“Third time is the charm,” Doc muttered.
“Shut up, you old coot,” Mildred growled, squeezed tight between J.B. and Dean.
“Here we go!” Krysty shouted out the side window, and started the engine, blue exhaust pouring from the tailpipes. Then pumping the gas pedal, the woman shifted gears and stomped on the clutch, rocking the long wag back and forth.
The companions pushed as the back tires began to spin freely in the slick mud, sending out a spray of muck until smoke rose from the hot rubber. The wag started to inch forward, then Ryan cried out as the tree branch broke from his grip and sailed off into the nearby trees.
“Kill the engine!” Ryan spit, flexing his stinging hands. “Save the juice!”
As the engine dieseled off, the wag promptly settled into the mud once more. Fireblast! After all they had been through, to be stopped by something like this. Krysty had carefully avoided the roads and cut across barren fields, pausing only to let Ryan set fire to the savanna to hide their trail. Going miles out of the way, J.B. blew up a bridge and tried to make it seem they had crossed to the other side first. Then they drove off with tree branches tied to the bumper to erase the tire marks. Jak took a turn behind the wheel, driving the wag down the bed of a shallow river, so the water would wash away any marks, then started into the mountains and drove back out over the wag’s tracks to lay a fake trail. Reaching the grasslands, the companions were confident of not being followed. Then they encountered the mud.
“Mebbe we should empty the bus,” Dean suggested, rubbing his shoulder where it had been pressed against the wag. “Make it lighter.”
“Wouldn’t help,” J.B. stated, shifting his stance in the mucky soil. “Not when we’re already this deep.”
“Acing mud.” Jak scowled in annoyance, sliding off his jacket to toss it through the open back door of the wag. His shirt was sleeveless, and the hard rippling muscles in his pale arms were clearly defined. As were countless scars.
Using a strip of cloth to bind her beaded hair, Mildred said, “This is more like quicksand than mud.”
“A rose by any other name,” Doc rumbled, brushing some speckles off the frills of his shirt. He was getting filthy, and thought that he’d have to ask Emily to soak it as soon as he got back to keep the material from permanently staining.
“Hey, any block and tackle in the wag?” Dean asked, cracking his knuckles, exactly as his father often did. “Mebbe we can hitch the axle to a tree and pull the bus free.”
“Sounds good. Go check,” Ryan said, trying to shove the branch deeper under the left tire. “Everybody else get some more branches. We need to chock every tire firmly.”
“Can’t hurt,” Mildred agreed.
Straightening his fedora, J.B. swung the Uzi to his front and stood guard while the others trundled out of the soggy ground and headed into the trees for fresh supplies of wood.
Slogging around the bus, Dean climbed inside and scraped the soles of his boots clean on the metal step before going to the rear of the wag and rummaging through the stacks of boxes. He found a tremendous amount of smoked food, but little in the way of tools. Could they have missed a stash back at the lagoon?
“Any luck?” Ryan shouted through the rear door.
“Nothing yet!” Removing a wicker basket of blankets, the boy uncovered a long narrow crate. Unlike the other containers, this one was tied securely shut. Using his bowie knife, Dean cut the ropes holding it closed and flipped over the hinged top.
“Hot pipe!” he cried out, lifting a fat tube into view. “Firebirds!”
“Let me see,” J.B. said, opening the rear door.
Stepping over some boxes, Dean passed him a tube, and the Armorer studied the weapon. Just a simple bamboo tube lacquered with tree resin until it was fireproof, with carved wooden grips so the gunner could hold the weapon steady. Jammed inside was a black-powder rocket with a crude fuse hanging from the side. That was it. Yet the crude weapons had created Kinnison an empire of villes unlike anything in the history of the Deathlands.