Nothing. The stickies were no longer on the truck's roof nor clinging to the sides nor, as far as he could see, underneath either. He stared at the other truck, which was braking in a cloud of dust behind the first. Nothing there. Maybe, he thought, they'd hopped off as the trucks were speeding through the trees. In which case they were still around. He glanced fearfully at the wooded area they had come through, but he could see no unnatural movement in the trees. Maybe they'd simply beat it, got disgusted with the whole jig and cleared out. Hah! He said out loud. No way. No way, my friend. Stickies had one-track minds.
And what about the Trader's buggies? Where in hell's name had they got to? No sign of them. No sound of them, either. Had they just given up the chase, turned around and headed back the way they'd come, to the road, satisfied after their single kill?
But that didn't seem too likely. In one respect the Trader's warriors were akin to the stickies: they had one-track minds.
Ryan's nose wrinkled. The stench from the camp below was like a fist between the eyes. Months, maybe years, of rot contributed to that smelclass="underline" bad food, excrement, urine, dead bodies flung anywhere to decay. A stomach-churning stink, a monstrous miasma that, he thought grimly, if you could distill it and bottle it, would probably be as efficient in destruction as strong poison. Not that those who existed down there would notice anything. They were surely used to it by now, and worse.
"Hell, Ryan, we're gonna need masks to go down there."
"Yeah, pretty ripe."
"Ripe ain't the word."
"Don't worry, Abe. Couple of mortars should do it. We don't need to go in blazing."
They were crouched on a low, bush-topped bluff that overlooked the pest hole of a camp from the south. Ryan had spotted the two trucks while dealing with the jeep, but then held back from following them too closely. It was easy enough to watch where they had gone, even more simple to follow at a distance and hide the two buggies in the trees that grew this side of the canyon.
"See." Ryan pointed down at the cluster of buildings, to one building in particular, larger than the rest and built away from the center. "That one. Seems to be in better shape than the others, and it's bigger. Old storehouse probably. That'll be where the honcho hangs out, and that'll be where the weaponry and fuel will be stored. And the explosives. The honcho'd want to keep an eye on all that valuable shit. Hit that and we solve the problem."
"What about all those guys? We let 'em live?"
"They aren't going to be zipping around attacking land wag trains now. They'll be lucky to survive out the year. Winter comes, no food..." He snapped his black-gloved fingers.
Abe, a tall, lanky individual with a thick mustache and long, flowing hair tied up in a knot at the back of his head, nodded. He knew Ryan's rules. The Trader's rules, really. No killing for the sake of it. No killing unless you or your buddies were in danger, or unless other, innocent, folk were in danger.
"We can back one of the buggies up here fast, before they catch on to the noise, and just take out that storehouse," Ryan was saying. "If I'm wrong she won't go up like a firework display and we'll maybe have to think again, because they must have materiel somewhere, and that's what we have to destroy. But I don't think I'm wrong."
"Could use a rocket."
"Waste of a rocket. We got plenty of mortar shells."
"Hmm. Okay."
Abe half rose and turned when Ryan suddenly swore. The tall man stooped, turned back.
"Gimme the glasses."
Abe handed over his binoculars, saw what Ryan had spotted. Ryan saw the scene below spring into hi-mag definition through his one remaining eye. The man with the faintly scaly skin, whom he'd already tagged as the leader, was emerging from one of the cabins dragging a woman. But this was not, by any stretch of the imagination, one of the mutie women. This one was dressed in a clean, pouched combat suit with good boots. She was long limbed, full breasted, with a high-boned face. Her most startling feature was her hair: rich, deep magenta in hue, a thick mass of it, flowing over her shoulders and halfway down her back. The mutie leader was dragging her by it, two fists deep in its chunky mass, pulling her along the ground. Her hands were tied behind her and her legs were hobbled at the ankles. Even so she was putting up a struggle, jerking and squirming as she was tugged toward the large storehouse.
Ryan put the glasses down, shot a bleak look at his companion.
He said, "They got prisoners. We go in."
Chapter Four
Krysty Wroth winced her eyes closed and pushed her face deeper into the filthy blanket on which she was huddled. All of her body ached, her arms most of all because they were wrenched behind her, tied tightly at the wrists. Her head felt as though someone with abnormally callused hands had reached inside her skull and was clutching at her brain, squeezing it tight then letting it go; squeezing, letting go. Waves of pain washed over her and receded, then surged and fell away again. Her breasts hurt, her nipples hurt. Her ribs and kidneys throbbed where the man with the faintly scaled skin had kicked her viciously, not once but three times, in swift succession. At the moment she was trying desperately not to be sick because in her present position, if she were sick she had no means of avoiding her own vomit, and this would add enormously to her misery, her feelings of mental despair and physical wretchedness.
The sickness slowly receded, leaving her with sweat dewing her skin, her brow clammily cold. She fluttered open her eyes, eased her head sideways, her left cheek away from the verminous blanket. The sudden itchiness she was now experiencing all over her body she could cope with. The odd flea here and there had very little relevance to her present stark situation or the outrage that threatened her, the gross invasion of her body.
She closed her eyes again, breathing out slowly and silently as another, subtly different ache spread through the pit of her stomach, a soft sharpness that was at the same time a feeling incorporeal, a shift in the mind as much as in the body. She winced again, but this time her grimace was halfway an exhausted smile tinged with resignation, as she felt her blood flowing gently out of her, the cyclical clock in her body insistent, relentless, even at such a time, in such a place, at such a dreadful pass.
She almost felt like laughing. Really, it was so absurd. Of course she knew almost to the minute when she was due, had always known, since menarche. Her periods were as regular as night falling, day dawning. And of course she had been aware that she was due, as ever; but the events of the past twenty-four hours by turns confused, horrifying, violent, ghastly had torn her own reality apart, had indeed almost shattered it. And now, so near the onrushing moment of terror, of violation, her body had shown her that, blind to all externalities, the secret rhythm of life continued its perpetual motion undisturbed.
Into her mind there flashed again that sickening scene after the ambush, when the two burning land wags had lain drunkenly at the side of the pitted highway and the mutants had been at their bloody work, slaughtering and raping the two old ladies from Harmony, dear Uncle Tyas, Peter Maritza and the rest of the passengers. She heard again thunderous shotgun blasts and the hideous ripping chatter of automatic rifles and shrill, agonized screams. Then the ultimate degradation: the hacking off of the heads, the shoving and kicking and the heaving of the twisted torsos into a tangled heap at the side of the road, fodder for the birds and strange beasts, or perhaps worse, any human carrion that might happen by.
That she had been spared offered no comfort. She knew precisely why she had not been subjected to physical abuse and assault. She saw again, in her mind, the mad eyes of the man the others called Scale as he stared at her in hideous appreciation, literally licking his lips, one hand slowly and obscenely rubbing his crotch. She had surrendered to an engulfing wave of blind panic that threatened her sanity.