“If there are any survivors, much less winners,” Krysty added grimly, looking skyward. “Check up there.”
Craning his neck to follow her direction, Ryan saw the roiling storm clouds overhead were darker, more yellow than usual, and the ever present smell of acid rain was increasing. Nuking hell, a chem storm was coming and that changed everything. Down below the city was on fire, with a droid hunting them and muties everywhere. Up here were battling war wags and flat, open desert where the acid rain would easily catch them and strip them to bare bones in only a few screaming minutes. Damned if they tried to escape in any direction, that left only one choice.
“If we’re going get chilled, it might as well be on our feet,” Ryan said, hefting his longblaster. “Double time, let’s go see who is in that APC and convince them we need a ride.”
“And if Gaza?” Jak asked, massaging his aching left arm in its sling.
“Then we take it away from him. Let’s go.”
Chapter Seventeen
Scuttling from the smoky shadows along the preDark road, a fat lizard paused on top of the wizened corpse of a construction worker, its three eyes darting about in different directions searching for predators.
Wrapping a tentacle around his glass knife, Larry lashed out with the blade and the lizard’s head was removed. Gushing blood, the body tumbled to the pavement, and a dozen other lizards charged from their hiding places to start tearing apart their fallen brother.
Now Larry pulled hard on the rope and a net erupted from underneath the snowy layer of salt, and the pile of lizards was hauled wiggling into the air caught in the crude net.
“Food!” Larry said in delight, rubbing his scaled stomach in delight. Carefully untying the net from the ropes, the mutant twirled it above his head several times and then brought it crashing down on the hood of a car, killing the lizards instantly.
“Food,” he mumbled again. He pulled a large piece of window glass from a leather pouch and cut the reptiles apart and stuffed the bloody gobbets of raw flesh into his lopsided mouth.
“Good!” He chortled in happiness, then froze instantly at the sound of thunder.
Ramming the rest of a lizard into his mouth and stuffing the others into his pouch, Larry loped through an alleyway filled with huge sections of the salt dome and crouched in the ornamental wrought iron fencing that edged a public library. When the sparkle white ground fell, all things in the desert rushed in to see.
Much fighting, Larry remembered, and many things died. Larry and kin follow food into pit and hunting good. Until bad metal come. Two-legs try kill Larry with thunder sticks. Twice in the cold seasons he had been stung by black bees from booming sticks, much blood and pain. His mate died from black bee, child, too. And it been good child, Larry thought, no scales like parents, no claws. Two-legs would have thought it a norm aside from eyes. Norms had little eyes, not big like child, not see in darkness and know what animals think in head. Child had helped much in hunting, find big food Larry would kill with sharp glass across neck. Eat for week!
Then two-legs with bad metal come into stone forest, Larry remembered, kill everything. But Larry stay. He wait for two-legs to not have thunder stick, then cut across neck with glass, use claws on belly and face. Bad metal take little ones away. Someday he get them, drink redblood. Then mate and child sleep peacefully. As the two-legs started his way, Larry retreated quickly. Loping across the pavilion, the mutie disappeared into the sewer, his rubbery tentacles lashing about like wild snakes until he was through the grating and gone from sight.
ONLY MOMENTS LATER, moving through the jumbled ruins, Gaza led the way into the choking hot chaos. The smell of acid rain was a lot less noticeable down here, the thick smoke masking the smell of anything else in the atmosphere. Masked by the swirling black smoke were tall honeycombs of flame, burning buildings with fiery tongues lashing out every opening, a few structures reduced to only the twisted outline of the softening steel frames.