Moving fast through the ruins outside the parking lot, the trio kept low. A lizard eating a tarantula darted away at their passage, but nothing else responded to their presence. No barking dogs, no gunshots, no cries of alarm.
Reaching a ditch opposite the garage, they slid in and splashed quietly through the brackish runoff water, which reeked of sulfur. Using the mirror first, then chancing a direct look, they could see the Hummer parked amid the cold ashes and burned timbers of the building. The wag was a lot more battered than when they had last seen it; the sides scraped, the radio antenna gone, with the spare tire flat and hanging loose on the rim bolted to the chassis.
Ryan pointed left and right. The others spread out and approached the garage from converging directions. At the doorway, they took positions, listening for sounds, then charged in with blasters at the ready. Jak took the grease pit, Krysty the office, Ryan the tool room. The garage was completely deserted.
Chewing steadily, Jak went under the chassis of the wag, while Krysty stood guard and Ryan circled the wag, looking for trip wires. In the cargo area, he found the longblasters from the pawnshop, but the med kit and the big M-60 were nowhere in sight, which was expected. Those items were the most valuable.
In a few moments, Jak came back out. “Clean. You?”
“Same,” Ryan reported gruffly. “The thief just took what he could carry and left. Probably planning on coming back and getting the rest. We can’t wait for that. Could be days before he returns.”
“How did he start it?” Krysty asked. “Ah, took the radio fuse and inserted it into the ignition. That was stupe.”
“Yeah, might have shorted out the engine and blown the whole electrical system,” Ryan countered. “It’s what you do in an emergency situation.”
“Mebbe was for him,” Jak suggested pensively.
Sliding in the proper fuse, Ryan hit the ignition and checked the gauges on the dashboard. “At least we know why he abandoned it here. She’s out of gas.”
Krysty gratefully slid off her backpack, the contents sloshing as it hit the ground. “We got that covered. Doc was smart to hide the extra fuel in the lav.”
She refueled the wag, as the others kept guard, watching the shop and the steel girders above them for suspicious movement. Some yellow papers blew among the wreckage, then lifted away on a breeze into the sky.
“Done,” the redhead said, capping the container and placing it in the rear with the rifles.
“Drive?” Jak asked.
“We’re too close to the river,” Ryan said. “May as well leave the wag here out of sight of the sec men on the wall. Krysty, take all of the fuses and let’s do a perimeter sweep for footprints.”
Sure enough, only a few yards away they located tracks marked with black soot from the burned-out school. Following the footprints across a football field and through a dry creekbed, they reached the edge of the river. The clouds overhead were a vile green, slashed with fiery orange. If a storm was coming, it was going to be hell on Earth, and that made them move faster.
Reaching the concrete dockyards, they noted that the sluggish river from yesterday was now churning madly, whitecaps crashing on the embankments as the water rushed into the east.
“Scuffle, no, slipped,” Jak corrected, scrutinizing the stony concrete. “Check water.”
Krysty leaned over the edge. “No sign of a… Wait, there’s the M-60! Oh crap, the barrel’s bent. Must have hit something on the way down.”
“Useless,” Jak agreed, scanning the river. “No sign kit. Must kept.”
Feeling the pressure on him, Ryan glanced east and west along the river, both directions equally barren of tracks. Every second made the thief farther away, and increased the risk for Dean. Fast decisions and fast action were called for. And if he had to gamble, so be it. This close to the ville, the logical place to look was the tunnel. Maybe he was a refugee, or a guard. The med kit could be only a hundred yards away in the hands of the sec men, pawing through the instruments wondering what they were.