After his escape from the posse, he and Trader had been constantly on the move, only stopping in the many abandoned cabins that were scattered around the Cascades when the weather closed in on them.
It had been a hard time for both of them.
Though they were free of the pursuit, the land was inherently hostile, the cold and snow a constant danger. Abe had sprained an ankle falling badly over the wrecked and rusting remains of an ancient semi, hidden beneath the blizzard. And Trader’s variety of old wounds, injuries and illnesses kept him quieter and much less active than usual.
“Should I go and hunt now?”
Trader shook his head. It had been several days since either of them had shaved, and his cheeks and chin were covered with a silvery stubble.
“Leave it awhile. Warmer days coming, Hun. I mean Abe. Let’s stay where we are in this good old cave.”
What worried Abe was that the “good old cave” had contained a substantial heap of gnawed bones and rotting flesh. As well, there were piles of fairly fresh bear droppings in the woods only a few yards away.
“I’ll go later.”
“Sure, Abe, sure. You noticed how this place makes your voice sort of echo and sound odd?”
“Yeah. Hollow kind of sound.”
“I tell you about the time me and Marsh Folsom came across that cache of”
“The war wags up in the Apps? Sure you have. But that was thirty years gone.”
“I know that,” Trader said angrily. “You best stop treating me like your fucking triple-stupe grandpa, Abe, or you’ll have my blaster where the sun don’t shine.”
“Sorry, but you”
Trader rode over him, ignoring the fact that he’d been in the middle of a sentence. “When Marsh and me found” Abe stayed silent. Trader looked at him. “Come on, for fuck’s sake. Help me out a little.”
“When you found that huge store of gas hundred and fifty miles north of the old ville of Boston.”
“No.” Trader’s face brightened. “Though all of that’s true. I ever tell you what happened to Marsh Folsom? The way it all ran out for him? I tell you?”
“Plenty of times. But you were going to tell me something different, Trader.”
“I was?”
“You was.”
“What?”
Abe laughed, the movement shaking a dew-drop of moisture from the end of his beaky, broken nose, into the dangling fronds of his mustache. “You started saying how our voices sounded in this cave and that it reminded you of something.”
Trader clapped his hands together. “Sure thing. I got the ace on the line now. Me and Marsh was north of the big lakes. Them days we spent a lot of our hunting time in the north and the east. Good for pre-dark stuff. We found this old kind of a redoubt, I guess it was.”
“Using those gateways and mat-trans units. Ryan and the others been into dozens of redoubts all over.”
“You told me that scads of times, Abe. I’ll believe them when I see them. These jump gates.”
Abe didn’t bother to correct him, looking out beyond the sinking fire into the dull morning, where snow was already starting to turn to rain.
“This redoubt we found was small. Sort of hidden warehouse for military hardware. Ryan and me” His brow furrowed. “No. This has to be before Ryan and the Armorer came and joined us. Before the war wags, I think. What do you think?”
“Before my time, Trader.”
“This place was two floors high and contained forty or fifty rooms. Each of them had once held a different kind of weapon or explosive. Plas-ex, nitro, Sem-tex, good old black powder even. And any number of grens.”
“Frags?”
“Sure. Blue and red implodes. Remotes and nervies. Burners and stuns. Delays and plain hi-ex. Shraps and smokies. Lights and even some hi-alts.”
“What kind of firing mechanisms?”
“Both, Abe. Flip-tops and two-step buttons. Seemed to be thousands of them.”
“Just you and Marsh Folsom?”
Trader sighed. “Points like this is where my memory gets sort of foggy, Abe. Those days I think I traveled with a handful of good men and women. Five or six of us. Taylor and Rathman. Man who did it was called Wyoming Johnny. Tall with hair that was split half black and half white. Got himself caught in a nasty acid spill, somewhere up near old Cheyenne. Face looked like it was made from minced tomatoes.”