He stepped backward until he was in the open doorway of the wag, never taking his eyes off the solitary figure. Renz was holding the scattergun, staring down at the twin barrels as though he couldn't quite understand what they were.
"Get in, Ryan. I got him covered," J.B. said from behind him.
"Bastards!" Renz shouted, his torn voice ringing harsh through the forest, clearly audible even inside the racketing box of the big wag. Ryan began to close the sliding door.
The clouds had drifted away from the moon, and the clearing was as brightly lit as a stage, Renz at its center. The gun was close to his open mouth, and his eyes were fixed on the door of the wag.
The explosion was muffled.
Even as the door slammed shut, the sec locks clicking into place, Ryan saw the top of the man's head disintegrate in a great spray that looked as black as beads of jet in the moonlight.
"Did he?.." Krysty began, seeing Ryan nod the answer.
"Let's go, Jak," Ryan ordered, holding on as the vehicle began to grind its way westward.
Chapter Fourteen
The wag was big enough to carry all six comfortably, and each had a narrow bunk. The self-heats in the kitchen area of the wag lacked labels, which made meals an interesting lottery. Near the back, in its own partitioned closet, was a chem toilet. Generally the vehicle was scruffy and stank of old sweat, but during the first morning's driving they bowled along with the blaster ports and roof vents open, all working together to sweep and clean the interior.
The half-breed truck seemed in good mechanical condition. They stopped about ten in the morning because the arrow in the temperature gauge was showing signs of veering into the red. But when Jak checked under the hood he found the reading was false. One of the pistons was worn, and the exhaust roared more loudly than it should have.
"Going't'be heavy on gas," he said. "Good job's cans in back."
None of them knew it, but there was another hundred gallons of precious gas hidden away in the undergrowth near the five corpses.
It was late in the afternoon when they reached the fast-flowing expanse of the Delaware River, looking to cross it near the ruined ville of Stockton. The dash of the wag held some fragile old maps, creased and crumpled, which were held together with brown bits of tape and frayed string.
The parts of the maps that would have shown the trails to Front Royal were missing, ragged edges taking them tantalizingly close to their proposed destination. Ryan pored over them at a small table near the open port, the others peering over his shoulder.
"North along the Delaware, toward Easton. Around Allentown and on to... Can't read that name. Doc? Can you make it?"
"My eyes are not, frankly, as sharp as once they were, my dear Ryan. But I believe it must be the town of Harrisburg, and from thence to Gettysburg. By the three Kennedys and the one Lincoln, but there is a name to stir the cockles of memory. That we should be going there after..." He turned away quickly and went to sit down on his bunk, where Lori ran to comfort him.
"Then Frederick..." Ryan continued. "I recall that. The ville's close to there."
"We've got to cross the river first," Krysty said quietly. "Looks wide from that map."
"Lotta toll bridges built in the Shens," Ryan said. "Trade or jack."
"What're we gonna do?" Jak asked, climbing back into the driver's seat. "No jack. What trade?"
Ryan held up the Heckler & Koch. "I figure this is all the trade I need."
Doc wiped his face with his swallow's eye kerchief. "Least we don't have ice to cross the Delaware like... like somebody or other did, but I disremember who."
The highways weren't in bad condition. The surface was cracked and deteriorated, but most of the way it was drivable. Every so often the road disappeared under an earthslip, or was washed out of the world by a swollen river.
Occasionally they'd pass by the tumbled ruins of a small hamlet. Most buildings were totally destroyed, though the central stone chimneys remained standing fingers pointing upward like graveyard memorials. Now and again they'd come across one or two intact buildings, scorched clapboard rotting away. A doctor's shingle would still be legible, or a rectangular crimson soft drink machine would squat outside the tumbled relic of a general store.
Grass and weeds had taken over most of the land, sometimes bursting through the tarmac of the highway. J.B. took over at the steering wheel from Jak as the day wore on. They stopped to refill the tank from one of the cans, standing in the soft afternoon heat under an azure sky.
They saw more birds, dipping and swooping over a mud hollow, feasting on the lazy clouds of tiny insects. A little way off to the right they could see the remains of a gas station. The building itself had completely vanished under tangling vines, but the metal-and-glass pumps remained, white and maroon paint peeling off in patches.
"Look," Krysty said, pointing farther down the blacktop, where a single human figure stood shimmering in the heat.
"Trouble?" J.B. asked, hand dropping automatically to the butt of the mini-Uzi.
Ryan shaded his eye with his hand. "Road's wide there. No brush close to it. Can't be an ambush. Not one alone."
As a precaution they closed some of the blaster ports, keeping careful watch through the others, and Ryan slid the roof vent across and bolted it. Because of the menace of stickies it wasn't a good idea to give them any way to get at you. Ryan sat up front, riding shotgun with Jak.
J.B. had left the driver's seat and taken up a position by the rear ob-slit.
"Take it slow, Jak," Ryan warned. "Get ready to push the pedal through the metal."
The young albino boy looked up at him, shaking his head. "Wanna tell me how't'wipe my ass, Grandad Ryan?"
"Cheeky bastard. Trouble with young kids now. Too much gall and not enough sand. Let's go, Jak."
The wall lurched forward as the teenager crashed it into gear, making everything in the sweating box of the main compartment rattle and fall.
"He moving?" Krysty asked.
"No. Still where he was. Can't see any danger. Nobody else is there."
"Could be a trap," Doc Tanner suggested from the right side of the wag.
"Could be. One man isn't about to take an armed wag."
Ryan stared through the slit in the wired and armored glass of the windshield. As they moved steadily along the track, he was able to see the motionless stranger a little better.
It was a male, around average height, tending toward skinny. In the Deathlands you didn't very often get to see anyone fat.
He was wearing a light gray coat that hung below his knees, the breeze tugging at its hem. His pants were also gray, tucked into brown laced-up work boots. His hair was cropped to a mousy stubble over prominent ears. His skull was long and narrow.
"Slow it down," Ryan ordered. "Keep your eyes double-wide."
He kept the automatic rifle trained on the man as the wag eased to a crawl. The face of the stranger was turned up, incurious, the eyes locking on Ryan's eye. The expression didn't alter. Ryan spotted the heavy old horse pistol that was jammed into the man's wide belt. It looked as if it'd been used for everything from stirring stew to hammering in fence posts.
Lori was the only one who spoke, staring through her ob-slit at the stranger.
"He got a face like a sheep-killing dog," she said.
J.B. watched through the back of the wag, calling to Ryan. "The crazy isn't moving. Just stands there, looking at our dust."
They kept moving and reached the river near evening as the sun was sinking behind the rolling hills that stretched as far west as the eye could see. After the chance encounter with the mysterious young man, Ryan had ordered them to keep the ob-slits half-shut and made sure the roof vent remained bolted.
There had been discontented muttering about the heat, mainly from Doc Tanner, but Ryan had been concerned that the low bushes seemed to be getting closer to the edge of the highway, making a sneak attack that much easier to mount.