It was J.B., leading the way, who spotted the squat shape of the ruined building, standing alone at the edge of a deserted highway. The flank of the side wall was toward them, the stucco peeling and weathered. But the lettering still showed through, in an ornate Gothic script Faust’s Ramp;R Metal Heaven.
They huddled together, peering at it through the driving rain. “What in the name of all perdition can that have been?” Doc asked.
“Heavy-metal rock and roll,” Mildred replied. “Past your bedtime music, Doc.”
“But does the store still have a roof to it?”
“Yeah. Looks like.”
“Then that is most certainly the place for me.” He led the way at an ungainly gallop, his long legs angling out like a demented stork, waving his sword-stick and yelling as if he were leading a forlorn hope into the breach at Badajoz or attacking the cannon at Chickamauga.
The rest followed, splashing through the deep puddles scattered over what had presumably once been the parking lot for the store and was now a blank expanse of weed-strewed tarmac, cracked and rippled by earth movements across the years.
A steel-framed door swung open, clattering in the strong wind, leading into a single stripped concrete box of a room, some twenty feet square. The store’s main window had probably caved in at skydark, but it had been skillfully boarded up, and kept out the worst of the storm.
Now they were out of the elements, it seemed shockingly silent. The companions shook themselves, removing soaked coats, rubbing hands against the chill.
“Looks like someone’s been living rough here,” Mildred commented, pointing to a charred section of wall in the corner, where a pile of half-burned wood lay. A stained mattress was on the floor next to it, along with a few rusted self-heat cans and some empty bottles of cheap red gut-rot wine.
“Let’s get that fire going again,” J.B. said, kneeling by it and igniting a self-light from one of his pockets. “Get dried off.”
“Might as well stay the night here,” Krysty suggested. “Storm’s in for hours.”
“How about our stickie brethren?” Doc asked worriedly, brushing water from the shoulders of his antique frock coat. “Might they not come a’calling?”
“Stickies hate rain,” Jak said. “Won’t be out in it. Find some place hole up.”
“A place like this, do you mean, my snowcapped young companion?”
Jak grinned, his teeth peeling back off his lips like a young wolf. “Don’t worry, Doc. Can bolt door. Side window’s too small. Any trouble can hold off army from here.” He glanced at the Armorer. “True?”
J.B. sniffed and nodded. “True. Walls and roof are solid, Doc. Take more than a few muties to give us worries. Good, solid little fortress for us.”
“Well, I trust implicitly your judgment in matters of military logistics, my dear John Barrymore. I offer my profound hope that you will not disappoint me.” He sat by the crackling fire and made himself comfortable.
“Wish we’d taken a few slices of that pig,” Mildred said, joining him. “Going to be a long, hungry stay.”
THE RAIN WAS STILL falling when Krysty jerked awake sometime after midnight.
Not knowing what had awakened her, she lay still, eyes open in the blackness, every sense straining. But she could see and hear nothing in the empty store. The only sound was a faint rustling of paper from high in one corner that she knew was the torn half of a frail predark advertising poster that had somehow clung to the wall. It advertised a bulky, long-haired singer whose name, oddly, appeared to have been “Loaf.” At least, that was all that remained under the menacing black-and-white photograph of the looming figure. The remnants of a slogan suggested that the rock singer had come from Hell.
” Ryan?” she breathed, somehow feeling his presence,
She could hear J.B. on her left, breathing as soft and gentle as a fox. Doc was across the room, alongside the crumbling ashes of the fire, snoring surprisingly quietly, the breath rasping at the back of his throat.
Krysty closed her eyes, overwhelmed by a sense of loss. An emptiness filled her heart, the desolation of knowing that from now on she would walk alone through life.