“But always danger,” Jak added. It was a statement rather than a question.
Lonnie made no comment, but led the party up to the top level and then through to the sec doors leading out to the rock face in which the entry door to the redoubt was housed. After punching in the code and pressing the lever, he led the seven-strong party out into the harsh glare of the late morning. Jak shielded his pink albino eyes from the brightness, while the others took in the vista that lay beyond the ridge on which they stood. The door closed ponderously behind them.
The cloudless blue sky was tinged with a pink that bespoke of high chem residue that floated in the upper atmosphere. Below, the two stark blocks of plateaued rock that they had seen the previous night while disposing of the chilled bodies stood a rich red stone against the pale, sandy soil that stood at their respective bases. Some sparse scrub and a few Joshua trees stood weakly, attesting to the lack of moisture in the soil. Beyond the barely nurturing shadow around the rock, out into the relentless sun, little was visible but a semi-dust-bowl desert.
Lonnie led them up the rough road, with its few surviving traces of blacktop, that seemed to take them away from their intended direction and up around to the rear of the small mountain.
The air was dry and rasped at their lungs, the prickling heat making them break into a sweat before they had even reached the apex of the road and rounded the rock.
“This is a trifle ominous,” Doc remarked, gasping in breath.
“Don’t worry too much,” Tilly replied in between gasps of her own, “this is deceptive…wrong time of day for this height, this heat…”
“Don’t talk, save it,” Lonnie snapped.
He was right. They needed to conserve and work on their breathing, pacing themselves to make the top of the road without losing too much water.
The road leveled out and bent around the side of the mountain. They were able to ease their effort, knowing that they would soon be into the descent around the far side. The curving surface of the road was shadowed by a sheer ascent of rock wall, shielding their view of the far side until they actually turned into the first dip downward. When they did, the companions understood why the redoubt had been safe.
Coming around the side of the mountain, there was almost a compulsion to huddle against the sheer rock wall beside them to fight off the feelings of emptiness that the facing landscape engendered. Where, on the side of the mountain facing the redoubt, there was at least some kind of scrub, or some rock formations to break up the endless emptiness, on this side there was nothing. The mountain on which they stood fell away, the rock plunging down, taking the remains of the blacktop on a steep ascent that it immediately occurred to Jak—would make a descent by wag difficult to control. Perhaps, he thought, this was part of the reason why the Hellbenders disdained wags so much, and yet also why they had been so secure in their position.
But this was only a passing thought. What really occupied the minds of the three who hadn’t seen this view before was how desolate and dead it seemed. For miles, stretching to a horizon tinged pink by the distant reflection of chem deposits in the equally empty sky, there was nothing except flat, dull dust bowl and sand. No lichens or scrub broke the emptiness, no creatures moved—even the slightest movement would have been detectable against the deadness that surrounded—and there were no other outcrops to break up the unremitting, bland sameness of the land.
“By the Three Kennedys,” Doc gasped, “this is surely hell. I have seen many things across this land, but the unrelenting tedium and lack of any life…”
“Yeah, this is basically where the real shit rad-blasting begins,” Mik replied, even though Doc had made more of a statement than a query. The small, rat-featured man flashed Doc a wry grin. “One of the reasons this is such a good place to have base, ain’t it? We’re on the edge of total extinction—who’d ever look for us there?”