“Good disguise,” Jak stated, sounding impressed.
Shifting sands and bare rock stretched to the horizon, without a single break of withered grass, dead trees or the ancient remains of a sidewalk. As far as they could tell, this was virgin desert, as pristine as before humanity walked erect.
Krysty gave a shiver. “Dead, it’s so dead,” she said, hugging her shaggy bearskin coat tight as if she were freezing. “There’s no life out here I can feel.”
“Good,” Jak said, idly stropping one of his countless throwing knives on a pocket whetstone.
“Reminds me of the lunar landscape,” Mildred commented.
Dean stared at her and began to ask a question, then stopped. He would take her word on the matter. Mildred knew things that were almost impossible for him to believe, but were true nonetheless.
“It Does resemble the moon, dear lady, except for those,” Doc noted, pointing. In the far distance, gray mountains rose high into the sky, their sides twinkling as if set with a thousand diamonds.
“Now that’s interesting,” the physician murmured, raising a pair of binocs to her face and pressing them against the tinted composite glass. “Note those rolling hills before the odd mountains? That’s atomic landscaping. When the nuke hit, the soil rippled liked a pond when you drop in a stone, then solidified into place.”
Opening the window a crack. Ryan unclipped the rad counter from his collar and held it outside. “Clean!”
“Same here,” J.B. said from the starboard machine gun, inspecting his own rad counter. “Must have been a short half-life bomb that leveled this area. Background is tolerable.”
“So where are we?” Mildred asked. Tucking away his rad counter, LB. reached into his shirt and produced a minisextant. “Give me five minutes and I can tell you.”
“Anywhere not Chicago is fine by me,” Doc said succinctly, his face full of memories.
Returning the rad counter to his collar, Ryan closed the window. “Area seems secure, but don’t dawdle, J.B. Everybody else watch for-”
“Incoming,” Dean cried loudly from the rear doors.
Doc joined him at the louvered slots. “By the Three Kennedys, those Dantean canines are yet after us!” Then his expression changed to befuddlement “Shades of the great Houdini! Th-they’re gone!”
“Ran away?” Ryan asked pointedly. He was looking in both the sideview mirrors, but couldn’t see the mutie dogs.
“No, sir,” Dean reported, swallowing hard. “They’re just.. .gone. Sort of, faded away.”
“They turned light tan in color,” Doc explained, making sure the bolt on the rear doors was secure. “Exactly the same hue as the sand.”
“Like chameleons?” Mildred asked, studying the desert outside. Only the baked sand was visible, but every little puff of wind-driven dust now held hostile intent. “That’s why they were black inside the garage, and the dead went neutral in tone. Better cover. Fascinating.”
“Deadly,” Ryan corrected, swiveling in his chair. “Krysty, anything on that infrared gizmo?”
“Checking,” the redhead replied, fumbling with the unfamiliar controls. It took her a few moments to figure out what was where. “No, it’s too hot out here. There’s a switch here for something called ultraviolet”
Krysty flipped a switch and a vid screen came to life, showing a stark black-and-white view of the landscape. She rotated a tracking ball, and the picture spun to their wake. “Found them! Smack on top of that big sand dune.”
“Got them.” The Armorer smiled and he hit a switch.
There was a metallic clang, then a roaring noise that built in volume, then quickly faded away. From the side windows and ports, the friends could see a silvery dart riding a column of reddish fire streak away to violently impact on the hilltop. The entire dune vanished in a tremendous explosion, a geyser of sand blowing into the sky for dozens of yards.
“Dead,” Jak said, his scarred face twisting into a smile.
Easing on the clutch, Ryan brought the rumbling machine to a gentle halt. “Well?” he asked.
“No,” Krysty replied, fine-tuning the controls. “Two figures are running off into the sunset”
“Where? Directly into the sunset, or on a vector?” J.B. snapped.
“Too late,” she announced, as the screen went blank. “They’re gone.”
“Well, we got most of them,” Dean said.