“Go on,” she said, gesturing with the flash hider and ramp sight of the battered AK.
The companions took turns at the bucket, drinking their fill. The water was sweet, cool and fairly clean.
When they were done, Krysty said to Mama, “We paid you for the water, now what do we owe you for the air?”
At a signal from their mother, the kids kicked over the rest of the bucket on the ground. That was followed by a caustic stream of profanity and death threats from the tiny family.
“Friendly town, isn’t it?” Mildred remarked as they carefully backed away and continued on.
“Make no mistake about it,” Ryan said, his voice deadly cold, “this isn’t your run-of-the-mill hellpit. This is the radblasted end of the line, the last outpost on the Gulf coast before the Dallas-Houston death zone. Folks don’t end up in Port A ville by choice. They end up here because they were driven out of the eastern baronies on account of who they were or what they did. I’m talking about the lowest of low—diseased gaudy sluts, jolt fiends, coldheart robbers and crazy chillers. The traders who come through here specialize in looting the interior’s hotspots, and robbing the scroungers who got there first. They’re used to taking the biggest risks, to chilling first and never asking questions after. Keep your eyes open and your blaster hands free. From now on, we’re triple red.”
After another couple of miles of deserted gridwork streets and sprawling ruination, they came to the intersection of two main roads, and in the near distance, the remains of an enormous predark shopping center. Almost all of its structures lay in piles of fractured concrete. There was no telling what had brought the buildings down: storms from the Gulf, earthquake, flood, demolition. Any or all of it was possible.
The parking lots were covered in layers of dried mud and in places trees grew up through cracks in the asphalt. Visible from a quarter mile away, four huge letters hung crooked on a concrete-block building’s lone surviving wall.
“They sold ‘ears’?” Jak wondered out loud.
“No,” Mildred said. “No, the
S
must’ve fallen off. It’s Sears.”
Before she could elaborate, Ryan urged them on. “Let’s keep moving,” he said. “We’ve still got some ground to cover.”
Maintaining the 450-yard buffer, he led them over swampy, trash-littered, former backyards and between cinder-block foundations, filled with stagnant, black water, around to the west side of the mall. From this angle, they could see almost all of the complex’s connecting interior corridors and colonnades had collapsed in on themselves. A single big-box store was still standing.
“That’s BoomT’s,” Ryan told the others as he signaled a halt.
The entrance to the three-story building was shielded by a pair of Winnebagos sitting on their rusting wheel rims. A mob of people waited in the heat to pass single file through the gap between the RVs. Some wore heavy backpacks; some stowed their trade goods in homemade wags and dog carts. Those were the small-timers. There was a separate queue for big-time traders—a lineup of horse-drawn carts, motorcycles, pack mules and tethered-human bearers at the back bumper of the Winnebago on the right, along the building’s windowless facade. Everybody stood under the watch of crude blastertowers at the corners of the roof.
As Krysty scanned the setup through minibinocs, she said, “How does the operation work?”
“Small-timers are dealt with by BoomT’s sec men,” Ryan said. “Before they get to go into the building, the sec men put a value on their trade goods. The customers get a chit, which they can use for any of the goods inside up to the amount of the chit. Inside there’s a drop-off area for newly bartered stuff. Folks find what they’re after and hand back the chit. The exit’s on the south end of the building. Can’t see it from here.”
Krysty passed the binocs to Mildred, who had a look-see and said, “Who’s the fat man coming out of the Winnie on the right? He’s as big as a Sumo wrestler and it looks like he’s wearing a chenille bedspread. Good God, look at that flab!” She tried to give Ryan the binocs.
The one-eyed man waved her off. He didn’t need magnification to identify the man lumbering onto the tarmac. “That would be BoomT in the flesh,” he told the others. “He handles the major trades and shipping deals himself.”
“What are all those pinkish blotches on his arms and back?” Mildred asked as she took another look through the binocs. “He seems to have a skin condition.”
“Yeah, from bullets,” J.B. answered. “Those are wound scars. Definitely a hard man to chill.”
“A lot of folks have tried to put BoomT in the ground,” Ryan said. “He’s put them all there instead. It’s the flab that protects him, that and all the muscle underneath. He’s one powerful son of a bitch, and he’s a lot faster than he looks. Rumor has it, he can snap a grown man’s neck with either hand.”
“Need a dead-center hit with an RPG to take out that giant tub of guts,” J.B. added.
“BoomT opened up shop about fifteen years ago,” Ryan went on, “after scroungers started going into the hot zones to the north and west to look for spoils.”
“By ‘spoils,’ I take it you are referring to undiscovered caches of predark manufactured goods?” Doc said as he accepted the binocs from Mildred.
“Correct,” Ryan said.
More than a century after the Apocalypse, there was still no large-scale manufacturing in the Deathlands. The necessary machines, the understanding of engineering and assembly-line processes had all gone extinct, along with democracy, the forty-hour work week and cable TV. In actuality, nuclear Armageddon had turned back America’s clock more than two hundred years, to before the Industrial Revolution. The United States of America had devolved into a feudal, agarian and hunter-gatherer society.
“Trader never trusted BoomT,” J.B. said.
“He had good reason,” Ryan said. “Big Boy over there is a double-dealing, backstabbing mountain of crap. And we don’t have enough ammo left to defend our booty. If we take more spoils with us than we’re willing to lose, chances are we’ll lose everything and get ourselves chilled in the bargain.”
“So, we’ve got to hide most of the C-4?” Mildred said. “Where?”
“I know a good place farther south,” Ryan said, waving on the companions.
Circling wide around the south end of the mall, through the shimmering waves of heat they could see a pair of four-mule carts crawling for the line of moored sailboats at the water’s edge. The heavily laden wags rolled on scavenged auto axles and wheels down the cracked and granularized street.
Between the mall and the distant water was a wide expanse of rolling, undeveloped land. There were stands of mature trees; some bare-limbed and dead, some living. Among the twists and turns of the landscape stood patches of irrigated fields that were bordered by little clusters of field-hand shanties.
“From the lay of it, I’d say it used to be a golf course,” Mildred said.
It was a golf course no more.
It had become the breadbasket for Port A ville and vicinity.
Local folk had abandoned the city streets in favor of the open space. The soil there was unpolluted, and there were no wrecked buildings that had to be cleared before it could be cultivated. The former Babe Zaharias Memorial Golf Course was, in fact, the path of least resistance.
Ryan led the companions across the mule-cart route, past the imploded shell of the former links’ clubhouse, and onto what had once been a lush and rolling green. The farm fields on either side weren’t fenced. No field hands were in evidence. With the sun straight overhead, it was too hot to do grunt work. No heads appeared in the doorless doorways or glassless windows of the huts, either. If the laborers were inside, they were dozing soundly through the suffocating heat.
The companions climbed a shallow grade, then passed through a stand of tall trees. In a shallow bowl below, out of sight of the surrounding fields, was a water hazard that had once challenged golfers. The small lake’s surface was choked with mats of chartreuse algae.
Ryan led them down to the shore, then handed J.B. his scoped longblaster and said, “Leave your C-4 here and head up to the ridge on the far side of the lake. Make sure no one is spying on us from that direction.”
As J.B. trotted away, Krysty put two and two together and said, “We’re hiding the explosives in the water?”
“It won’t hurt the C-4 because it’s sealed in plastic,” Ryan said as he dumped the contents of his backpack onto the bank. “Everybody take out one detonator blister pack,” he told the others.
The companions unshouldered their loads and did as he asked.
“Put the batteries in your detonators,” Ryan said as he put batteries in his. When they were all ready, he added, “Now try the test button.”
All of the remotes lit up. Green for go. They were functional.
The one-eyed man pried the two tiny power cells from the black plastic case and slipped each of them into a different pants pocket. “Okay, now remove the batteries,” he said. “Hide them in your gear separate from the detonators. We don’t want some drooler arming one of the remotes and pushing the ‘fire’ button by accident.”
As Doc pocketed his depowered detonator he shook his head and said, “Batteries in, batteries out. Dear Ryan, I must admit to puzzlement. For the life of me I cannot fathom your intent.”
He was not alone.
“Where are you going with this, Ryan?” Krysty said.
“I’m just buying us some getaway insurance.”
With the point of his panga Ryan carefully slit the plastic on one of the bricks along a lengthwise seam. Using the components from a blister pack, he quickly rigged the two-kilo block of plastique for remote detonation. Then he pressed closed the slit he had made in the plastic wrap. Because it stuck to the explosive material, the incision was almost undetectable. He repacked the backpack with ten parcels of C-4, putting the rigged brick near the bottom.
“Now any of us can detonate the entire load if the shit hits the fan,” he said.
“We better all be a long ways off when that happens,” Mildred said. “Twelve kilos of plastique is going to raise some dust.”
“But, Ryan, anybody else can set it off, too,” Krysty protested. “Why did you leave the detonators and batteries in the load we’re going to trade?”
“Had no choice,” Ryan told her. “For all we know, BoomT is expecting this C-4 to show up. He could have contracted the dead scroungers to bring it to him from New Mex. And if he did, he could know there were supposed to be remote detonators included in the deal. If the detonators are missing when we show him the goods, you can bet the farm he’ll have his sec men search us. When they find what they’re looking for, it’ll take the play away from us. If the detonators are in the mix, BoomT isn’t going to dig deeper, and we’ve still got our hole card.”
“So, we show up with the C-4 instead of the traders he contracted with?” Mildred said. “How’s that going to go down?”
“BoomT won’t care who makes the delivery or who he pays for the C-4,” J.B. said. “He sure as hell isn’t going to care what happened to the scroungers. That’s the kind of shit-snake he is.”
“But it is possible that he was expecting the arrival of all six backpacks,” Doc interjected.
“In that case, he’ll be happy that one actually showed up,” Ryan said. “We’ve got a believable story. His pet scroungers were chilled by stickies. We salvaged a single load. Hell, it’s almost even true.”
The one-eyed warrior sat on the grass, untied his boots and kicked them off. “No sense in more than two of us getting wet,” he said. “Jak, gather up a couple of backpacks of C-4 and wade out with me.”
Leaving his own pack on the bank, Ryan hoisted three others and moved slowly into the warm water, careful to tear the smallest possible rip in the algae mat.
The albino kicked off his boots, grabbed up the remaining unbooby-trapped packs and waded out to midthigh. The two of them sank the packs under the water, holding them down until all the trapped air bubbles escaped. As they backtracked their path to shore, they brushed together the torn edges of the bloom.
Ryan and Jak carefully dried their feet on the grass before putting on their boots. When Ryan stood, he waved for J.B. to hurry down from the lookout.
“I am still at rather a loss here,” Doc confessed. “What exactly is your larger strategy?”
“If we can get cartridges and gas in trade for the one load of C-4,” Ryan told him, “we can lug the fuel and the sunken explosives back to the bikes, and ride on east to Louisiana in style. If we can’t get gas, we’ll have to find transport by water, or keep walking. If things go sour with BoomT, and we have enough of a head start, we can come back here and recover the rest of the C-4. If not, we can leave it where it is for now and come back later.”
After J.B. rejoined them, Ryan retrieved his long-blaster, shouldered the last backpack of explosives and said, “Let’s go cut ourselves a deal.”
They returned to the mall, retracing their circuitous route to approach it from the north, an extra but necessary precaution. If things went badly, BoomT and crew wouldn’t think to look south for any spoils they had hidden. As the companions stepped onto the sunbaked parking lot, the dried mud crunched under their boots like layers of crisp pastry dough, and each step sent up a little puff of fine brown dust.
Keeping the edge of the mall’s acres of mounded rubble on their left, they headed for the big-box store. As Ryan got closer, he could see that a side entrance to the mall’s interior and its covered walkway were still intact and connected to the north wall of BoomT’s emporium. The interior hallway and roof were supported on the opposite side by the facades of gutted storefronts. Ryan led the others wide right of the doorless opening, giving them some room to maneuver, if need be.
Just inside the shade of the corridor on the left, a bevy of rode-hard and hefty gaudy sluts reclined on tubular aluminum chaise longues. Barefoot, in carelessly belted, ratty nylon housecoats, they were showing off their wares and airing them at the same time.
There were no takers among the handful of scroungers loitering on the other side of the partially collapsed hallway.
Too hot.
Too sober.
Or mebbe the airing was incomplete.
Above the row of overtaxed chaises, a predark restaurant sign said Cantina Olé in red, three-dimensional letters. The “i” of the sign was a little cartoon cactus and the “O” was wearing a yellow sombrero.
Jak leaned close to Mildred and in a deadpan voice said, “Did H fall off?”
At first Mildred was puzzled by the question. Then she stared in amazement at the wild child. A second later she burst out laughing.
“Nuking hell!” J.B. exclaimed, turning to the others. “Did you catch that? Jak just made a joke!”
Although his mouth remained a thin line of implacable reserve, the albino’s ruby-red eyes seemed to glitter merrily.
A loud scuffle and angry shouts and screams from deeper in the corridor put an abrupt end to conversation and sent hands grabbing for gun butts. From out of the darkness of the interior spilled a trio of wild-ass, go-for-broke combatants. The companions stepped clear as the herky-jerky, high-speed fist and foot fight tumbled out into the blinding sunlight of the parking lot.
It wasn’t two against one; it was every man for himself.
Joltheads, Ryan thought, keeping his hand on his holstered SIG-Sauer.
The evidence for that conclusion was incontrovertible: the stringy, emaciated arms; the sagging, prematurely wrinkled skin dotted with angry sores; hair missing from the scalp in fist-size patches; the bulging, jaundiced eyes; the rotten, black-edged teeth; the clothes that looked like they’d been salvaged from a garbage dump and put through a shredder.
And the capper was the insensate violence.
The trio punched and kicked one another at extreme close range, spitting blood and fragments of teeth, tossing up tufts of ripped-out hair, raising clouds of dust when they fell through the mud crust on their backsides, jumping up again like they were on springs. Even though the battle was powered by a drug, there was no way human bodies could maintain the frenetic pace. After a couple of minutes of all-out combat, gasping for air, the fighters pulled black-powder handblasters out from under their clothing.
The moment they reached for their battered revolvers, the companions unholstered their own weapons and hastily withdrew to the cover of the hallway entrance.
Just in time.
Point-blank, the circling joltheads started jacking back single-action hammers and pulling triggers. The revolvers click, click, clicked like castanets on misfires or unloaded or uncapped chambers—a lucky thing, since the bastards weren’t paying attention to background and potential inadvertent targets. Finally, thunderously, one of the weapons discharged, but an instant too late. Instead of coring the opposing drug fiend’s head, it powder-blackened the left side of his face from chin to receding hairline and blew a .44-caliber chunk out of his dirty earlobe.
Three empty blasters hit the dirt and the sheathed knives came out.
When fixed blades were drawn, everyone watching from behind hard cover stepped forward to get a better view of the festivities. Even the gaudy sluts raised themselves from the horizontal. Nobody lifted a finger to intervene in the conflict. Nobody seemed to know or care what the fight was about. Given the fact that the combatants were joltheads, the chances were good they were fighting over something imaginary.
One of the male bystanders—a solidly built man with slicked-back, dark blond hair and an impressive, drooping-to-the-chest handlebar mustache—whipped out a harmonica. Tapping his foot to keep time, he provided a sprightly and rhythmic musical commentary on the mayhem.
Ryan had to admit it was a sight to behold: three wild-eyed, beat-to-shit ragbags wheeling around and around, taking turns stabbing each other in the guts, groaning and squealing with every strike, blood and spittle flying in all directions. After dozens of stabs delivered and received, the action suddenly lost its momentum. Gore-drenched arms hanging limply at their sides, one by one the fighters buckled and collapsed into the fine brown dirt.
A contest to the death had ended in a three-way draw.
The musician crescendoed with a scale-climbing flourish, and the assembled sluts and scroungers answered with lethargic applause. It was too hot to cheer.
Nobody moved to check the bodies for signs of life. Not even Mildred, who in a former life had sworn a Hippocratic oath.
Joltheads were better off dead.
As Ryan led the others past the rear of the mob of small-timer scroungers still waiting to pass through the gap between the cadaverous, 120-year-old Winnies, he could feel the gunsights up in the guard towers tracking their every step. BoomT hadn’t lasted as long as he had and built his mercantile empire by luck alone. The fat man had an animal cunning and instinct for danger. He was capable of ordering an indiscriminate preemptive strike on the entire parking lot, if he sniffed out so much as the slightest threat.
The big-time queue had shortened considerably while they were gone. There was only one group of traders ahead of them, now. Five men bearing heavy backpacks awaited the judgment of the proprietor.
BoomT sat in a canopied golf cart, out of sniper sight in the lee of the southernmost Winnebago’s bow. Clipped to the underside of the canopy’s frame were a pair of ComBloc RPGs, their plastic pistol grips in easy reach.
If anything, the man was bigger than Ryan remembered. His five-hundred-pound, six-foot-eight-inch bulk took up the entire bench seat. Rolls upon rolls of pendulous, sweating flab hung from his chest. Close up, the gunshot scars on his torso and arms were clearly of varying calibers, waxy divots ranging from .380 Auto to 7.62 mm NATO. A mountainous wedge of shoulders and neck peaked at a head shaved to black stubble. Long wisps of beard hair trailed from his sloping cheeks. Instead of shoes or boots, he wore homemade sandals of tire tread. Boots his size were hard to come by.
To protect his eyes from the sun and to conceal the focus of his attention, BoomT wore raspberry-mirror-lensed, wraparound sunglasses.
The vast, bedspread-swaddled hipster impatiently waved his sec men forward to uncover the next batch of goods on offer. As he did so, he tossed a pale, slender rib bone onto the pile of other bones on the ground beside him. From the size of the heap it looked like he’d already eaten eight or nine of whatever the species was. He licked his fingers, one by one, and daintily wiped them on the edge of the coverlet.
The sec men shoulder-slung their fold-stock AKMs, opened the tops of the traders’ overloaded packs and pulled out fistfuls of assorted predark fasteners. It was all salvaged nail by nail, screw by screw. It had to be. Screws and nails were no longer manufactured or imported. Without metal fasteners, building or repair of large structures was difficult, if not impossible. Without those once taken-for-granted items, folks were forced to live in tents, lean-tos, stone or log huts, or caves.
One of the sec men approached his boss and held out the sample for examination. With a fingertip BoomT casually flicked out a few badly rusted, bent nails and stripped-slot screws. “Looks like thirty percent is useless shit,” was his verdict.
Then he addressed the traders. “If there are rocks in your packs, I’m going to use them to sink you to the bottom of the bay. Is that understood?”
The traders grimaced in response.
BoomT wrote out a chit and handed the scrap of paper to the sec man with a warning. “Don’t give them this until you make sure there are no rocks.”
The fat man shifted on the bench seat to take in the next trader in line. When he saw who was standing there, his mouth dropped open. He pushed his sunglasses down the bridge of his nose and squinted through slits for eyelids.
“As I live and breathe, it’s One-Eye Cawdor!” he roared. Then he looked over at J.B. and added, “And fuck me triple dead if it ain’t the Pipsqueak, too.”