Spotting a moving shadow on the sand, Jak intently watched a sting-wing cruise through the murky sky. The bird sailed off toward the east as if the ancient city ahead of them held no interest to the little mutie. That was a good indication. Sting-wings feared nothing and ate everything. Perhaps the ruins were deserted.
As the Hummer approached the outskirts of the ruins, the buildings rapidly rose above the horizon. Oddly, there seemed to be no houses or stores to show the gradual expansion of the metropolis. The structures simply jutted from the sunbaked soil like fence posts with windows. Most of the windows were a dull white in color.
“Desert storms sandblasted them white,” Mildred stated, wiping the sweat off her face with a moist towelette.
Nobody contradicted her theory. An octagonal sheet of metal on a post heralded their entrance into the nameless city, and Ryan immediately slowed the progress of the Hummer. The streets were completely bare, not a car, a truck or even a piece of a vehicle was in sight.
“Strange,” Ryan said, furrowing his brow. “No cars, yet the buildings are intact.”
“Another neutron bomb,” Krysty suggested, curling a lip in disgust.
“Seems that way. No bodies, property undamaged. Only where are the vehicles?”
“Mebbe the survivors drove away,” Dean offered.
“Could be. But if the city was hit by a nuke, the engines would have been deactivated by the EMP blast,” Mildred said. “And if it was a chem storm or germ warfare, then all the people would be dead, but the cars okay.”
“So somebody took them afterward,” the boy stated as if the fact were obvious.
The Hummer rolled past a parking garage. The gates were smashed, and every level they could see into was vacant.
“Mebbe,” the elder Cawdor agreed hesitantly, not liking where this conversation was going. “But what would you need a thousand, mebbe ten thousand bastard cars for?”
“Wall,” Jak said.
“Makes sense,” J.B. stated, his finger resting on the trigger of the M-60. “We’ve seen it done before. Just not on this scale.”
They rolled past a new-car showroom, the window gone, the sales floor deserted.
“But it’s got to be one huge ville to need every car,” Krysty said.
The ruins seemed to be thinning ahead of them, so Ryan took a left at an intersection heading toward the skyscraper. Soon, bits and pieces of broken asphalt started to show under the sand covering the road, and within a block they were driving on cracked pavement. It was a rare experience.
“Stay sharp,” Ryan warned as he slowed their speed to get a better view of the ruins.
Large snowy windows fronted the street on each side, the same down every side street. Above stores, empty metal frames swung in the soft breeze, the plastic long ago eroded, and the tattered remains of a movie-theater marquee seemed bullet-riddled from the hundreds of empty lightbulb sockets. Street signs of different shapes stood wordless on shiny metal poles, every trace of paint completely removed.
“No rust,” Ryan commented, bringing the Hummer to a halt. “Must get a lot of acid rain here.”
“That stops rust from forming?” Dean asked in surprise.
“Washes it off,” Mildred answered. “Sandstorms and acid rain. Not a good area to try farming.”
“Storm damage is minimal,” Doc noted, glancing around carefully. “Mayhap the buildings themselves act as a sort of windbreak.”
“I’d of thought they’d funnel the wind and worsen the damage,” J.B. said.
“Close,” Ryan replied, driving around a huge pothole in the middle of an intersection. “Faster wind means less sand to form piles.”
“I’m surprised that mutie was around,” J.B. stated, removing his hat to wipe his forehead with a sleeve. Even with the unbroken cloud cover, it was still getting too damn warm. He replaced the fedora with a pat. “Wonder what it eats.”
“Lizards,” Krysty said, watching a fat lizard with a twitching spider in its mouth dart out from underneath the mailbox and scuttle away into a sewer grating at their approach. The lizard’s claws churned the sand and left a little contrail of dust to mark its passage. “Lots of them around.”
“And what do they eat?” Dean asked.