“Mother of God,” Mildred whispered. Then she relaxed, remembering that any hot ground explosion of sufficient size would form a mushroom cloud. It wasn’t a proprietary symbol of only a nuclear blast.
The winds continued to buffet them for several more minutes, smaller detonations barely discernible within the roiling hell of the fiery ville. Daring to open the rear doors, the companions stepped out of the APC and looked upon the destruction. The men and wags at the gate were gone without a trace, vaporized by the blast. Pieces of the stone blocks were missing, and gaping cracks ran along the expanse of the limestone wall, the mushroom cloud hellishly illuminated from below by countless small fires. It was unlike anything they had ever seen. Only Mildred shivered, recalling the old vid of the nuke blasts at White Sands and Hiroshima.
Then something bounced off the top of the wag with a ringing clang.
“Fallout!” J.B. cried, and started racing for the LAV. “Back inside the wag!”
The companions followed the man and piled into the vehicle, slamming shut the doors, just as the first of the debris began to plummet from the tortured sky. Bits of wood, pieces of brick, body parts, chunks of the dish and assorted junk rained across the landscape, making the LAV sound as if it were caught in a neverending shotgun blast. A cooking pot slammed into the wag through the missing turret hatch, followed by a smoking toilet seat and a brick that shattered into reddish dust on the dented floor. In desperation, Mildred covered Jak with her body and cried out as the particles hit her back.
“Move this thing!” Ryan commanded, holding on to a ceiling stanchion.
Already in the driver’s seat, J.B. fought to start the engines, but the diesels were uncooperative. “Come on, you piece of shit,” he cursed, adjusting the controls, as a chunk of burst steam boiler melted doors and gigantic pieces of foundation slammed around the wag with meteoric force, shattering the landscape for hundreds of yards.
With a roar, the diesels finally caught. J.B. slammed the ten-ton wag into gear and stomped on the gas. The LAV rolled straight for the smaller debris, rolling over the pieces, zigzagging its way across the broken landscape.
“John Barrymore, what are you doing?” Doc shouted from the rear.
“I’m dodging the falling debris!” J.B. replied, tugging and shoving the steering levers frantically. “It rarely lands on the same spot twice. By going from wreckage to wreckage, we probably wouldn’t get flattened.”
“Probably?”
“Best I got!”
“Then haste thy chariot, Hermes!”
Soon they reached the rim of the debris, and the APC charged on a straight line for the redoubt.
“Goodbye Shiloh,” Ryan growled, removing his bandanna and using it to wipe his face clean. Tossing away the rag, the Deathlands warrior turned to look at Sheffield.
“Which only leaves you,” he said, drawing the SIG-Sauer.
“Chill him later!” Krysty cursed, watching out the rear ob slit. “We got company.”
The starboard ob slit had been hammered shut by concussion, so Ryan went into the turret to look behind. Sure enough, there were bobbing headlights. A vehicle of some kind was in pursuit. In the background, the flames of the burning ville seemed to reach the clouds, the black smoke rising to the distant stars.
“That’s a Hummer,” Ryan shouted to the others. “No prob. I’ll chill it with the” The man stopped talking as he saw what remained of the electric 25 mm Gatling cannon. The rapidfire was bowed in the middle, almost bent in two.
Just then there was a flash from the Hummer and something exploded on the rear doors, making them rattle and loosening several of the hinge bolts.
Sheffield beamed in delight behind his gag, and continued working on getting the rope around his wrists loose. There was a jagged piece of metal that had penetrated the seat cushion beside him, and he had managed to steal the sliver before the others noticed. He had already cut halfway through the safety harness holding him in the seat and was steadily working on the sticky layers of duct tape. His fingers were slippery with his own blood from using the razor-sharp sliver, but wounds would heal. A bullet in the brain was forever. He had to get loose quickly, before Ryan turned his attention on the baron for one last time.