Ryan roused himself from semislumber against the cab of the wag and joined Mildred. J.B. got on the other side. The wag continued on across the bumpy road, jarring the occupants as it rolled along at forty or fifty miles per hour.
The remains of the entertainment city lay like a dying neon rose in the parched sand of the desert. Dozens of colors sprayed across the broken buildings jutting from the landscape, and seemed to be centered in the heart of the city.
“Skydark was hard on this burg,” Mildred said. “It used to be something to look at.”
“Been here?” J.B. asked.
Mildred nodded, her gaze glued on the city as they came down off the long, sweeping hills surrounding Vegas. “A couple visits. First time was when I was a college freshman. Sort of to get the bridle in my teeth and prove I could do anything I wanted to do.”
Ryan ran his eye over the wreckage of the city, which hadn’t taken direct hits from nukes like some of the larger metropolitan areas during the war. But the nukes that had claimed nearby silo sites had created enough particle drift to kill off most vegetation and animal life in the days and weeks that followed. Very little had crept back into the area to begin the struggle against the desert and leftover rad spots. The terrain so far had been dull, echoing a depressing monotony.
The city was far more interesting. There were some tall buildings among the shorter ones, but the majority of space was taken on the horizontal rather than the vertical, not like Lantic Ocean coastal villes. At some point decades past, quakes had riven Vegas, splintering it and leaving huge, gaping cracks in the streets. The tectonic pressures had also tumbled down most of the taller buildings.
Ryan glanced at the line of wags ahead of them, then the few that followed. In the six days they’d been traveling, there’d been no sign of Krysty or the others. Not all of the six days had been necessary to make the trip, but Hardcoe and LeMarck had made certain they were used. There’d also been limited interaction with LeMarck, and none at all with the baron. The sec commander treated them like valuable livestock.
“How well do you think you remember your way around the ville?” he asked Mildred.
“Depends on where we go. Vegas is built on a strip where all the action stayed. Provided the pit is located somewhere in that, and the landmarks weren’t too screwed up by the quakes and whatever scavengers there might have been, I can find my way around.”
“Gives us an edge,” Ryan said.
“Mighty slim one,” J.B. acknowledged.
Ryan nodded. “Going to have to work with what we have.” He stayed at the bars, studying the ville as the convoy drew closer. According to LeMarck and what Ryan had learned from the Heimdall Foundation men, the chilling was scheduled to begin at midnight. He’d wondered about that at first, trying to understand how they’d be able to wander around in the dark and tell who was chilling who. But seeing the way the neon lights lit up the ville’s inner core resolved that mystery. All that remained was the living and the dying.
“IS THAT THE WAG housing our companions, Krysty?” Doc asked.
From their vantage point up above the narrow road that led down into Vegas, the red-haired woman adjusted the magnification on her binoculars. She brought the first few wags into focus, not recognizing anyone.
The first wag slowed to cross a narrow wooden bridge that linked the cracked remnants of the highway on either side of a twelve- or fifteen-foot fissure that looked almost as deep. Twilight made it harder to judge distances.
She moved back, scanning each wag in turn. She knew LeMarck by sight. During the last three of the six days they’d spent pursuing the convoy, she’d marked the sec commander’s face, knowing him from the description Ryan and Bernsen had provided, the latter confirming it visually on one occasion.
The initial three days of the pursuit, the companions had traveled hell-bent for leather, having to circle around a few times to pick up the convoy’s trail. A map of the southwestern United States, found in the overturned wag, had helped them considerably, but had been misleading at times, as well. When they’d caught up with Hardcoe’s convoy, they’d had to slow down, waiting for an opportunity to free Ryan, J.B. and Mildred. It hadn’t happened. The baron’s sec men had kept too tight a rein on things. So Krysty and the others had remained tantalizingly close, but had been given no opportunity to steal their friends away without getting captured in the process.