“Two of the bikes got shot up pretty bad, the rest are fine, Chief,” Roberto reported, then cursed as he slipped in the mud. Kate started to offer a hand, but held back as the man scowled darkly and righted himself.
“No casualties on our side,” he continued, as they reached the crest and got onto level ground. “But we lost a lot of the prisoners.”
“Damn,” Kate growled. “Okay, keep the broken bike for spare parts, then strip the dead. We’ll split the blasters and ammo with the surviving prisoners. They can have any of the Devil clothing they want, except the leather jackets. Those we keep. Then we’ll escort them back to that ville by the waterfall.”
“That’s two days out of our way,” he reminded her. “And we’re low as hell on fuel.”
She shrugged. “Can’t be helped. These poor bastards couldn’t hold off a one-legged chicken right now. We turn them loose here, and that is the same as acing them ourselves.”
“I’ll find room for them in the Hummers,” Roberto stated; “Wasting a lot of time, though.”
“Time we got,” Kate said, stepping through the open hatch of War Wag One. “But we needed those bikes to get control of that waterhole so we can cross the Great Salt.”
Yeah, it was always the same old battle, the man thought to himself, weight versus fuel. Hauling more water meant using additional fuel, which meant more fuel to carry so there was less room for water. And so on, and so on. It wasn’t the Core, or the muties, or the rad storms that kept them out of north Texas, it was the Great Salt, a flat featureless desert made of pure salt. He’d heard tell there was something similar way up north near Utah called the Great Salt Lake, but this was no body of salty water. Just salt, compressed hard as rock and stretching for more long miles under the blazing white sun than he liked to think about.
As the man and woman maneuvered through the ammo bins and humming comps filling the front of the big transport, the crew at the control boards and machine gun blisters hailed them in passing. Vid screens showed views from all around the vehicle, and the radio crackled with the conversations of the guards on foot patrol. With all the nukeshit in the atmosphere, a radio couldn’t work for more than a few miles, but that was more than enough to give the convoy a fighting edge nobody else had in the Deathlands—communications.
Safe behind a tinted Plexiglas blister, Kate watched the busy crew at their tasks and said nothing.
“Okay, Jake, let’s get moving,” she ordered, slumping into a chair and draping a leg over the metal arm. “We got a lot of traveling before we can finally end this triple-cursed war permanently.”
“About time,” the redheaded driver growled, starting the big diesel engines of the armored transport. “That damn Scorpion God has needed chilling for a bastard long time.”
SLUGGISHLY, RYAN came awake clawing for his blaster. Then recalling what had happened, he released the weapon. Groaning loudly, he raised himself off the wall and sat with his shoulder against the roof. The interior of the sideways APC was dully illuminated by a reddish glow coming from through the starboard vents and blaster ports. He could see the others laying crumpled nearby, slowly showing signs of life.
Rummaging for a candle on the wall, Ryan found one and carefully used his hands to squeeze the squashed wax back into shape before using a butane lighter to ignite the wick. As weak as the flame was, it brightened the interior considerably.
“Okay, we survived,” Ryan said quietly, wincing as the word sent daggers through his head. “Did they?”
“Damned if I know,” J.B. groaned, straightening his glasses. His beloved fedora was partially showing from underneath Mildred, but he made no effort to reclaim the hat. “Dark night, it feels like we did a bad jump and landed in a cement mixer that exploded.”
“Any damage, John?” Mildred asked, panting from the exertion of sitting upright.
“Nah, just bruised everywhere but my teeth.”
Extending a hand, Ryan help Doc to extract himself from a tangle of canvas webbing. “You okay, Doc?”