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  "Radar dish," J.B. said.

  "Satellite receiver, I believe," Doc panted. He was nearly done. A little blood trickled from his mouth where he'd bitten his lip.

  "Five minutes," J.B. counted.

  Ryan made the decision.

  "There," he said.

  There was just room for all of them to squeeze under the fallen metal dish, pressed against one another.

  "What if it's not strong enough?" Mildred asked, and immediately answered her own question. "Kind of stupid, Mildred. We get killed if it's not strong enough."

  "Inside two minutes," J.B. said. "Can't be too sure about accuracy within a minute or so. Could be any moment."

  Krysty had her arm around Ryan's shoulders. "If we don't make it, then it's been good. Wish we could've found a place to settle, lover."

  Ryan held her tight, his cheek against hers, not saying anything.

  Waiting.

  "I make it around thirty seconds," J.B. announced. "Hang on, people."

  "Farewell, comrades," Doc muttered. "I would just like to remark that—"

  The explosion of the world interrupted him.

  The concussion was unimaginable.

  Ryan blacked out and guessed that the same happened to all of them. There was a shock wave that moved the earth beneath, behind and all around them. They were lifted up and slammed down, and the metal disk above them rang like a bell. Despite the amazing power of the huge underground explosion, there was very little noise. There was a pressure that hurt the ears and a vague, booming sound that seemed to swirl around between sky and earth.

  When Ryan came around he was deafened by rocks and stones pounding on the satellite dish above them. He instinctively curled partway into a ball, grabbing for Krysty to try to protect her.

  It was impossible to see beyond the circular edge for the whirling dust. The ground beneath Ryan was still trembling from the shock and what he guessed were some minor detonations in the remains of the redoubt.

  It crossed his mind that this was what it must have been like when the United States of America died and the Deathlands was born.

  The tremors continued for half an hour. Ryan had ordered everyone to remain within the relative safety of the metal shield. It had been visibly dented and battered by the hail of stones that had struck it, some of them having obviously been hurled hundreds of feet in the air. Without its protection there wasn't much doubt that all six of them would have died.

  Ryan tried to swallow and hawked up a mouthful of thick red spittle. His head ached, and his good eye was sanded sore. Jak had begun to bleed copiously from both ears, but it had finally stopped and the boy seemed little the worse for the experience.

  "Nearly thirty minutes since the blow," J.B. said.

  Ryan nodded. "Okay. Let's move. Come out real slow and easy. Don't know what the mountain's like up there above us."

  "Sweet Jesus on the Cross," Mildred breathed, rubbing at her eyes.

  The rest of them stared in silence.

  A whole section of the hillside above them had completely vanished, as though a giant excavator had bitten a monstrous slice from the rock.

  Millions of cubic feet of stone and concrete had disappeared in the cataclysmic explosion. The prevailing wind was blowing the pillar of dark smoke away toward the east, away from the six companions, obscuring the horizon. There wasn't the least sign that there'd ever been a redoubt.

  All around them the land was scattered with smashed stone, some pieces the size of a small wag. The metal dish that had saved their lives was pitted and scarred, with dozens of chunks of rock all over its battered top.

  Ryan turned away and, for the first time, was able to take a more leisurely look at where they were. It was a bleak desert landscape, blood-hued and inhospitable. There were more mountains toward the south, across a featureless plain, dotted with stately saguaro cactus and yucca. As far as the eye could see there was no evidence of any human activity.

  "Don't look much," he observed.

  Krysty laid a hand on his arm. "Looks good to me, lover. Looks like life."

  Doc was hypnotized by the ravaged mountain beneath which they'd lived for so many wearisome days. "I am death, the destroyer of worlds," he said. "By the three Kennedys! That is power too great!"

  "No rad-count," J.B. commented, as cautious as ever.

  "Where now?" Jak asked, picking at a small cut on his cheek.

  "Check where we are first," Ryan replied. "You do it, J.B. Once we know that we can decide what to do. Where to go."

  While the Armorer began to take the necessary observations with his microsextant, the others sat down on the sun-heated rocks. Krysty and Ryan smiled at each other.

  "Lover?" she asked.

  "Yeah."

  "Could be worse."

  "Sure. Could all have died there. Like ants under a wheel."

  "You nearly went with that poison."

  "Too close." He held her hand, warm in his fingers.

  "When you were out, in that long sleep… Where were you?"

  Ryan kissed her hand, tasting the roughened skin and the dust. "I was in the past."

  "Your own past?"

  "Yeah. Good place to visit for a while, but I sure wouldn't want to go and live there."

  Epilogue

  SOMEWHERE IN DEATHLANDS, if it had survived, the child of Sharona Carson, fathered by Ryan Cawdor, would be about ten years old.