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  Now flat, open sand stretched before them, with only some angled dunes rising low on the horizon. The air still carried the sharp tang of salt, and it mixed unpleasantly with the faint stink of the rancid sweat of the companions clothing.

  Placing a hand to his forehead to block the bright sunlight, Ryan studied the ground, but there were no more chucks of concrete to use to hide their tracks, not even rocks. From here they had to walk on the bare sand, even though it was the home for the Core.

  “Make sure you don’t fragging walk in unison,” he ordered brusquely. “Stop every few yards and pat your boots softly as if it they were hot. These muties can probably hear things from underground and we gotta sound like animals. If they detect marching, they’ll come in force.”

  “Especially with the direction we’re taking,” Mildred added, using a cloth to tie back her riot of beaded hair. “I just hope the land to the south actually really is forbidden for them to travel.”

  “Only one way to find out,” Dean stated, wiping his neck with a pocket rag. “Once there, we might be safe from attack.”

  “If they come, spread out in a circle, not a pack,” J.B. directed, checking the ammo clip in his Uzi machine pistol. “They’ll be striking from underneath, so we need room to track and fire. We bunch up, and we all buy the farm.”

  “No prob,” Krysty said, then added, “And if anybody has to piss, do it on your boot to break the force of the stream.”

  Testing the point of his Spanish sword on a thumb, Doc chuckled softly at that remark.

  “What?” the redhead demanded.

  “I beg your pardon for my uncouth laughter, dear lady,” Doc said, sheathing the sword back into the ebony stick. “It had simply occurred to me that if anybody from my time had uttered such a sentence in polite society, men would have gasped, ladies fainted, children screamed, then probably been arrested and hauled off to jail.”

  “So nobody pissed back then, eh?” Krysty asked in a teasing manner, resting a fist on her hip.

  Doc feigned horror. “Not and admitted to such an action, no, madam. Never! It was unthinkable.”

  “And still want go back?” Jak asked, arching a snow-white eyebrow.

  “To be with my wife again, yes. But there were many good points, too, Mr. Lauren. Clean beds, hot meals and no muties.” He shrugged. “But no place is perfect. Sadly for us all, there is no Shangri-La, and Brigadoon does not exist.”

  “But there are a lot better shitholes than this place,” Ryan said bluntly, tightening the straps on his backpack. It was bastard heavy, but he had added a third belt that went around his hip to help distribute the weight. Hip straps, the pinnacle of preDark science.

  “And worse, too,” Ryan continued. “You know that for a fact, Doc. We found you in Mocsin, and you’ve been to Front Royal, which is paradise on Earth in comparison.”

  Every trace of humor drained away from his features as Doc recalled the horrors done to him in that truly evil town. “Truth indeed, old friend. I shall forever be in Trader’s debt for what he did to Mocsin.”

  “Yeah, Trader cleaned out that pesthole,” J.B. added, setting the brim of his fedora against the sun. “And he’ll do the same to the Core once we link up with him.”

  Pressing her canteen to a cheek, Krysty savored the coolness trying to ease her thirst without taking a drink. It was too soon to have another sip, and sucking a pebble wasn’t helping much today. “If it is the Trader,” Krysty countered, forcing herself to lower the water container.

  “It’s him,” Ryan stated with conviction, stepping onto the hot sand and starting forward at a broad gait. “Nobody else can make so many folks so pissed off at same time.”

  The brief rest break over, the companions broke ranks and spread out in a ragged line across the burning sand, the tiny salt crystals crunching underneath their boots. As the day wore on, the weary travelers stopped talking, almost ceased to think, trying to concentrate solely on placing one foot ahead of other, then break the pattern with a pause and shuffle. Sweat ran down their faces, soaking their armpits, their backs roasted dry from the blazing sun. Each tried to ignore the chafing of their backpacks and their growing thirst, savoring a delicious vision of the cool of the Grandee.

  The day wore on in mindless drudgery as the companions went up and down sand dunes like driftwood riding the ocean waves. Occasionally, they would walk across black weeds to muffle their steps. Curiously, they were finding more and more local plant life, some real grass mixed in with the weeds, and a few real cacti dotting the barren landscape. While the rest kept him covered, Doc prodded the first cactus with his sword to make sure it was only a plant, and when nothing happened, the man happily cut off chunks. Badly dehydrated, the people greedily sucked the spongy pulp for every drop of sweet moisture, then very carefully placed the rinds on sloping dunes to roll far away and hide in which direction they were going. The dry wind was efficiently filling their footsteps, and even Jak wasn’t sure that he could have followed anybody into the heart of the desolate land.

  Refreshed from the cactus juice, the companions kept moving. The heat of the sun seeped into their bones and made their blasters almost too hot to touch with bare hands, so socks were wrapped around the grips for protection. Then Dean had to unlock his crossbow out of fear the string would break. On they moved, like cyborgs on a programmed task, heedless of anything around them, seeing only the ground before their feet.

  Less than a mile later, Ryan whistled softly as he found some more cacti. But the welcome sight turned bitter when it was discovered the plant was really a Drinker, the bones of its victims lying in plain sight.

  Traveling up a gentle slope, the companions took a short break and allowed themselves a single capful of warm water.

  “And take some salt,” Ryan directed, grimacing at the thought.

  Opening a few MRE packs, they shared the little envelopes of iodized powder. It was unpleasant, but vitally necessary. Their clothing was becoming stiff from the salt they lost by sweating so much. If it wasn’t replaced, soon they would get weak, then sleepy and eventually die. Water was all a person wanted in the desert, but salt helped keep a person alive.

  Pulling out his minisextant, J.B. took a reading on the sun.

  “Nowhere,” he announced, returning the minisextant under his stiff shirt, salt residue marking a white band across the material. “We’re in the middle of nowhere and heading for abso-fragging-lutely nothing.”

  “I could have told that,” Jak muttered, brushing his snowy hair forward to help shade his pale face from the painful sunlight.

  As they stood on the crested ridge, ahead of them stretched an impossibly flat land utterly devoid of any features whatsoever. Not even a rock or a tumbleweed was in sight. Yet thick tufts of weeds and some sort of bracken lay thick along the very top of the break, almost as if marking the line of transition between the desert and the flatlands.

  “E. A. Abbott, beware,” Doc muttered in wry humor.

  “Yeah,” Mildred said, thoughtfully chewing the inside of her cheek. She recognized the reference to the 1886 fantasy novel about two-dimensional creatures discovering the 3-D world. “But this is almost too flat. Seems artificial somehow.”

  “Rad counter reads clean,” Ryan said, aiming the lapel pin about in a slow arc for a full scan.

  Pulling a compass out of his jacket, J.B. tapped the device with a fingertip. “No mag fields, either.”

  “Salt-fall,” Jak said simply, as if that explained everything.

  “Makes sense,” Krysty agreed. When the nukes were coming down everywhere during skydark, quite a few of the bombs and missiles missed their coastal targets and hit in the ocean. The thermonuclear detonations created boiling tidal waves that washed inland for miles, forming flat, featureless vistas very similar to this. Yes, that seemed reasonable. This was merely a carpet of dried salt covering the desert underneath.

  Stepping down from the embankment, Mildred tested her weight on the salt, then jumped a few time
s. Unlike the desert sand, this material neither yielded nor cracked in any way.

  “Solid as rock,” Ryan declared. “Just stay razor, and go around any domes.” Often when a salt-fall hit, there were pockets of air trapped underneath, forming low domes that would crack apart when walked upon and send a person falling for yards. Ryan never heard of anybody getting aced by a salt dome, but there was always a first time. Besides, sometimes the domes were inhabited. Mebbe that was where the Core lived, in a big dome somewhere.

  “In plain sight miles,” Jak complained sullenly, flexing his hand. A blade slipped from his sleeve at the gesture, and he absentmindedly tucked it away again. “Not like that.”

  “But we’ll make better time,” Krysty countered.

  “Besides that,” Dean added, “if we’re in view, then anybody coming after us is, too.”

  Smearing a dab of axle grease from the satchel on her chapped lips, Mildred watched as Doc winced, flexing his shoulders. Jak took his bad arm out of the sling and flexed it a few times to help the circulation and keep the limb from going stiff.

  “How’s the back?” she asked, tucking away the tube of grease.

  “Itches like the dickens,” Doc said, gently making a fist.

  “Good. That means it’s healing.”

  Furrowing his brow, Doc merely grunted in reply. Pain was part of life. When it stopped, they buried you.

  Climbing down the embankment, the companions started across the flatland and found the walking much less tiring with a hard surface underfoot. As their speed increased, spirits rose. The sun was past azimuth now and the day was ebbing. Soon it would begin to get cool, and they were making good time. Even if the Core knew where they were now, it would be impossible for them to strike from below through the hard plain.

  Everywhere around the companions the ground sparkled with hidden diamonds, salt crystals sometimes as large as a fist. Dean found some rusted bits of unidentifiable metal embedded in the hard ground. At a distance Mildred spotted a half-buried car tire arching up like a crochet hoop, then J.B. tripped and fell to the sound of shattering glass. Getting off the ground, the Armorer knelt again to see what he had broken.

  “Nuke me, it’s plastic,” he said, running a hand across the satiny smooth material. “With neon lights lining the edge. I must have stepped on an intact bulb. I’d say it was some kind of a big electric sign.”

  “Could be an entire building buried under this,” Krysty said in amazement.

  “If it happened fast enough, then most of the place would be in good condition,” Mildred said excitedly. Salt was a good preservative. One of the best. “Machinery, clothing, and all we have to do is dig.”

  “Yeah, for about a month, with our bare hands in sunlight hot enough to ignite ammo,” Dean said scowling, hitching the heavy crossbow on his back. “No, thanks.”

  The crossbow was becoming a real burden to the boy, as the heavy weapon kept hitting him in the kidney, and he was giving serious thought to dumping the crossbow and quiver. A blaster and clips weighed a lot less, and required less maintenance, too.

  “J.B., mark it on your map,” Ryan directed. “Mebbe the Trader would be interested. But for right now, pulling air into our lungs is my main concern. Keep walking. We rest at night.”

  Stepping over the buried sign, J.B. turned away and started walking when there was a crackling sound and his leg went into the ground all the way to the knee. Panic hit the man, and as he tried to yank the limb free, cracks spread outward from the small hole with more pieces of the white ground falling away to enlarge the opening with frightening speed. Suddenly coming loose, J.B. attempted to dive away from the expanding gap, but not fast enough, and he fell into the blackness below.

  “John!” Mildred screamed, reaching for the man.

  Throwing himself forward, Ryan hit the cracking ground and thrust out a hand to try to grab his friend, even though he knew it was totally hopeless. Incredibly, Ryan touched cloth and he grabbed the back of the wiry man’s jacket in an iron grip. Then the Armorer stood, the top of his hat only inches below the salty plain.

  “Good Lord!” Doc rumbled, taking a half step forward.

  In the afternoon light angling into the crevice, the companions could see that J.B. was standing on the roof of a preDark building with a rotary ventilation fan nearby. The unit was normally on top of skyscrapers to use the natural force of the wind to drive fresh air deep into the immense structures. The plastic J.B. had stepped on could now be seen as part of a rooftop billboard, the faded picture advertising some vid about a flying war wag covered with scantily clad women. The colors were faded, but otherwise the sign was in perfect condition. Beyond the edge of the roof, was stygian darkness as impenetrable as outer space.

  “Only fell five feet,” J.B. said with a shaky laugh. “Damn near thought I was taking the long ride.”

  “Climb onto the billboard,” Ryan told him. “I can hoist you up from there.”

  But before the Armorer could move, a faint vibration shook the entire desert, and a hundred tiny puffs of dust rose from different locations across the flatland. Now a horrible stench welled from below, increasing as the cracks began to widen. Visibly, the salt-fall was shifting position, huge sections rising and falling slightly, with a crackling sound that steadily got louder.

  “Oh, Christ, the pressure dropped!” Mildred cursed, in sudden realization. “When we broke the crust, it let out the ancient gases supporting the dome. Like popping a balloon! The whole salt land is starting to collapse!”

  Ryan started to speak when a hundred feet away a huge section of the sparkling white ground shook and plummeted out of sight.

  “Get on the roof!” the man ordered, jumping into the hole. He landed hard, sprawling near the ventilation fan. A foot to the left, and he would have been gutted by the salt-encrusted blades.

  The others were only a heartbeat behind, the white landscape crumbling under their boots. Now the crackling noise seemed to fill the world and the entire area began to quake, thin cracks shooting in every direction. Then the cracks yawned wide and the white dome broke apart completely, huge pieces of the landscape tilting sideways to expose the underside crystalline deposits, bits of fish and seaweed clinging to the irregular bottom. Coming loose, myriad pieces dropped into the reeking hurricane from below, and the crackling grew into a strident roar that steadily increased in volume and power until the companions were forced to cover their ears.

  Rancid winds buffeted them from every direction, and the building violently shook, the stone and steel groaning as if in pain. It was as if the world were dying. The tempest was worse than any earthquake they had encountered, louder and more violent than the eruption of a South Seas volcano. Almost as if skydark had returned to finish the job of destroying the scourge of humanity.

  Now billowing clouds of pulverized salt rose over the edge of the building, covering them in a sparkling blizzard. Desperately, the companions clenched their eyes shut, while the thunder of destruction rattled their bones from its sheer force. With the sound of splintering wood, the stout supports of the billboard crumpled, and it came hurtling down to slam onto the roof, missing the huddled friends by only a few feet. Lost in the tumultuous noise and hurricane winds, the companions never even noticed.

  Now there came another exhalation of fetid gas. Pulling the collars of their shirts over their faces, Ryan and the others fought not to vomit, knowing that to open their mouths now would mean death from whirlwind of flying salt.

  Helpless in the maelstrom, the companions clustered together, fighting to stay alive through the savage pounding and rampaging chaos of the collapsing salt dome.

  The noise and destruction seemed to last forever, then slowly an immense white plume rose into the sky and began to form a horrifying shape of a dreaded mushroom cloud.

  Chapter Six

  At the top of the sand dune, Hawk plunged his hand into the pile of dried horse shit and fingered the crumbling material. It was stiff, but moist inside, and l
ive with the tiny red ants that were everywhere in the Deathlands. His father had called them the only winners of skydark, and Hawk agreed.

  “Ryan and the others were here less than twelve hours ago,” Hawk announced, casting the dung away and glancing out across the shimmering expanse of the hot desert. “No more than a day max.”

  “Think the Core got them?” Mikel said, opening a canteen to pour some water on his head and down his neck. The day was hotter than a gun barrel, but they had plenty of water. Hell, there was still some sloshing about in his boot from the ville.

  Wiping his hands clean in the sand, Hawk stood slowly, the scorpion perched on his shoulder scuttling around to keep its balance. He had simply put the creature there to get it away from the water. Scorpions drowned easily. But it seemed to like the high vantage point, and Hawk was pleased with the unnerving looks he got from the sec men. Fear was always the cornerstone of obedience.

  “Mebbe,” Hawk admitted, scowling at the bare skeleton lying in the sand. The bones were scraped with some sort of curved blade, very similar to those razor-sickles used by the Core. If the sand muties had harvested a dead horse to feed their bugs, then the outlanders might be prisoners, or even already converted. One sip of the bug juice and a man was perm addicted. A traveler had tried a sip once and then escaped. The next day he was burning hot with fever, covered with blisters, vomiting and crapping blood and screaming the craziest things. Never liking to waste ammo, Gaza had used an ax to chill the poor bastard, but then the pigs refused to eat the corpse as if the madness had remained inside the flesh. Triple weird. Rumor said that only long cooking purged the taint of the bug juice from food, but that wasn’t something Hawk wanted to put to the trigger. Whatever the bug juice did to a person was something just this side of Hell.

  “Well, nukeshit,” a sec man drawled, hunching his shoulders. “Know what I think, Chief?”

  “What?” Hawk demanded, squinting into the bright sunlight.

  The man opened his mouth to speak, but never spoke. Then he violently threw himself off the horse to the ground.