He had really tried to take the big blaster off the top of the war wag, but he couldn’t figure out how to free the ammo belt. After dragging it behind him for a block, Harold had tossed it away. Besides, the long dangling belt was too noisy. Never sneak in here with that.
Scampering noises sounded from the darkness ahead of him, and Harold quickly reached inside his shirt and blew on the silent whistle. He felt a stab inside his ears as always, and the scampering sounds quickly departed. The man had no idea how the broken whistle could chase away rats. The voices suggested they had a better range of hearing than humans, but his chest started to pound as he struggled to understand the odd words, and the voices soon ceased, replaced by soothing silence.
After a while, the drain branched into a full six-way intersection, and Harold carefully jumped across the gap into the next tunnel. Staying to the left, he counted aloud on fingers and toes until reaching his right pinkie toe, and climbed a ladder set into the concrete wall. Pushing aside the iron grating, he eased out of the storm drain and glanced around to make sure nobody could see him.
Over by the big tunnel that went under the dead river, twin searchlights swept the sky. The air was foggy with the reflection of the powerful beams. Climbing out, the hunchback eased the grating quietly back into position, then, staying close to the wall of cars, he kept low until finding the faded orange bumper sticker. There were no others like it anywhere on the wall. One had been similar, and in a fit of brilliance he had removed the bumper so as not to become confused between the two. But then Harold spent days trying to figure out if he’d removed the correct sticker. Life was so confusing sometimes, and the voices in his head didn’t always help, even though they said different.
Grabbing the handle of the Pontiac, he eased the back door open, lifting it slightly so the metal wouldn’t squeal. Stepping inside, he carefully locked it behind him and started the labyrinthine return to the ville on the other side. From this point onward, Harold knew he was safe. Nobody could follow him through the wall. Not even the rats.
Chapter Eleven
The cloudy yellow sky was just beginning to lighten in color, slashes of fiery orange streaking across the murky gray atmosphere as dawn struggled into existence. The front door to the government building opened on freshly oiled hinges, and Ryan stepped onto the broken sidewalk.
“Good enough,” he declared as the rest of the companions joined him outside. They had spent the night in hurried preparation, blocking the exposed stairwell solid with office furniture, doing the same to the elevator shaft and nailing all of the office doors shut, and driving extra nails through the middle of the wooden panels so that anybody trying to crash through would be badly stabbed. Forming a semicircle across the lobby was a six-foot-tall barricade of metal file cabinets stuffed with books, and backed with the couches. It made a pretty good fire wall, and helped muffle any lights or noises. There was still a lot of work to be done, but it was a good start. Purely precautionary, but experience taught hard lessons over the years. Better safe than dead, as the Trader always used to say.
Unfortunately, Dean was no better by morning, if anything a bit worse, and the necessity of reclaiming the med kit had been escalated to a priority.
Walking over to the garage, Jak knelt on the sandy ground, running his fingers over the faint indentations across the ground. A breeze ruffled his snowy hair as the Cajun stood and walked into the street.
“One man, big,” he said. “Walks funny, mebbe wounded. Came from down block.”
“He came from the ville,” Ryan answered curtly. “Can you track the Hummer?”
Snorting, Jak glanced over a shoulder, his ruby-red eyes deadly serious. “Track through monsoon for Dean.”
“Who’s to stay?” Krysty asked, shifting her backpack.
“J.B. and Doc,” said Ryan, sliding the Steyr off his shoulder and checking the clip.