“Freeze,” Doc whispered softly, going motionless. “Droid. Two o’clock.”
Everybody stopped moving at the words, and only shifted their eyes to search along the stores lining the nearby street. Halfway down the block was the damaged sec hunter droid, its eyes gone and its chrome body covered with quivering antennae. But the racing machine wasn’t coming toward the companions; it was charging along the street, crushing the corpses in its way until going out of sight.
“Dark night,” J.B. said, rubbing the scar on his chin. “I wonder what the frag it’s after?”
“Don’t know, don’t care,” Ryan muttered, shifting his longblaster. “As long as it ain’t us. Shift it into high gear, people. I want to be far from here when it returns.”
The hours passed slowly as the day progressed, but the rising sun could do little to penetrate the thickening layer of turbulent clouds. Sheet lightning was crashing among the roiling orange-and-purple clouds with ever increasing ferocity. A major storm seemed to be brewing, a real Texas tempest, but at least the telltale smell of rotten eggs wasn’t in the wind, forecasting the arrival of a deadly acid rain.
Walking carefully up the slope of a piece of the fallen dome, Ryan paused to scowl at something on the other side. Then the big man started forward, and as the rest crested the dome they could see a body sprawled on the ground, its bandage wrapped limbs splayed at angles impossible for any living being.
“A member of the Core,” Krysty said, squinting upward. There was no sign of any activity along the edge of the cliff, but the desert muties might be hiding like before.
“No sign of a wound,” Mildred said, kneeling to inspect the crumpled body. “He must have simply fallen from the top.”
“No, from that ledge,” Dean stated excitedly, pointing.
Sure enough, only fifty feet above them was a rocky ledge in the cliff, an extension of a meandering crack that formed a kind of natural trail leading from the top.
“And there’s our exit,” Ryan said, cracking the knuckles on both hands. “No more than fifty feet max. We can do that easy.”
“Yeah, but we’re dead meat if stickies attack while we climb,” J.B. said gruffly, surveying the area.
“Gotta take the chance,” Ryan stated, sliding the pack off his shoulder. “Okay, drop your packs. The lighter we are, the easier the climb. J.B. and I will stay behind to give cover. Once the rest of you reach the ledge, hitch your belts together and haul up the backpacks. Then cover us while we climb.”
The simple plan needed no discussion, so divesting themselves of the haversacks and assorted shoulder bags, the five companions started feeling the details of the rock with their fingers. Finding small purchases, the friends wiggled the toes of their combat boots into some cracks and pulled themselves off the ground. Then testing their positions, they reached high again to continue the endless process. Time was short, but they had to move slow. They might only get one chance at this, and a single mistake would be deadly. A fall of fifty feet onto concrete would chill as fast as a round to the head.
Taking a Molotov and a homemade pipe bomb from the bags for quick access, Ryan and J.B. readied their blasters and alternately watched the cliff and the burning preDark city as the others slowly began to ascend toward the ledge above, and freedom.
WATCHING THE SMOKE RISE ahead of the convoy through the front windows of the lead wag, the Trader suddenly jerked alert as the desert abruptly yawned wide before War Wag One. What in hell was that, a nuke Crater? But then she saw dozens of burning buildings sprawling in the ground below. That was no skybomb crater, but a sinkhole with a preDark city inside!
“Stop!” Kate ordered, placing aside her cold can of soup, the spoon rattling loose.
“Bet your ass I’m stopping,” Jake replied, as the massive vehicle rumbled to a slow halt. “Black dust, will ya look at that. Just look at it!”
That Kate was doing, and even as the Trader rose from her chair, the woman found herself unsure of what to do next. The ruins were enormous! Dozens of blocks, with huge brick buildings rising almost level to the desert floor. From the billowing smoke, it appeared that most of the place was burning, but her people had done raids on crumbling preDark ruins before. Once while a mall was sinking into a swamp, and another while it was getting bombed during a sandstorm. Burning made it trickier, but not impossible. Nothing was impossible.