“How do you mean?” his father asked.
Dean shrugged. “You don’t estimate, you just deal with it and keep triple red. There’s always a curve ball, so you just try to hit it…” And he grinned wolfishly.
“That’s right.” Ryan showed a half smile. “Let’s do it.”
THE GATE CARAVAN moved off, all those who were a part of it aware that they were on the verge of battle.
Because they were looking for it, Gloria and Ryan were aware of the way in which the roads had been blocked. Every road that led off to the right was now impassable for the wags, forcing the caravan to take left turns at intersections or proceed ahead until the forward path was also blocked.
“The little sweeties, they’re not very subtle, are they?” Gloria murmured to Ryan as they turned left once more, passing a right-hand turn that had a ruined wag across the center of the roadway.
“They don’t have to be,” Ryan replied. “After all, would we think that if we didn’t know?”
“Fair point,” Gloria murmured. “But where does it lead us?”
“That’s the big question,” Ryan mused. “I think the turns are partly meant to disorient us, so we don’t know which direction we’re headed.”
Gloria’s face lit up with her lopsided grin. “Stupidworks bastards. The day they fuck with my sense of direction is the day they can burn me, ’cause I’ll be better off chilled. We’re going straight for the center. They’re leading us exactly to where we want to go.”
“Then they’re going to have a warm reception waiting for us,” Ryan warned.
“We can deal with it,” the Gate queen said simply.
Another turn came up as she spoke. At the end of the road ahead lay a large expanse of open concrete, leading up to the front of a flat building, the facade of which stretched beyond the perspective of the roadway, hemmed in by the old buildings.
“Now, if I were so dumb, even I wouldn’t bet that the stupidworks building down there isn’t five sided,” Gloria murmured as Ryan clicked back the bolt of his Steyr.
Behind them, the Gate prepared for battle. In the midst, Mildred chambered a slug in her Czech-made ZKR target pistol while J.B. switched his Uzi to rapid fire.
“Dark night, talk about into the jaws of the lion,” he murmured, ignoring Mildred’s astonished look at such a poetic outburst. As an afterthought, he added: “Guess I’ve been around Doc too long…”
Chapter Fourteen
“This is it,” Petor breathed from the rear of the caravan with Jon and the armory wag. Margia hurried back to them.
“Get the laser blasters ready. We won’t use them yet, but if things get too crazy they may give us the edge.” There was a gleam in her eye that suggested she wanted badly for things to get that crazy.
At the front of the caravan, Ryan and Gloria advanced beyond the last line of cover into open space, with Jak, Krysty and Tammy on their heels. The taller Gate warrior, with her mass of auburn curls framing a face taut with tension, had risen swiftly in the ranks, and Gloria now trusted her implicitly. It was unspoken, but the manner of her acting had promoted the younger woman in the ranks of the Gate warriors so that she was now almost second to the queen in battle.
The last line of cover itself was a small wall that ran around the last row of buildings before the vast concrete expanse. It was roughly 150 yards in itself, but vast enough when the lack of cover made every inch a potential death trap. The wall was only two and a half feet high and would have been little use as cover in a firefight, but nonetheless it marked a boundary, and Krysty shivered when one foot went beyond that boundary. Her hair closed around her neck. The tendrils that snaked down into her collar spoke volumes of the imminent danger.
“I feel completely naked like this,” Gloria whispered to Ryan.
“So do I,” the one-eyed warrior replied, “but there’s nothing we can do about it. They’ve directed us here. Why haven’t they picked us off if they can move about the ruins that easily without being seen? Mebbe they want to capture us more than kill us.”