“Can we stay?” Ryan asked bluntly. In battle, or cutting a deal with a baron, he knew what to do. But sickness like this was more Mildred’s specialty, and only a triple stupe would make a guess when he had an expert standing three feet away.
“Keep the handkerchiefs over your faces,” she directed. “Don’t touch anything with your bare hands, and for God’s sake don’t eat or drink anything unless it’s in a sealed can. We’ll be okay.”
“Must have hit like lightning,” Krysty muttered, looking away from tiny corpses, still clutched in their mother’s arms.
“Goddamn it!” Mildred raged, clenching her fists. “I could have saved this whole ville with a pocketful of rehydration salt and some tetracycline. Or even old furazolidone!”
Jak stared at the physician, wondering if she was making up those words.
“Got any of the chems?” Krysty asked bluntly. “Do they exist anymore, even in the redoubts?” The physician sometimes got this way over her inability to cure diseases that were such simple matters in her day, and now were the unstoppable plagues of the reality that was Deathlands.
“Can’t even remember what penicillin tastes like anymore,” Mildred admitted gloomily. Her med kit hung heavy at her side. She had the skill to cure the people, but not the tools. Sometimes the physician got so frustrated she thought she’d go as mad as Doc.
Going to the other side of the gate, J.B. found that a bulldozer was attached with lots of heavy chains to pull the gate open, its shovel flat against the container to keep it closed again. It was one hell of an impressive gate. Going to the driver’s seat, the Armorer found a corpse sprawled in the chair, skinny arms still on the controls.
“Aced trying to get out,” J.B. said, climbing into the dozer and checking the gauges.
“Nuke batteries have plenty of power,” he reported, thumping a control board. Rust fell from under the dashboard like dried blood. “But it’s out of fuel.”
“Let it stay there,” Ryan decided. He had no intention of wasting any of their precious fuel on operating the big wag. They would need every drop for the gateway to get them out of here. He only hoped it was still intact. People often destroyed pre-dark technology simply out of fear. If that had happened to the gateway, well, he had another plan to get them out of the Cific, but it was a hell of a lot more risky than using the gateway.
“Wonder how they moved the boxes,” Doc rumbled, leaning on his stick, hands clasped on the silver lion’s-head handle.
“No biggie,” Dean said, pointing. “See? They’re empty.”
Ryan looked closer and noted that all of the containers had holes cut in the side to serve as doorways and windows. But there was no glass, and the doors were only hanging sheets of canvas.
“They lived inside the wall,” Ryan said, rubbing his chin. “Smart. Anybody tried to get in, and you’d hear them on the metal roof.”
“Must have been a bitch cutting the doors,” J.B. stated, tilting back his hat. “Those aren’t plas-ex holes. Mebbe they used chisels and hacksaws.”
“Take weeks,” Jak said grimly. “Months.”
“Mebbe the locals needed the steel boxes to keep out something no sandbag-and-wood barricade could,” Krysty said, her hair stirring to unfelt breezes. The sense of death in the ville was strong, but somewhere life was stirring weakly. It was like a tickle with a feather, almost too soft to feel. Then as quickly as it came, the sensation was gone.
“Triple red,” Ryan whispered softly. The hairs rising on the back of his neck, he raised the Steyr and scanned the area quickly.
“So you felt it, too?” Krysty said, clicking back the hammer on her S&W .38 revolver.
“We’re being watched,” Mildred agreed. “Don’t know from where.” The hundred holes in the encircling wall each seemed to stare blankly at the companions below. But from one of those dark holes, living eyes watched their every move.
“Could be the birds. Got to clear this place out,” J.B. said. Sliding the shotgun off his shoulder, he jacked the action and fired a 12-gauge round into the birds. The flock erupted in bloody feathers, the rest lifted into the air, only to settle down again and begin to feed once more.