“But not all.”
J.B. yanked off his hat and smacked it into his hand. “Dark night! Bastard things are harder to kill than a three-headed stickie!”
“And uglier,” Jak drawled, testing a knife edge on a thumb. “Least they gone.”
“Indeed, sir,” Doc agreed vehemently. “And good riddance I say.”
Rolling down a window, Ryan let the dry desert wind blow over his face. “No,” he said, “it’s not good. Until we have two corpses, nobody goes outside this vehicle alone. At least, not until we’re far away from here.”
“Can’t know we’re away till we get the coordinates of here,” J.B. said, undogging the lock to the side door. “Okay, everybody cover me. I’m gonna find out where we are.”
“Scope is clean,” Krysty said, fiddling with the contrast. “But you best hurry. I can’t scan on every side at once.”
“No prob.”
Their handblasters primed, Jak and Dean took positions on either side of the open door, grimly watching the landscape for any suspicious movements. Slinging his submachine gun, J.B. reached inside his shirt and pulled out his minisextant “Just a second,” he announced working the device. Focusing the mirrors on the sun, then the horizon, he checked his arcs and counted off the seconds.
“Hmm, 40 minutes 32 seconds longitude, 82 minutes even 30 seconds latitude. If memory serves me right, we’re in northwestern Ohio.” The Armorer cracked a smile. “Smack in the middle of Salt Fork Lake.”
“Lake?” Jak snorted, squinting at the blazing sun and windswept landscape.
“Nuke landscaping,” Ryan reminded him, resting both arms on the steering wheel. “Seems to be desert on every side but straight ahead. What are those odd mountains to the east?”
J.B. climbed in and closed the door. “The Alleghenies, extending into West Virginia and Pennsylvania. Can’t tell you more. I don’t know this section of America.”
“As I recall, it was mostly farmland,” Doc said, leaning forward in his seat. “Very low-level-priority targets. No military bases or heavy industry. Therefore, the area most likely avoided a major attack.”
“Even some is a lot,” Krysty commented, her hair moving as if stirred by unfelt-winds. “One nuke can ruin your whole damn day.”
“Pennsylvania. That means the Amish,” Mildred said thoughtfully. “Even in my day they had renounced technology. Lived by muscle power. Their civilization wouldn’t collapse.”
“Slave muscle?” Ryan asked suspiciously.
“Never! They were good Christian folks,” Doc stated. “Hopefully, they still are. We should be able to trade with them.”
“Sounds good,” decided the one-eyed warrior. Pulling out the choke, he started the Detroit power plants with a low rumble. The gas gauge read just under the full line, and the side gauge read a reserve tank of four hundred gallons completely full. Plus, they had to have another couple of hundred gallons in cans. “J.B., any roads?”
“Nothing on the map. But there’s supposed to be a river ahead of us. Always easy traveling there. Even if it’s gone, the bed will make us a good road.”
“East it is, then.” Easing in the clutch and engaging the gears, Ryan brought the vehicle to a forward roll just as a beep sounded from the dashboard. Then another.
“It’s the radar,” he said, sounding surprised. “Something is coming our way.”
“The dogs again?” Mildred asked, moving quickly to a Remington. She snapped the release and opened the breech, laying in a fresh belt of ammo. LB. did the same on the other side. In an ever-increasing rhythm, the beeps slowly started coming together faster and faster. “No. Not the dogs,” Krysty said.
“So, what is it?”
“I don’t know,” Ryan said, pushing down the gas pedal, Leviathan moving off with increasing speed. “But it’s bastard big and coming our way.”
“Direct?”
“Sure is.”
Resting the Mossberg on a vacant seat, Dean went to the port blasterslot and scrutinized the desert. Only sunbaked desolation was visible. Some clouds in the far distance. Nothing more. “You sure?” he asked.
Dodging an irregular outcrop, Ryan glanced at the glowing green blip on the luminescent screen, which was increasing in size by the second. “Hell, yeah.”
“Found it!” Mildred cried, binocs to her face. “At seven o’clock, and moving fast.”
“What is it?” Ryan asked, urging more rpm out of the engines. Fight or flight, speed was to their advantage either way. He didn’t care what it was, anything that large was trouble.