As if sensing these thoughts, Allison turned away from the gun port she had been watching and nodded at her husband. Gaza felt his skin crawl slightly at the idea that the mutie could be reading his thoughts, and turned to concentrate on the driving. The removal of their tongues had been done simply to protect his secrets, yet it also made each of his wives oddly loyal to him, as faithful as dogs, and he trusted their judgment implicitly.
Spewing great columns of bluish smoke, the APC angled away from the salt flats and into the rolling dunes seeking shelter from the oncoming daylight. Soon enough Gaza would find the others. Horses had to rest, but the APC could drive nonstop all night long. There was no possible escape for the outlanders from his war wag, the deadly machine gun and his doomie wife.
By tomorrow midnight, they should be dead at his feet, and then he could get back to his plan of seizing another ville to rule and continuing his war against the Trader.
AS THE REST of the companions rushed to her side, Krysty bent to sniff at her hand. There was no odor of any kind, but there could be no other logical reason for the horse’s violent death except poison.
“What in hell happened?” Mildred demanded, approaching the corpse with a drawn blaster. If the physician had learned anything living in the Deathlands, it was to approach every situation as if it was a life-or-death battle. All too often it was.
Ryan covered the animal with his 9 mm SIG-Sauer, while J.B. knelt by the animal and checked its neck. There was no pulse.
“It’s dead,” he stated, standing. “But this doesn’t look like exhaustion, and it’s not hot enough for heat stroke.”
Dean glanced upward. “Screamwing get it?”
Instantly, the other companions raised their blasters and scanned the lightening sky for any movement. Screamwings were tiny flying muties that could send a person on the last train west in a split second with their needle sharp beaks. Small and fast, screamwings were harder than hell to shoot down and died trying to take its victim with them.
“No, it wasn’t a screamer,” Krysty stated, throwing away her canteen. “I think the water is poisoned.”
“All canteens?” Jak asked frowning deeply, his own blaster resting comfortably in his good hand. The blued steel shone like polished violence in the dim morning glow.
She shook her head. “No, I drank from that before, and so did my horse. It’s the big water bag.”
“Must be incredibly powerful toxins to cause this severe a reaction in so large an animal,” Mildred said in a clinical manner. “My guess would be a neurotoxin of some kind. Heavy metals and such would never work this fast.”
At those words, Krysty froze in the process of wiping her hand dry on her leg. Now the women knelt and scrubbed her palm with the salty sand until the skin was bright pink. Then she spit in her palm and wiped it clean again. Seeing the actions, Doc handed her a spare moist towelette from the opened MRE, and she cleaned both hands thoroughly.
“Calm down, it’s okay,” Mildred said, holstering her piece. “If the chemicals haven’t been absorbed through the pores by now, I’d say you’re safe.”
“Are you sure?” Krysty asked anxiously, her fiery hair relaxing back into gentle waves.
Kneeling by the dead animal, Mildred peeled back an eyelid to examine the pupils. They were fully dilated, but the creature could have glanced at the rising sun before dying. Drawing a knife, she pried open the mouth to inspect the tongue. There was no discoloration or marked lividity. Interesting.
“Am I sure?” she said honestly. “Not without an autopsy. Maybe the horse had heartworms.”
Jak snorted at that. “Dog get, not horse.”
“People, too,” Mildred corrected.
Tucking away his LeMat, Doc bowed his head and muttered something in the preDark language he called Latin that sounded like a poem or a prayer.
Keeping his weapon in hand, Ryan went over to the leather water bag lying in the sand beside the dead animal. “That was the bag we took from the stable,” he said, scowling, nudging the bag with the bulbous tip of the silenced blaster. The fluid inside sloshed about like water, and there were no telltale secondary motions of anything alive inside the sack. It had been a long shot idea, but it never hurt to check.