Kitabı oku: «Eden's Twilight»

The deal was on the table

“Come along with us to Cascade. Lend a blaster if there’s any chilling to be done on the way. The healer helps patch any wounds, and talks to the old-timers, and the six of you get a fair share of every trade I make,” Roberto stated.

Having done something similar a hundred times before during his years traveling with the Trader, Ryan was impressed. It was a fair offer. And the chance to see a predark city. Ryan got a flutter of excitement in his guts. He glanced at the others. Were they interested? Hell yeah.

“Deal,” Ryan said, offering a hand.

Looking coolly at the man he had wanted to ace only a few hours earlier, Roberto marveled at the strange complexities of life. Friends became enemies, and enemies became friends, often in less time than it took to load a blaster.

“Done, and done,” he growled, and they shook.

Eden’s Twilight

Death Lands_®

James Axler

www.mirabooks.co.uk

The world was all before them, where to choose

Their place of rest, and Providence their guide:

They hand in hand with wand’ring steps and slow

Through Eden took their solitary way.

—John Milton,

1608–1674

THE DEATHLANDS SAGA

This world is their legacy, a world born in the violent nuclear spasm of 2001 that was the bitter outcome of a struggle for global dominance.

There is no real escape from this shockscape where life always hangs in the balance, vulnerable to newly demonic nature, barbarism, lawlessness.

But they are the warrior survivalists, and they endure—in the way of the lion, the hawk and the tiger, true to nature’s heart despite its ruination.

Ryan Cawdor: The privileged son of an East Coast baron. Acquainted with betrayal from a tender age, he is a master of the hard realities.

Krysty Wroth: Harmony ville’s own Titian-haired beauty, a woman with the strength of tempered steel. Her premonitions and Gaia powers have been fostered by her Mother Sonja.

J. B. Dix, the Armorer: Weapons master and Ryan’s close ally, he, too, honed his skills traversing the Deathlands with the legendary Trader.

Doctor Theophilus Tanner: Torn from his family and a gentler life in 1896, Doc has been thrown into a future he couldn’t have imagined.

Dr. Mildred Wyeth: Her father was killed by the Ku Klux Klan, but her fate is not much lighter. Restored from predark cryogenic suspension, she brings twentieth-century healing skills to a nightmare.

Jak Lauren: A true child of the wastelands, reared on adversity, loss and danger, the albino teenager is a fierce fighter and loyal friend.

Dean Cawdor: Ryan’s young son by Sharona accepts the only world he knows, and yet he is the seedling bearing the promise of tomorrow.

In a world where all was lost, they are humanity’s last hope….

Contents

Prologue

Chapter One

Chapter Two

Chapter Three

Chapter Four

Chapter Five

Chapter Six

Chapter Seven

Chapter Eight

Chapter Nine

Chapter Ten

Chapter Eleven

Chapter Twelve

Chapter Thirteen

Chapter Fourteen

Chapter Fifteen

Chapter Sixteen

Chapter Seventeen

Chapter Eighteen

Chapter Nineteen

Chapter Twenty

Chapter Twenty-One

Chapter Twenty-Two

Chapter Twenty-Three

Chapter Twenty-Four

Chapter Twenty-Five

Chapter Twenty-Six

Chapter Twenty-Seven

Epilogue

Prologue

Alone, the man stood on the edge of the cliff, the cool wind blowing over the rocky escarpment weakly stirring the dry leaves around his boots. A thick growth of ivy covered the ground like a living carpet.

Resting a hand on the automatic pistol holstered at his side, Dale MacIntyre gazed thoughtfully down into the foggy chasm. A cool mist rose from the thundering river below to moisten his face and clothing, the white-water rapids sounding like the distant thunder of a perpetual storm.

Had skydark sounded something like that, MacIntyre wondered, when a rain of nuclear bombs destroyed civilization in only a few hours? Possibly. But there was no way to know. That had happened a hundred years earlier, and not even the founding fathers told about such things in the doomsday book. Facts were few and far between. Nobody knew how the war started, why, how it ended, or even if it had ended. Perhaps the last remnants of the predark military were still battling ancient foes in some forgotten corner of the world. The fighting never seemed to cease. The fathers thought they had stopped the killing, but all they had done was postpone it for a few decades, nothing more.

Shaking his head to dispel the dark thought, MacIntyre shifted his stance a little farther away from the edge of the crumbling cliff. The Barrier River at the bottom could be heard, but it had never been seen since Last Day, when it changed from a gentle creek into a savage torrent of deadly whirlpools, hot water geysers, jagged boulders…and creatures. Huge indescribable things of teeth and tentacles that lurked at the bottom of the river patiently waiting for somebody to cross, and then they would strike. The unstoppable lurkers moved lightning-fast, and the poor victims were still horribly alive when dragged below the churning water to vanish forever. Nothing could get across the Barrier River. Especially with the bridge gone.

Jutting from the opposite side of the chasm were the remains of a predark bridge, the broken steel beams extending for only a few feet before ending abruptly in ragged ends, the metal twisted and partially melted. The sagging girders were covered with rust and festooned with vines, the crumbling asphalt dotted with potholes and covered with moss. There was absolutely no sign of the bridge on this side of World’s End, every trace of it carefully removed decades earlier. Then hundreds of trees had been lovingly planted by hand to create an artificial forest that completely hid the isolated farming community. The little town of Cascade was invisible, and unreachable.

We live in a damn castle, MacIntyre noted dourly, hitching up his gunbelt, with mountains for walls, the river as a moat, muties for guard dogs…and me as the gatekeeper.

Dressed in the blue-and-gray uniform of a City Protector, MacIntyre wore his wavy brown hair cropped short, the black boots shiny with fresh polish. There was a discolored patch on his face from being caught in the acid rain as a teenager. The flesh puckered into a gnarled ruin, and the left side of his mouth curled back into a permanent snarl. A great many women found the disfigurement oddly attractive, as if it were some kind of badge of honor. A touch of the savage in their peaceful world. But MacIntyre considered it only a badge of shame. It was his own damn fault he’d been caught in the downpour. He had been drunk that night, using a full year’s ration of whiskey in a single evening to try to burn out the terrible memory of learning the truth about his hometown, and the locked back room of the sheriff’s station. It was a shock to discover that everything he believed was a carefully sculpted lie. Some folks leaped off the cliff after the ceremony of adulthood, while others quietly went into a tub of warm water and slit their wrists, but the gaunt teenager had merely gotten royally drunk, permanently scarred and then joined the Protectors the next morning.

Now I’m the chief, MacIntyre thought, clenching a calloused fist at his side. His nails cut into his flesh, the pain strangely reassuring. And it is time for me to do a Harvest. Harvest! What a hideously deceptive word.

Suddenly there came the crunch of loose gravel from behind.

Ignoring it, MacIntyre didn’t turn. There were no muties, coldhearts or slavers in Cascade. No warlords, kings, dictators or despots. Stingwings were the only real danger to Cascade, and the strong mountain winds that kept out the acid rains also served to repel the winged muties. Most likely, the isolated mountaintop community was the only safe place left in the world. The last bastion of civilization. I’m the most dangerous thing in Cascade, a natural-born killer, and they’ve asked me to leave.

“Have you made a decision yet?” a familiar voice said gently.

Glancing over a shoulder, MacIntyre frowned at the mayor of Cascade. Technically the woman should probably be considered the de facto president of the United States, as she was the only elected official in existence. But to claim the leadership of a nation that no longer existed would be the height of foolishness, and Henrietta Spencer was anything but a fool.

Dressed in a forest-camouflage-pattern military jumpsuit, the woman wore comfortable sneakers and a gunbelt that holstered a large-caliber revolver, the blue metal glinting dully in the afternoon light. Known as Etta to her friends, the middle-aged woman had gentle touches of silver highlighting her long auburn hair, and a wide generous mouth. A very generous mouth, as he remembered. Etta possessed the most amazingly blue eyes he had ever seen, and her lush, womanly figure was completely covered with freckles. The childhood friends had become lovers over time, but had been forced to end the romance when they became the mayor and Chief Protector. Cascade was a democracy, and having the two most powerful people in town living together was getting a little too close to the creation of aristocracy, something the townsfolk would never tolerate. Now, in an odd twist of fate, she was sending him to his death.

Possible death, MacIntyre corrected. I might return alive. Others have before. Not all of them, but a few, so why not me?

“Well, old friend?” Etta asked softly, resting a hand on his shoulder.

Her warm touch brought back memories of youthful fumbling in haystacks, and then more adult pleasures in a soft bed before a roaring fireplace. Wine and laughter, an intimate touch, smooth bare skin, a heartfelt sigh. But that was too much to say, so the man simply nodded.

“When will you leave?”

He shrugged. “Tomorrow morning.”

Etta started to say something but stopped and wordlessly turned to start walking back into the trees. She did not enjoy being out in the open for too long. It seemed like tempting fate.

Listening to her leave, MacIntyre drew his gun and dutifully checked the load before holstering it once more. The man was glad she had not asked to stay the night. He might have accepted, and that would have only made leaving that much more difficult. And he already had enough on his mind planning for the harvest.

Studying the broken bridge for a while longer, MacIntyre turned away from World’s End and started the walk back toward Cascade, his thoughts full of violence, betrayal and bloody death.

Chapter One

The howling sandstorm filled the Ohio desert like a boiling ocean of dirt and salt, making it impossible to tell where the land ended and the thundering heavens began. The dull red sun was long gone, swallowed whole by the tempest, the only illumination coming from the endless volleys of sheet lightning flashing in blue-white fury across the tumultuous sky.

Brutally pounded by the savage winds, six masked figures stumbled through the maelstrom resembling animated corpses freshly escaped from the grave. Ratty blankets were tied around their bodies as crude protection from the stinging grit, and torn strips of cloth were wrapped tightly around their faces to make breathing possible, only a tiny slit left open in front for them to dimly see through. Moving in a ragged line, their arms were linked together, only the combined weight of the companions keeping them on the ever-shifting ground.

In every direction sand dunes rose and fell like cresting waves on the ocean to briefly form yawning valleys that filled as quickly as they were formed. Hopping across the desert, a large mutie rabbit was caught in a depression and vanished beneath the flowing sands to never emerge again. Easing the grip on their blasters hidden under the whipping blankets, the companions turned away from that area and grimly kept moving. They hated losing all of that meat, but to try to harvest it now would only get them chilled.

Only this morning they had arrived at a peaceful ville on the Kentuck River and traded a handful of live brass for an old horse and new wooden cart. A doomie warned them not to venture into the Great Salt until after nightfall, but they had been eager to reach the Ohio redoubt to the north, and departed anyway. Only a few hours later, the roiling sandstorm had come over the western horizon like a tidal wave of destruction. The terrified horse had choked to death before they were able to rig a mask for the poor animal, and the companions had been forced to abandon their precious supplies to make a desperate journey back to the ville. But it was impossible to go against the hurricane-force winds, and the companions were resigned to traveling blindly to the east toward the unknown.

Without warning, a woman in the middle of the line yelled as the sand flowed out from under her boots, leaving her suspended in midair, supported only by the arms of the other companions. Tightening their hold on her, the people moved quickly away from the whirlpool until she was back on the ground once more. The woman shouted something at the others, but if it was advice, or her thanks, nobody could tell, the words lost in the deafening sandstorm.

Hunched low against the fierce wind, the big man at the front of the line slowed as something appeared out of the storm ahead. But a moment later he saw that it was only the wreckage of an ancient APC, an armored personnel carrier. The metal chassis was stripped bare of paint from decades of erosion, the hood buckled back to expose a corroded engine block, the wiring and rubber hoses lashing about like a nest of snakes.

As the companions shuffled past, the wind kicked up to briefly clear off the windshield, and behind the badly scratched plastic they could vaguely see a grinning skeleton strapped into the driver’s seat, the tattered remains of a blue-and-gray uniform hanging off the bleached bones. At the end of the line, a stocky woman hugging a lumpy canvas bag bowed her head for a moment in silent prayer, and a tall man with silvery hair made a brief sign of the cross.

Suddenly the leader stumbled over something buried in the ground. At first he assumed it was a part of the APC. But the obstruction extended for several yards. Bending low, he cupped a hand protectively around his eyes and could just make out the regular pattern of predark bricks. It was part of a wall. There could be ruins nearby! If even pieces of the buildings were still erect, the companions could get out of the bastard storm for some much-needed rest.

Wordlessly tugging the others to follow, he moved along the ancient barrier until he found the end. A huge concrete eagle rose defiantly to face the storm, wings outspread as if about to take flight. Everybody took heart at the sight and quickly stumbled around the statue onto cracked pavement. As they crouched behind the brick wall, the force of the wind noticeably lessened, and they all took a moment to catch their breath before noticing the rusty remains of a car. This was a parking lot! Which meant they were very close to the ruins. Eagerly rallying, they charged back into the full power of the sandstorm.

Temporarily blinded by the windblown grit, the companions were forced to proceed more slowly, until a large dark shape loomed before them and once more the wind eased. Shuffling closer, they could make out the rough shape of a large cinder-block building. This side was solid, without any cracks, and a row of intact milky-white windows sat just under the roof. Nuking hell, could the whole damn place be intact? That raised their hopes again, but unfortunately there were no doors in sight nor any windows low enough to reach.

Hurrying around the corner, the group discovered a concrete loading dock fronted by a row of huge metal gates, the louvered steel sandblasted to a mirror polish. This was some sort of garage or warehouse! Scrambling onto the dock, the companions tried the handles, but the gates refused to budge. They were locked tight, with no keypads or keyholes in sight. However, searching along the wall, they soon found the mandatory fire exit. This door was also made of steel, without any handle or visible lock. But the companions had seen enough of these to know the weak points.

Moving closer to the door, a small person knelt as the others clustered around him as protection from the wind. Expertly running his fingers along the jamb for any traps, the wiry youth finally grunted in satisfaction, then hurriedly rummaged under his blanket to produce a small wad of grayish clay and a stubby black stick. Slapping the lump of C-4 plastic onto the fire door exactly in the middle, he stabbed in the timing pencil and snapped it off at the twenty-second mark.

As he stood, everybody moved to the far end of the dock. A few moments later there was a hard bang and the door violently swung aside, exposing the dark interior.

Moving fast, the companions scrambled through the doorway, loose sand billowing along with them like gritty smoke. As soon as they were all inside the building, the big man grabbed the door and forced it closed against the buffeting wind by sheer determination.

“Find something to block this!” Ryan Cawdor yelled, the words muffled by the dirty strips of cloth covering his face. “I can’t hold this bastard shut forever!”

Nodding, Krysty, Mildred and Doc rushed to obey, while J.B. and Jak put their backs to the cinder-block wall and pulled out blasters just in case they were not alone.

In spite of the soft light coming through the sand-blasted windows, the interior of the building was murky with shadows, and the two men watched the pools of darkness for any suspicious movement. Slowly their sight adjusted to the gloom and they could see that the garage was a single huge room, about one hundred feet wide. The floor was smooth concrete, the faint remains of painted lines still dimly showing through the thin covering of sand and the long passage of time. The nearby wall was Peg-Board covered with hanging tools, while a workbench in front was littered with assorted small pieces of machinery. Heavy chains dangled from the overhead rafters and clumps of equipment stood scattered around, the hulking metal shapes dotted with shiny plastic controls.

“Nine o’clock is clear!” J. B. Dix shouted, easing his grip on the S&W M-4000 shotgun. He would have preferred to use the 9 mm Uzi machine pistol hanging under his blanket, but there was probably loose sand in the works and he would most likely only get off a few rounds before the rapidfire jammed. However, the deadly 12-gauge scattergun should be more than enough for anything they encountered in here, norm, mutie or droid.

“Three is same!” Jak Lauren added, watching the other direction. A big-bore Colt .357 Python was tight in the albino youth’s hand, a leaf-shaped throwing knife held loosely in the other. If there had been anything waiting in the dark, the pale teen would have used the blade first, before spending a live round. When the horse died, the companions had been forced to choose between carrying extra food or ammo. No choice there. As his father had always liked to say, rice is nice, but brass will save your ass. True words, and there was always something trying to ace a person in the Deathlands.

As if in reply to the thought, the wind moaned louder through the ragged hole in the door, the stream of loose sand blowing across the murky garage. Pushed back slightly, Ryan grimly dug in his boots and slammed the door shut again. “Knife!” he bellowed.

Understanding what he meant, Jak stepped closer and rammed the blade between the door and the floor as a makeshift stop. Still holding the shotgun, J.B. joined them and together the three men put their shoulders to the trembling metal.

“Dark night, this is like trying to wrestle a grizzly bear!” J.B. cried out, angrily curling his chapped lips. There were red marks on his nose where glasses normally rested, and the wiry man was squinting against the windblown grit peppering his face. Without his wire-rimmed spectacles, J.B. was terribly nearsighted, but that wasn’t really a problem inside the building.

“Worse!” Jak snarled through clenched teeth, his ruby-red eyes glaring hatefully. “Could always ace bear!”

Suddenly a sharp whistle sounded and everybody turned to see Krysty Wroth standing in a rectangle of window light, a wrapped hand resting on top of a large fifty-five-gallon steel drum.

“This one is full!” the woman shouted, tufts of crimson hair sticking out of her wrapping, the prehensile filaments moving defiantly against the acrid breeze.

Abandoning their own searches, Mildred and Doc hurried closer, and the three companions tipped the heavy container to awkwardly roll it across the garage, the loose sand crunching underfoot. As they approached, J.B. and Jak got out of the way and the five of them set the barrel firmly against the door. Easing his stance, Ryan grunted in satisfaction as the fire exit rattled slightly but stayed in place.

“That’ll do,” the one-eyed warrior said grudgingly. “But we better get another.” Irritably, Ryan rubbed the back of his hand against the leather patch where his left eye used to be located. Sometimes in nightmares he could still see his brother’s knife descending and feel the terrible stab of pain that haunted him for so many years afterward.

“And find something to block that nuking hole!” J.B. added, blinking repeatedly. He started to reach for the glasses in his shirt pocket, but forced himself to stop. These were his only good pair—his spares had hideous purple frames—and he could not risk getting them damaged.

“Will this serve?” Doc Tanner asked in a deep stentorian bass, gesturing at a piece of corrugated steel lying on the floor.

“Yeah, looks good,” Ryan growled, lumbering that way. He was tired and sore from battling the storm, but there was a lot to do before any of them could rest.

Each taking a side, Doc and Ryan tried to lift the ramp, but the thick plane of steel proved to be a lot heavier than it looked, and it took all six of the companions to cumbersomely hoist the corrugated sheet off the floor. As it moved, a grease pit was exposed, the shadowy depths lined with shelves filled with plastic bottles of lubricant, oil filters and miscellaneous objects.

Wary of where they stepped, the six companions moved carefully around the deep opening, and hauled the protective cover across the dark garage. Wiggling it between the shaking door and the barrel neatly sealed the hole, and the stinging wind died away completely. However, the companions added another fifty-five-gallon drum to the barricade, and then a third, before they were finally satisfied.

Lighting some candles, the companions dutifully checked their blasters, then did a second recce of the garage just to make sure they were truly alone. More than once they had entered a supposedly empty building only to be attacked by coldhearts hidden in a closet or to have a mutie drop down on them from the rafters. However, they took heart at the fact that there were no unusual smells in the air, just the expected reek of old grease, rust and decaying rubber.

There proved to be nothing lurking in the bathroom, utility closet or even hidden inside the refrigerator, the insides of which resembled a high-school lab experiment gone bad. There was a wooden desk in the corner, but the drawers contained only requisition logs, order forms, time sheets, pencils, paper clips and other assorted effluvia from the old world. Even the tools on the Peg-Board were only rusty ghosts, rendered into outlines from the sheer passage of implacable time. The garage was clear of anything dangerous or useful.

Gathering in the corner farthest from the blocked door, the companions gratefully undid the caked strips of cloth from around their faces, then loosened the ropes holding the blankets in place and gratefully dropped them to the floor.

“Never saw a bastard storm hit this fast before,” Ryan growled, stretching his tired muscles. “If we hadn’t found this place, we’d all have been on the last train west by now.”

Tall and heavily muscled, the big man had a deeply scarred face, with a leather patch covering the puckered hole of his left eye. A bolt-action Steyr SSG-70 was strapped across his lumpy backpack, and a 9 mm SIG-Sauer blaster was holstered at his hip, right next to the curved sheath of a panga.

“Got that right, lover,” Krysty agreed, listening to the thunder booming outside. A split second later lightning flashed outside the windows, casting the people in the garage into stark relief. “However, when I saw that concrete eagle outside, I knew we’d be okay.”

A strikingly beautiful woman, Krysty was tall with ample curves and bright emerald eyes. Long crimson hair hung past her shoulders, the animated filaments flexing and moving around with a life of their own. A canvas-web belt of ammo pouches circled her waist, the checkered grip of an S&W .38 revolver jutting from a holster on her right hip. A large Bowie knife was sheathed on the left. Her worn blue cowboy boots were embroidered with the silvery outline of falcons, and a tattered bearskin coat hung over her shoulders.

“Yeah, me, too,” Ryan said, almost smiling. “National Guard bases are always good boltholes. I read once they were designed to hold back rioting mobs of people. The ones Trader found were usually in good condition.” He paused. “Not always, but usually.”

“Gaia must have been guiding our steps,” Krysty said, removing the cap from her canteen. She took a small sip, sloshing the water in her mouth before spitting it into the grease pit, and then took a long draft from the container. The water was tepid, flat, but tasted like ambrosia.

“Gaia, eh? Mebbe she did help at that,” J.B. added, removing the glasses from his pocket and sliding them into place. “Because I sure couldn’t see the compass, or sextant. We could easily have gone deeper into the desert and ended up as bones in the Great Salt.”

Short and wiry, J.B. was wearing loose neutral-colored fatigue pants, U.S. Army boots, a brown leather jacket and fingerless gloves. An Uzi submachine gun hung off his left shoulder, an S&W M-4000 shotgun was slung across his shoulders and at his side was a munitions bag bulging with assorted explosives. Their old teacher, the Trader, had nicknamed him “the Armorer” long ago, and the title fit John Barrymore Dix perfectly. There wasn’t a weapon in existence the deadly man could not fix, or repair, in his sleep.

“Nonsense, John Barrymore, luck favors the ready,” Doc said, trying to brush the loose grit from his clothing. However, he only seemed to be making it worse, so the man abandoned the effort. “Indeed, observe our current locale! This is a perfect sanctuary from the Dantean fimbulvetr rampaging outside!”

Lean and muscular as a racing whippet, Professor Theophilus Algernon Tanner seemed incongruous in his frock coat and frilly white shirt, clothing from a time when the style of a man’s clothing was vitally important. A huge .44 LeMat pistol was tucked into a wide gunbelt, the canvas ammo pouches full of black powder, lead and cotton wads for the massive Civil War handcannon. An ebony walking stick was thrust into his belt like a medieval sword, and his backpack hung empty and flat across his back.

“Stop mixing mythologies, you crazy old coot,” Dr. Mildred Wyeth shot back irritably, stomping the dust off her combat boots. “Dante’s hell was blazing hot, while the Norse legend of the fimbulvetr said it was freezing cold!”

Short and stocky, the physician was wearing a red flannel shirt and camou-colored fatigue pants, her ebony hair braided into beaded plaits. A Czech-made ZKR target revolver was snugly holstered low on her hip, and a patched canvas bag hung from her shoulder bearing the faded word M*A*S*H. It held the bare essentials: boiled water sealed in plastic bottles, sterilized cloth in plastic bags, two sharp knives, sulfur to dust wounds, flea powder from an animal clinic, eyebrow tweezers from a hair salon, pliers from a dentist, long fingers recovered from an autobody shop and some tampons reserved for deep bullet wounds. It wasn’t much, barely the basics, but it was a start.

“Indeed, madam, but Dante’s hell was also frozen in the center,” Doc countered, raising a finger. “So who is to say the two frigid dreamscapes were not connected somehow in a sort of cosmic abettor?”

Scowling, Mildred started a reply then merely snorted instead, simply too exhausted to argue with the scholar. Besides, she thought, maybe he was correct.

“Hot, cold, not care,” Jak Lauren noted pragmatically, taking a long pull at his canteen before closing it tight. “Long as we inside and storm out.”

A true albino, the teenager was the color of snow, hair and skin alike. He wore loose fatigue pants that had seen better days, a T-shirt that bore a picture of a wolf and a battered jacket covered with bits of metal, glass and feathers. Sewn into the collar were a dozen razor blades, a terrible surprise for any enemy who tried to grab the youth by the neck. A huge Colt .357 Magnum Python rested in a policeman’s gunbelt. At least a dozen leaf-bladed throwing knives were secreted in his jacket. A combat knife was sheathed at his left hip, and the handle of a dagger jutted from the top of his right boot.

“You can load that into a blaster and fire it,” Ryan growled, fisting the leather patch that covered his missing eye. Some of the bastard sand and salt had gotten through the wrapping and were making the empty hole itch like crazy. Turning away from the others, he lifted the patch and carefully poured some water onto his face until the sensation ceased.

Outside the garage, the howling wind increased in volume, the hard-driven grit sounding like winter hail on the roof. Then something heavy slammed into the side of the garage, the impact shaking loose a light rain of dust from the steel beams supporting the ceiling.

“The storm seems to actually be getting worse, if that’s possible.” Krysty frowned, casting an anxious glance at the barricaded door. “We must be near a rad pit, and a really mucking big one.” She did not fully understand the science behind the atmospheric phenomenon the way Mildred and Doc said they did, but the woman knew from experience that the rising heat from a nuke crater could change the local weather in any manner of odd ways; burn a forest into a desert or turn a desert into a swamp. Skydark did more than simply destroy people and cities, it altered the world in ways the whitecoats couldn’t have predicted.

Instantly both Ryan and J.B. checked the rad counters clipped to their lapels, but each of the devices registered only the usual background levels.

“We’re clear,” J.B. announced in obvious relief. “No rads worth mentioning.”

Just then sheet lightning flashed outside in a continuous barrage and thunder rolled for several minutes, making speech impossible.

“Well, we’re not going anywhere until this ends,” Ryan stated, rubbing his unshaved jaw. “Might as well settle in for the night. The ceiling is high enough for us to start a fire, and we can use the desk for kindling. What’s the food situation?”

Taking a seat on a wooden bench, Mildred answered without even looking in her backpack. “We lost a lot of it in the storm,” she said with a sigh. “But I managed to keep about three pounds of dried beans, four self-heats of mushroom soup, some beef jerky that probably won’t crack our teeth too badly, and six cans of…uh, dinosaur.”

The physician tried not to blush at the word. Dinosaur was her private term for cans of dog food. She wanted to call it beef stew, goulash, any damn thing else, but the companions could read and knew better. They didn’t care, food was food, and as a physician she had to grudgingly admit that the…dinosaur…was perfectly edible, tender meat, rich vegetables and a thick gravy fortified with vitamins. Very healthy stuff these blighted days. But until she had removed the labels and started calling it something else, Mildred had simply never been able to stomach the stuff. She tried not to shudder. Dinosaur stew.

Understanding, J.B. patted her on the arm. “Well, at least it’s not boot soup,” he said in consolation. Once, the companions had been trapped underground and were forced to eat their leather footwear to stay alive. It had worked, but the unique flavor was something none of them would ever forget.

In spite of herself, Mildred had to smile at the memory. “You’re right, John, anything is better than that.” She chuckled.

“Not one MRE?” Jak asked hopefully.

“Sorry.” Mildred shrugged. “We had the last one yesterday.”

The teen frowned. “Damn.” Those were his favorite.

The letters MRE were military speak for Meal Ready to Eat, predark army rations. Each envelope was a complete meal, and the pack included a main course, snack, cigarettes, candy bar, dessert, coffee, sugar, moist towelette, chewing gum and even a small packet of toilet tissue for use afterward. The food was incredible: spaghetti with meatballs, veal Parmesan, beef Stroganoff, chicken and dumplings, eggs and bacon, even pancakes and waffles. The meals were fit for a baron. Best he’d ever had! Well, aside from possum, Jak acknowledged. The MRE packs were worth their weight in ammo, and harder to find than a friendly stickie.

“Well, it’s my turn to get the wood,” Krysty said, picking up a heavy wrench from a toolbox on the floor and starting for the desk.

“Rest first,” Ryan ordered brusquely, then softened his tone. “We’re not going anywhere soon, lover.”

With a nod, the tired woman sat again and placed the wrench aside for later.

“Well, if we have naught to do until the anger of Thor is appeased,” Doc said lugubriously, pulling a worn deck of cards from a pocket of his frock coat, “would anyone be interested in a nice game of Whist?”

“Mebbe later, thanks,” Ryan said, going to the workbench.

Taking a seat, he cleared an area, then drew the SIG-Sauer and dropped the clip as a prelude to thoroughly cleaning the dirty weapon. Joining his friend, J.B. laid down the Uzi and started pulling tools from his munitions bag, along with a small bottle of homogenized gun oil.

“Whist?” Mildred scowled.

“Fair enough, then. How about Canasta?” he asked hopefully. “Or mayhap pinochle?”

Crossing her arms, Krysty looked at the tall man and said nothing.

Seeing it was hopeless, Doc sighed in resignation. “All right, poker again.”

“Now talking!” Jak grinned, cracking his knuckles.

Moving their candles to the sandy floor, the companions sat in a circle and Doc started neatly shuffling the plastic-coated playing cards when the thump sounded again, even louder this time. Then it came three more times in rapid succession. In sudden comprehension, the startled companions realized that the noise was not coming from the sandstorm outside, but from a blank section of the cinder-block wall near the refrigerator.

Scowling darkly, Ryan began to rise from the workbench when the wall visibly moved, a spiderweb of cracks radiating across the rows of cinder blocks as several of them broke into pieces and fell away, leaving a ragged hole. But instead of the howling storm, there was only cool blackness on the other side.

Then something large shifted position in the Stygian dark, the reflection of polished metal gleaming in the dim candlelight.

Chapter Two

“Get razor, people!” Ryan snarled, pulling the Steyr SSG-70 off his back and working the bolt to chamber a 7.62 mm round for immediate action. “We’re about to have company!”

Muttering curses, J.B. started to reach for the Uzi, then turned away and swung the S&W M-4000 around. Working the pump, the Armorer kicked out the first cartridge, then quickly thumbed it right back into the receiver to help break apart any clumps of sand that might clog in the mechanism. The scattergun would probably have worked just fine anyway, but better safe than aced, as the Trader always used to say.

Moving fast, the rest of the companions spread out to not offer an enemy a group target. Setting their candles high and out of the way to not reveal their positions, the companions took cover behind a lathe, drill press and other pieces of heavy equipment just as the cinder blocks violently shook, the cracks spreading wider, and a host of small tools falling off the Peg-Board landed in a ringing clatter.

“Shit,” Jak drawled, turning the word into two syllables as he thumbed back the hammer on his Colt Python. “Big ’un. What be, mutie?”

“I most assuredly hope so,” Doc replied, tightening a finger on the trigger of the LeMat, his free hand poised over the weapon to fan the hammer. “Because if not—”

But the scholar was interrupted by the unexpected sound of working hydraulics. The wall bulged in the middle, the blocks shattering to spray loose debris across the garage. Even before the broken pieces of masonry hit the floor, the companions bitterly cursed and opened fire at the shadowy figure standing in the irregular gap.

The cylindrical body of the machine was shiny and smooth, the low head only a rounded dome sporting two red crystal lenses that never stopped rotating. The flexing arms were thick ferruled cables, one equipped with a pounding pneumatic airhammer, and the other tipped with a spinning buzzsaw, the razor-sharp disk only a whining blur, the noise oddly reminiscent of a predark dentist drill.

“Sec hunter droid!” Krysty growled, using both hands to steady her S&W Model 640 revolver.

In a ragged barrage, the companions cut loose with their blasters, but the soft-lead rounds only ricocheted harmlessly off the armored body of the droid as it continued to enlarge the hole in the wall. Then the shotgun boomed, and one of the red eyes shattered into a million pieces.

Instantly turning in that direction, the droid extended the buzzsaw arm. Already in motion, J.B. got out of the way just in time, and the spinning blade slammed into the workbench instead, dislodging dozens of tools. Ducking under a lathe, J.B. turned and fired again just as the buzzsaw hit the machine, throwing off a corona of sparks. Stepping in close, Ryan fired point-blank at the robotic limb, the barrel of the longblaster actually touching the rotating blade. As expected, the copper-jacketed round rebounded, but the buzzsaw was momentarily thrown out of alignment, jammed in the yoke and violently shattered, the steel slivers going everywhere.

With a cry, Mildred dropped the ZKR target pistol and clutched her right arm.

“Have at thee, Visigoth!” Doc bellowed, fanning the LeMat like a Wild West gunslinger. The .44 miniballs hit the droid like flying sledgehammers, badly denting the domed head. Hydraulic fluid started leaking from one of the depressions in the manner of watery blood.

Flailing its damaged limb madly, the droid smashed chunks out of the wooden workbench. Dodging out of the way, Ryan fired twice at the machine, then stepped behind a cluster of hanging chains. The limb started that way, paused and then retreated, unwilling to risk getting tangled in the steel lengths.

Working the bolt on the Steyr, Ryan grunted at the sight. Fireblast, just how smart was this tin can?

Crawling behind a pile of rotting tires, Mildred fumbled in her med kit for a length of boiled cloth to tie a tourniquet around the wound as a temporary field dressing. The blood was coming fast, but not spurting, which meant there was no damage to a major artery. Plus, it hurt like hell, which was also a good sign. Life-threatening wounds almost always went numb to protect the body from shock. This felt like a nice, clean, flesh wound.

Moving like a ghost in the darkness, Jak concentrated his Colt Python on the ruined eye of the droid, the .357 Magnum rounds denting the dome. But the machine rotated the weakened section safely out of harm’s way.

Reloading while on the run, J.B. aimed and fired, always keeping in motion. The 12-gauge didn’t have the range of the Uzi and he had to get closer to do maximum damage. There was a pipe bomb in his munitions bag that should reduce the droid to smoking wreckage. Unfortunately the garage was too small to use explosives. The concussion would also ace the companions. They would have to take this nukesucker down the hard way.

Going for the remaining eye, Ryan fired his longblaster as fast as he could work the bolt. When the clip was empty, he dropped into a crouch to hastily insert a fresh one. This was a triple-bad place for a prolonged fight, and he cast a furtive glance at the blocked fire exit. They may have nailed the lid on their own bastard coffin with that barricade, but there was nothing he could do about it now.

Holding the end of the crude bandage in her teeth, Mildred ignored the pain as she cinched the tourniquet tight. She watched for any leakage, and when no fresh blood appeared, she fumbled for the ZKR with her left hand and grimly stood to begin snapping off rounds at the droid. The first few bullets went wild, then she grew calm as if performing surgery, and once more started to hit the machine with deadly accuracy. However, the sec hunter droid seemed to be ignoring the companions now, and was using both arms to batter down the last section of the cinder-block wall.

Feeling her blood run cold at the sight, Krysty snapped shut the reloaded cylinder of her S&W Model 640 and started to fire again. Gaia, she thought, if the machine got into the garage it could move freely among them and this fight would be over in only a few minutes. The companions had to keep the droid from getting through the wall at any cost! Spotting a welding tank near the breach, she took a gamble and shot it twice. But both of the pressurized tanks only weakly hissed for a few moments before going silent, the explosive mixture of oxygen and acetylene having leaked away completely over the long decades.

Firing in unison, Doc and Jak battered the machine with their big-bore handcannons as the last few cinder blocks fell away and the droid triumphantly entered the garage.

Cursing vehemently, J.B. dropped the shotgun, a misfired cartridge jammed in the ejector port. Grabbing a sledgehammer, he awkwardly swung it around in a circle over his head and let go, but the droid dodged the clumsy missile and lashed out with both limbs to crush four of the flickering candles set on top of the old machinery.

Instantly the garage darkened noticeably, and the companions slowed their attack, no longer able to clearly aim at their inhuman enemy.

Realizing what the droid had in mind, Ryan knew they were out of options and made a fast decision.

“Gren!” the Deathlands warrior bellowed, dropping the longblaster and insanely charging at the droid.

Pivoting, the machine lanced out with the pneumatic hammer. Diving under the snaking limb, Ryan reached the droid and drove his shoulder into the metal chassis, actually lifting it off the ground a little as he exerted all of his strength to drive the machine back a yard until it went over the edge of the floor and dropped into the grease pit.

Hitting the concrete, Ryan rolled away quickly as the droid lashed its telescoping arms around to try to right itself and J.B. tossed the hissing pipe bomb into the pit.

The companions took cover and braced themselves for the blast, and just as the domed head of the sec hunter droid rose into view, the one red crystal eye spinning insanely, the metal arms reaching out, the bomb detonated.

The confined explosion was deafening, and the entire building shook from the violent force of the blast. Channeled by the concrete sides of the grease pit, flames and smoke formed a volcano straight upward, carrying along numerous broken pieces of the droid. Several of the windows noisily shattered, and the raging sandstorm poured into the smoky garage with unbridled fury as the thundering column of destruction slammed into the roof. Down came a rain of wiring, gears, solenoids, assorted junk and hydraulic fluid. A robotic arm smacked onto the refrigerator and the crumpled head hit the desk, splintering the ancient wood.

All of the companions were peppered with refuse, but they resolutely stayed in place, hands covering their ears, as they waited for the ringing force of the concussion to dissipate. Sand and windblown grit began to sprinkle down from the smashed windows before they finally rose, stiff and sore, to check their weapons and stumble toward the hole in the wall. Where there was one droid, there were often two, and sometimes more. A lot more.

Judiciously, Ryan worked the bolt on the longblaster and checked the clear plastic clip in the breech of the Steyr. Four shots remained. Removing the partially loaded cylinder, Ryan slipped in a full clip and worked the bolt again to chamber a round for immediate use. In a fight, a single round often made the difference between walking on the dirt or wearing it as a blanket.

Gathering in front of the dark opening, the companions waited, fingers on triggers, their clothing riffling from the salt wind. The candles were extinguished, so Jak and Doc flicked butane lighters into life, the small blue flames throwing out weak nimbi of illumination that barely penetrated the darkness.

Reaching into her med kit, Mildred pulled out a small survivalist flashlight and pumped the cracked handle a few times to charge the old batteries. The device had been a gift to the physician from the captain of a steamboat for saving the life of his only child. It had served her well, but these days the weakening batteries took more and more pumping to charge, and the beam was becoming less pronounced. Soon it would be useless and she would be reduced to tallow candles and rope torches once more.

Thumbing the switch, Mildred aimed the pale yellow beam at the irregular gap. Swirling sand and salt sparkled in the air like fireflies, and she could only see a bare concrete floor on the other side. Nothing more.

With blasters at the ready, the companions waited for a reaction from the other side of the wall. But there was no sign of movement, only darkness, the stillness almost palpable.

When nothing happened after a few minutes, Ryan leveled his longblaster and assumed the point position, easing through the break, his head moving steadily back and forth so that nothing could approach from his blind side. The 12-gauge primed, J.B. followed close by, flanking his friend, one covering the other until they were in the next room. The sound and fury of the storm was less pronounced in this new section of the National Guard base. Assuming defensive positions, the two men stood guard while the others crossed over, butane lighters held high, blasters leading the way.

“If anything moves, anything at all, take no chances,” Ryan ordered gruffly. “Just spend the brass and save your ass.”

The others nodded their agreement. The companions did not have an official leader, but they usually followed the lead of the big one-eyed man, as he was right nine times out of ten.

In the feeble yellow beam, they could see that this was another garage. Bigger, but not much different than the other one—tools on the Peg-Board, more chains, another grease pit. From the size of the equipment and tools, this garage was clearly designed to handle military wags, 4x4 trucks, armored personnel carriers and such. But that was not what riveted their attention. There were more sec hunter droids. Dozens upon dozens of them.

The army of machines was scattered across the floor, extending far beyond the feeble glow of the flashlight. Loose wires and burned circuit boards lay everywhere, the piles of smashed wreckage reaching over a yard high in some spots, the bent and twisted metal reflecting the yellow beam like a golden treasure. Dried puddles of hydraulic fluid dotted the graveyard, as if the machines had been savaged by wolves. But the droids were not alone.

Still defiantly standing over the field of destruction were a couple of robotic spiders. At the sight, Ryan almost instinctively fired, then realized it wasn’t necessary. The flickering butane light had simply given them the momentary illusion of life. These droids would never harm anybody ever again.

Most of the spiders were reduced to only three or four legs, instead of the usual eight, and every one had its guts ripped out, the computerized workings dangling loosely like metallic intestines. Even the dreaded belly-mounted lasers drooped impotently, the slim barrels bent or hammered flat.

The companions had encountered the spiders before and aside from a single belly-mounted weapon, the machines had no other offensive capabilities. They were one-hit wonders, as Mildred liked to say—unlike the sec hunter droids, which seemed to be made out of weapons.

“Droids fighting droids,” Ryan muttered uneasily, testing the words as if they were rotting floorboards to see if they would hold his weight. “Must have been a nukestorm of a fight.” The warrior tried to reconstruct the battle in his mind. There seemed to have been pockets of resistance, as if the machines were holding positions to guard something, or somebody, in their midst.

“Looks like draw,” Jak snorted, easing down the hammer of his Colt. There was nothing dangerous here anymore. Only ghosts of the past.

“Most assuredly, my young friend, a genuine Pyrrhic victory,” Doc agreed, holstering the LeMat. “Although I would theorize that our earlier, ahem, guest, was in fact the sole survivor of this internecine conflict.”

“And it broke through the wall to attack us the moment it heard voices,” J.B. said slowly, using the shotgun to tilt back his fedora. “Yeah, that makes sense, in a droid sort of way.”

Mildred shook her head in disbelief, her beaded plaits clacking. “It stayed on guard, alone, in a black room, for a hundred years.”

“Just droid,” Jak replied, dismissing the matter.

“Wonder what they were fighting over,” Ryan said cagily. “Could be something useful.” The companions were low on food, almost out of water and on foot. Almost anything would be helpful at this point. The only thing in their favor was that the group did have plenty of ammo for once. But that was dwindling fast.

“Probably just wanted control of the base,” J.B. said with a shrug. “Who can figure out the logic of a droid?”

“Actually, I think the answer is over there,” Krysty said in a deceptively soft voice. She was looking into the far darkness, her long red hair flexing wildly.

Swinging the flashlight in that direction, Mildred revealed a cluster of Hummers parked in a protective circle around something really big that was covered with a sheet of canvas. The Hummers were carrying M-60 machine guns, and were literally torn to pieces from laser fire. Two of them had obviously caught fire and burned to the floor. Even worse, the white bones of human skeletons were strewed about the wags, many of them missing arms or heads. Rusty longblasters gleamed dully in the pale light, and spent brass was everywhere. These had clearly not been innocent bystanders, but participants in the battle. A few pieces of their aged uniforms were visible among the burned boots, torn body armor and cracked helmets. The troopers seemed to be from every branch of the armed services: army, navy, air force and marines. Only their patent leather belts seemed completely unaffected by the long passage of time.

“A pickup squad,” Doc said, resting a hand on the silver lion’s head of his ebony walking stick. “Forced recruits taken from whoever was handy when the convoy was formed.”

“What think is?” Jak asked suspiciously.

“In a predark convoy? Could be anything,” Mildred replied with a sigh. “Top-secret documents, high-ranking politicians, all sorts of useless things.”

“Or it could be a convoy of supplies for the Ohio redoubt,” Krysty said in subdued excitement. “Thousands of MRE food packs, tons of live brass, med kits…”

“Boot polish, toothpaste, laundry detergent,” Mildred continued unabated. “Uniform insignia, letterhead stationery…”

“Only one way to find out,” Krysty countered.

“Agreed. Watch for traps,” Ryan said, kicking the dome of a sec hunter droid out of the way with his combat boot as he headed for the vehicles. From long experience, he knew that some folks died hard, clutching a primed gren in their hand in a desperate hope of taking out their killers. Death kept their fingers on the arming lever, but a careless boot could knock that loose and chill the lot of them faster than a live droid.

Staying sharp, the companions watched the shadows for any suspicious movements. Unfortunately the blue flame of the butane lighters made everything seem alive in motion.

Reaching into his jacket, Jak pulled out his only flare. Thumping the end on a raised knee, the top sputtered and a sizzling dagger of flame formed, the brilliant white light banishing most of the gloom. Holding the flare high to avoid the reeking clouds of bitter smoke, Jak took the lead with Ryan and J.B. on his flanks.

Moving easily through the assorted destruction, the companions watched where they stepped, wary of the jagged metal sticking up from the wreckage like thorny brambles. Now they could see that some of the spiders had been equipped with needlers, the bodies of the sec hunter droids riddled to pieces from the superfast 1 mm fléchettes. They found the weapon cut in two by a buzzsaw, the spinning blade buried deep in the sleek machine. Pity. Sometimes those were found in working condition.

“How’s the arm?” J.B. asked, glancing at Mildred.

“Just a flesh wound, nothing serious,” the physician replied, hefting the ZKR. “When we get the chance, I’ll bandage it. I can still shoot just fine.”

“Sure, sure.” The wiry man heard the words, but looked at her hard to see if they were true. Noticing his concern, Mildred gave a game smile and bumped him with a hip. J.B. smiled in return, and they walked alongside each other until reaching the Hummers.

The military wags were wrecks, tires flat, windshields shattered, the chassis deeply scored by the lasers, the engines hammered into crumpled wads of metal.

Sidling past the aced transports, Ryan used the barrel of the Steyr to carefully lift the canvas sheet to take a gander underneath. At first he scowled, then grabbed the material and hauled it down in a single motion.

A cloud of dust rose from the canvas, obscuring whatever it had covered, but the salt breeze from the other garage thinned that out quickly, and the companions found themselves looking at a titanic wag of a type they had never seen before.

More than twenty feet long, and about half that wide, the colossal machine was clearly a transport of some kind, with eight tires that stood an easy six feet high. The angular chassis was composed of a smooth armor painted a dull tan, and the symbol of the U.S. Marine Corps was painted on the side. Large windows ringed the passenger section, each one equipped with a blasterport. Strangest of all, there were large hydraulic lifters set on each side attached to a sort of hinged fork; each of the tines was a foot wide and ended in sharp tips.

“Holy mackerel, that’s one of those urban combat vehicles!” Mildred gasped in astonishment, reaching out to touch the machine as if it were about to vanish in a cloud of fairy dust. “I saw a TV report on them just before I went in for my surgery!”

The others knew the rest of that story. The predark physician had gone under the knife for a simple operation, but there had been serious complications, and the attending physicians had had no choice but to cryogenically freeze Mildred in a desperate attempt to save her life. A hundred years later, Ryan and the companions freed Mildred from her icy prison, and she had been with them ever since. Her illness was mysteriously in remission, but she lived in growing fear that one day it would return to finish the job started so very long ago.

“I’d heard that the UCV program was only in the testing phase,” Mildred continued, walking around the massive wag. On the side was a brass plaque that read, Mark II. “This must be the next model!”

“Looks like tank, without gun,” Jak said, neither impressed nor disappointed.

“That’s pretty damn close.” Mildred smiled. “Looks like these things could literally drive through a brick building without slowing down. Aside from not having a cannon, this is a tank, it even has the same size motors, Allision transmission, everything!”

“Why no blaster?” the teen asked quizzically.

“Money, probably,” Mildred said.

“Those windows some sort of Plexiglas?” Ryan queried.

“Lexan plastic, tough as cast iron, and it looks like the blasterports are arranged so that you can actually see what you’re shooting at, unlike a LAV-25, T-80 or Bradley Fighting Vehicle.”

“So there was no need to expose yourself to enemy blasters to fight back,” J.B. said, stroking his jaw. “Pretty sweet. Those blades in front for stabbing folks or carrying supplies like a forklift?”

“Oh no, the program said they were for digging up buried land mines. And see the bottom? The armor is shaped to deflect the force of the blast outward, instead of taking it flat. Even the tires could take a 40 mm gren without going flat.”

“Madam, please,” Doc said skeptically. “Are we also to believe that it can fly to the moon on gossamer wings?”

“No, honestly,” Mildred continued. “This thing has got so much reinforced armor, packed on top of armor, that most of the wag is engine and fuel tanks. It only holds a crew of eight.”

“Eight?” Krysty asked, craning her neck to try to see inside. But the windows were a good six feet off the floor. “This thing should hold thirty troopers easy.”

“Nope, only eight. See for yourself!” Reaching out, Mildred tried a door handle, but it was locked solid. Damn!

“Let me try,” J.B. said, passing Doc the flare and pulling out some tools. A few minutes later the Armorer had to admit defeat. None of the armored doors could be picked or forced open. The military vehicles did not have mechanical locks, but alphanumeric keypads hidden under sliding steel plates, very similar to the ones the companions used to gain entry into a redoubt. There were millions of possible combinations, and it would take them years to try every one and any attempt to rig a short circuit or to hack the lock would probably trip a self-defense charge and weld the doors closed forever. On a whim, he tried the access code to enter a redoubt, but nothing happened.

“Forget it. This baby is sealed tighter than a crab’s ass at a bean-eating contest,” J.B. reported, tucking away his equipment.

“Pity,” Doc said. “It would have been nice to ride to the next redoubt in comfort.”

“Really think still function?” Jak asked incredulously. The companions sometimes found working predark vehicles stored inside a redoubt, but those were sealed deep underground, far from the rads, acid rain and thieving coldhearts.

“Probably not,” Ryan started, but then changed his mind. The canvas sheet that had been covering the vehicle was filled with holes from blasterfire, needlers and the laser weapons of the droids. Yet the wag didn’t have a scratch, and shone as if freshly polished. Could it be self-repairing like a redoubt? Fireblast, what a find that would be!

“Then again, it never hurts to do a recce,” Ryan said, shouldering the Steyr. Going over to the nearest Hummer, the Deathlands warrior climbed on top of the tilted wreck and found that he was now high enough to see directly into the urban combat vehicle.