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  Dean shrugged. He had survived; that was what mattered.

  Just then, the call of a bird echoing among the tall buildings made the companions glance upward with weapons at the ready. But there was nothing in sight. Then a puff of smoke appeared over a concrete parking garage.

  “With the salt dome covering the sky last time, the fires ran out of oxygen and died quickly,” Mildred said grumpily. “That’s why there’s anything here at all.”

  “Not happen this time,” Jak said. “Burn all.”

  Ryan halted at a corner of a bank, the dead teller leaning against the bulletproof glass and staring down at them. Using a plastic mirror from a pocket, he checked the next street to make sure it was clear, then swept around to continue the recce. This road was wider than the rest, more a boulevard, and every store seemed to have a colorful awning and huge windows, the powdery salt mixed with the glistening glass shards.

  Shuffling his boots to keep from stepping on the glass and shattering a piece with every step, Ryan swept the store with his eye, then paused and gave a low whistle, imitating the bird they had heard earlier.

  The companions hurried into view and saw the man going across the traffic-filled street to a dark supermarket, its windowless front gaping wide. Spreading out to avoid giving any hidden watchers a group target, the companions converged on the store and slipped inside, with Doc and Jak staying at the front as a rear guard.

  Inside, the dead were everywhere, lying in disorganized lines at the registers, sprawled on top of gnarled fruit filling a bin, supine before an ATM with slips of paper and cash clutched in their gnarled fists.

  “Clear,” Ryan announced, checking his rad counter. “Only background rads. The place was never hot nuked. Must have been a neutron bomb.”

  Dean remembered hearing about those. Some sort of fancy nuke that only chilled people, but not buildings.

  “I hope they were all slain instantly,” Doc said from the doorway. “Otherwise, any survivors would have been buried alive in perpetual darkness, sans air and hope.”

  Sadly, Krysty shook her head. “Such a waste.”

  Going to an endcap display of fruit juice, Krysty inspected the top can only to replace it with a disgusted expression.

  “Rusted through,” she complained, wiping a hand clean on her thigh.

  “Don’t take anything with any rusty spots,” Mildred warned. “The salt would eat through the galvanized tin easily. Stick with glass and plastic if possible.”

  Spreading out in a standard search pattern, the companions walked along the deathly silent aisles, stepping over the desiccated bodies when they could. Which wasn’t often. Soon, their boots were coated with a gray dust and the air began to have a strangely appetizing aroma that was almost meaty.

  “Odd, it’s sorta like beef jerky,” J.B. said puzzled, then contorted his features. “Son of a bitch, we’re breathing longpig!”

  Krysty recoiled at that. Longpig, the cannie term for human flesh.

  “Just deaders rotting,” Ryan stated, prodding a display of plastic bags with the barrel of his blaster.

  “Better put on your masks,” Mildred ordered brusquely, pulling out a handkerchief. “There could be microbes in this dust that’ll make us ill.”

  The unspoken word of plague seemed to thunder in their midst, and the companions quickly tied the clothes over their faces. At the sight, Mildred felt her mood oddly brighten as she thought about how the security guards from a hundred years ago would have had a heart attack at so many heavily armed people wearing masks invading their store.

  “Something funny?” J.B. asked, cocking an eyebrow.

  “Tell you later, John,” she promised, smiling with her eyes. The earlier depression was gone. The past was past, and she was still alive. Mildred had true friends and a man who deeply loved her. There really wasn’t anything more important in life than that.

  Playing her flashlight on the ceiling signs, Mildred found the soda pop aisle and led the rest that way. It was dim between the tall racks, but the candles helped and she could read the colorful labels of assorted soft drinks. The names brought memories of ridiculous television commercials, and the physician found herself humming jingles that hadn’t been played for a century.

  “This brand seems to be the best,” Ryan said, lifting a shiny container that audibly sloshed. “Glass bottles, good and tight.”

  It was only half full, but the fluid inside was crystal clear with no clouding to mark contamination. He cracked the plastic film around the cap with a simple twist but sniffed the water first, then poured some into a palm before touching it with his tongue.

  “Nuking hell, that’s good.” He sighed thankfully, then took a long drink and ended finishing off the entire container.

  “Fireblast, I needed that,” he said, then placed the empty back on the shelf. “Everybody, fill your canteens, drink your fill and then put a dozen into your backpacks.”

  “We could load up a truck from outside,” Dean suggested, placing a case of beef stew on the floor. “Take everything we can.”

  “Those wags are aced,” J.B. explained, pouring a bottle of water over his head, then paused as it seeped into his dusty clothing. “This isn’t a mil base or a redoubt. Nothing out there has a nuke battery or condensed fuel. The power is gone, the tanks are dry and the engine is seized tight from the grease dried solid as iron over the years.”

  Leaving the others to their work, Mildred proceeded deeper into the market, the reflected shine of her flashlight moving about here and there. After a few minutes, she returned, her satchel bag bulging with items.

  “There was a pharmacy!” Mildred called in triumph. “Alcohol, white thread for sutures, powdered sulfur for wounds, bandages, aspirins, antibiotics! I found a thousand things we need!”

  “Can you carry a thousand things?” Dean asked calmly, stuffing bottles into the bag.

  As the beam started to wane, Mildred pumped the handle of her flashlight to recharge the weakening batteries.

  “No, Dean, I can’t,” she admitted honestly. “But even these few items will help us stay alive. My next batch of jump juice may actually do the trick.”

  “If we can get out of this pit alive,” Ryan said, pouring a full bottle of water over his head and brushing back his soaked hair. It had been several weeks since they found a redoubt with a working shower, and he could almost taste the stink of his clothing.

  Fully loaded, the group took a detour through the canned-goods aisle and found a dozen cans of soup and beef stew in acceptable condition. Privately, they each knew there was probably a lot of beef jerky in the snack aisle, but by unspoken agreement, they didn’t go there. The meaty smell in the air of the store had killed any appetite for that staple for a long time.

  Going to the front of the store, Ryan sent Doc and Jak back to fill up with water, but Mildred stopped the teenager.

  “First I fix that arm properly,” she stated firmly and dragged Jak over to sit down on a cardboard box of dog food. “Off with the shirt.”

  Removing his heavy jacket, Jak nodded in acceptance, and eased off his bloody shirt, the material sticking to him in several spots. In spite of her earlier work, Mildred was unhappy with the condition of the wound. The teenager had been using the arm, and the stitching had come loose. Fresh blood was seeping into the sandy bandages, and the wound was slightly red from infection. Damnation, and the dirty air of the store was only going to make that worse!

  Quickly she checked his upper arms for any striation indicating blood poisoning, but thankfully there was none. Satisfied, she cleaned the wound with sterile water sold for contact lenses, then sewed it shut with actual sutures and washed it clean with pure alcohol. Drinking a bottle of mineral water, the teenager flinched at the contact but never said a word. Packing the wound with greasy antibiotics, Mildred tied off a military-style field dressing and hung it over his neck once more. The antibiotics would be incredibly weak, if there was any life in them at all, but it was the best she had.r />
  “Hey, not itch,” Jak said, flexing the arm and bunching the muscles. “Feels good.”

  “I used some hydrocortisone,” the physician explained, packing the satchel again.

  “Good stuff,” Jak said in frank appreciation. “Got more?”

  “Two full tubes.”

  Suddenly, a light fixture dropped from the ceiling to hit the terrazzo floor in a loud crash. As the companions turned, another object fell from a hole in the roof and hit with a metallic clang.

  “Droid!” Ryan shouted, firing his blaster.

  Smashing aside a display rack, the sec hunter droid came charging out of the darkness with spinning buzz saws attached to the ends of both ferruled arms.

  Chapter Eight

  Holding on to his spear, Alar ran with an easy grace along the crumbling edge of the huge sinkhole, the air thick with the smell of salt. A white fog was moving among the sand dunes, almost too heavy for the winds to shift. His eyes stung from the proximity, his throat constricted, and Alar constantly took a sip from the jinkaja bag hanging at his side.

  At a restful distance behind the man was every warrior in the Core, their coverings rattling with knives and sickles. There had been no denying them on this holy vendetta. Kalr had been correct about the ancient ways, and he had been wrong. So terribly wrong. Death was the only way to protect the Core from the hated norms with their sterile minds. Alar had spared them out of the hope that the redheaded female would join the Core, and feed its line with the strength of her new blood. Her mind was great but undisciplined, chaotic, and useless as a weapon. But her children could have been giants, mindkillers of the old legends. It was his desire to improve the Core that had led to this disaster. No, it had been pride, foolish pride that he could control a bestial norm. The ultimate foolishness.

  Stretching to his left were the endless buildings of the Source, the homeland where the Core had been born. Or created. Or awoken. The legends were vague on several details, and he knew in his heart that much was fantasy, word illusions to inspire the children of each generation. The truth was in the fact that the Core existed, and ruled the beasts by the power of their superior minds.

  When the Core had first arrived, Ryan and the others were already in the heart of the holy land and then fired their longblasters, chilling a young warrior named Ghlat. Now every male and female of the Core had a smear of his blood on the face rags so that the outlanders would see it as they died screaming for mercy.

  With a rumbling crash, another small section of the dome broke away from the edge of the cliff, and Alar halted to furiously watch the destruction. Tumbling end over end, the chunk of crystalline material fell onto a building and exploded into dust, shattering that area of the structure.

  The Core had found several trails that led down the cliff. However, most didn’t reach halfway, and several had crumbled under the weight of a single person, sending the Core member tumbling into the abyss. They sang a death song at the passings, and ran onward, fueled into a battle frenzy by the sheer grandeur of their blessed mission of revenge. Ryan and the others had to be killed. It was an edict from the gods of the sand. Spill the blood of the outlanders, or be damned forever.

  A plaintive caw from above made Alar glance skyward, and he frowned deeply at the sight of a dozen huge black birds circling above the holy land. Already the buzzards had arrived, gathering their courage to swoop down and start feasting on the ancient ones. Their cries would attract others: cougars, stickies, other muties, and then the greatest destroyers of all, norms. Perhaps even too many norms for his people to stop. Their powers were great, but required the warriors of the Core to be very close together. Like wooden sticks bundled into a war club, each was strong, but together they were a deadly weapon.

  Alar stopped at a sloping piece of stone, the desert sands trickling along the inclined plane like blood from a wound. The angled stone descended sharply, and seemed to end at a ledge fifty feet down. But after that there was nothing but a drop of countless feet onto a jagged pile of broken rubble, great metal beams rising like spears from the smashed stones coated white from the salt.

  The leader of the Core slumped his shoulders, for the first time feeling despair. Perhaps the journey was impossible. The sinkhole was so huge! Larger than any seen before, and the sides were as sheer as a knife blade, sharp and smooth. But the warriors were still grimly determined to find a way down. They had to! A series of cracks that could be used as a ladder, a ravine they could crawl through, even a deep pool of hated water that could be jumped into from a height. Anything would do, but they had to enter the holy city and ace the outlanders.

  It was beyond a necessity; it was a primal urge, fed by their will of the warriors and forged by sheer hatred.

  FULL OF GRUBS and red ants, the tiny lizard was lying on the flat rock and showing its belly to the hot sun in total contentment. Then the ground began to shake, and the sky darkened as something radiating waves of heat blocked out the sky. Caught by surprise, panic seized the creature and it froze as the darkness rumbled overhead. Scrambling to its clawed feet, the mutie opened all three eyes and fiercely spit at the towering enemy. Anything larger was always considered an enemy. The acid spray hit with a sizzling hiss that usually marked the demise of the target, and its pea-sized brain reveled at the thought of all the additional food the kill of such a giant would yield.

  Never even slowing, the huge studded tire rolled over the Gila monster, crushing it flat, pulsating intestines and blood spraying out on either side as the LAV 25 rolled on through the wide Texas desert. The splotch of deadly acid barely caused a minor discoloration in the resilient material of the preDark tires already marred by Drinker thorns, bits of glass, shattered bones, the broken wooden shafts of a dozen arrows and a swarm of small-caliber bullets.

  Crushing scorpions, rocks and anything else that got in the way, the heavy military tires of the APC flattened every obstacle in the irregular surface of the shifting sands, leaving behind a trail of compacted debris that stretched out of sight for miles. The LAV 25 wasn’t designed to be a stealth vehicle, but a battlefield juggernaut, heavily armed and armored, proof to toxic chems, radiation and most virus vectors, with pinpoint scanners, worldwide communication equipment, radar, radio scramblers, and yet big enough to carry six troopers and still be fast enough to escape anything larger that might prove to be a viable threat to the sleek U.S. Army leviathan.

  Nowadays, much of the electronics, radio and comps and other fancy tech were gone, ripped out to make room for additional fuel, water and food. There had even been a set of rudders and propellers as if the damn APC was a boat of some kind! Pure madness to think steel could float. Just more deadweight, Gaza thought, to haul around and waste precious fuel. However, he had kept the winch and 40 mm smoke makers, even though he had no chems for those.

  Stripped to the bare essentials of might and flight, the imposing war machine still ruled the wastelands. Thick canvas sheets draped the machine to offer protection from the deadly noon sun, the heavy material soaked with a tacky glue made from boiled bones and then sprinkled with sand to create an effective mask to hide its shape and armament, which were considerable. Where the canvas yawned, there could be seen the original mottle of tans and creams similar to those of an Appaloosa horse, near perfect camou for the desert surroundings.

  The ventilated barrel of a .50-cal thrust out of the forward blaster port of the prow so the driver could fire and steer at the same time, and from the turret there dominated the imposing barrel of a 25 mm cannon that could traverse horizontally and vertically to track in every direction to find its prey.

  Inside the war wag, the air was warm, reeking of diesel fumes and machine oil, the dangling belts of linked ammo jingling musically as the APC rolled over the warming desert. Crouched in the driver’s seat, Baron Gaza grinned in pleasure at the sound of the dangling ammo. The jury-rigging to mount the cannon to the pintel mounting had been a bitch, but now the 25 mm cannon worked perfectly. Hawk had done a good j
ob of cleaning and oiling the big blaster. Now the APC was a proper war wag, armed to the eyeballs, and more than a match for the armed trucks of the Trader.

  Moving to the motion of the machine as if they were on a ship at sea, the five women in the rear wall seats leaned toward the small air vents, savoring every breeze that blew in from underneath the canvas sheeting. To endure the oppressing heat, the baron’s wives had stripped down to the bare essentials, their wealth of bare skin shiny with sweat that dripped off their bodies to fall onto the corrugated steel deck. However, strips of cloth were tied around every wrist to keep their hands dry and ready to use the blasters holstered on their bare hips, and the loaded rapid-fires lying across their open thighs.

  Sticking a cig into his mouth, Gaza kept one hand on the steering yoke while he lit the smoke and pulled the rich, dark smoke deep into his lungs. The damn things were as addictive as jolt, but smoking helped him stay razor. They were deep in Core territory now, and whatever that white nuke cloud had been, the baron was triple damn sure the Core would also be going there to do a recce. Fucking mutie bastards.

  Shifting in his sticky chair, the baron stretched out his sore leg and in the gunner’s chair, Kathleen moved out of the way to give him some more space. Gaza grunted at the act of kindness. His bad leg was starting to ache from being in the cramped position for so long, but that was a lot better than being crucified by the rebelling civies of his own ville for lying to them for so many years. Stupid feebs didn’t understand that sacrifices needed to be made in war. They should have been honored that he choose Rockpoint ville as his base to strike at the Trader, and then use his stockpile of preDark weapons to build an empire in the Death-lands. To create a New America that would purge the world of muties and freaks. A world of norms! It was to have been—no, would be—a war of purification. And the blood of the dead would nourish the sand until it would grow crops, and America would be green once more. Alive and safe. With Emperor Gaza as the absolute ruler.