Bloodfire

“Nuking hell,” Jessica said, massaging a temple. “Just look at it!”

“Shitfire, mebbe it is a blast crater,” Roberto muttered, hunching his shoulders as if braced for a blow, “Check the rads immediately!”

“Already did, and it’s clear,” Eric said over the ceiling speakers. “Whatever destroyed this place wasn’t atomic.”

“Not a hot zone, good,” Kate said, running stiff fingers through her hair. “But this was the source of that mushroom cloud we saw before?”

“Dead on,” Jake replied, both hands still on the steering wheel of the war wag. “Same lat and long.”

“Mebbe it was white smoke, or a salt whirlwind forming in the hole,” Jessica offered hesitantly. “Hell, I dunno. But look at all those buildings!”

“Just fucking think of it. A complete preDark ville!” the door guard started, rubbing the back of his free hand across his mouth, the other clutching the M-16 with white fingers. “Fuel, ammo, food, clothing, meds…”

“Rads, tox chems, muties, bobbies, cave-ins, avalanche, Gaza, the Core,” Kate added in a growl, hitching her gun belt. “The bigger the prize, the more ants there will be trying to carry pieces away.”

“At the rate it’s going,” Roberto added, craning his neck for a better view out the front windshield, “there won’t be anything left in a few days.”

Which raised an interesting point for Kate. Two villes destroyed in the desert, one by water, now another by fire. Could this also be the work of the outlander called Ryan? Mebbe her info on the man was scragged like a comp disk. Could be he was a technophobe, and hated any kind of science or whitecoat. She had encountered such feebs before, but generally only as loonies running about in rags. Folks like that weren’t really a threat to anybody but themselves. But this was another matter entirely.

“Okay, we’re going to do a full recce,” Kate decided, watching the buzzards circle in the sky about the sunken city. “Put the cargo vans behind those big dunes to the south, with War Wag Two as protection. I want hands on blasters and fingers on triggers.”

Pulling his sawed off from the holster, Roberto scowled, “We’re going in alone?”

“Not quite,” she replied, but then was interrupted by a shout of surprise from the tech at the radar screen.

“Chief, we have a bounce on the screen,” he announced, working the controls. The luminous arms of the radar swept along the glowing screen, leaving ghostly blobs in its wake of varying sizes.

“Something from a skyscraper?” Roberto asked, studying the screen.

Glancing out the front windows, Kate scowled darkly. “No, the sig is too small and a good mile away. Must be on the far side of the crater, sinkhole, whatever this fragging thing is.”

“Hard to tell for sure,” Blackjack said, the tech caressing the controls to urge greater clarity from the old patched equipment. “There’s so much fucking hash in the atmosphere! But it appears to be something large and metal on the far side on the crater.”

A wag? Going to the periscope, Kate pulled it up and tried to get a look, but even with the max magnification the billowing smoke from the conflagration below masked most of the city, along with anything beyond.

“Is it moving?” she demanded, chewing the inside of a cheek.

The man didn’t reply for a minute, then relaxed. “No, Trader, it appears to be standing still.”

“Just some wreckage or ruins then,” Roberto said confidently, but then added, “Although this part of the Great Salt is normally bare as a baron’s heart.”

True enough.

“Jake, move us farther away from the edge of the cliff. It doesn’t look too bastard stable,” Kate ordered.

“We’re staying here as the anchor. Rob, send out some troops on the bikes for a recce. I want a complete circle of the pit.”

“Looking for a way down?” Roberto asked, checking a canteen hanging from a metal peg on the wall before slinging it over an arm. “No way in hell we’re ever finding a trail wide enough for the rigs. Much less secure enough to take the weight.”

“Only nobody tries a descent without my permission,” she commanded bluntly. “Gaza could have set fire to the ruins as a distraction to night creep us from behind.”