Ryan was keeping an eye on the fuel gauge, as was J.B. Because of the angle of the road, the tank sensor was misreading the level. They both knew it had to be wrong. It showed more gas now than when they’d started.
“Look up there,” Dean said, pointing out the side window. “We’re almost at the edge of the forest.”
All that separated them from the wall of hundred-foot-tall trees were a few switchbacks.
“What do you think, Ryan?” J.B. asked.
From J.B.’s tight lipped expression, Ryan knew the two of them were on the same wavelength. In a few minutes, the RV’s fuel tank was going to run dry and they’d end up stopping somewhere, but not by choice. And mebbe not in the right spot to permanently slow the pursuit.
“I think the next hairpin is as far as we go in this wag,” he said. “I’m going to wedge it across the road. Make our friends down below come after us on foot. Everybody get ready to bail out.”
He had to park the Winnebago so it couldn’t be budged, rammed or dragged out of the way. He knew the other wags couldn’t back up without going over the edge, so there was no way they could pull it free. The lead wag could only push it. And the road leading up to the hairpin was so steep, there was no traction to do this. “Everybody out!” Ryan shouted when he reached the spot he was looking for. “Head up the road for the tree line. Triple quick!”
As the companions ran ahead, he turned the front wheels hard over, put it in reverse and goosed the gas pedal, backing up until he bashed the rear end into the facing slope. Then he shifted into Drive, cutting the wheels as far as they’d go the other way, and moved forward a half yard. He put it in reverse again and repeated the process. After shifting into forward gear, he very carefully edged the nose of the Winnebago off the road, dropping it hard onto its front axle, with its rear bumper brushing the sheer wall on the other side.
Foot traffic could pass, if it hopped over the bumper.
But nothing else.
Below him, the sounds of the other wags’ engines were getting louder. Ryan climbed out the driver’s door, slung his Steyr longblaster and beat feet up the road, past the last switchback, up to the edge of the dense forest where the others were waiting.
As he approached the wall of trees, he sensed something unnatural. Ryan had come across a few other forests like this during his wanderings, lifeless except for the tightly packed trees. In this case some kind of mutated evergreen. There were no other types of trees, or vegetation for that matter. There was no undergrowth. Just pale gray dust that shaded the seemingly endless sprawl of trunks. Smothering heat and silence. No air. Little light. It was the kind of place that gave children wake-up-screaming nightmares, and that grown men and women avoided like the bloody flux.
The rumble of engines coming up the grade suddenly stopped.
“They’re at the barricade,” Ryan said. “Let’s go…we’ve got to hurry now.”
He waved the others up the road that vanished into the immense stand of trees. J.B. went first, pulling Doc behind him on a tether. Mildred followed, then Dean and Leeloo and Krysty. Everyone but Doc and Leeloo had a weapon up and ready to fire. Jak stood beside the mountain lion, who hung back at the edge of the darkness, as if reluctant to set foot in the woods. Its huge nostrils flared, as if it had caught the scent of something filtering down through the trees.
“What’s the matter with your pet?” Ryan asked Jak.
“He’s afraid,” the albino said.
Chapter Twenty-Three
The Magnificent Crecca plowed the biggest of the carny wags through the quarter-mile-long dust cloud swirling in the wake of Ryan Cawdor’s RV. The red-haired, red-bearded man had lost virtually everything. Three-quarters of his convoy’s chillers and wags had been left behind at Bullard ville. As had all of the mutie menagerie collected by Gert Wolfram and him over the years, except for Jackson, the singing stickie, who sat on the floor at his hip.