Ryan shook his head. “Guess we’re a bit like the wind that blows through and cleans away the bad things. You won’t want to be reminded of us.”
“Someone said they saw little Krysty Wroth, the daughter of Mother Sonja, along with”
Ryan held up his hand. “We have to go and you have dead to bury and tears to shed.”
With that he turned his back and quickly strode toward the alley, where he could hear the small armawag was already warmed up and ready.
“Take her away, J.B.,” he said as soon as he’d squeezed into the cramped interior. He pulled the steel hatch closed, shutting out the noise of shouting.
The engine revved, coughing blue gray fumes into the sunny morning. The Armorer engaged first gear and the vehicle began to move steadily forward, out onto the main street of Harmony. They made a right turn and headed north back toward Fairplay and the highway that wound down the valley toward the interstate and Glenwood Springs.
Krysty was sitting in the rear of the wag, with the rear ob slit partly open, looking out of it as Harmony ville shrank away behind them.
And vanished.
WHEN THEY REACHED the ville of Breckenridge, Mildred asked if they could stop there for a break and to get some fresh air. “Like traveling in a can of tuna with the added flavor of the exhaust fumes,” she said. “Like to see Breckenridge. I took place in a shooting competition here, a year or so before I got ill.”
J.B. parked the wag in the center of the ville, near a long-dry fountain, its base cracked by an ancient earth slip, and they all climbed out.
“By the Three Kennedys! What a relief. Perhaps it beats the labor of walking, but I am most damnably cramped. I have been shaken, rattled, bumped and bounced from pillar to post and back again. Thank the Lord for some good fresh air. This must have been a pretty place, Mildred, once upon a time.”
“It was. Pay anything up to a thousand dollars a night for a suite. Look at it now. Tumbled glory.”
The ville seemed to be deserted and looked as if quake damage had ravaged it, probably at the beginning of the long winters. Its triple-decker shopping mall was a heap of rotting concrete and shattered glass, and the trendy little boutiques with their fancy names were no more.
“Good country for skiing,” Krysty said, looking around. “That why it was so costly?”
“Sure was. Like Crested Butte and Vail and Aspen. Lovely little villages that got themselves ‘developed.’ Blocks of identical condos sprouted overnight, and film stars bought blocks of land for their hideaway ranches and mansions. And now the developments have been swept away by earth slips and quakes and avalanches and the hand of Father Time, and it’s all beautiful again.”
“Should have asked the people up in Harmony for some food,” Ryan said.
“Probably fruit here. Go look?”
“Sure, Jak. Why not. But don’t go wandering around on your own.”
“I would be delighted to accompany the young fellow,” Doc offered.
Ryan looked at Krysty. “You want to walk some and see the sights, lover?”
“Sure. Mildred?”
“Think that John and I might take us a stroll around the ruins.”
“Meet back at the wag in an hour or so. Then we can move on and get through Glenwood Springs well before sunset. Mebbe rest up in the dormitories.”
“If they haven’t flooded,” J.B. said.
“Fireblast! Forgot about the burst pipes in all the excitement since then. Yeah, as long as the redoubt’s not flooded out we could spend the night and get some rest. Then jump first thing the next morning.”
“Sounds fine,” Mildred agreed. “You sec locked the wag, John?”
“Yeah. Back here in an hour.”
RYAN LINKED ARMS with Krysty and they walked south, along what had been the main street of Breckenridge, past row after row of ruined stores, some with their faded names still visible after nearly a hundred years.
“That’s an odd name.” Ryan pointed at what seemed to have been an art shop. “Yrellag Gallery. Think it’s a Native American name, lover?”