"Fuck you!" she grated. "How did you know? Heard us putting on the snickers?"
"No."
"Then, how the?.."
"Goodbye," Ryan said, drawing the SIG-Sauer P-226 and squeezing off a single round. The bullet hit Chrissy between the eyes, kicking her skull back against the floor of the wag with an echoing thud. Her head bounced once, then rolled to one side as she died.
It wasn't much of a firefight — not from the point of view of the twenty or so squatters waiting outside for Jem and Chrissy to betray the strangers and deliver them into their tender hands. The ob-slits opened and the muzzles of blasters came peeking out, spitting fire and lead.
J.B.'s mini-Uzi and Ryan's G-12 decided the battle almost before it had started. Thirty-two rounds of nine-millimeter stingers flew from the Armorer's machine pistol. The Gewehr fired a burst that sounded like tearing silk.
The gang of assassins was ripped to pieces by the awesome firepower of the two blasters.
Ryan didn't very often like firing the caseless automatic rifle on continuous burst, but he couldn't take a chance that the squatters might be able to take out their tires and then burn the wag. It wasn't fully protected like a proper war wag and was vulnerable to a concerted attack by determined men.
"Hold fire! Gimme a chill count. J.B.?"
"Seven certain, three or four more down."
"Krysty?"
"Agreed with J.B., plus two close in by the wheels. Both head shot."
"Lori?"
Immediately Ryan grimaced, knowing from previous experience what the girl's reply would be. "A lot chilled. Serve the cannies right." Lori couldn't count all that well.
"Doc? How many your side?"
"Pistoled four or five with a single shotgun round, Ryan. Two dead, maybe three."
The running total made it sound like at least a dozen of the squatters had been perma-chilled, allowing for the couple on Jak's side of the big wag's cab.
There was a burst of firing from Doc and Lori's side, bullets pinging like heavy hail off the rough arma-plate. The defenders immediately started to reply, both blasters making light, flat sounds.
"Some running!" Jak yelled, frantically winding down his window to get a clear shot at the fleeing men.
"Leave 'em!" Ryan ordered. "Save ammo. Let 'em go."
Ryan was ramming the twenty-five-round loaders into the magazine clip, feeding the nitrocellulose caseless rounds. J.B. had dropped the empty cartridge mag to the wag's floor, plucking another from one of his infinitely capacious pockets and slotting it home with a satisfying click.
"One crawling away this side," Krysty said. "Looks like a broken thigh. Shall I waste him or let him go, Ryan?"
"Let him be. Jak, get ready to move. Doc, you and Lori go and shift that spiked rail from 'cross the road. Krysty, stay here and keep watch. Me and J.B.'ll get down first and check out the body count. Chill any that are still moving."
"Check," the Armorer said, drawing the small Tekna knife from its sheath on his belt.
"Ryan? "Krysty said.
"Yeah?"
"One thing?"
"What is it? Best get moving and over the river. Might be more of the squatters."
"Sure. But how d'you know?"
"You hear them putting on finger knives?" Jak asked.
Ryan grinned, moving a half step toward Krysty, then wincing as his boots slithered in the sticky pool of the dead couple's blood. "Better get this dreck cleared out 'fore we cross the Susquehanna," he said. "How did I know? It kept nibbling at me that there was something wrong 'bout that burning truck. Then, just as we was coming to the bridge, the woman said something that brought it clear.''
"She was talking about how he looked after the wag," Krysty remembered.
"Yeah. You saw it, burned out. Settled in the dirt up to the hubs and raw red rust everywhere, the fire still smoldering."
Krysty looked puzzled. It was Jak who made the connection first. "Sure. Bastards! If'n fire only just burned, it'd be clean metal."
Doc Tanner had been listening with great interest. "I see it now. The oxidation of the exposed metal was old. Days old. Weeks old."
"Mebbe months old," J.B, added. "Could have been pulling that butcher's scam for fucking months. Survivors from the ambush. Get a lift. Then open the throats of the driver and shotgun and let in their mates. Easy as catching a legless mutie.''
"And the way it was sitting there," Krysty said. "Now that you say it... Gaia! What a stupe I was. I can see it in my mind's eye now, and it's obvious it was a real old wreck, set by the track and fired with some brush. Drop of gas and oil and it smokes like a fresh killing ground."
"And they'd have been eaten us!" Lori exclaimed, kicking out at the slumped corpse of the woman. "Cannies!"
"Right," Ryan agreed. "Now you all know what you gotta do. Clean this wag and tidy up out there. Then we can move on again."
It took only a half hour to finish off the wounded men and wash out the bloodied interior of the big wag. Then Jak cranked up the engine, and they rolled south toward the old Maryland state line.
Chapter Seventeen
"I wish, I wish, I wish in vain,
I wish I were a maid again.
A maid again, I ne'er can be,
'Til...
"Can't you hold this fireblasted wag steady on the road, Jak?"
"Sorry, Krysty. Tree felled and blocked us. Had to go around."
It had taken them three days to get from the Susquehanna, across the northern angle of Maryland and into the edges of Virginia. The road had been appalling and the weather worse.
Twice they'd been hit by ferocious chem storms, as severe as anything Ryan or J.B. had ever encountered. The gales had come shrieking from the east, bringing a biting salt rain and hail that battered at the metal roof of the wag. Lightning lanced to earth all around them, filling the air with the dry taste of bitter ozone. The thunder was so loud that any conversation within the vehicle had to be shouted.
At the height of the storms Jak had stopped driving, unable to see more than a couple of feet ahead. Mud fell from the skies and streaked the armored glass, coating it with a thick layer of gray-orange slime.
In the evening of the third day, the wind shifted and ravened from the west. Ryan climbed down from the wag on the leeward side, finding to his dismay that his rad counter began to cheep a warning, the needle sliding into the red.
"Must have picked up some hot shit from beyond the Miss," J.B. said when Ryan told him about it. "Some real glow spots that way. Better keep in and move on when we can."
In one of the places where they lost the highway, they plowed through an old burial ground.
"Where the fuck's this?" Jak shouted, his sweaty hair tangled around his face. It was early in the morning, and a thin slice of sullen sun glowered balefully over a low range of hills to the east of them.
As far as the eye could see, there were great rows of pale stones, most with carving on them and words that had been virtually obliterated by long years of wind, rain and chem storms. Doc Tanner offered to get down and take a look.
The door slid open, and the old man vanished into the hazy dawn. They watched him from the ob-slits, seeing his gaunt figure, stooped like a crow, picking his way among the headstones. He hesitated now and again, hunkering down to peer at the lettering. Once he looked back toward the wag.
"I'm getting out't'join him," Ryan said. "Anyone coming?"
He was underwhelmed by the response. Suddenly everyone had something to do.