on top, there should be lots of linked ammo stored inside. Mebbe even fresh chems for the smoke generators. Her husband would be delighted over such a find. But this was more than she could carry. There was so much to take!

 

 Turning toward the cliff, she fingered a message for Kathleen to come down. Standing dangerously close to the edge, the busty woman nodded and stepped out of sight. Returning, Kathleen slipped over the edge and the cable started extending with the woman dangling at the end.

 

 As the woman landed, Carol helped her loose from the hook and they returned to the park. Kathleen went to explore the APC as Carol started straight the Hummer.

 

 Passing the tank, Carol heard an odd sound, almost like empty ammo shells jingling in a pocket. Curiously, the woman turned to see a machine of some sort come out of the war wag and start toward her. Its body was composed of chrome rods, the domed head fronted by two enormous red crystal eyes and both of its weird flexible metal arms tipped with scissors. Was it some sort of device for farming, to harvest crops? Born and raised in the desert ville of Rockpoint, Carol had never seen anything vaguely similar before and couldn't even hazard a guess to its purpose. However, it was still working, so mebbe her husband would want it for parts.

 

 As she approached, the machine suddenly reached out and she automatically jerked backward, the scissors snapping closed only a hair away from her throat. Carol had actually felt the passage of the metal on her skin.

 

 Snarling a curse, the woman unlimbered the rapidfire and hosed the preDark device with a stuttering stream of 9 mm rounds. At this range it was impossible to miss and almost every round hit the sec hunter droid but merely bounced off its armored body.

 

 Now the droid charged again, the twin scissors closing with a loud crunch, and she saw that the barrel of her blaster was cut off at the magazine. Nuking hell, it was a guardian of some kind! Firing wildly, the panicked woman could barely control her weapon without the aid of the barrel and she hastily backed away, trying to shout for help, the impulse returning unbidden after so many years of being rendered mute.

 

 Then her weapon jammed, and as the droid reached for her face Carol turned and ran blindly into the street, bouncing off the dead cars and rattling the ancient occupants. Then cutting through a courtyard, she ran through a feeding flock of buzzards, hoping the birds might distract the machine. Screaming in outrage, the carrion eaters erupted into flight, and while the urge to look was strong, Carol dared not risk a glance to see if the trick worked.

 

 Pelting down the street, the woman zigzagged through the rubble and dashed under the crashed lamppost. Unable to hear anything but her own rushed breathing, she scrambled up the rubble, feeling a rush of relief that the cable was still hanging in place waiting for her return.

 

 Rushing for the hook, Carol tripped and landed hard, losing her blaster and a hand went straight onto a cluster of salt crystals, the sharp prisms stabbing through the soft part of her palm like a glass daggers. Writhing in agony, she pulled her hand loose just as the jingling noise came again from behind. It was here!

 

 Blasters started shooting suddenly from above, the rounds hitting everywhere nearby. Safe for the moment, the woman reclaimed her rapidfire and savagely yanked the arming bolt of the boxy 9 mm Ingram SMG, finally freeing the bent casing caught in the ejector port. Firing as she turned, Carol saw only the brief flash of mirror bright steel as the scissors stabbed into her chest.

 

 Searing pain filled her world as she saw her own blood gush onto the machine, then the second scissors reached for her throat. Everything went chaotic as she went flying sideways to land on the ground, then rolled away until eternal blackness swallowed her whole.

 

 Casting away the headless torso, the sec hunter droid swiveled its lenses skyward, easily finding the APC on the ledge. It waited a full minute for an order from the soldiers operating the U.S. Army vehicle, but when nothing was received on the proper channels, it immediately switched to defense mode. Cycling out a pair of secondary arms equipped with pliers, the droid grabbed on to the dangling hook and started to climb steadily arm over arm.

 

 Now from above and below small caliber rounds hit the droid, then a nearby section of the rock face exploded thunderously as a LAV rocket slammed into it. Shrapnel ricocheted off its primary hull in a hundred places, but nothing penetrated.

 

 Then the damage around the smoking blast crater began to spread, the cracks yawning wide in every direction. Large pieces of the rock started to fall away, causing a minor avalanche. Then there came the roar of a diesel engine and the cable began to move as the APC departed the weakened section.

 

 Gripping even harder, the droid continued to climb even as it bounced and slammed off the crumbling face of the cliff. More than once it was sent spinning away, sailing over the city, only to come crashing back against the rock with brutal force. An eye cracked, distorting its external view, and a secondary hydraulic system went off-line from the pounding, but the droid accepted the damage as minimal and continued toward the enemy.

 

 The droid was only a few yards from the top of the cliff, when the APC stopped moving. Redoubling its ascent, the sec hunter clawed its way onto the desert floor and stood just as the 25 mm cannon atop the LAV 25 roared into life. The explosive rounds detonated on its hull in strident fury, smashing both primary and secondary systems. Forced backward from the sheer force of the continuous detonations, the sec hunter tried to get out of the way and it suddenly was falling.

 

 Unacceptable. Reaching out for the blur of rock with every arm, the machine found the cliff was just outside its range, even with the longarms fully extended. Sending out a radio signal for immediate assistance, the machine emotionlessly tried to find a solution to the problem when it hit a pile of broken concrete with triphammer force and abruptly ceased to process information.

 

 INSERTING A FRESH ammo clip into his AK-47 assault rifle, Baron Gaza snarled a guttural curse as the tumbling machine crashed into a million pieces, wires and gears flying wide and far. Then there came a crackling electrical explosion from within the wreckage, and an oily cloud of dark smoke rolled skyward.

 

 "Try to chill me, will ya?" he shouted, firing a burst at the destroyed remains. The pieces jumped and danced from the incoming barrage of rounds, but no other result was achieved from the expenditure of ammo.

 

 A grunt caught his attention, and Gaza turned to look at Allison still in the turret of the APC, an arm draped across the 25 mm cannon, its multiple barrels visibly radiating heat. He arched an eyebrow and she asked a silent question.

 

 Shrugging in response, Gaza went back to looking at the city below, now searching for any sign of Kathleen. Studying the littered street, the man saw a movement in the shadows and started to swing the Kalashnikov that way when a breathless Kathleen raced into view, her arms cradling a LAW rocket launcher, the plastic tube fully extended for immediate firing.

 

 Scanning the desert above, she looked quizzically at the baron, until he pointed downward and his wife tracked to where the droid lay smashed amid the salt and concrete. Exhaling deeply, Kathleen sadly shook her head over the incident, then started back toward the convoy in the parking lot.

 

 There still was a lot of ammo and fuel to harvest before it would be time to sing the passing of her beloved sister. Business came first, then mourning and, eventually, sweet revenge.

 

  

 

 Chapter Fourteen

 

  

 

 Caught by surprise by the rain of muties, the companions were forced to withhold using their blaster out of fear of hitting one another at such close quarters.

 

 Even as Ryan ducked and dodged out of the way, the hooting stickies charged. With his back to the rock wall, the one-eyed man fired the Steyr only inches from the face of a mutie, the muzzle flash washing over the distorted features and seeming to drive it away more than the 9 mm round that punched through its head.

 

 Rushed from both sides, Jak dropped the cumbersome Winchester and jerked both hands straight out. With hard thuds, knives slammed into the throats of the two stickies, cutting off their terrible cry. Then, grabbing the Winchester again, Jak raced between them, firing at another heading for Mildred from behind. At the noise, the woman turned and fired, the combined impacts to the head killing the creature.

 

 Shoving the Webley into the belly of a rushing creature, Doc fired the big bore handcannon, blasting open its abdomen. But as the mutie was thrown backward, the blaster went along, pulled from his grasp by even the brief contact to the gelatinous ooze of the dreaded stickie.

 

 Firing his shotgun twice from the hip, J.B. blew two of the muties into each other. They fell in a tangle of limbs, then stood again without any problems, their damn secretions obviously not adhering to their own kind. Slicing out with the bayonet on the end of her Remington, Mildred tried to gut the monster, but the blade went in only so far before becoming bogged down inside the guts of the creature. As the sucker covered hands went for her face, Mildred triggered the blaster as a distraction, then shoved the Remington as hard as she could, making the stickie stagger away as it took the weapon along, buying a few feet of precious distance.

 

 Free for a moment, the companions unleashed a hellstorm of lead, peppering the hooting creatures in the head and driving them from the cliff. But even as the companions scrambled for some combat room, the surviving stickies started forward again, already altering their naked bodies to meld with the scenery. One male standing on the pavement and the salt was morphing into black asphalt on the left and sparkling crystals on the right. The effect was more than disconcerting. Standing amid the rubble of the ruins that circled the preDark city, the chameleonic muties were fragging difficult to track properly.

 

 "Force them into the open street!" Ryan shouted, shouldering the Steyr and fanning the creatures with a hail of 9 mm rounds from the coughing SIG-Sauer. "Jak, light 'em up!"

 

 While the others formed a ragged line to discharge volley after volley of rounds to drive off the creatures, Jak pulled out the Molotovs and started to throw them. The first hit the ground between the two groups to keep the muties at bay, but the next two bottles arced down directly onto the creatures, the glass shattering as it hit the ground, and splashing them with the fiery contents.

 

 One stickie caught a Molotov in the chest and the bottle just stayed there, the burning rag fuse hanging impotently. Then Dean triggered his Browning, shattering the glass. Burning fuel engulfed the stickie, and it hooted wildly as it started running about blindly. Coming through the pool of fire, the creature headed for Krysty. The woman dodged frantically and it collided with a rusty mailbox, instantly trapped by its own resinous secretions. Even as it burned alive, the skin was turning bright orange and red to match the colors of the fire.

 

 Incredibly, one more stickie fell from the cliff to land near the companions. Moving fast, Doc threw a fistful of salt into its face, and Ryan grabbed a bent curtain rod from a pile of junk and used the pole to beat the stickie into the growing pyre.

 

 The stench coming from the frying muties was horrendous, their anguished hooting getting louder all the time, but the companions stood their ground with blasters at the ready until the thrashing creatures finally succumbed into quiet death.

 

 "Mother Gaia! Hellhounds would be easier to ace than a stickie," Krysty said, cracking open her revolver and dumping the spent brass to quickly reload. The shells hit the hard ground and bounced away.

 

 "Stay razor, people," J.B. growled, switching from the M-4000 scattergun to the Uzi machine pistol. "There could be more of them."

 

 "Probably not," Mildred said, glancing into the rock shadows overhead and in the wreckage piled outside the city. "The food supply in the desert is too meager to support many of these creatures. Big as a human usually means a human size appetite."

 

 "Doesn't mean that for sure," Ryan countered grimly, slipping a fresh clip into the SIG-Sauer; "We best stay together. That'll reduce the chance of another mutie slipping in close."

 

 "Camou stickies," J.B. muttered, working the arming bolt of the Uzi. "Thought I'd seen it all."

 

 "There is a first time for everything, John Barrymore," Doc rumbled, purging and recharging the LeMat, The Webley would be sorely missed.

 

 "At least once," Krysty agreed, her hair flexing and curling from her agitated state. Her steel blaster felt warm and familiar in her grip, but the woman drew no comfort from the weapon. This ancient city of the dead was quickly becoming a city of death. How many more battles would they have to survive before they could leave? But she already knew the answer to that question. Too damn many.

 

 Thumbing fresh rounds into the side feed of the Winchester, Jak approached the grisly bonfire and frowned at the sight of his leaf shaped throwing blades mired in the crackling corpses of the deceased muties.

 

 "Damn, good knives," the albino teen muttered angrily, working the lever to prime the single-shot longblaster. "Hate lose."

 

 "Blasters are better," J.B. said.

 

 Masked by his sunglasses, Jak snorted. "No reload blade," he stated. "Silent, too."

 

 "You're preaching to the choir," Doc rumbled, patting the bony swordstick thrust through his belt.

 

 "I prefer distance," J.B. said, straightening his fedora. "And the farther away, the better."

 

 "Talk with your boots," Ryan commanded, walking along the perimeter of the city. "Jawing and yapping ain't getting us any closer to the surface."

 

 Staying alert for any suspicious movements, the companions trudged along the base of the cliff, climbing over piles of preDark rubble and around a couple of deep chasms in the ground. The footing was treacherous, the pieces of the fallen dome constantly slipping away underfoot, and often shattering at the first step. Soon the smoldering corpses of the stickies were left far behind, only a thin plume of smoke visible to mark the location for the circling vultures.

 

 "Freeze," Doc whispered softly, going motionless. "Droid. Two o'clock."

 

 Everybody stopped moving at the words, and only shifted their eyes to search along the stores lining the nearby street. Halfway down the block was the damaged sec hunter droid, its eyes gone and its chrome body covered with quivering antennae. But the racing machine wasn't coming toward the companions; it was charging along the street, crushing the corpses in its way until going out of sight.

 

 "Dark night," J.B. said, rubbing the scar on his chin. "I wonder what the frag it's after?"

 

 "Don't know, don't care," Ryan muttered, shifting his longblaster. "As long as it ain't us. Shift it into high gear, people. I want to be far from here when it returns."

 

 The hours passed slowly as the day progressed, but the rising sun could do little to penetrate the thickening layer of turbulent clouds. Sheet lightning was crashing among the roiling orange-and-purple clouds with ever increasing ferocity. A major storm seemed to be brewing, a real Texas tempest, but at least the telltale smell of rotten eggs wasn't in the wind, forecasting the arrival of a deadly acid rain.

 

 Walking carefully up the slope of a piece of the fallen dome, Ryan paused to scowl at something on the other side. Then the big man started forward, and as the rest crested the dome they could see a body sprawled on the ground, its bandage wrapped limbs splayed at angles impossible for any living being.

 

 "A member of the Core," Krysty said, squinting upward. There was no sign of any activity along the edge of the cliff, but the desert muties might be hiding like before.

 

 "No sign of a wound," Mildred said, kneeling to inspect the crumpled body. "He must have simply fallen from the top."

 

 "No, from that ledge," Dean stated excitedly, pointing.

 

 Sure enough, only fifty feet above them was a rocky ledge in the cliff, an extension of a meandering crack that formed a kind of natural trail leading from the top.

 

 "And there's our exit," Ryan said, cracking the knuckles on both hands. "No more than fifty feet max. We can do that easy."

 

 "Yeah, but we're dead meat if stickies attack while we climb," J.B. said gruffly, surveying the area.

 

 "Gotta take the chance," Ryan stated, sliding the pack off his shoulder. "Okay, drop your packs. The lighter we are, the easier the climb. J.B. and I will stay behind to give cover. Once the rest of you reach the ledge, hitch your belts together and haul up the backpacks. Then cover us while we climb."

 

 The simple plan needed no discussion, so divesting themselves of the haversacks and assorted shoulder bags, the five companions started feeling the details of the rock with their fingers. Finding small purchases, the friends wiggled the toes of their combat boots into some cracks and pulled themselves off the ground. Then testing their positions, they reached high again to continue the endless process. Time was short, but they had to move slow. They might only get one chance at this, and a single mistake would be deadly. A fall of fifty feet onto concrete would chill as fast as a round to the head.

 

 Taking a Molotov and a homemade pipe bomb from the bags for quick access, Ryan and J.B. readied their blasters and alternately watched the cliff and the burning preDark city as the others slowly began to ascend toward the ledge above, and freedom.

 

 WATCHING THE SMOKE RISE ahead of the convoy through the front windows of the lead wag, the Trader suddenly jerked alert as the desert abruptly yawned wide before War Wag One. What in hell was that, a nuke Crater? But then she saw dozens of burning buildings sprawling in the ground below. That was no skybomb crater, but a sinkhole with a preDark city inside!

 

 "Stop!" Kate ordered, placing aside her cold can of soup, the spoon rattling loose.

 

 "Bet your ass I'm stopping," Jake replied, as the massive vehicle rumbled to a slow halt. "Black dust, will ya look at that. Just look at it!"

 

 That Kate was doing, and even as the Trader rose from her chair, the woman found herself unsure of what to do next. The ruins were enormous! Dozens of blocks, with huge brick buildings rising almost level to the desert floor. From the billowing smoke, it appeared that most of the place was burning, but her people had done raids on crumbling preDark ruins before. Once while a mall was sinking into a swamp, and another while it was getting bombed during a sandstorm. Burning made it trickier, but not impossible. Nothing was impossible.

 

 "Nuking hell," Jessica said, massaging a temple. "Just look at it!"

 

 "Shitfire, mebbe it is a blast crater," Roberto muttered, hunching his shoulders as if braced for a blow, "Check the rads immediately!"

 

 "Already did, and it's clear," Eric said over the ceiling speakers. "Whatever destroyed this place wasn't atomic."

 

 "Not a hot zone, good," Kate said, running stiff fingers through her hair. "But this was the source of that mushroom cloud we saw before?"

 

 "Dead on," Jake replied, both hands still on the steering wheel of the war wag. "Same lat and long."

 

 "Mebbe it was white smoke, or a salt whirlwind forming in the hole," Jessica offered hesitantly. "Hell, I dunno. But look at all those buildings!"

 

 "Just fucking think of it. A complete preDark ville!" the door guard started, rubbing the back of his free hand across his mouth, the other clutching the M-16 with white fingers. "Fuel, ammo, food, clothing, meds…"

 

 "Rads, tox chems, muties, bobbies, cave-ins, avalanche, Gaza, the Core," Kate added in a growl, hitching her gun belt. "The bigger the prize, the more ants there will be trying to carry pieces away."

 

 "At the rate it's going," Roberto added, craning his neck for a better view out the front windshield, "there won't be anything left in a few days."

 

 Which raised an interesting point for Kate. Two villes destroyed in the desert, one by water, now another by fire. Could this also be the work of the outlander called Ryan? Mebbe her info on the man was scragged like a comp disk. Could be he was a technophobe, and hated any kind of science or whitecoat. She had encountered such feebs before, but generally only as loonies running about in rags. Folks like that weren't really a threat to anybody but themselves. But this was another matter entirely.

 

 "Okay, we're going to do a full recce," Kate decided, watching the buzzards circle in the sky about the sunken city. "Put the cargo vans behind those big dunes to the south, with War Wag Two as protection. I want hands on blasters and fingers on triggers."

 

 Pulling his sawed off from the holster, Roberto scowled, "We're going in alone?"

 

 "Not quite," she replied, but then was interrupted by a shout of surprise from the tech at the radar screen.

 

 "Chief, we have a bounce on the screen," he announced, working the controls. The luminous arms of the radar swept along the glowing screen, leaving ghostly blobs in its wake of varying sizes.

 

 "Something from a skyscraper?" Roberto asked, studying the screen.

 

 Glancing out the front windows, Kate scowled darkly. "No, the sig is too small and a good mile away. Must be on the far side of the crater, sinkhole, whatever this fragging thing is."

 

 "Hard to tell for sure," Blackjack said, the tech caressing the controls to urge greater clarity from the old patched equipment. "There's so much fucking hash in the atmosphere! But it appears to be something large and metal on the far side on the crater."

 

 A wag? Going to the periscope, Kate pulled it up and tried to get a look, but even with the max magnification the billowing smoke from the conflagration below masked most of the city, along with anything beyond.

 

 "Is it moving?" she demanded, chewing the inside of a cheek.

 

 The man didn't reply for a minute, then relaxed. "No, Trader, it appears to be standing still."

 

 "Just some wreckage or ruins then," Roberto said confidently, but then added, "Although this part of the Great Salt is normally bare as a baron's heart."

 

 True enough.

 

 "Jake, move us farther away from the edge of the cliff. It doesn't look too bastard stable," Kate ordered.

 

 "We're staying here as the anchor. Rob, send out some troops on the bikes for a recce. I want a complete circle of the pit."

 

 "Looking for a way down?" Roberto asked, checking a canteen hanging from a metal peg on the wall before slinging it over an arm. "No way in hell we're ever finding a trail wide enough for the rigs. Much less secure enough to take the weight."

 

 "Only nobody tries a descent without my permission," she commanded bluntly. "Gaza could have set fire to the ruins as a distraction to night creep us from behind."

 

 "Eric, keep the ear going at full power."

 

 "Done and done," the man replied over the speakers.

 

 "Think Gaza is going to try and jack the whole convoy?" Roberto asked, adding a pair of binocs and an Uzi to his load. "Mighty ambitious for the baron."

 

 "He jacked a ville once," she reminded him. "Why not a convoy?"

 

 Stuffing some spare ammo clips into his pockets, Roberto took an Aussie digger hat hanging from the rear of his chair at the .50-cal.

 

 "Fair enough," he rumbled, heading for the door. "Be back in a few."

 

 "Stay razor," Trader directed as the armed guard lowered the curved section of the hull to the sandy ground outside. Instantly, a warm breeze blew into the control room of the rig. "Radio when you can."

 

 "If we can, sure," he told her, descending the metal steps, wisps of smoke coming through the open hatchway carrying the smell of wood and some kind of meat. Whatever the frag that could possibly be she had no damn idea.

 

 Watching the rear vid screens, Kate saw Roberto and five other troopers haul down the motorcycles from the side mounted racks of War Wag Two and check the engines and fuel tanks.

 

 "Prime the missiles in the main pod," the Trader commanded, "We may have to provide some cover for the riders."

 

 "Already on it, Chief," Jessica replied, both hands throwing switches and turning dials. "We're loaded and ready."

 

 "Not yet. Turn off the heat seekers, or the damn rockets will just arch down after the fire."

 

 "But we'll be shooting blind without them," Jake said, his hands playing over the controls like a musician. "Might ace our own people!"

 

 Resuming her chair, Kate grunted at that possibility. "Lock the first one on the metal thing," she said.

 

 "Alert, I have blasterfire," Eric reported over the ceiling speaker.

 

 "Shitfire, gimme a location!" the Trader demanded, leaning toward the front window of the war wag.

 

 "Inconclusive," he reported slowly. "Almost sounds like two different spots at the same time."

 

 "Are they near each other?" Kate demanded. "We got some sort of a firefight going on down there?"

 

 The ceiling speaker crackled for a few seconds. "Negative on that, Chief," Eric said at last. "The blasters are much too far apart to be shooting at each other."

 

 "Probably just old ammo cooking off from the heat," Fat Pete said, chewing on a piece of jerky. The man had both hands on the grips of the port side .50-cal, and was nervously shuffling his boots on the corrugated floor.

 

 "Yeah?" Kate muttered angrily. "Mix 'probable' with 'always' and you get aced constantly."

 

 The man had no response to that and lowered his head as if to block her from his sight.

 

 "Stay loose," the Trader ordered in a softer tone. "Gaza is the one to be worried if he's here."

 

 Fat Pete granted in reply but took on a more normal stance.

 

 "And what if it's Ryan?" Jessica asked.

 

 "Ain't decided on him yet," Kate replied honestly.

 

 Just then, the darkening clouds overhead rumbled with thunder, and the wind slightly increased, kicking up more loose salt and sand until it was almost a visible river of motion. As each bolt of lightning lit up the fiery clouds, there was a faint crackle of static from the speakers, and several of the meters flicked, the radar screen went out of focus and the compass spun wildly.

 

 Pulling the half clip from her Ingram, Kate placed it aside for reloading later on, and inserted a full mag into the blaster, working the bolt to chamber a round and clicking off the safety.

 

 A blaster fight, or old ammo? Gaza or Ryan, or something else entirely? There was no way of telling, but something down deep in her bones told the woman that, one way or the other, there was a hell of a storm coming.

 

 ON THE FAR SIDE of the sinkhole, masked by the raging fires filling the city, the second sec hunter droid finally responded to the radio beacon of its smashed brother. The damaged droid began to remove bits and pieces of the destroyed machine, replacing weapons, servo-mechanisms, solenoids, eyes and power packs. The work steadily progressed with the motions of the buzzards eating the dead almost perfectly duplicating the utilitarian mechanical salvaging.

 

  

 

 Chapter Fifteen

 

  

 

 "That's the last of it," Baron Gaza said, tossing aside the empty can. Tightening the vapor cap on the fuel tank of the LAV 25, he locked the protective shutter into place and patted the heavy metal shielding with an open palm.

 

 What a find this city had been! Along with the weapons, MRE packs and ammo, he now had a full tank of fuel. Just incredible. The ground around the APC was littered with empty fuel cans, laboriously hauled up from the preDark convoy at the bottom of the cliff. But all the work had been worth it. Both the main and reserve tanks were full, and there were five more twenty-gallon containers stuffed inside the war wag.

 

 And best of all, it wasn't reg fuel—that would have evaporated long ago—but that good mil stuff that Trader called condensed fuel. It didn't have a smell and didn't evaporate worth a damn even in direct sunlight, yet it fueled a gasoline engine or a diesel.

 

 The ammo bins were jammed full of grens, linked belts of brass, even a couple of those fancy LAW rocket launcher things. Never having seen one before, Gaza had no idea how to fire the damn things, until Allison read the directions on top of the plastic tube. After that, it was easy as knifing a blind man. With this kind of heavy iron, nothing could stop the baron now!

 

 Going to the canteen hanging from a steel loop designed to attach equipment to the outside of the LAV 25, Gaza drank his fill, then poured some more on his face and slicked back his soaked hair, enjoying the feel of the drops trickling down the collar of his new khaki shirt. He didn't know what the colorful bar of decorations meant on the left side of the shirt, but since the clothing came from the leader of the convoy below, that meant they were important, which was good enough for him.

 

 Standing halfway out of the APC turret, Allison frowned as she pulled back from the scope bolted on top of the big .50-cal machine gun. The longeyes couldn't be used when the .50-cal was firing, or else the brutal recoil would remove an eye, but on single round firing, it turned the big gun into a longblaster of fantastic range, if only moderate accuracy. However, the scope served many functions aside from merely locating a target.

 

 Rapping her knuckles loudly on the armored chassis of the war wag, Allison got her husband's attention and pointed urgently toward the southern desert.

 

 "Trouble?" Gaza asked, scowling that way, the rivulets of water running down his face from the wet hair.

 

 To the east was the burning city, mostly hidden by the billowing plumes of dark smoke. In every other direction lay only the Great Salt, utter desolation for a hundred miles.

 

 The woman nodded urgently, and splayed both hands twice.

 

 That many were approaching? Although, the man could see nothing, the doomie was rarely wrong on such matters. She only got rare glimpses of the future, but could smell an enemy over the horizon.

 

 Going to the rear doors, Gaza accepted an AK-47 assault rifle from Kathleen, who had another in her hand and a LAW slung across her back. At the front of the wag, Delia was starting to turn over the big diesels, while Shala was checking the huge steel box full of linked ammo for the 25 mm cannon. The former member of the Core was wearing norm clothing now, and although the girl seemed frightened by machines of any kind, she was much more terrified of Gaza and his horrible wives and would do anything she was told, just not willingly. Not yet, anyway.

 

 Just then the sound of engines came on the wind, and was gone, only to return again stronger and louder. Machines of some sort. Could be strip-downs, cars reduced to bare frames to max their fuel, a favorite of the coldhearts who raided the villes beyond the desert. Grimly, Gaza worked the arming bolt on the rapidfire. These sounded more like motorcycles. As always, the baron went with his gut feeling on such matters.

 

 Better to prepare for the worst than to have it happen to you.

 

 "Bikes, coming our way!" the baron shouted, grabbing a few grens from the wall bins and dropping them into the pockets of his new tan jacket. "Let's close her tight!"

 

 The diesel roared into life as the man headed for the front of the wag, Kathleen closing and locking the heavy rear doors. The baron knew the riders might only be the Blue Devils, not exactly allies, but mercies who ran a stretch of villes and brothels to the west of the Great Salt. Hard boys with a taste for pain, the group was tough and fast, with a secret source of shine to fuel their bikes and an unhealthy appetite for longpig. These were people Gaza could understand, and he wanted them as his new sec men. The first recruits for his conquering army.

 

 Taking over the controls, Gaza moved the APC away from the cliff where the ground was weak and a single gren could send them hurtling over the side. Better to play it safe.

 

 Charging out of the thick smoke blowing across the desert, the six bikes came into view, leaving eddies swirling in the dark fumes behind. At the sight of the APC, the riders' faces became shocked, and they all drew blasters, boxy rapidfires, and one guy on front hauling out a sawed off double barrel.

 

 There were no decorations of any kind on the two-wheelers, no human skulls, no flaps of scalped enemies, no necklaces of teeth. That was suspicious enough, but their clothing was in good shape, and they had extra ammo in the loops of their gun belts. Mebbe they jacked the bikes and blasters from the Devils,but nobody had clothing like that except for barons and that blond bitch. Baron Gaza had no fragging idea who these assholes were, but it sure as shit wasn't the Blue Devils.

 

 "Outriders!" the baron cursed, in sudden understanding. "They're fucking sec men for the Trader! Take 'em down!"

 

 As his wives started firing through the blasterports, the bikers gunned their engines and separated quickly, only taking a few wild shots at the APC in passing. But as they converged behind the LAV 25, the .50-cal in the turret exploded into action, the heavy rounds ripping through the riders and machines, throwing sparks and blood to the desert sands.

 

 The two flank men dropped, their bikes toppling over to pin them helpless on the sand. Then another motorcycle detonated as its fuel tank was ruptured, the fireball engulfing two other riders. The screaming human torches continued riding their bikes blindly over the cliff and out of sight.

 

 Revving the engine, Gaza started for the others when something hard bounced on top of the APC and then hit the ground, exploding with deafening force and throwing a hellstorm of sand and shrapnel against the armored side. The shrapnel from the antipers gren sounded like hard driven hail for a long moment, and then was gone.

 

 "Missed! That all you got?" Gaza sneered, throwing the transmission into high gear. "Aim for the bikes! I want one of those bastards for questioning!"

 

 Sitting alongside the man, Kathleen nodded and started to fire short bursts from her new AK-47 out the blasterports.

 

 More weapons boomed outside, closely followed by another gren bouncing loudly off the chassis. It landed in plain sight directly before the ob port of the driver, only inches from Gaza's face. The man locked the left four tires and gave full power to the right four. The APC heaved into a sharp turn, the gren tumbling away to detonate a split second later somewhere to the side. With a pounding heart, Gaza slammed the gas pedal to the floor, and the mammoth machine lurched forward, catching a man pinned under his crippled bike, his screams cut off almost before they started.

 

 The fifty stuttered once more, and Kathleen let loose a long spray of lead when the roaring diesel of the APC suddenly cut off and interior light winked out.

 

 Out of power, the war wag rolled on for a few yards, the bikers hammering it from every side. Throwing a switch, Gaza flooded the interior with emergency lights, and there by the rear doors stood Shala, still holding a fistful of wires as she fumbled with the lock.

 

 "Fucking traitor!" Gaza screamed, clawing for his handcannon.

 

 But Kathleen moved first. Firing from the hip, the slim redhead put a full burst into the busty teenager, stitching her from knees to neck, just as the doors opened and she fell outside.

 

 "We got 'em!" a biker shouted, and started racing for the open rear of the APC, his sawed-off blowing thunder at the startled people trapped inside the dead war wag.

 

 IN WAR WAG ONE, the ceiling speakers crackled with static, then came back loud and clear.

 

 "We found Gaza!" Blackjack cried. "His wag is busted, and we're going in…" His voice faded away.

 

 "Get him back," Kate directed sternly, hunched forward in her chair.

 

 "Working on it, Chief," Eric said, and suddenly the ceiling speakers rushed with a background hum of full power.

 

 "…trap," Roberto coughed, his voice distorted from pain. "Repeat…fucking trap. He's got a 25…blew us to hell. Forget us… Use the—" Static took away the transmission of the hand comm, and there was only crackling silence.

 

 "Shitfire, Gaza and Hawk have joined forces," Kate raged, slamming a fist onto the arm of her chair. "That APC armed with a 25 mm cannon would chew us to pieces!"

 

 "Want to send a rescue team?" Jake asked, turning from the control board. "We can send Two east, and we go west, and catch him between us? Mebbe save our guys?"

 

 "They're already chilled," Jessica stated. "No sense wasting more lives to rescue deaders."

 

 Frowning at that, Trader started to speak when the radio crackled with power, mumbled words barely discernible over the atmospheric hash. Then the distortion lifted and the signal came in loud and clear.

 

 "Hello, is anybody there?" A new voice chuckled over the ceiling speakers.

 

 The control room crew stopped moving, and Kate felt her skin crawl as memory flared at the sound of Baron Gaza's voice coming over one of their own hand comms.

 

 "Your sec men are dead, bitch." Gaza laughed, then there came the sound of a blaster shot. "Correction, now they're all dead. Let's end this today, slut. Right here and now. Come get me! I'm staying right fucking here!"

 

 There was a crackle of static that blocked the next words, and Kate made a slashing motion. The techs cut off the speakers, but the Trader waited until the indicator lights of the transponder had gone dark before she spoke.

 

 "Ready a missile!" she ordered. "If the radar can find that APC, then the missile should blow him to hell!"

 

 "On it," Jake replied, both hands busy.

 

 A few seconds later there grew a loud rustling from above, and then thunder shook the war wag as flame raced by overhead, flying straight into the heart of the smoke above the preDark city. Long moments passed before the radar screen blossomed with a patch of white. Seconds later a low rumble rolled in from the distance.

 

 "Got him!" Jessica cried, raising a fist.

 

 "Well, we hit something at least," Red Jack muttered, watching the screen clear back to normal. Then he frowned. "Black dust, the goddamn APC is still there!"

 

 Straining to see something through the rising smoke of the city, Jake scowled. "We missed?"

 

 "Must have hit a sand dune," Kate gritted through clenched teeth. "The range is too far, especially with all this shit in the air blocking the warhead. We gotta get closer."

 

 Then the radar screen gave a single loud beep, closely followed by another, and then a mounting series.

 

 "Holy shit!" Red Jack shouted from the increasing noise. "We got incoming!"

 

 Snapping her attention in that direction, Kate couldn't believe her eyes and ears for a moment. Was their own fucking missile now coming back for them? No, wait, the heat sig was wrong—too small a wash and way too fast. Gaza had to have launched a missile of his own and it was coming faster than jackshit right down their fragging throats!

 

 "No time to dodge. Eric, fire all guns!" she commanded. "Bring it down!"

 

 The lights dimmed as the comp drew unlimited power from the electrical system. Now the servomotors on the front .50-cals whined into life, the comp linking the weapons onto the signal of the radar screen and filling the air ahead of the rocket with hot lead.

 

 The noise was deafening. This was why they had a comp and Eric to nurse it. To give them an edge like this. But was it enough? Would it work? There had never been a chance to try their missile defense system before, and now it was all or nothing. Aces or diamonds, as the river folks liked to say. Life or death.

 

 Unexpectedly, the machine guns stopped firing, and in the ringing silence the beeping of the radar could still be heard, but different, slower and less urgent.

 

 "The missile is starting to descend," Red Jack reported in disbelief. "Look at her drop! Nukeshit, the damn thing didn't have the range to reach us this far away! Must have just been a LAW or HAFLA or mebbe something he cobbled together."

 

 Just a man-portable rocket, not a real missile like War Wag One was packing, Kate realized, easing the tension in her shoulders. Shitfire, she couldn't lock on to Gaza from this distance, and he couldn't reach her. Stalemate.

 

 "We could use the L-Gun," Jake stated.

 

 Kate cut him off. "Not with all this smoke," she replied sternly. "That cuts its power by half. I wanna ace the bastard, not merely piss him off.

 

 "Okay, we have no choice," she continued. "We go in as a group, the wags keep close and chill everything in sight. Send a runner to Two about not using the standard radio channels."

 

 "Roger that, Chief!"

 

 "Switch to channel four and use the scramblers," Eric said over the speakers. "No way the baron can hear us then."

 

 She grunted at that. "Good. Red Jack, stay glued to that radar. You get a blip, don't waste the breath to tell me. Give the info straight to Eric. The closer we get, the less time we have to shoot down one of his rockets."

 

 "Then we give him missiles up the ass," Jessica spit hatefully.

 

 "Damn straight," Kate ordered. "We're going in nose to nose with that bastard, and end this now!"

 

 The control room crew scrambled at their posts, sending messages throughout the wag over the phone lines while a runner hit the salty ground and started racing for the other wags.

 

 As the tandem engines started revving to full power, the lights of the war wag brightened to full strength and the rig began to roll along, staying a good distance from the crumbling cliff.

 

 "Here we come," Kate muttered softly, looking across the swirling smoke at their invisible enemy.

 

 AS GAZA AND HIS WIVES fired another rocket into the billowing smoke clouds, left unnoticed on the ground Shala forced herself to painfully crawl for the safety of the nearby desert. She could see the wide open plains of salted ground only a dozen yards away. She was close, so very close…

 

 But every motion brought racking pain to her chest, the salt stinging like acid in her terrible wounds, and Shala could see the blood dripping off her arms as she tried to claw another foot forward, just one more inch toward the blessed sands of time.

 

 Rising from the shifting sands, the women of the Core started for their girl only to see her tremble and die, a single gory finger resting on the clean sand of the true desert outside the forbidden zone. A crimson trail of her blood marked a direct path backward to the machine and the top-walkers near the cliff. Raising a spear, a woman started forward but others held her back. There was no courage in dying. The spears and mindkillers of the men had sadly proved the superiority of the brutal norms.

 

 Gathering the still child in holy strips of tan cloth, the women brought the little one deep into the heart of the earth where she would lie forever safe and warm. And lying on the ground at that spot was a large leather bag removed from the ruins to the north, the outlanders' water bag. But the polluted contents had been washed out and replaced with mineral water from a clean spring, then laced with enough undetectablejinkaja to cause instant madness, violent seizures and eventually agonizing death.

 

 It was a hard truth that the Core couldn't match the mighty machines of the norms, but the desert always found a way to balance the scales of death.

 

  

 

 Chapter Sixteen

 

  

 

 A fiery dagger came out of the billowing plume of smoke and streaked past the APC to slam into the dune behind. The sandy hill heaved and blew apart, a roiling column of fire rising into the rumbling sky.

 

 Kneeling over the exposed engine, Gaza still flinched as the concussion rumbled over the dead war wag. Okay, that bitch had the range, but not him. Not him! Feverishly, the baron worked on the diesel, trying to remove pieces of the dead comm system to replace the missing parts and getting nowhere. Damn that girl! The APC engine had been too often repaired and was far too easy to wreck. He had been a fool trying to recruit the girl. But when those rags came off and he saw the pale trembling figure, reason and logic had fled as blind lust took over. Now he was paying the price.

 

 Standing in the open turret, Allison triggered a long sweeping blast from the 25 mm cannon, angling the barrel ever higher in wide circles. She knew the shells didn't have the true range to reach the Trader, but she would gain valuable distance by shooting high and allowing the shells to arc downward. However, there was no way to see through the smoke of the city, and she was guiding her shots purely on the feelings she was receiving of approaching death. That had to be the Trader. Who else could possibly challenge her husband?

 

 Going to the rear doors, Kathleen extended a LAW tube and started to open the lock. Rushing close, Gaza slapped the weapon from her hand and it hit the metal floor in a clatter.

 

 "Stop that! Save ammo!" the baron ordered brusquely, towering over the startled woman. "They're too far away for the rockets. Even the fifty can't reach them."

 

 Against the wall, Kathleen raised two fingers and quickly brought them toward each other.

 

 "Yes, I know that!" he raged, clenching both fists, the greasy wires from the engine still dangling impotently in his grip. "She's coming fast, and with everything they got on the trips."

 

 Reaching out to touch the tangle of wires, the woman asked her husband an urgent question with her eyes.

 

 "Useless!" Gaza cursed, throwing aside a fistful of assorted wires. "Without the proper parts, the same damn parts, we're not going anywhere in this tin box."

 

 Stomping her boot, Allison got everyone's attention and pointed around at the LAV 25, then raised two fingers and pointed one into the fiery ruins. The landscape shook once more as Gaza raked stiff fingers through his hair, but was forced to agree. Their only hope of surviving was to be mobile, usethe greater speed of the APC to outmaneuver the Trader's lumbering war wags and strike from the dunes. A night creep in broad daylight. Hit and git.Which left him no options at all. He would have to go afterthe wiring in the second APC below the cliff.

 

 "Stop firing! Mebbe they'll think we'vemoved!" Gaza ordered, going to a rack and grabbing an M-16 recovered from the convoy in the park. He workedthe bolt, chambering a round, and slung theblaster over a shoulder. "Kathleen, you're coming withme. Allison, prepare the land mines. Lay 'em out in adiamond pattern around the wag. That may buy us some time. Don't bother to bury them. The damn things maynot work, but at least it'll scare the Trader into going slow if she sends more bikes."

 

 Closing the top hatch of the war wag, the doomie waved both hands in a mime of drivinga Harleyto ask about the motorcycles outside.

 

 "After you're done with the mines, tryand find three that work," he decided, stuffing his pockets with spare clips and grens. "If I can't find what we need in the other APC, then we'll ride out of here andmine the war wag to blow."

 

 Ducking under the empty framework ofa radar unit long gone, the baron grabbed some canvas gloveswith a box and tossed Kathleen a pair.

 

 "Stay razor," Gaza ordered, stuffing theother set of gloves into his gun belt. "Allison will be busy up here, so we'll be on our own down there."

 

 Sliding on the gloves, the slim redhead nodded, and collapsed the tube on the LAW rocket, making the sights retract. Expertly, she hung it across her back and grabbed an AK-47 from the ville armory. It was her preferred blaster and most of the ammo was hand loaded by her, or the other wives. She considered homemade ammo much more dependable than the preDark stuff, no matter how well it was preserved inside sealed plastic boxes.

 

 Stepping to the turret, Gaza grabbed his first wife by the scruff of the neck and pulled her close for a hard kiss.

 

 "Don't you fucking die on me," he muttered softly. "Worse happens, set the ammo bins of the wag to blow and slide down the cable to join us below. This is far from being over."

 

 Brushing some loose hair from his face, Allison nodded at her husband, then turned to do the same to her sister standing by the aft doors. The women shared a moment of understanding, wishing the other goodbye. In spite of what their beloved husband said, the chances of this working were virtually zero, but they would stand by him to the end.

 

 Pushing past them both, Gaza threw open the rear door and stepped outside. The air was murky with smoke and the drifting dust from the missile hits. Hurrying among the sprawled forms of dead sec men and their bikes, Gaza reached the winch and checked the nuke batteries on the electric motor. He was relieved to find the machinery working perfectly. At least that much was going his way.

 

 Kathleen joined him at the winch. Stuffing his hands into the stiff gloves, Gaza freed the cable and together they dragged it to the edge of the cliff and started to snake it down. When it reached the bottom, the baron locked the winch tight and Kathleen started over the edge of the cliff to grab the cable. She started to slide down, using her boots to brake the speed. The gloves grew uncomfortably hot in only a matter of yards, but the woman kept going and gratefully released the hot woven steel upon reaching the ground.

 

 Gaza was already sliding down the cable and landed only a few seconds later. Sliding was a dangerous way to use the cable, but the fastest way to reach the city and time was against them right now. Every moment counted.

 

 Anchoring the cable in case Allison had to follow, the man and woman readied their blasters and charged into the morass of rubble and wreckage that ringed the burning city, firing sporadically at anything that moved.

 

 WITH THE SIG-Sauer leading the way, Ryan crawled out of the steep ravine and reached the top of the cliff. Pausing for a moment to recce the area, he studied the tattered bodies of the Core littering the sandy ground.

 

 Large caliber rounds had chewed them apart, along with small explosions, mebbe that 25 mm cannon he had heard about. But this was no recent fight. The ripe smell of the corpses made it clear that the Core had been chilled a while ago. Hours, mebbe a full day. Odd thing, no buzzards were feasting on the meat, not even the scorpions or the red ants. Mebbe even the fragging insects knew how dangerous thatjinkaja dreck was that saturated their flesh.

 

 Standing slowly, Ryan listened for a minute to the wind blow and the crackling of the fire. If this was the only way into the sinkhole, then it made sense for the Core to be waiting for them to come out here. Black hair whipping about his face, Ryan swept the killing field with the muzzle of the deadly blaster, ready for betrayal from the deaders, or the soil underneath. The airborne salt particles made it difficult to see. But the area was clear. Could be Gaza got them all.

 

 Finally satisfied, Ryan whistled sharply twice through his teeth and stepped out for the others to ascend. Helping one another up the last few yards, the rest of the companions gratefully reached the floor of the desert and looked over the battlefield.

 

 "Tire tracks," Jak said, pointing at what appeared to be merely churned sand. "APC was here."

 

 "A day, mebbe less," Ryan agreed.

 

 Bending, Dean lifted the spent brass from a .50-cal and inspected the bottom before sniffing the dirty inside.

 

 "Homemade," he stated. "Not preDark loads."

 

 Just then a tremendous explosion came from the west, but the drifting smoke and distance combined with the rolling sand dunes to hide the source of the detonation.

 

 "Could be anything," Mildred said, glancing about nervously. Her arms ached from the hurried climb, and the woman felt vulnerable just standing there in plain sight.

 

 A few seconds later another explosion came from within the city, the cornice of a skyscraper exploding into pieces, the entire roof breaking apart to slide off and plummet into the streets below.

 

 Studying the fiery metropolis, J.B. slung the Uzi and dug out his longeyes to recce the cityscape.

 

 "The angle of the blast is wrong for that to have come from this side," he said slowly, as the thick clouds thinned for a moment, moving to the force of the northern wind. "It came from across the city, say, about twenty degrees to the…"

 

 The Armorer's voice faded away, then came back strong. "Dark night, there's a land tank over there! No, wait, there are two of 'em! Big as anything I've ever seen."

 

 "Alone?" Ryan demanded pointedly.

 

 "Some smaller wags, too. Couldn't get a good look."

 

 "Is the war wag an APC?" Krysty asked, squinting to try to see past the conflagration.

 

 "Converted trucks," J.B. said, lowering the longeyes and compacting it before tucking it away into his bulging munitions bag. "Machine gun blisters, rocket pods on the roof and what sure as shit looks like a radar dish."

 

 "Just sitting there, or is it turning?" Ryan asked scowling.

 

 "Turning steadily."

 

 "That means it's probably working," Ryan muttered, a hard smile coming to his face. "That's gotta be the Trader. He and Abe escaped after all and reached a stockpile."

 

 "Indeed, logic dictates it to be so," Doc rumbled. Estimating the direction the rocket traveled across the preDark city, Ryan leveled the Steyr SSG-70 and swept the opposite desert cliff with the scope. He had only seen Baron Gaza once with the sun at his back hiding his features. But if there was anybody shouting orders while the others ran to obey, that would be him and Ryan would see if the 7.62 mm long cartridges of the sniper rifle could do what the missile couldn't.

 

 For just a brief moment, Ryan saw an APC about a half mile away sitting on the edge of the cliff, and then it was gone behind the black smoke once more. The urge came to try anyway as he had before to chase off the Core, but the range finder on the scope told the brutal truth that it was too distant for an accurate shot.

 

 "No good," Ryan muttered, loweringthe long-blaster.

 

 "Too bad about the Holland & Holland," Dean said, shifting the pack on his back to a more comfortable position. "You would havehad therange with that."

 

 "But not the accuracy needed," Mildred stated. "A sniper weapon is a hell of a lot different from a standard longblaster, or an assault rifle."

 

 "Like a knife is to a scalpel, right?"

 

 "Exactly."

 

 Pulling out a plastic mirror from a pocket, Ryan debated trying to flash the Trader a message, but even if the man saw the reflected light, would he recognize the old codes or strike back instantly with a missile? Fireblast, he didn't even know if it washis Trader, or merely somebody new using the rep to do business. If that was the case, then a flashing light might be mistaken for blasterfire and bring down a shitstorm of lead their way. Best to stay lowfor the moment.

 

 "Let's get moving," Ryan ordered brusquely. "We can go into the desert, use the dunes as cover. Last place we want to be is between any war wags during a rocket fight without some steel covering our ass."

 

 Shuffling his boots in the sand, Dean frowned. "We just gonna leave?"

 

 "We should taketo the high ground," Doc suggested. "Reconnoiterthe situationfrom the top ofa dune."

 

 "That's triple stupe," J.B. said bluntly. "Up high we'd be seen and catch a lot of lead. No, we stay low and leave. That's the smart thing. They are in wags and we're on foot. So let them fight it out, and we'll come back when the smoke clears and see who was the winner."

 

 "If there are any survivors, much less winners," Krysty added grimly, looking skyward. "Check up there."

 

 Craning his neck to follow her direction, Ryan saw the roiling storm clouds overhead were darker, more yellow than usual, and the ever present smell of acid rain was increasing. Nuking hell, a chem storm was coming and that changed everything. Down below the city was on fire, with a droid hunting them and muties everywhere. Up here were battling war wags and flat, open desert where the acid rain would easily catch them and strip them to bare bones in only a few screaming minutes. Damned if they tried to escape in any direction, that left only one choice.

 

 "If we're going get chilled, it might as well be on our feet," Ryan said, hefting his longblaster. "Double time, let's go see who is in that APC and convince them we need a ride."

 

 "And if Gaza?" Jak asked, massaging his aching left arm in its sling.

 

 "Then we take it away from him. Let's go."

 

  

 

 Chapter Seventeen

 

  

 

 Scuttling from the smoky shadows along the preDark road, a fat lizard paused on top of the wizened corpse of a construction worker, its three eyes darting about in different directions searching for predators.

 

 Wrapping a tentacle around his glass knife, Larry lashed out with the blade and the lizard's head was removed. Gushing blood, the body tumbled to the pavement, and a dozen other lizards charged from their hiding places to start tearing apart their fallen brother.

 

 Now Larry pulled hard on the rope and a net erupted from underneath the snowy layer of salt, and the pile of lizards was hauled wiggling into the air caught in the crude net.

 

 "Food!" Larry said in delight, rubbing his scaled stomach in delight. Carefully untying the net from the ropes, the mutant twirled it above his head several times and then brought it crashing down on the hood of a car, killing the lizards instantly.

 

 "Food," he mumbled again. He pulled a large piece of window glass from a leather pouch and cut the reptiles apart and stuffed the bloody gobbets of raw flesh into his lopsided mouth.

 

 "Good!" He chortled in happiness, then froze instantly at the sound of thunder.

 

 Ramming the rest of a lizard into his mouth and stuffing the others into his pouch, Larry loped through an alleyway filled with huge sections of the salt dome and crouched in the ornamental wrought iron fencing that edged a public library. When the sparkle white ground fell, all things in the desert rushed in to see.

 

 Much fighting, Larry remembered, and many things died. Larry and kin follow food into pit and hunting good. Until bad metal come. Two-legs try kill Larry with thunder sticks. Twice in the cold seasons he had been stung by black bees from booming sticks, much blood and pain. His mate died from black bee, child, too. And it been good child, Larry thought, no scales like parents, no claws. Two-legs would have thought it a norm aside from eyes. Norms had little eyes, not big like child, not see in darkness and know what animals think in head. Child had helped much in hunting, find big food Larry would kill with sharp glass across neck. Eat for week!

 

 Then two-legs with bad metal come into stone forest, Larry remembered, kill everything. But Larry stay. He wait for two-legs to not have thunder stick, then cut across neck with glass, use claws on belly and face. Bad metal take little ones away. Someday he get them, drink redblood. Then mate and child sleep peacefully. As the two-legs started his way, Larry retreated quickly. Loping across the pavilion, the mutie disappeared into the sewer, his rubbery tentacles lashing about like wild snakes until he was through the grating and gone from sight.

 

 ONLY MOMENTS LATER, moving through the jumbled ruins, Gaza led the way into the choking hot chaos. The smell of acid rain was a lot less noticeable down here, the thick smoke masking the smell of anything else in the atmosphere. Masked by the swirling black smoke were tall honeycombs of flame, burning buildings with fiery tongues lashing out every opening, a few structures reduced to only the twisted outline of the softening steel frames.

 

 Glowing ash drifted past the two people like a snowstorm in hell, the red hot residue floating on the thermal currents of the destruction, gray soot mixing with the sparkling cover of salt dust everywhere and turning the clean wintry appearance of the Texas city into filthy graveyard pallor. Softly in the background came the constant crashing of glass as window after window shattered from the pressure and heat, the shards and slivers raining down to smash onto the sidewalks and streets once more.

 

 Many of the corpses in the street were reduced to bones and shoes, their clothing removed by the sharp beaks of the buzzards and vultures to reach the dried flesh and organs. But the scavengers were starting to leave, abandoning the wealth of food to fly away and take roost into the windowless stores of the city, to start anew on other bodies. Only the millipedes in the street stayed, the insects unconcerned with the growing heat and the smoke.

 

 Staying well clear of the writhing bugs, Gaza and Kathleen kept in the open as much as possible and used their weapons freely. Time was pressing and ammo spent saved precious moments. A sudden flurry of movement at a sewer grating made the baron jerk back and fire a long burst from his M-16. The hardball ammo threw off sparks as it hit the corroded grating, but a few rounds passed through the small holes and something shrieked in the darkness. Echoing slightly, the cries faded as if retreating into the distance.

 

 "We're in a goddamn mutie pit!" Baron Gaza roared, dropping the spent clip and slapping in a fresh one. "Shoot anything that moves and let's haul ass!"

 

 Breaking into a stride, Kathleen braced the rapidfire at her waist and sent a spray of lead into a flock of buzzards in their way. Several birds dropped to the ground in a fluttering of feathers and gore, while the rest rose hurriedly into the gray sky. With some measure of satisfaction, Gaza was chilling the millipedes, grinding their bleeding forms under his boots. A scrawny desert rat darted from underneath a car to grab a juicy morsel of an aced bird, and Gaza contemptuously kicked it aside with a crunch of bones. The rodent flew across the street to impact on the front counter inside a shadowy store, then fell limply to the floor, blood dribbling from its slack mouth and both hind feet still twitching as it tried to escape.

 

 Brass arching in streams, the man and woman blasted a path through the feasting scavengers and reached the wire fence encircling the park only to find this section clear of anything living. It was as if they had crossed an invisible boundary that nothing was allowed to pass.

 

 Or was afraid to pass, Baron Gaza realized grimly. But the sec hunter droid was destroyed; he had seen it crash and explode. There was nothing to harm them here. This was a safe zone in the middle of the hellish ruins. But no one ever got chilled by being too careful.

 

 "Stand guard," he ordered brusquely, walking sideways toward the nearest APC. It was just beyond a crashed truck, set between a huge Army tank and two crashed Hummers. "I'll grab the wires and we leave."

 

 Breathing deeply through her nose, Kathleen vigorously nodded in agreement as they proceeded past the tank. From the other side of the wire fence, hundreds of things seemed to be watching them, from the nooks and crevices of the city, as if hungrily waiting for the people to exit the park. Their hatred was palpable, like the beat of a powerful engine.

 

 In a thunderous roar, a building down the street sagged inward and started to collapse, pieces of rubble slamming to the street and smashing cars while others hit lower structures like flaming meteor strikes.

 

 Snapping her fingers for his attention, Kathleen twirled a single finger in the air, then made a fist.

 

 "Bet your ass I'll hurry," Gaza grunted in reply, then gestured a direction with his rapidfire. "Check the Hummer for any more of those rockets. We may need to blast our way out of here."

 

 She nodded and started that way as he worked the latch of the heavy rear door and slipped into the APC. The interior was almost pitch black, and he scratched a road flare to life, filling the wag with searing red light. A scorpion on the wall scuttled away, and Gaza thrust the flare at the creature, searing off its pincers and cracking open the shell. Thrashing wildly, the scorpion fell to the corrugated floor and started stinging itself in blind madness. Grimacing at the sight, Gaza deliberately stepped over the dying creature so that it would linger in agony as he proceeded deeper into the steel box.

 

 Gaza found the access panel near the turret. Placing the flare on an empty seat, he managed to force open the panel with one hand, the other filled with the M-16 rapidfire. Casting the lid aside with a loud clatter, he grabbed the flare and held it up, soon locating the needed wiring harness. Yes! Carefully as possible, he gently removed the connections and wrapped the harness in a clean piece of cloth before tucking it safely away inside a pocket. Okay, back in biz.

 

 Suddenly, there was a frantic thumping on the metal side of the vehicle. Rushing to the exit, the baron paused for a moment listening for danger before joining his wife outside. He was losing spouses at an unprecedented rate, but it was still better them than him.

 

 Kathleen now had another LAW slung over a shoulder and a pair of pressurized tanks strapped to her back, a vented blaster of some kind attached to the larger tank with a flexible metallic hose.

 

 "Rad-blast my ass, a preDark flamethrower!" Baron Gaza gasped in shocked delight at the find. "Does it still work? Fuel okay?"

 

 Hurriedly, Kathleen nodded, but also held a finger to her lips for silence. Gaza frowned at that until he heard a noise coming that chilled his blood. A weird combination of sounds unlike anything he had ever heard before, partially masked by the crackling of the flames and the crash of falling masonry. A sort of whirring mixed a horrible hooting. Stickies!

 

 Then coming around a nearby corner was a mutie fighting a machine—the sec hunter droid from before, or another that looked exactly the same. Could there be two? More? Dripping gore, the preDark machine was battling a stickie, the rubbery mutie charging at the droid uncaring of the whirling blades and snippers. Mindlessly, the feral creature seemed to be fighting on a visceral level, without much common sense of fear.

 

 The stickie was missing an arm, the blood running thickly down its side. Trying to move past the mutie, the droid charged with its buzz saw extending and the creature was sliced in two, the pieces dropping to the filthy street. But as the droid started forward, more stickies appeared, stepping out of a brick wall and the corroded side of a crashed bus.

 

 Thunder and lightning crashed in the sky as the muties raced over the corpses, their bodies changing color and texture, blending into whatever they were near. A startled buzzard brushed a stickie, and the thing's arm became covered with black feathers. Another tripped in a pothole landing atop a desiccated corpse not yet eaten by the scavengers, and as it rose the stickie began to blend into the mummified norm.

 

 Gaza couldn't believe what he was seeing, and Kathleen edged closer to the man for protection. Camou stickies. They had heard rumors from outlanders about such things but never really believed them until this moment.

 

 As the stickies attacked, the sec hunter droid slashed out with its buzz saw and scissors at the same time, striking in the opposite direction. The closest two stickies died horribly, and the gore splattered machine retreated again toward the convoy in the park. Sitting on the crumpled hood of a crashed car, a millipede hissed at the droid as it passed and was slashed apart by the flashing blades. Then more stickies attacked, slowing the machine by the sheer bulk of the bodies. One mutie got a good grip on a red lens and tried to pull it free, and the droid threw itself against a nearby truck, crushing the stickie's head. As the dead mutie released its hold on the droid, it fell to the street, its skin rippling in different colors and textures, the suckers moving like gasping mouths, until the humanoid went still and the skin become a dull pasty white like a drowned man long deceased.

 

 Longblaster in hand, Gaza sneered at the sight. Muties always seemed irresistibly attracted to machinery, fires, diesel engines and the like, but this time the machines were fighting back and chilling them in droves. The armored chrome of the droid was dripping with blood, feathers, pincers and a few suckers adhering to its blades as grisly trophies of combat.

 

 Making a guttural sound deep in her throat, Kathleen bumped him with a hip, urging the man to leave. Gaza agreed and eased around the APC, trying to keep its bulk between them and the approaching droid. Oddly, it didn't seem to be after the norms in particular. Mebbe it was merely returning to the tank where it had first been seen, like a guard on patrol. Suddenly, the baron had a strong urge to see what was inside the preDark war machine that needed such a high level of protection. Nukes? Nerve gas? But the danger of the droid was too great to risk a recce, and he followed his wife away from the imposing hulk of the huge preDark juggernaut, its titanic cannon resting against its armored prow and pointing uselessly at the ground. Or could it be the tank itself that needed guarding?

 

 Dimly the man recalled a memory from childhood when a similar machine had been found in the ruins of West Virginia. The local baron had called it a Ranger, and claimed it was a thinking war wag, as if a droid and an APC had been combined. The very idea of obtaining such a weapon made the baron slow his departure until shied onward by the urgings of Kathleen.