“But why would they all be pooping into the old sewer system?” Mildred demanded. “I mean, I know gravity still works. Without power to pump it to treatment plants, it’ll all just flow down to the river. And God help the poor bastards downstream. But why do they bother?”
Ryan scratched an ear with his forefinger.
“Mebbe we don’t live as refined as people did back in your time, Mildred,” Ryan said, “but we still remember the old saying, ‘Don’t shit where you eat.’ And why bother digging latrines if you got sewers?”
“You’re right, Ryan,” Mildred said, instantly contrite. “I didn’t mean to imply everybody these days is a barbarian.”
Ryan chuckled. “Mostly we are. Just not that kind.”
“So where do we go from here, lover?” Krysty asked.
“There’s a big structure another few blocks, the way we were going,” J. B. said. “Looks half-trashed. You could still fit a respectable ville’s worth of folks inside by the looks of things.”
“Downtown seems to be behind us,” Ryan said. “And to the north from what I could see as we were leaving the redoubt. Not that I looked hard at anything but a way out of there.”
“Do we
want
to potentially meet a whole ville’s worth of people?” Mildred asked. “That first bunch seemed anything but friendly, and I’m not even counting the muties. What’d they call them again?”
“Clayboys,” Ricky said. He had taken up station beside a front window, keeping an eye on the way they’d come. He had his DeLisle unslung. Jak crouched by the southwest window like an alert dog.
“Yeah. Look,” Mildred added, “if I recall correctly, Windsor’s right across the river. It used to be part of Canada. The only part of Canada south of a big U.S. city, at least in the old lower forty-eight, I think. And if we’re south of downtown, or close to it, we’re near the river. Maybe we should head that way.”
“Mebbe not everybody’s as hostile as that first crew,” J.B. said.
“And here I thought you were the reliably paranoid one, John,” she replied.
“I just reckon that if we took people by surprise in their own backyard, naturally they’re gonna react.”
“Who’s growing the food?” Krysty asked suddenly. “Those punk types didn’t strike me as the farming sort.”
“More like enforcers,” Ryan said. “Or raiders.”
He rubbed his jaw. Quick-growing stubble rasped his palm.
“Why did we want to be in a hurry to shake the dust of this place off our boot heels?” he asked.
Everybody looked at him.
“I presume that was not a rhetorical question,” Doc said slowly. “Inasmuch as you have notoriously little patience with such.”
“No. Practical. Why do we think we’d get a better reception in this Windsor ville, anyway? Seems like they’re in pretty much the same boat as Detroit. And let me remind everybody, although we’ve got lots of ammo at the moment, we’re starting to run low on rations.”
“Then what’s your plan?” Mildred asked. “It doesn’t look as if the beans and corn across the street are near ready to be picked and eaten.”
“Not to mention they’ll be guarded,” Krysty said. “Either by the bunch with the pink Mohawks or those against them.”
“And that’s it,” Ryan said. “You got food here. You got people growing the food. You got people with blasters. That means you got trouble.”
J.B. shrugged. “Could have stood pat with just, ‘You got people,’” he said.
“Yeah. Well. What I’m saying is, there’s trouble for us to fix. And food to pay us with for fixing it. I’m not sure a better deal’s liable to just come strolling along.”
“It’s a big city, Ryan,” Krysty said. “Isn’t that kind of a tall order?”
He grinned.
“When isn’t it?”
* * *
T
HEY HEADED OUT
. Ryan decided to keep going the way they had been, southwest, in the general direction of the immense half-collapsed rectangular structure.
Krysty had misgivings about that. She was in her own way even more attuned to the natural world than their former wild child Jak, who was now ranging out in front of the rest scouting for danger—a job he insisted on doing despite his discomfort in urban surroundings. Being in the middle of the steel-and-concrete corpse of a great predark city felt unnerving enough, though the greenery bursting out through cracks in the rubble as if to reclaim it in so many places kept her from feeling cut off from Gaia.
The corner they approached was apparently an entrance. It consisted of blocky shapes tiered outward and upward from a corner cut out of the giant building. The doors had once held glass, long since blown out, leaving rusting metal frames like cage walls.
A colonnade ran down the building face along the street to their left. The street itself remained more or less intact. It was still passable, anyway, in spite of being heaved and broken in a crazy quilt of angled planes. And still passed, she reckoned, to judge by the fact that little more than sprouts and tufts showed through the network of innumerable cracks.
The space between it and the facade had obviously been a broad walkway. Now the pavement was gone, replaced by neat rows of cultivated plants—potatoes, beans twining up stakes, green vegetables, rows of shoulder-high corn along the edge closer to the structure where they wouldn’t deny the other crops light. It all looked terribly vulnerable to Krysty.
“I wonder where everybody is,” Ricky said from behind her.
As they approached the vast derelict—or
ruin,
she corrected herself, because somebody pretty evidently still occupied it—they had fanned out into a V formation, with Ryan at the point, Krysty at his left side and J.B. to his right. Mildred walked just behind J.B. Doc followed Krysty. Jak zigzagged cautiously ten yards ahead of Ryan. Ricky brought up the rear in a line behind Ryan.
“Somebody’s spent a lot of time tending that garden,” he said. “Like the one behind us. And somebody keeps the junk from building up in that place we took our break. So where are they?”
“Laying low,” J.B. said. “They likely heard blasters. Decided to duck and cover until whoever was having the disagreement sorted things out.”
“Think they’re inside that thing?” Mildred asked uneasily.
“Seems likely,” Ryan said.
Jak crouched up the concrete steps to the entrance, well over to the right so he wasn’t walking right up to the open, Cubist cave mouth. He glanced inside.
“See nothing,” he called back softly.
“Ryan?” Krysty asked.
“Drive on,” he said firmly.
“You sure that’s wise?” Mildred asked.
“No. If we were wise, we wouldn’t be here.”
“Where else would we be, then, Ryan?” Doc asked.
“If I knew that,” Ryan gritted, “we’d be there. Right. We walk in like we own the place.”
“Won’t somebody spot us?” Ricky squeaked.
“Son,” J.B. said, “somebody has. You don’t think people survive in a place like this without keeping close watch on everything that goes on in their immediate area?
Especially
intruders coming into it.”
Ryan led the way boldly up the steps. Jak slipped around and inside the building, trusting his superior senses and reflexes to alert him to any lurking dangers—especially ambushers—and get him out of the jaws of any trap before they slammed shut.
Inside was cool and dark, especially after the hot dazzle of the downtown street. Coils of razor wire were positioned at both sides of the entrance, at angles to leave the way in and out clear.
“Looks like somebody likes to be able to shut the place up tight,” J.B. remarked. “Keep unwanted guests out.”
“It is not working on us,” Doc said.
J.B. shrugged. “Mebbe we’re not what they had in mind.”
“Huh,” Mildred said, sniffing the air. “It doesn’t smell like sewage. Much. Other than us, I mean. We have
got
to get cleaned up. I know everybody these days has a super immune system, but if we don’t want any little scratch to give us
pseudomonas,
so that our legs swell up and go gangrenous and have to be cut off—”
“Enough,” Ryan said. He halted them just inside the lobby.
“Anyway, it seems like a good sign,” she finished.
“People live,” Jak said. He crouched in an area right of the entrance, where a picnic table and some chairs had been set in what might have once been a kiosk. Its enclosure was now just metal uprights to hold long-vanished glass.
“Yep, they do,” Mildred said. “Somewhere. The question is, do any live here?”
“They do,” Krysty said. “I smell food cooking. With onion, garlic and basil.”
Her stomach rumbled as she said it.
“Mebbe they’ll invite us to join them for lunch,” Ricky said.
“Or to be lunch,” J.B. suggested.
Other tables and chairs sat on a tile floor, dark gray on lighter gray down the central strip that ran from the door, mixed shades of blue and gray to the sides. It looked as if the area was used for socializing. A dead escalator rose at the far end to a second story surrounded by a rail.
“Ryan, look,” Krysty said as they advanced. She pointed at a giant square doorway that opened to their right.
Like several others, it spilled yellow daylight onto the floor tiles. Through it they could see what looked to be another farm or garden. A hole in the roof—or a roof that was missing entirely—allowed the life-giving sunlight in.
“Huh,” Ryan said.
“Nobody home,” Ricky stated.
“Waiting and watching to see what we do, likely,” J.B. said.
“So what should we do, lover?” Krysty asked Ryan.
He had reholstered his weapons when they ducked into the building across the intersection. Now he cupped his empty hands around his mouth and hollered, “Hello! Anybody here? We’ve reached this ville and we’re looking for work.”
A blaster shot fired from the railing toward the escalator was his reply.
Chapter Four
“Mebbe they don’t like outlanders,” J.B. said.
“You rad-sucking fool, Tyrone!” a man’s voice shouted from the gallery. “Why’d you give us away?”
“They’re mercies!” another voice yelled back defensively. “We can’t let Hizzoner’s blasters on Angels turf!”
“Back outside!” Ryan yelled, racing toward the doors, which fortuitously were open.
As the companions turned to sprint the few steps back to the outdoors, another shot cracked out. Tile splintered to Ryan’s right. Then another blaster spoke and another.
“More right!” Jak yelped. Meaning other enemies were appearing in the doorway to the odd interior garden plots.
“Hold your breath!” J.B. shouted. “Poison gas!”
Then Ryan heard a clatter and sound of something metal and weighty rolling on tile.
“Gas!” one of the ambusher screamed from the railing.
A female voice cried, “Get back!”
Ryan burst into the sunlight. He took a few steps down the steps to the street, then spun, unlimbering his Steyr and dropping to one knee. He intended to cover his friends’ retreat.
He saw dirty yellow-white smoke billowing up from the middle of the wide floor. Already it rose high enough to obscure the second-story gallery from view, which meant it also obscured
them
from their enemies’ view, making aimed fire impossible.
Ryan grinned as his friends came flying out of the giant half-gutted building, racing past him. He heard a rip of full-auto fire and recognized J.B.’s Uzi. The Armorer was clearly giving their attackers some additional reason not to be fast about rushing to pursue.
Of course, they would pursue. That was a given. Especially once they figured out that what J.B. had unleashed on them wasn’t poison gas at all, but just one of the black-powder smoke bombs the Armorer and his apprentice, Ricky Morales, had started making in their spare time weeks ago.
Ryan was impressed by just how much smoke a bomb the size of a predark beer can produced—and how quickly.
“Best power right on,” J.B. called as he trotted down the steps, holding his Uzi in his right hand and his fedora pressed to his head with his left. “They’re starting to get organized, and it sounds like we got them hot well past nuke red.”
Jak raced past and took off to Ryan’s right to put himself in front of his companions. Everybody else was clear. Ryan had checked them off mentally as they passed him.
They headed southwest again, away from downtown—where they knew there were hostile blasters who more than likely were still keeping eyes skinned for them, even though they hadn’t pursued. They wouldn’t be any better disposed toward the companions after they had treated them to a faceful of mutie talons and all the accumulated sewage of some unspecified but no doubt vast swath of the great half-overgrown urban ruin-scape.
It was as good a direction as any. Ryan stood and followed.
* * *
W
HEN HIS BUDDY
Jak sprinted past him to take the lead in the hasty retreat, Ricky found himself half-disappointed and half-relieved. It wasn’t that he was afraid to put his life on the line for his friends—he did that all the time. It was that he was a bit on the near-sighted side and hated leaving his friends’ survival dependent on senses that were far less keen than the albino’s.
He carried his DeLisle carbine in preference to his Webley handblaster. The big top-break, double-action revolver, converted by his uncle Benito to fire the same .45 ACP cartridges the longblaster did, was handier to use in a close-in fight, and faster, too. But he already knew the Detroit ruins hosted muties with bad attitudes toward norms. And the green growth that exploded through the broken pavement here and there, or sprouted in more or less orderly rows in the cultivated plots they sometimes passed, provided enemies with excellent cover. The sturdy, stocky DeLisle made a far better melee weapon than a handgun did.
They were running down the northwestern edge of the great half-ruined building. Even as he looked around for potential enemies, Ricky took in more of the extent of its ruination. He realized quickly why the big space they had glimpsed through the side door was full of crops and the daylight that gave them life. Something had taken off or collapsed the roof of the blocky center from twenty or thirty yards down from the entrance, all the way back to where an elevated track or walkway to a circular parking structure had been taken down by the same catastrophe. Or a similar one. The parking structure itself, mostly open, had survived intact, at least as far as Ricky could see. Open structures always seemed to have survived nuke blasts better than closed ones.