SLUGGISHLY, the companions awoke in cool shadow with a steady wind howling in their ears. Blinking at the darkness, Ryan realized it wasn’t shade, but night. Craning his neck, the man saw a scattering of stars peeking through the roiling clouds of tox chems high overhead. Fireblast, how long had they been unconscious?
From what he could see, the companions were sprawled in the corner of a piece of building, the brick wall forming a triangle, with the desert wind howling around the sides. They had been moved from the dead Drinker and could be anywhere by now. Reaching for his blaster, Ryan was consoled to find the weapon still at his hip, his Steyr SSG-70 stuck through the lashings of his backpack, the saddle nearby. However, there were no signs of the horses.
Squinting against the windblown sand, Ryan could vaguely see that ahead of them lay more pieces of preDark building, the smashed windows looking across the desert like the eyes of a corpse. A thick layer of sand covered the paved street, and no structure rose more than a few stories until abruptly ending in ragged destruction. Beyond these few tattered remnants of the lost civilization, only a flat, endless desert stretched to the distant horizon.
Forcing himself to stand, Ryan shuffled over to the other companions and shook each one to rouse them from sleep. Everybody stirred easily enough, and once figuring out where they were located, immediately ran a check on their possessions. To Ryan’s eye, it seemed as if their packs and bags hadn’t been touched. Even the water bags were present, including the poisoned leather pouch from Rockpoint.
The wind kicked up sand and salt, and it howled straight through one open window. Going to the empty window frame, Jak took one of the plastic shower curtains they had salvaged from the Texas redoubt as a makeshift rain poncho and used four knives to tack it in place, covering the opening. The force of the wind lessened noticeably, and the companions could fully open their eyes now without salt being blown into them.
“A plastic shower curtain is the most massively useful thing a hitchhiker can carry,” Doc rumbled in amusement, deliberately misquoting an ancient novel.
“Check your things,” Ryan demanded, his words making him wince. Once, very long ago, he and Finn had been involved in a drinking contest that stopped only when the ville bar ran out of shine. The next day Ryan was so sick he thought death was near and welcomed it with open arms. This was worse.
“Looks like everything is okay,” Dean whispered, running his hands over a backpack. Checking his blaster, the boy used a bowie knife to open a round and inspect the greasy cordite inside. Nope, the blasters hadn’t been tampered with and the ammo was live.
“Why did they take the horses?” Doc queried. “If it was to keep us here, then surely they could have bound us prisoners instead.”
“Mebbe got do by choice,” Jak muttered, using his good arm to run stiff fingers through his unruly mane of snowy hair. “Why do hard way, when got no choice?”
“That makes chilling sense, Mr. Lauren.”
The teenager shrugged as he made sure his collection of knives was intact hidden in his clothing. His wounded arm had come out of its sling, but was still otherwise okay.
“Passive-aggressive recruitment techniques.” Mildred snorted in disdain, fingering a rip in her flannel shirt where a button had come off somewhere. Probably while they were being transported to this place. “Well, that’s a new one on me.”
“Shh, not so loud,” J.B. said, holding his glasses in one hand while massaging the side of his face. Then he noticed Krysty sitting quietly by herself. “How you doing, Krysty? You don’t look so good.”
Hunched over, Krysty said nothing in reply, her limp hair moving freely in the wind.
“You okay, lover?” Ryan asked gently, kneeling by her side. “I’m surprised you didn’t pass out before the rest of us, since you have some mental abilities.”
She glumly nodded, moving as if every atom of her body was in agonizing pain. “Worse,” the redhead muttered, hanging her head.