Ryan snapped binocs to his face and dialed for clarity. The Ranger and the pieces of bridge were still tumbling through the misty air of the gorge when he found them. Then they hit the river simultaneously. The bridge stabbing into the bed like the skeleton of a knife, the Ranger punching through the shallow stream and hitting the granite riverbed like a triphammer. Its hull burst into pieces, the mechanical guts spilling out. Something inside the wreckage detonated, finishing the task, and as the smoke cleared, the river waters were flowing over the impact point and there was nothing to be seen.
“It’s dead,” Krysty stated, her hair moving constantly from her conflicting feelings. “Kind of hard to believe, isn’t it?”
“Yeah,” Jak said quietly.
“He saved us,” Dean added, his chest tight with emotion, but his face was a stern battle mask.
Krysty walked closer to the boy. She could feel his anger at the loss, his frustration and rage. “It’s the cycle of life,” she told him gently, “and he died a free man. That was more important to him than anything else.”
Dean kicked some pebbles over the edge of the cliff. “I suppose,” he muttered, not sounding very convinced.
Keeping a hand on top of his hat to stop it from blowing away, J.B. scrutinized the other side of the gorge. “You know,” he said slowly, “we should have grabbed those depleted uranium rounds back at the ville. Those are probably the only thing in existence that could have easily stopped the blasted machine.”
“A man stopped the machine,” Ryan said, turning his back to the destruction. “Not armament or science. Just a man.”
In silence, they walked to Leviathan. The remains of the missile pod on top of the craft were still glowing from the heat of the laser beam. The companions stopped at the open side door, but Ryan continued on to the blast crater in the mound.
He took a handful and rubbed it between his fin-gem. “Soft dirt. Mebbe we can blow steps into it with the recoilless rifles.”
“Not get high enough angle,” Jak said, rubbing his cheek.
“Sure can,” Dix countered. “We’ll use the tire jacks to boost her up a couple of feet.”
“It should work,” Doc added. “We can brace the undercarriage with the tires not on the wheels.”
“Good idea.”
“I better start making backpacks.” Mildred sighed, climbing into Leviathan. “Looks like we’re walking out of here.”
Shivering slightly, Krysty crossed her arms.
“Sure, only a couple hundred miles till the next redoubt.”
“Better than being dead,” Ryan stated, feeling oddly tired. “Come on, let’s get to work.”
Epilogue
Through the fuming, smoky ruins of Novaville came the scavengers. Erect bipeds, they stood hunched over, their skin deathly pale, animalistic fangs filling their wide mouths. They wore only loincloths of untreated hide, and carried clubs of tree branches with the bark removed.
The destruction of the ville was near absolute. The wooden palisade that marked the boundary of their territory was burning out of control, and the formidable stone wall smashed in countless places. The harder-than-stone black gate was melted.
Blasters lay everywhere, but they avoided those, knowing that when they barked they killed. But there were sleeping horses for them to gather, and there was food aplenty. The dead and the sleeping sec men were piled on litters and dragged back to the dwelling place to be cooked for dinner, or smoked in the great lodge and saved for winter. The unconscious slaves they respectfully detoured around. The Beast had slain hundreds, but not harmed the slaves. Clearly, they were his chosen people and to eat one would be to invoke terrible consequences.
In the crumbling base of a brick tower, the muties found a mighty altar of silver and jewels with a wizened old man sitting in the chair. His skin was wrinkled and tanned as leather, his eyes blank glass orbs, his mouth sewn shut. Some of the stitching along his neck had popped, allowing the cotton stuffing inside to burst out in wads. On his head was a crown of gold and jewels. The scavengers bowed deeply to the totem and left immediately, fearing to disturb the god of the ville. None wished to chance negating their great good luck this day.