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  “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 long-blaster. Only four rou
nds 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—4×4 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.