The raggedy man stood and watched, face blank with shock. His whole family had been iced in the blinking of an eye, and it still hadn’t really registered. And now his wag was going to disappear forever, A great flow of tears suddenly began to course down Renz’s filthy cheeks.
“Take me with you.”
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Ryan ignored him. “Back in the wag, everyone. Let’s move out.”
“Fuck you!”
The engine rumbled, gouts of blue-gray smoke hang-ing in the air, pierced by shafts of silver moonlight. Ryan gestured to J.B. to join the others, backing away slowly himself and keeping the blaster trained on the solitary man. The corpse dangling from the jagged end of the branch finally ceased twitching and hung still.
“Can’t make it on my own!” Renz stooped and picked up the sawed-off shotgun, lifting it to his face.
Ryan hesitated, considering chilling the man. But bul-lets were scarce.
He stepped backward until he was in the open door-way of the wag, never taking his eyes off the solitary fig-ure. Renz was holding the scattergun, staring down at the twin barrels as though he couldn’t quite understand what they were.
“Get in, Ryan. I got him covered,” J.B. said from be-hind him.
“Bastards!” Renz shouted, his torn voice ringing harsh through the forest, clearly audible even inside the racket-ing box of the big wag. Ryan began to close the sliding door.
The clouds had drifted away from the moon, and the clearing was as brightly lit as a stage, Renz at its center. The gun was close to his open mouth, and his eyes were fixed on the door of the wag.
The explosion was muffled.
Even as the door slammed shut, the sec locks clicking into place, Ryan saw the top of the man’s head disinte-grate in a great spray that looked as black as beads of jet in the moonlight.
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“Did he… ?” Krysty began, seeing Ryan nod the an-swer.
“Let’s go, Jak,” Ryan ordered, holding on as the ve-hicle began to grind its way westward.
Chapter Fourteen
the wag was big enough to carry all six comfortably, and each had a narrow bunk. The self-heats in the kitchen area of the wag lacked labels, which made meals an inter-esting lottery. Near the back, in its own partitioned closet, was a chem toilet. Generally the vehicle was scruffy and stank of old sweat, but during the first morning’s driving they bowled along with the blaster ports and roof vents open, all working together to sweep and clean the inte-rior.
The half-breed truck seemed in good mechanical con-dition. They stopped about ten in the morning because the arrow in the temperature gauge was showing signs of veering into the red. But when Jak checked under the hood he found the reading was false. One of the pistons was worn, and the exhaust roared more loudly than it should have.
“Going t’be heavy on gas,” he said. “Good job’s cans in back.”
None of them knew it, but there was another hundred gallons of precious gas hidden away in the undergrowth near the five corpses.
it was late in the afternoon when they reached the fast-flowing expanse of the Delaware River, looking to cross it near the ruined ville of Stockton. The dash of the wag held some fragile old maps, creased and crumpled, which
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were held together with brown bits of tape and frayed string.
The parts of the maps that would have shown the trails to Front Royal were missing, ragged edges taking them tantalizingly close to their proposed destination. Ryan pored over them at a small table near the open port, the others peering over his shoulder.
“North along the Delaware, toward Easton. Around Allentown and on to… Can’t read that name. Doc? Can you make it?”
“My eyes are not, frankly, as sharp as once they were, my dear Ryan. But I believe it must be the town of Har-risburg, and from thence to Gettysburg. By the three Kennedys and the one Lincoln, but there is a name to stir the cockles of memory. That we should be going there af-ter-” He turned away quickly and went to sit down on his bunk, where Lori ran to comfort him.