The barman had been telling the truth, at least in part. There was no way to miss Moonboy.
Some freak of geologic erosion had created a wide, protected nook in the promontory rock. Below them, the ville lay nestled in a roughly circular box canyon. Even though the actual paving had long since disintegrated, at a distance of one thousand yards Ryan and the others could still make out the mazelike layout of the predark development’s streets. They could also see the gridwork of its building lots, though ninety-five per cent of the original dwellings had been reduced to rubble by the trinuke, by the elements and by legions of human scavengers. A few of the light poles stood upright, towering over the spreading shamble of huts and shacks. Because the backsides of some of the surviving three-story buildings faced them, most of Moonboy’s main street was blocked from their view.
“Stay low,” Ryan warned, “and keep your weapons down. We don’t want sun flashing off our gun barrels.”
They watched in silence for a few minutes, passing their three pairs of binocs back and forth. Nothing moved below.
“A ghost ville,” Dean said.
“I don’t see anything but recycled predark wreckage down there,” Ryan stated.
“The scrounger might have made up the story about muties with strange chilling gear just to cadge a few drinks,” Krysty suggested.
“Yeah, but a ville this size, this time of day should have people walking around,” Ryan replied. “There’s no sign of life.”
At his suggestion, J.B. moved out to scout another angle of view, and he came back, quick. ‘ ‘Better all have a look,” J.B. said.
The companions followed him around the far side of the ridge’s spires, and, from the new vantage point, got a view straight down the main drag. Something strange was going on there, all right. Something dark stuck up in the middle of the deserted street. They took turns looking at it through the rubber-armored binocs.
“A derrick, maybe,” Mildred said. “Plenty tall. On eight wheels. Could be motor-driven.”
“It’s never seen a nuke attack, or a drop of acid rain, either,” Dix said. “Metal looks new.”
“Way over to the right,” Krysty said. “Is that a war wag?”
Ryan accepted the binocs from her and framed the vehicle in its view field. Painted desert camou, with oversized, all-terrain tires, the squat wag had an enclosed, two-man driver compartment, but there was no armored rear passenger area for troops. “Not like any LAV I ever saw,” he said.
What was behind the vehicle was even more interesting to him. On a big-wheeled flatbed trailer, connected to the wag by a tow hook, sat a streamlined black machine on skids.
“Mildred, what do you make of the thing it’s towing? Looks like a helicopter,” Ryan said.
After studying the object, she said, “Yes. It looks to me like a one-person helicopter.”
“Predark flying machine designed for vertical takeoffs and landings,” J.B. affirmed.
“Right, only it’s all blackthere’s no window for the pilot to see out of,” Mildred went on. “And I’ve never seen a chopper with a rotor configuration like that. The tail rotor’s ninety degrees off line and it’s way too big, almost like a rear propeller. All those stubby things sticking out of the nose, that looks like a weapons cluster to me.”
“Had to have been looted from a redoubt,” J.B. said with confidence. “But what’s it doing here?”
Ryan lowered the binocs. It was a good question.
The all-out nuclear exchange of 2001 had produced an electromagnetic pulse that had fried every computer chip and circuit board on the planet, save those buried deep in the fortified, radiation-shielded bunker complexes known as redoubts. Ryan knew that operational flying machines still existed in Deathlands. They’d seen them. But as far as he was concerned, travel by air was nothing more than a fable told by Dr. Mildred Wyeth. Assuming such a machine was found, and that it could be prepped and fueled, there was no safe way to learn how to fly it by trial and error. The only use it could serve was as an ornament in some baron’s garden. Armageddon had turned humankind back into a species of flatlanders, of dirt crawlers.