“The hell it is,” Kate muttered, unable to tear her eyes away from the incredible sight.
“Full halt,” she ordered, scowling as war wag crested a low dune. Now before them was a muddy flatland stretching to the horizon.
Swiveling in his chair, Roberto said, “This was desert only a couple of months ago. Now, I’ve seen acid rain turn grassland into desert, but never the reverse. Where the nuking hell did this much water come from?”
“We can follow the stream,” Kate started to say, when the ceiling speaker cracked into life.
“Eric here, Chief,” a voice said. “I have blasterfire to the portside, and coming in fast.” He paused. “And something else, another sound, I can’t really tell what it is for sure. Mebbe rain, or a lot of folks bleeding bad, or—”
“Splashing,” Kate said. “It’s goddamn splashing, isn’t it?”
“Could be,” Eric said hesitantly. “But that can’t be right. We’re in the middle of the Deathlands! Ain’t no water for hundreds of miles!”
“There is now,” the Trader said, rising from her chair and going to the periscope near a blaster rack. Raising the Navy device to its full height, Kate pressed her face to the cracked eyepiece and slowly turned for a full sweep.
“Found ’em,” she announced, staying hunched over, hands on the guide posts. “Ten, twelve men on foot to the east. Two hundred yards.”
Kate stood and lowered the periscope into the floor. “Get razor, people! They got a swarm of millipedes on their ass!”
“How many?” Jake asked.
“Too many!”
“Lock and load!” Roberto commanded, spinning in his chair and racking the bolt. “Close all ports! We go on canned air, right now!”
A series of hard slams sounded throughout the entire length of the vehicle, as the war wag sealed every opening with sheet steel, then the ceiling lights and control boards dimmed for a moment as the air conditioners kicked on and a cool breeze started blowing from the ceiling vents.
Then every blaster turned toward the strangers from the east, and the horde of slavering muties close behind them.
Chapter Ten
“Son of a bitch!” J.B. cursed, putting a long spray from the Uzi into the face of the sec droid hunter. The 9 mm rounds ricocheted off the machine flying in every direction, hitting cans on the shelves and the corpses lying on the floor.
“Outside!” Ryan shouted, firing his Steyr SSG-70 as fast as he could work the bolt.
Firing every step of the way, the companions backed out of the supermarket when Krysty cut loose with the H&H Nitro Express. A lance of flame extended from the twin barrels, the discharge deafeningly loud even in the open air. The first .475 round glanced off the droid, denting the alloy rod of its torso, the ricochet whining away into the distance. The second hit the joint of the left arm, ripping away the cover plating. Instantly, Ryan concentrated his longblaster there, the 7.62 mm rounds slamming into the exposed gears until the array from the soft lead froze the arm in position. But the spinning buzz saw at the end of the ferruled arm never slowed.
As the machine came through the smashed windows of the preDark building, Doc held the LeMat in a two-handed grip, waiting an insanely long moment before firing. The handcannon boomed like thunder as the .44 miniball slammed into the machine with triphammer force. The left eye lens shattered from the impact, and the droid started for the scholar as he fired a fast four times, trying for the other eye but missing.
Moving among the dead cars, the companions tripped several times on the dried corpses on the black pavement. This was the worst place to hold a fight.
Working the bolt on her Remington longblaster, Mildred fired twice at a car near the droid, the sporting rounds punching neat holes through the hood of the vehicle, but failing to ignite the engine. The gas tanks were as dry as dust.
Leaving the sidewalk, the droid bumped into a car and the desiccated corpse behind the steering wheel fell over. In blinding speed, the droid rammed its buzz saw through the glass to behead the dead woman and the passenger beyond.