Half blind from the swirling sand, the rest of the pack rode onward, unlimbering their weapons when the night was suddenly illuminated by a strident detonation within the ville. Seconds later a towering geyser of clear water rose like a fountain above Rockpoint.
“Somebody finally found the trip wire,” Ryan muttered, his horse pounding over the hilly desert.
The men on the walls stopped firing at the incredible sight, then held out their palms as a light sprinkle rained upon them from the rumbling geyser. Slowing their horses, the outriders did the same, staring in wonder at the fantastic, impossible sight. Water, clean, clear water, was gushing upward from the temple in the heart of the ville in unlimited amounts.
“Nuking hell, it was a trick!” a sec man shouted furiously. “Gaza told us there was barely enough water to keep us alive, while he was sitting on a hidden ocean!”
“Son of a bitch lied to his own sec men!” another man ranted, switching from looking at the ville to the escaping outlanders.
“Blood for water, my ass!” a guard snarled, rubbing old scars on his chest.
Reining in his mount, a sergeant brought the horse to a ragged halt in the sand. “Forget the outies,” he commanded the rest of the troops. “Let’s go get that son of a bitch Gaza and string him up by the balls!”
Waving their blasters, the sec men shouted obscenities and reversed direction to charge back into the ville, hellbent for bloody revenge.
Epilogue
Drenched to the skin by the falling water, Baron Gaza slogged through the ankle deep puddles in the streets of the ville, heading for the junkyard. Again and again, he was approached by furious people screaming for revenge, and he ruthlessly cut them down with a rapidfire.
How could things have gone so bad so nuking quickly? He was an outcast in his own ville! There was only one conceivable way that the outlanders could have possibly found the pump room. Hawk had to have been right; they were spies for Trader.
Fortunately, the dried mud walls were softening under the presence of the water and soon the buildings would start to sag and crumble. Chaos was spreading through Rockpoint, and that alone was what gave Gaza the chance to escape with his wives. The silent women had expressed no wish to leave the man, and privately he was glad for their company. The more blasters covering his ass the better. Their sodden clothing clung to every curve, exposing a wealth of flesh, but the blasters in their hands were expertly balanced and swept the ville in a steady pattern. Gaza approved.
Reaching the junkyard, Gaza cut down two sec men waiting in hiding near the fence, then took the handcannons from their twitching fingers, along with an oil lantern. Damn fools.
Lighting the wick, Gaza held the lantern high as he maneuvered through the jumbled collection of junk and rusty cars, leading the five women at his back into a metallic cave formed by predark cars tilting against one another. The baron paused at one point, listening to the growing sounds of battle, punctuated by the groan of a collapsing building, before directing the women around a deadfall trap—an engine block attached to chains that would have swung along the middle of the tunnel with deadly force, a cast-iron pendulum that would have crushed any intruder into a bag of broken bones with one shot.
After a few yards more, the baron guided them past a pitfall, the bottom of the deep hole studded with pool cues, the long sticks sharpened and charred with fire to make them strong. The rotting remains of a curious sec man rested halfway down the pit, his desiccated corpse still suspended in the air from the wooden shafts jammed into his torso and broken limbs.
Once past that, Gaza kept his wives close as he paused to dig in the loose sand to uncover a wooden box. Lifting the lid, he cut a few wires inside, disabling a predark land mine, then started forward into the flickering darkness.
From overhead came the steady patter of the falling water from the towering geyser, and soon the hissing lantern revealed a ramshackle school bus sitting in the center of the dim tunnel, its rusty sides covered with corrugated steel, the windows barred, jagged knife blades jutting from the rim of each tire.