The needle of the rad counter wavered, edging between yellow and orange. The level of contamination around them was still tolerable, if not exactly safe, at least if they didn’t expose themselves to it for very long. He assumed Teague would have taken standard shielding precautions if he intended to drive the Sandcat into a hellzone.
Domi guided the vehicle up and over another bluff and onto fairly level ground once more. She increased the speed to forty miles per hour. After six miles, the rad counter slowly crept over to the orange band. The few trees they saw were leached of all color, a monochromatic shade of gray. It was like looking at the world through the night-vision visor, only not quite as stark. The sun overhead was bright, but the countryside was various shades of gray. A few dead branches crunched under the treads, falling apart like sculptures made of ash.
Ahead of them appeared a collection of improvised shelters made of rotting wood, cloth and canvas. A cluster of a dozen or so raggedy people stood around the structures. When they saw the Sandcat coming, they shuffled this way and that, fanning out to make room for its passage. Domi downshifted, easing off on the accelerator as they passed by. Kane looked at them, and they looked at him. The hairs at the nape of his neck tingled.
He’d seen more than his fair share of Dregs, but even so, he was repulsed by the disfigured faces. The rad count wasn’t even midpoint orange, but generations of exposure had thoroughly tainted the people’s gene pool. Blood and pus and serum dripped from clusters of boils all over their bodies, their afflicted faces grotesque parodies of a human being’s.
As the vehicle rolled past, he noticed that a few of them reacted to his Mag armor, and they called out words in thick, beseeching tones.
“What do they want?” Kane asked. “Food, medicine?”
“No,” said Domi. “They see a sec man. They want sec man to chill them.” She bared her teeth briefly in a mirthless grin. “They want Mag’s mercy.”
Half to himself, Kane muttered, “What possible use did Reeth have for them?”
He didn’t expect an answer, but Domi provided one. “They expendable. They as good as dead,” she said stolidly. “Fewer born every year. Fewer live long enough to have children.”
Anger burned redly in her eyes. “Heard term once. ‘Planned extinction.’ Thanks to fucking villes, thanks to fucking Mags. Thanks to fucking barons.”
Domi stopped talking as she upshifted, pressed on the gas pedal and swung the Sandcat down into a dry streambed that twisted and turned among low hills. Everyone was jounced, bounced, tossed and thoroughly pummeled. It occurred to Kane that if the Mags didn’t kill them, the escape route might. During the nukecaust, “earthshaker” bombs had not only completely resculpted the Cific coast, but had triggered month-long earthquakes that had shaken thousands of square miles with cataclysmic shocks and tremors.
The wag’s suspension creaked and groaned so loudly, Kane was actually glad he still wore his helmet. The polystyrene foam lining helped a little to mute the sounds. The narrow streambed swerved around rock formations, and Grant swore as the vehicle yawed and tossed him against Brigid. Pebbles rattled noisily beneath the rolling treads and chassis.
The path swung up out of the dry arroyo with a lazy serpentine motion, and Domi steered the wag along a narrow trail overlooking a wide, shallow gully. Shouldering the sky in the near distance were the ancient eroded crags surrounding Mesa Verde canyon. Kane started to turn to tell the others in the back, then static hissed thinly in his ear. Ice coursed through his Veins.
A faint crackly voice said “track”
Kane tilted his head to the right, trying to focus on the voices filtering through his coram link.
“West by northwesttrackgetfix.”
Pollard’s voice. Kane checked his chron. The Deathbirds were nearly half an hour behind schedule.
Chapter Twenty-Five
“The Birds are just now coming into comm range,” Kane warned. “We’ve got a three-mile lead.”
Grant didn’t conceal his anger. “Three miles or three hundred, what the hell difference does it make? Once they’ve fixed our position, they’ll catch us in no time flat.”