But now he gave them his full attention because they were giving him a big share of theirs.
“Fuckers probably rabid.” Jak walked at Ryan’s side little more than an arm’s length away. Far enough away they wouldn’t get tangled with each other when they moved, but close enough they could move together if they needed to.
“If they decide to attack, a man might not live long enough to find out anyway.” Ryan reached to his right hip and loosened the thong holding the SIG-Sauer P-226 in the holster. He took up the razor-edged panga in his left hand, fingers curled loosely around the haft. The blade was an eighteen-inch extension of himself, and he knew it intimately.
“Mebbe chill couple. Let eat each other.” Jak fisted some of his leaf-bladed throwing knives.
“No.” Ryan kept walking, determined to give the rats a wide berth if at all possible. He crossed the street, staying away from the main body of the pack.
After the nukecaust, Mother Nature’s hand was no longer solely responsible for the grand designs of all creatures great and small. Especially in the rad-blasted areas. Mutie blood showed up, changing things forever. Sometimes the rad-burn had created a wholly new creature with no ties to whatever had originally sired it.
Without warning, the scream rushed through the street again, echoing within the cavernous vaults left inside the collapsed buildings. The rats paused, throwing their broad warty snouts into the breeze.
“Smell it?” Jak asked.
Ryan took a breath. The albino teen’s senses were more developed than most, but he had no problem sorting out the fecund scent of death. “Yeah.”
The scream dragged on for a few short seconds, then broke in the middle. For a moment, Ryan thought the screamer had finally died. Before he turned to glance in Krysty’s direction to check with her, the voice returned as a snuffling sob.
He couldn’t recognize the words, but he knew from the tones that the screamer was a woman.
Ryan stayed close to the crumbled remains. He kept the panga ready in his hand while he followed the barrel of the Steyr forward. Furtive movements sounded inside the building.
With his trained eye, Ryan saw past the ruined facade of the building. Paths had been cleared through the rubble, a sure indication of some kind of habitation.
The Trader had taught Ryan and everyone else under his command to look for signs such as those. Paths around a body of fresh water or a river were understandable and to be expected. Man and beast alike both needed a source of fresh drinking water to survive.
But a path worn into an area where there was no source of water meant something else entirely. Especially when the crossers of those paths were human. At those times, the Trader had pointed out, a smart man knew he had a host of buyers just waiting to be approached. Men or women who made it a habit of crossing other people’s paths were looking to get something they wanted from the other party—by whatever means they could get it.
Ryan knew from studying the barren earth worn between the patches of weeds and grass that the area was heavily traveled. It meant either the predators gathered there to attack those weaker than themselves, or that someone had gone into business managing supply and demand for the area.
The big man’s curiosity flared into being. Though he had seen a considerable amount of Deathlands, he wanted to see more.
He took up the Steyr in both hands and followed the trail up the steep incline in front of him. He glanced at Jak, watching the youth step into the shadows under some of the broken rock. Jak disappeared within three steps, leaving nothing to mark his passage through the rock.
WRAPPING THE STEYR’S SLING around his forearm to better balance the weapon, Ryan crested the hill. Peering over the edge, Ryan studied the scene unfolding before him.
Over the top of the hill, the land fell away and pooled in a bowl-shaped depression rimmed by stacks of junked cars and the shattered remains of a few warehouses and garages. A rusted fence topped with barbed wire encircled most of the lot. Over the broken remnants of two wire gates, a listing sign with faded paint proclaimed Samuelson’s Wrecking Yard.
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