“Then Frederick…” Ryan continued. “I recall that. The ville’s close to there.”
“We’ve got to cross the river first,” Krysty said qui-etly. “Looks wide from that map.”
“Lotta toll bridges built in the Shens,” Ryan said. “Trade or jack.”
“What’re we gonna do?” Jak asked, climbing back into the driver’s seat. “No jack. What trade?”
Ryan held up the Heckler & Koch. “I figure this is all the trade I need.”
Doc wiped his face with his swallow’s eye kerchief. “Least we don’t have ice to cross the Delaware like…like somebody or other did, but I disremember who.”
The highways weren’t in bad condition. The surface was cracked and deteriorated, but most of the way it was drivable. Every so often the road disappeared under an
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earthslip, or was washed out of the world by a swollen river.
Occasionally they’d pass by the tumbled ruins of a small hamlet. Most buildings were totally destroyed, though the central stone chimneys remained standing- fingers pointing upward like graveyard memorials. Now and again they’d come across one or two intact build-ings, scorched clapboard rotting away. A doctor’s shin-gle would still be legible, or a rectangular crimson soft drink machine would squat outside the tumbled relic of a general store.
Grass and weeds had taken over most of the land, sometimes bursting through the tarmac of the highway. J.B. took over at the steering wheel from Jak as the day wore on. They stopped to refill the tank from one of the cans, standing in the soft afternoon heat under an azure sky.
They saw more birds, dipping and swooping over a mud hollow, feasting on the lazy clouds of tiny insects. A little way off to the right they could see the remains of a gas station. The building itself had completely vanished un-der tangling vines, but the metal-and-glass pumps re-mained, white and maroon paint peeling off in patches.
“Look,” Krysty said, pointing farther down the blacktop, where a single human figure stood shimmering in the heat.
“Trouble?” J.B. asked, hand dropping automatically to the butt of the mini-Uzi.
Ryan shaded his eye with his hand. “Road’s wide there. No brush close to it. Can’t be an ambush. Not one alone.”
As a precaution they closed some of the blaster ports, keeping careful watch through the others, and Ryan slid the roof vent across and bolted it. Because of the menace
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of stickies it wasn’t a good idea to give them any way to get at you. Ryan sat up front, riding shotgun with Jak.
J.B. had left the driver’s seat and taken up a position by the rear ob-slit.
“Take it slow, Jak,” Ryan warned. “Get ready to push the pedal through the metal.”
The young albino boy looked up at him, shaking his head. “Wanna tell me how t’wipe my ass, Grandad Ryan?”
“Cheeky bastard. Trouble with young kids now. Too much gall and not enough sand. Let’s go, Jak.”
The wall lurched forward as the teenager crashed it into gear, making everything in the sweating box of the main compartment rattle and fall.
“He moving?” Krysty asked.
“No. Still where he was. Can’t see any danger. No-body else is there.”
“Could be a trap,” Doc Tanner suggested from the right side of the wag.
“Could be. One man isn’t about to take an armed wag.”
Ryan stared through the slit in the wired and armored glass of the windshield. As they moved steadily along the track, he was able to see the motionless stranger a little better.
It was a male, around average height, tending toward skinny. In the Deathlands you didn’t very often get to see anyone fat.
He was wearing a light gray coat that hung below his knees, the breeze tugging at its hem. His pants were also gray, tucked into brown laced-up work boots. His hair was cropped to a mousy stubble over prominent ears. His skull was long and narrow.
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“Slow it down,” Ryan ordered. “Keep your eyes dou-ble-wide.”
He kept the automatic rifle trained on the man as the wag eased to a crawl. The face of the stranger was turned up, incurious, the eyes locking on Ryan’s eye. The expression didn’t alter. Ryan spotted the heavy old horse pistol that was jammed into the man’s wide belt. It looked as if it’d been used for everything from stirring stew to hammering in fence posts.