Their goal appeared to be a predark motel situated between a roofless adobe ruin, and a garbage dump buzzing with flies. The original neon sign on the cinder block wall was only a stain, the name long gone and replaced with a poorly drawn cartoon of a bed and a spoon on a faded wooden placard. That was necessary these dark days for the many folks who couldn’t read.
“Pretty clever,” J.B. muttered. “Having outlanders living without a roof, must cut their stay short.”
“Make buy more water, too,” Jak added, rubbing a hand across his dry mouth. The canteen hung heavy at his side, but he was holding off until they were some place out of the direct sun.
“Okay, this is the place,” Hawk announced, reining his stallion to a halt and walking it around. “You can put the wag in the barn over there. We have no other outlanders staying here, so you won’t be bothering any horses.”
“Fair enough. Any laws we should know about?” Ryan asked, turning on the heater to keep the heating engine operating. As a wave of hot air rushed from the vents, the temperature gauge needle flickered and began to move away from the red line in a pulsating motion.
“Yeah, there are. You can leave Rockpoint anytime you want during the day, but not at night,” Hawk said, leaning forward in the saddle, both hands crossed over the pommel. “Disobey a sec man, ten lashes. Steal water, thirty lashes. Hurt a horse, a hundred lashes. Go anywhere near the temple, death. Say anything treasonous against the baron, you get into the temple. Permanently. You leave at dawn in three days.”
With that done, the big man shook the bridle to start the stallion trotting away. The rest of the sec men rode around the sputtering wag with hands on blasters once in a patent display of firepower, then followed their chief back into the coolness of the covered ville.
“Mother Gaia, I wonder why they let us come inside,” Krysty said. “They sure as hell don’t seem to want any visitors.”
“Only way to get any news about what’s happening outside the walls,” Ryan explained, turning the wheel to head for the adobe barn. “New plagues, new muties, and such. If they stay too isolated, something big could come their way and they wouldn’t be ready to fight, or run.”
“Simple self preservation,” Mildred said in agreement. “Nothing more. Walls this thick were built to keep something out.”
“Or in,” Doc added cryptically.
Rolling the wag into the barn, Ryan made a wide arc and managed to turn it around to park facing the exit. It would be ready to charge and smash through the door in case they had to leave in a hurry. Ryan turned off the engine, and he and J.B. both stayed in the vehicle, listening carefully as it sputtered and backfired to finally go still.
“Intake is clogged with salt dust,” J.B. said with a frown. “Tricky to fix that.”
Setting the handbrake, Ryan added, “And we got to remove that thermostat.”
“Damn straight we do. My legs are feeling like they’ve been dipped in acid rain.”
“At least we got the spare juice to flush the manifold,” Ryan told him, reaching under the dashboard and pulling a handful of fuses. “But that’s for tomorrow, after we rest and eat.”
“Good,” Jak said eagerly, lowering the canteen and smacking his lips. “Starving.”
Tucking the fuses into a pocket, Ryan climbed down from the cab and walked to the rear of the wag to claim his backpack. A slanted shadow cut across the interior of the barn from the setting sun, but if there was a difference in temperature it wasn’t readily noticeable. Why anybody would build a ville here in the first place was a puzzle. Then again, maybe it was started by folks fleeing across the salty desert and they found water.
“Dean takes first watch,” Ryan directed, checking his wrist chron. “Doc next, then Jak, J.B. and me. We switch every two hours.”
“No prob,” the boy said, lifting a nukelamp and checking to make sure the device still worked. Even in the daylight, the brilliant beam was clearly visible. Turning it off, he placed the lamp on the ground in the far corner where the beam could shine in the open doorway. Hidden in the shadows behind the light, he would be a hard target to shoot.