“Never get those going again,” J.B. stated, joining the man. He pushed back his fedora. “This isn’t the prize we thought. Half this stuff is useless.”
“But half isn’t,” Ryan stated. He gestured. “Any fuel in those tanks?”
The Armorer rapped on the side of the tank with a knuckle and got a dull answering thump. “Sure, lots,” J.B. answered, puzzled. “But it’s diesel. Turned to jelly decades ago. Even if we got some to the gateway, it would be too thick to ran the turbines. Need to cut it with something.”
“Shine?”
“Anything that burns would be okay.”
“Good, save a gallon to take with us,” Ryan said, then paused to let the throbbing in his leg ease. They had been on the run, fighting every step of the way for too damn long. The half-healed cut on his gun hand was starting to stiffen, seriously slowing his speed. Not good. Across the shelter, Krysty was rubbing her bad shoulder, and the others looked as if they had been ran over a couple of times by a war wag. Everybody was scratching at the itchy dried salt on their clothes, and down here in the close confines of the shelter house, the rank smell of unwashed bodies was starting to leave an oily taste in his mouth. Mildred was always touting cleanliness for health, but more importantly, when they went outside the stink would reveal their presence to anybody in the vicinity, and leave a hell of a fine trail for dogs to follow. And those triple-blasted crabs.
“We’ll start on the juice tomorrow,” Ryan said, sitting on a wall bunk. The mattress was a hell of a lot softer than the sand dune he awakened on that morning. “I think we’d better stay here for a while, get clean, catch some sleep. We have to cross three waterways to reach the island with a ville. Got the blasters to try now, but we’re never going to make it if we’re dragging ass every step of the way.”
“Wouldn’t mind a hot shower myself,” J.B. said, glancing at the rusty stalls. “We could probably get those running in short order.”
“How long?” Jak asked, padding over in his bare feet. The teenager was sliding laces through the holes of a brand-new pair of combat boots.
Ryan dropped his backpack and flexed his shoulders. “A week,” he decided, laying the Steyr nearby. The blaster desperately needed to be completely disassembled and oiled. “We’ll have to guard the fireplace for crabs, and have somebody in the lighthouse to watch for the baron’s men. Place a few C-4 charges along the stairwell in case of trouble. But we should be safe enough down here. For a while, at least.”
Dropping their backpacks with sighs of relief, the companions got busy rearranging the crates to make more space and started settling in for the night. After establishing a firing line for defense, food was gobbled straight from the MRE packs, and the exhausted friends took turns sleeping and standing guard. Soon, the soft breathing of exhausted sleep filled the bomb shelter.
But all through the starry tropical night, the army of crabs crawled around the peninsula outside like flies on a corpse, endlessly searching for some way inside.
Chapter Four
A hundred nautical miles away on another island, Lord Baron Maxwell Kinnison was driving a pre-dark Hummer along the edge of a steep cliff at breakneck speed. Slowly, dawn began to tint the east sky, the polluted storms clouds overhead rumbling with thunder.
Revving the powerful engine on the Hummer, Kinnison banked sharply around a small avalanche of rocks and cut away from the slide to go deeper into the thick jungle of Maturo Island. There was little terrain on his island ville he didn’t know in detail, having crawled and run and fought pirates on every hill. His path to the throne as baron of all barons had been steeped in blood, not one single drop of it his. At least, none in combat.
Arcing through a dense copse of thorny bushes, Kinnison headed back toward the seaside cliffs, his two passengers holding on for dear life against the wag’s wild rocking.
A growth of bamboo was smashed aside, and their goal popped into sight. The cottage stood on the swell of a cliff overlooking the calm sea. The roof was solid, glass filled the windows and the thick door was bolted on the inside. A clear stream flowed past the cottage and over the cliff, bringing fresh drinking water and carrying away each day’s bucket of waste. The trees were heavy with fruit, the vines rich with flowers whose scent repelled most of the insects. A fence of thorny bushes cut off the cottage and its garden from the rest of the island, and at the gate was a hand-painted sign bearing the symbol of the lord baron, followed by a death’s-head skull. The meaning was plain and clear. Cross the fence and die.