“Shoot the horses?” Dean asked askance, looking up from his work. The Browning Hi-Power was lying on a clean piece of cloth completely disassembled. The boy was cleaning each piece thoroughly before rebuilding the blaster.
“No,” his father replied coldly. “We’ll ride them till they die. Get every mile out of them we can. I’d prefer to find food and keep them for the rest of our journey.”
“Me, too!”
“Maybe we should check out the ruins,” Mildred ventured, sipping her tin cup of cold turkey bouillon. “Dried cereals on the supermarket shelves, cans of corn, envelopes of oatmeal, could be lots of food down there.”
“The big one looks like a Hyatt,” she continued.
“Good hotel. I always stayed at them for medical conferences.”
Ryan sucked a hollow tooth. “Don’t recall ever looting a hotel before. But come to think of it, they would have lots of usable items. Tons of canned goods for the kitchen, good knives, too. Soap and shampoo, TP, radio and blasters in the sec office.”
“Should be lots of clothing. I could use a new belt.”
“Socks,” Jak said.
“There could be nothing. Rats usually get everything not in a can, and rust gets that,” Ryan countered, putting aside the gnawed fish. Whatever Flat Rock did to preserve the stuff almost made the things inedible. His teeth ached from chewing on the smoked trout. “I think we stand a better chance finding food on the road. We’ll leave the roads and start cutting cross-country.”
“Well, there’s a redoubt to the south of here,” J.B. said, reading the map. The firelight glistened off his glasses, casting tiny rainbows across his face. “But it’s over 150 miles away.”
He turned the map over. “Now, just sixty miles to the north is the town of Shiloh, of which we know nothing. But to the northwest is Shiloh battlefield. There’s a redoubt there, and it’s only a hundred miles away.”
“Two birds, one stone,” Krysty said sagely. “I vote for simplicity.”
“Ville near redoubt had horses,” Jak reminded them. He stood and stretched his arms, working a kink from his neck. It had been a long time since he did this much riding, and surprisingly, it was his back that was sore, not his ass.
“That ville also had lots of folks who wanted us chilled,” J.B. reminded the teenager.
Jak drew his blaster and checked the load in the cylinder. “Don’t care. You decide. I relieve Doc horses.” As silent as a jungle panther, the pale teenager slipped into the darkness and was gone.
“Anything useful in the Shiloh redoubt?” Dean asked, assembling his weapon without looking. Springs tucked into place neatly, and the carriage entered the oiled frame without hindrance.
Watching the work with approval, Ryan shook his head. “The base was stripped bare. Although, there are miles upon miles of tunnels under the redoubt, and we never did more than a fast recce into those. Could be anything stored down there.”
Finished, the boy eased the clip into place and jacked the slide. “Mebbe that’s where Overton was getting his blasters from, the Shiloh redoubt.”
“Could be,” Ryan said thoughtfully. “It just could damn well be the spot.”
The talk went on far into the night, and soon the decision was made. They would bypass all of the towns named Shiloh on their list and head straight for the Civil War battlefield of Shiloh Church.
THE CAMPFIRE WAS dwindling to red embers, the unburned ends of logs glowing in the darkness. Soft snoring came from the still figures under the blankets around the fire pit, along with the occasional mumbled word.
Blaster resting on his lap, J.B. sat sipping cold coffee and listening to the night. The insects and birds told more of what was happening in the area than vision could. An owl hooted its eternal question, something with wings soared overhead and a line of ants marched over his combat boot seeking the crumbs from their dinner.
The thin grass rustled as a dry breeze blew over the campsite. Then there was another rustle, but the breeze had ceased.
With instincts honed in a hundred battles, J.B. stood and threw a bundle of branches onto the embers. The oil-soaked wood burst into flames, filling the area with bright light that revealed a dozen figures near the horses, fumbling with the reins.
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