“It’s a goddamn chameleon stickie!” Mildred cursed, pumping two rounds into the creature’s face, going for the eyes. Both orbs exploded into a gelatinous mass from the arrival of the .38 slug, and the pure white stickie fell to the ground.
Several more of the disguised creatures dropped into the middle of the group from the rocky overhang, and the companions suddenly found themselves attacked from every side.
Chapter Thirteen
The eight heavy wheels chewed the ground along the edge of the cliff, sending a salty dust cloud across the preDark city.
Baron Gaza didn’t like it. To give away your position before a fight was bad tactics. But he hoped it wouldn’t be noticeable mixed in with the smoke from the burning buildings. Besides, there was no other choice. He needed to be this close to the rim of the cliff to see the buildings below. The baron had small hope of spotting the hated outlanders, but Allison was standing in the aft turret, ready to unleash the 25 mm cannon at the first sight of Ryan or the others.
The heat of the rising sun hadn’t yet turned the desert into an oven, and the baron had the top hatch raised to admit a pleasant breeze into the war wag. The smell of hot metal, oil, diesel fumes and sweaty bodies had been making the interior of the APC almost unbearable, and he now bitterly regretted ripping out the air conditioner to save fuel. The baron had no idea how the Trader could stand the reek of humanity for those long treks across the nukescape.
In tumbling majesty, the dying city was spread out to the left, the light of the fires fading in the sunlight, but during the night the sky had glowed from the reflected flames. Entire blocks had been reduced to blackened skeletons of twisted steel from the raging fires. Smaller structures were ablaze, filled with flames that occasionally exploded, throwing out a spray of burning debris.
Lines of cars were burning, like knots in a fuse, until the flames reached a preDark gas station and created new detonations, fireballs rising into the sky and fading away long before the sound of their creation echoed to the distant observers.
The sheer waste of the precious materials was a knife in his gut, but the man accepted the loss and concentrated on trying to steal what he could before the rest of the city was consumed by the growing conflagration.
Reaching for the water bag, the baron turned his head for a moment when a descending buzzard jerked his attention back to the metropolis below. What was it?
Slamming on the brakes, Gaza downshifted until the wag slowed to a shuddering halt. Almost immediately, the dust cloud in its wake washed over the vehicle, blocking out the world for a few moments.
Turning in the navigator seat, Kathleen silently asked her husband what was happening. Gaza ignored the woman and, grabbing hold of the overhead hatch, pulled himself from the driver’s seat and climbed down the angled hull of the APC to rush to the crumbling edge of the cliff.
Partially blocked by the smoke, he saw a parking lot about a block in filled with military vehicles—4X4 trucks, Hummers, a lone LAV 25 and several huge tanks. It was a convoy of some sort, stopped for lunch or fuel, and caught in the salt fall to never move again. Until now. The machines looked in perfect condition from this distance, and Gaza could barely breathe at the idea of how much ammo and fuel had to be there just waiting to be taken. For a wild moment, he toyed with the notion of trying to get one of the tanks to the desert, then abandoned the idea as impossible. The steep sides of the sinkhole would be tough for even a strong man to climb. And so far he hadn’t even found a trail that would handle the lumbering APC, much less a gigantic preDark tank. Those were made prisoners of the city from their own weight and size. But the contents could be scavenged, every drop of fuel and every live round of ammo.
“Wake up, my dears! Time to work!” the baron said, going to the external winch and releasing the cable.