“Lock it tight, Blackjack,” Kate ordered. “We don’t want to drag belly going over a dune and blow a power line.”
Already doing the job, the man didn’t bother to respond.
Taking a beer from a small fridge, Kate checked the bank of vid cameras and saw armed men and women standing guard at blaster ports along the huge vehicle. So many people depending on her decisions, and so many ways for her to geek things up and ace them all. Sometimes, Kate felt the pressure and had a fleeting urge to be alone again, just an outlander on the run with nobody to discipline and no friends to bury. But this was civilization, the completeness of her world. She was like a baron of a ville, or the captain of a ship at sea, with high, low and middle justice.
Watching the landscape moving outside the Plexiglas of the main window, Kate took another sip of the home brew. Damn her, but this was good beer. They would have to trade with those folks in New Mex more often. The farmers drove a hard bargain, but the brew was worth the price.
After a while, Roberto returned to the control room, the knuckles of his right hand bloody. Kate exchanged looks with the man as he took his chair and used an oily rag to clean his fingers. The skin wasn’t broken anywhere, which meant the blood was Anders’s. Hopefully, the hunter had finally learned his lesson this time. There would be no more chances. He was good, possibly the best, but nobody was irreplaceable. Not even her.
Swaying to the gentle motion of the wag, Kate finished the beer and tucked the bottle away for a wash and refill later. The drive crew was forbidden to drink anything potent on shift, but they made up for that lack when off duty. Only one time had she found a gunner doing jolt, and while on a shift. She shot out both knees and left him helpless on the ground, then took pity and drove over the fool, smashing him into pulp under the wide studded tires of the big wag.
The radar beeped suddenly, making everybody jump, and Kate studied their location on the map on the ceiling. Yeah, somewhere near here the town of Lubbock used to be. The radar was picking up the shattered ruins. But that was mutie land now, with nothing to find but death. The things in the ruins were unlike any other creature in the Deathlands. Twisted monstrosities that couldn’t leave the Great Salt any more than green plants could live in a glass lake. Born in the ancient rad storms, they now had to live in the rad pit and couldn’t leave. Which was so much the better for norms. From what she had heard…
“What the fuck is that?” Jake demanded, leaning into the controls. The purr of the tandem engines eased as the pneumatic brakes slowed the rig to a mere crawl.
“Trouble?” Kate demanded, glancing about. There was nothing in sight but some dark sand ahead. The glowing ruins of Lubbock were a long way in the distance.
“Get the missiles hot,” Roberto directed, racking the bolt on his .50-cal. “Anything comes our way, launch on sight.”
As the techs got busy, Kate didn’t want to contradict the man, even though she doubted the weapons would be necessary, but it was always better to be armed than not.
“What do ya see?” a tech asked, craning his neck to look out the windows.
“On our right,” Jake replied, angling the wag to roll alongside the dark line in the sand.
Then the woman looked again at flowing material and realized it wasn’t moving to the motion of the wind, but against it.
“Vid!” Kate barked, and an external camera swung that way and zoomed in for a tight view. As the screen cleared, Kate could tell the moving line wasn’t sand, or salt, but mud. A dirty stream of wet sand!
“It stretches for miles,” Jessica said in a shocked voice. “A stream of water.”
A burly man barked a disbelieving laugh. “In the middle of the Great Salt? Impossible.”