A world of norms, ruled by a mutie.
At the thought, Gaza stole a glance at the ragged scar on his left hand. His unknown mark of shame. The man told others the mark was from a cougar attack, but that was a lie. The scar was a memory, a secret from childhood when Edgar Gaza had been born with an extra finger on that hand. His wise mother had brutally chopped it off while he was still attached to her or else his father would never have allowed the dirty mutie to live and suckle at those gene-pure breasts.
A mutie who ruled norms. Yes, that would be his payback for every creature killed or tortured because it was born different. Once, a freak show came to Rockpoint, the zoo master displaying weird muties in cages for the people to stone for their amusement. In the cover of darkness, Gaza himself had hidden a blaster in the man’s wag, then publicly accused him of being a thief and whipped him to death right there in the street before the temple of the Scorpion God. Behind their iron bars, the trapped muties blessed Gaza with their misshapen eyes as the hated master was slowly reduced to a bloody carcass under the bullwhip. Unfortunately, afterward Gaza had no choice but to ace the poor creatures. But it was done with blasters, as painlessly as possible. Revenge could only be carried so far, and only an idiot allowed personal feelings to get in the way of survival.
Stealing a look into a cracked mirror set in the corner of the sloped roof, Gaza could see his wives were chatting among themselves using the hand language they had created. He had tried in vain to learn their silent speech, and harbored a nervous belief that they had altered the lessons to exclude him from their private conversations.
As if sensing his disquieting thought, Allison reached into a duffel bag hanging on the armored wall and offered her husband a honeyed bread, a personal favorite.
“Sticky hands while I’m driving?” Gaza snarled, puffing away on the cig. “Are you insane?”
Bowing her head in apology, Allison popped the morsel into her mouth and chewed contentedly while looking ahead of the rolling war wag at the endless vista of the shimmering sands, lost in her own thoughts.
The hours passed slowly, and as the APC crested a dune, blinding sunlight exploded through the ob ports. Shielding his face with a hand, Gaza fumbled to find a pair of sunglasses tucked into a pouch clipped under the chair. As he slid them on, the polarized lenses automatically darkened in response to the illumination and he could see clearly again, although everything was tinted blue now. Then the APC slowed as Gaza stared in disbelief at the huge hole spreading wide across the landscape. Down below were dozens of preDark buildings rising upward to almost the level of the desert floor. What the nuking hell was this? Some sort of a sunken ville, its buildings below the desert? But why hadn’t the wind filled the hole with sand over the long years?
The answer came in a flash. Because the pit was newly formed, no, uncovered! A salt dome! Blind norad, that was what he had seen in the distance! The blast cloud of a crashing salt dome that had covered over a preDark city.
Jerking upright in her chair, Allison grunted frantically and pointed to the right. Tracking in that direction, Gaza snarled as he saw the ragged figures of the Core running along the crumbling edge of the cliff about a half mile away. So they were trying to find a way down, eh? Perfect.
Thankfully, the wind was blowing in the wrong direction, hiding the smell and sound of the engines from the hated muties. This was the best chance he would ever have to end their foul race.
“Load ’em up!” Gaza shouted, throwing the war wag into a higher gear. “We’re going in hot and hard!”
Allison strapped herself into the gunner’s chair, and then released the ropes holding the .50-cal out of the way of the two people at the front of the vehicle. Expertly, she checked the linked ammo, making sure there were no kinks to tangle and jam the blaster, then she worked the arming bolt and took a few practice swings of the heavy blaster, testing its speed. The woman could feel the waves of rage from the Core, the pictures in their minds a visual tapestry hanging just below the subconscious level. The desert warriors were almost insane with anger and that was good. It would make them foolhardy, prone to taking unnecessary risks. An angry enemy was a weak enemy.