The boy studied the tree closely. “Sure,” he stated, and dropped his backpack to the ground. Tightening his belt, the boy started shimmying up the thick trunk and disappeared into the foliage.
“Anything?” his father shouted.
“Nothing yet!” came back the answer. “Wait a minute.”
The companions drew closer to the tree, hands on their weapons in case of trouble. A minute passed, then several, their expressions began to turn worried.
“Dean?” Krysty called gently through cupped hands.
But only the rustle of leaves responded, a few colorful birds taking flight from the dense overhang of greenery.
“I’m going after him,” Ryan declared, passing the Steyr to the redhead. Dropping his backpack, the man grabbed a low limb and chinned himself off the ground just as Dean dropped through the leaves to land sprawling in the bushes.
“Plane,” the boy said standing, his face bright with excitement. “Think I found a plane!”
“In the air?” Mildred asked in concern, scanning the sky through the holes in the sylvan canopy. It was one of her biggest worries. Even worse than a runaway plague. Anybody who got a powered airplane into the sky could seize absolute control of the Deathlands. There were few enough weapons working these days, and nothing that would challenge a skyfighter. Even an old box kite like the Wright brothers made for the U.S. government to use in World War I and some black-powder bombs would be enough. Just the threat of death from above would make most villes surrender automatically. The destruction of the world from the sky bombs had burned a very real fear of aerial attacks into the very souls of the human survivors.
Dean shook his head. “No, just caught in the branches. About a mile away. Big one. Looks intact.”
“Useless,” Krysty said. “If it’s visible, it’s been looted.”
The boy shook his head. “No way you could find it from the ground. Got to be high to see it.”
There was a pause. “I think,” he added honestly.
“Even crumbling walls can offer shelter,” Doc offered as comment.
“An airplane,” Ryan muttered, rubbing his chin. “Same direction as the pulse?”
“Yes, Dad.”
“Remember what the Trader taught us about crashed planes,” J.B. said, patting his empty Uzi machine pistol.
“Just what I was thinking,” the Deathlands warrior said, almost grinning. Shelter or not, there could be salvage. Blasters, ammo, food, hidden sagely away where nobody would ever find them. Lots of things they needed.
“Let’s check it out,” Ryan said, and started pushing a path through the tangled growth.
GROANING SOFTLY, Whyte awoke to a pounding headache and the stink of burning flesh. Almost immediately, there was a violent explosion, and something fell alongside the sec man with a thump. As his vision cleared, Whyte saw it was a dead stickie with a gaping hole in its bleeding chest. The mutie worked its suckers a few times as if fighting for life, then went still.
Hastily scrambling away, the sec man drew his own blaster and scanned the area for more of the muties. There were none, but he gasped upon seeing the smoking remains of a huge explosion.
The bus was spread wide open, resembling a metal flower that had been set on fire. Thick black smoke from the chassis was curling high into the overcast sky. The charred remains of norms and horses lay strewed across the asphalt, many of the bodies in pieces as if torn apart by wild animals.
After a moment, he realized it had to be from their ammo pouches detonating when the men were set on fire from the explosion. Cooked alive, then blown in two. Black dust, what a bad way to get aced. Wasn’t even quick.
“A bastard trap,” Whyte growled angrily. “Triple damn the outlanders. I’ll make them pay.”
“Over here!” a voice called.
Spinning, Whyte cocked back the hammer on his big flintlock. But only the dead were in sight, skins burned black, hair gone and clothing reduced to a layer of ash over the charred remains. Then he noticed a smoking blaster being waved from behind the sprawled body of a cooked horse. Approaching carefully, the sec man went around the chilled animal to discover Colonel Mitchum on the ground, his legs pinned under the beast from the knees down.