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closed with a solid snap. "Not only on their former masters, but any of their
fellow slaves who worked for the cannies. Could get damn messy."
Her face a mask of controlled hate, Kate looked over the battleground, the
dead and the dying mixed with the rubble and refuse.
"Let them," she said in a voice of icy granite.
"What's the status of the laser?"
"We're almost out of fuel for the reaction chamber,"
Roberto reported. "Plus, a few more minutes of use and the main lens would
have cracked. It's just not designed for this kind of fighting."
"But it did the job. Give Eric my thanks. The man works miracles."
Just then, a ricochet zinged off the armored prow of the wag only inches from
the woman. Instantly, Roberto fired his shotgun at the distant sniper, and
Kate dropped the radio to draw the Ingram and hosed a long burst from the
rapidfire. Fighting to clear a jam from his bolt action, the coldheart on the
rooftop got stitched across the chest by the 9 mm Parabellum rounds and fell
away spraying bright blood.
Snapping the sawed-off shut, Roberto grunted at the sight. "Good shot," he
said, stepping closer. "Bastard was out of my range."
"Can't control a rapidfire with one hand," Kate said, bending over to retrieve
the radio. "All gunners, secure this courtyard! I want every roof cleaned of
sec men, and I mean right fucking now!"
Every gunner inside the three armored transports did as requested and the
crisscrossing barrage of .50-
caliber rounds from the vented machine guns tore the roofs apart, shattering
the red tiles and sending two more snipers to the last train west.
"Roofs are secured," a voice reported crisply over the radio.
"Good," she answered. "Jeffers, Daniels, Dink, start a recce of the buildings
and watch for boobies. The locals are fond of traps. Be safe and shoot
everybody you find."
"All of them?" the voice asked, startled.
"Confirmed," Kate growled. "If they ain't in chains, put lead in their head!"
"Will do, Chief!" The radio crackled, even the short distance affected by the
rads in the sea.
"Knives are cheaper," Roberto stated, staying close to the woman, the
sawed-off held level at his waist with
both hands.
She shrugged in reply. "Fuck it. We got the ammo.
Besides, I'll damn well not lose another one of our people cleaning out this
viper's nest," Kate shot back furiously. "Ten rounds now will save us a
hundred in the future."
There was a scrambling motion at the base of a second guard tower, and from
the gaping doorway stumbled a bloody man in robes with both hands raised.
Roberto fired before Kate could even register the fact, and as he fell the
cannie elder was then torn apart by crisscrossing blasterfire from a dozen
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directions.
"Standard divvy among the dead?" Roberto asked, tightening his lips into what
could have been a grin as he reloaded again. The 12-gauge sawed-off did a
nuking amount of damage, but he was always shoving in shells. Too bad there
wasn't such a thing as a clip fed shotgun. Wouldn't that be a pisser?
"Not this time," the woman answered. "We turn the entire contents of the ville
over to the slaves. They earned it in ways we don't want to think about. Then
we divvy half of our food with them, too. Toss everything found in the
kitchens and storehouses into the sea. It's all dirty. Who knows what they
used to bake the bread, or fried the fish in."
Mebbe human fat, Roberto comprehended, going queasy. Dark night, he never
would have thought about that. "Good call, Chief," he stated, swallowing hard.
"I'll see it done personally. But we're still taking shine and fuel, right?"
Removing her hat, Kate fanned away the smoke from the burning buildings, the
fumes carried a reek of burning flesh that made her cringe. "Damn straight,
all we can carry," the woman added without any trace of humor. "From here we
can finally risk a journey to the
north."
Roberto frowned. By that, she meant across the
Great Salt. A hellzone considered by many to be the bleeding ass of the
Deathlands with its rad storms, quicksand, tornadoes, muties and worst of all,
the
Scorpion God.
Machine gun fire sounded from somewhere in the ville, ending with a wailing
scream, followed by cheers.
Sounded like the slaves were free and already equaling some old scores.
"Be a mighty good day when we ace the Scorpion,"
Roberto said grimly. "A lot of debts to be paid there, too."
"More than you know," Kate muttered, tucking her hat back on her head.
Chapter Eight
Sucking on a dry piece of jerky, Krysty was taking her turn behind the wheel
as dawn began to lighten the eastern sky behind the wag. Straight ahead, the
bright headlights of the old wag bounced wildly with every irregularity of the
ground, and she was forced to slow to a mere crawl to keep from crashing into
the occasional hole or rock. She hoped nothing attacked the wag, because at
this miserable speed, they couldn't outrun a fat baron.
When Ryan was driving the wag, at first it had seemed they were following a
predark road buried beneath the salt. But soon it became obvious that this was
merely a wash, the vestigial remains of a dried river that snaked through the
desolate landscape.
Aside from the shallow depression of the river, the land was flat and
featureless without even mountains on the
horizon, the largest dune of sandy salt only a few feet in height. It was as
if the world had been sandpapered smooth.
No, it was sandblasted smooth, Krysty corrected, by the bombs of skydark.
Whatever had once been here had to have been mighty important in the old days
for it to receive such a concentrated bombing. Some sort of military base, or
factory town. Had to have been big.
Sitting in the passenger side of the cab, Dean scowled alertly at the endless
vista of dried salt with open hostility, J.B.'s scattergun expertly cradled in
his hands. The boy carried a harmonica in his shirt pocket, a gift from long
ago, and he was slowly getting fairly good on the instrument. But for some
reason he felt the music would have been inappropriate. Dean found that he was
sometimes a little nervous when it was just him and Krysty, kind of as if he
were a small kid being watched over by a parent, instead of a young man of
nearly thirteen years standing guard. The weirdly mixed feelings confused the
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hell out of the boy.
Mildred told him it was normal for him to feel that way. He was in transition
from childhood to adulthood.
Adolescence, it was called. Dean wished it would just pass him by.
Buried under a pile of blankets, the rest of the companions were sleeping in
the rear of the vehicle, huddled in a group to share body heat and help fight
off the nighttime chill. It had to have been dawn when they arrived at the
redoubt, but as they escaped from the installation, the warmth quickly faded
from the air and the desert turned deeply cold. Krysty and Dean had the heater
under the dashboard to keep them comfortable, but the rest simply had to cope
as best they could.
As the sun slowly ascended, it burned away the blanket of polluted clouds and
filled the desert with the rosy gleam of predawn, turning everything delicate
shades of pinks. Soon the biting chill was no longer
whistling into the cab from around the mismatched doors, and the woman turned [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]