The only useful aid was a large compass, floating on a gyro, set in the middle of the dash.
As they drove west, J.B. gradually ripped everything off, reducing the vehicle to something more serviceable.
“Hit lucky with this wag,” he said after they’d gone about fifteen bouncing miles. He pulled off onto the weed-grown soft shoulder and let the powerful engine idle, getting out to stare behind them.
Ryan joined him. “Nothing?”
The Armorer wiped his glasses. “Reckon they’d think twice about setting up a lynch mob, once they realize how well-tooled we are and that we got clean away. No profit in chasing us. Not like we robbed their bank.”
Ryan patted his old friend on the back. “If we’d had another half hour, we could have done that, as well.”
Jak climbed out of the rear of the three rows of seats, where he’d been perched with Doc. “Need a leak,” he said. “Smart wag.”
While he was pissing in the dry brush off the side of the highway, there was a rumble of thunder far ahead of them and a flash of pinkish silver lightning, threatening a chem storm somewhere down the line.
Seeing that they were going to have a short break, the others all got out of the wag and stretched their legs in the warm moonlight.
“More lightning,” Mildred said. “Looks like we might run into that in a couple of hours.”
Ryan glanced at his wrist chron, seeing that the tiny liquid-crystal display showed it was a little after eleven o’clock.
“What kind of tank she got?”
Krysty had been checking under the hood while they waited, whistling in admiration. “Those good old boys might have been shit at human relations, but they sure made a fine job of their wag. It’s in as good condition as anything I ever saw. Must have been a kind of hobby for them.”
Ryan knew that most of the predark wags had small fuel tanks. An average family car might only carry a dozen gallons. Now, with the roughly processed fuel costing lives, it wasn’t any surprise to find that the 4×4 had a triple tank fitted to it that would hold around sixty gallons of crude gasoline, giving them a rough distance of five or six hundred miles. It was enough to get them to Memphis, and then all the way back to the redoubt.
Jak finished and they all climbed back into the vehicle, luxuriating in the soft-padded upholstery, feeling the solid thunk as the doors slammed shut.
“Upon my soul, but this is the way to travel,” Doc said, sighing. “I do believe that a fellow could become used to this kind of stylish traveling.”
“Shame that it cost men’s lives,” Krysty said.
Mildred snorted angrily. “You kidding me, Krysty? Those pig-ignorant sons of bitches had it coming. Leave the world a better and cleaner place. That’s what I say. Come on, John, let’s hit the roadand not come back here no more, no more. Graceland next stop.”
BUT GRACELAND AND MEMPHIS still lay some distance over the western horizon. Sullivan had described to them some of the more radical changes in the eco-structure of that part of Tennessee. The shifts in the tectonic plates after skydark altered the face of the state. The highway now snaked across two rivers and a new range of jagged hills. There was also an area of flat land, around two hundred square miles, that had turned in the past hundred years into a smaller version of the bayous of Louisiana.
Since there was no sign at all of any pursuit for the chillings back in Country Row, Ryan figured that it should soon be possible to find somewhere safe to camp to catch up on their rest.
But there were still many miles to go before they would finally sleep.
And a surprising meeting.
Chapter Twenty-five
Ryan had taken over behind the wheel, picking his way slowly across the bleak land with the aid of some adequate low-beam lights. The moon had gone, slinking away behind a bank of thick cloud, leaving the trail difficult to navigate.
The original highway seemed to have almost totally disappeared, with only the occasional fairly level strip of pavement running for a couple of hundred yards, then doglegging off to either right or left.