Lighting more candles, the companions proceeded carefully inside the room. In the flickering glow, they saw the rest of the horses lying on the floor, muffled cries coming their bound mouths.
“The monsters!” Mildred said, furious. “The greenies cut the leg tendons so the horses couldn’t run away.”
“Damn,” Jak said grimly. “No fix that.”
Krysty drew her blaster. “Nobody can fix that kind of wound. These horses are cripples. They’ll never walk again.”
“Stinking bastards,” J.B. spit, leveling his Uzi. The Armorer fired single shots, putting the crippled animals out of their misery.
“Done,” he said finally, slamming a fresh magazine home. “Let’s get the hell out of here.”
“Gladly, sir,” Doc rumbled, wiping some splashed blood off his cheek.
Holding a candle high, Ryan inspected some shelves. Aside from empty shoe boxes and wire coat hangers, there was nothing. “Damn. Find any of our packs anywhere while you were searching?” he asked.
Making sure the horses were dead, Mildred stood. “Not a thing. Just garbage and cobwebs.”
“Great. No horses, no food, only the ammo in our pockets,” Krysty growled. “Mebbe we should just head for the nearest redoubt and jump out of here. We’re not going to take the blues with what we have.”
“Mebbe,” Ryan said, walking toward the door. In the corridor, he turned, a new expression on his face. “Jak, in the parking lot you took a while to decide coming here. Why?”
“Odd tracks,” the teenager replied. “Horses here, greenies elsewhere. We want horses. Came here.”
“But they obviously took the saddles and backpacks someplace else.”
He shrugged. “Looks like.”
“Which means there are possibly a lot more of them,” Doc stated, then gestured grandly at the armory. “This degenerate abattoir is merely their kitchen, for lack of a better word.”
“We find their nest, we find our packs,” Dean concluded. “The ruins aren’t very big. It’ll only take us a few hours to recce.”
“Agreed,” Ryan said, working the bolt on his long-blaster. “Let’s go get those supplies back.”
Chapter Fourteen
Hidden in the shadows, a greenie watched the norms below from behind the sheet of mirrored glass in the tall building. He made fists, and the knuckle-thorns slid in and out as he debated attacking them now or waiting until they met the master and were helpless.
The choice was clear, and the symbiote left the room to gather more of his leafy brethren. Soon, oh, so very soon, the feasting would begin.
RETURNING OUTSIDE, Jak found the trail in the parking lot and started toward the ruins with the companions close behind. The moon was descending toward a bank of clouds, signaling the end of night. Soon, Ryan and the others would be visible.
The square foundations of homes and stores lined the streets in an orderly procession, most of the holes filled with debris, sand and weeds. Rubble was everywhere underfoot, along with bits of rusting machinery and a dusting of sand. In another hundred years, the desert would claim the predark city, eventually swallowing the monoliths under windblown drifts. Already the windows facing windward were frosted white from the constant bombardment of the hard particles.
Intent on the trail, Jak darted past a manhole missing its cover. Ryan knew that the lid had been probably taken for the iron. Manhole covers made good armor for war wags, or folks could melt them down for horseshoes, or even nails. As a child, Ryan remembered finding a lot more of the smaller items from similar predark ruins. But now the buildings were getting picked clean, and people were turning to making things once more. Doc considered that a step toward rebuilding civilization, but Ryan wasn’t sure. The first things most folks made were blasters and gallows.
Stopping at an intersection, Jak went down on a knee to study the ground closely, his fingers hovering above the pavement. A bug was crushed at one point, and a stone overturned, its wet side now facing the nighttime sky.
“Trouble?” Ryan asked, cradling the longblaster in his arms. He could tell somebody had passed by very recently, but not how many, or where they were headed. Jak’s expertise was tracking.
“No prob,” the teenager replied, starting to move about in an ever expanding spiral. Frowning, he finally stood.