Mildred watched in the mirrors as the leafy building shook once more, then broke into pieces. With the flood of fresh air, flames rose from the tumbling sections, fiying the vines, while the writhing bugs popped into green ichor. A thick plume of smoke rose into the mottled sky, the intense heat of the conflagration causing the classic mushroom shape to form above the city.
Mildred and Doc were unperturbed by the sight. Both knew any sufficiently hot ground-level combustion yielded a mushroom cloud. The rest of the friends simply scowled at the legendary sign of destruction.
“Six o’clock,” J.B. said, pulling the bolt on his Uzi.
“What now?” Ryan barked irritably.
Standing brazenly on the roof of a diner was a young man in leather clothes and an elderly woman in a ragged housedress. Green vines fringed their limbs, and the puppets watched as Leviathan drove
slowly away.
“Must be more than one of those things,” Ryan
stated.
Doc agreed. “Ascertaining if we are truly departing.”
A rifle discharged inside the tank, and Ryan saw Dean standing at a blasterport with his Steyr SSG-70
“Notch to the left,” Ryan suggested. “Adjust for wind.”
Nodding, the boy expertly worked the bolt and shot again. He hit both puppets, the hollowpoint rounds punching neat holes in their faces, but completely removing the back of their skulls. Gushing blood from the titanic wounds, the bodies stiffly turned and walked into the shadows.
“Waste ammo,” Jak said dourly.
“Removing sentries,” J.B. replied. “Protecting our retreat.”
The boy removed the clip from the longblaster and thumbed in fresh cartridges. “That’s not why I did it.”
“Yeah, we know,” Ryan said, feeling oddly proud of his son. Even though he hated to admit the fact, sometimes in this brutal struggle for life you had to waste a precious bullet just to be able to call yourself a hifman being.
They turned onto a side street, the center of the road a bare dirt median, dotted with dead trees, and no sign of the ivy anywhere. The buildings were in an advanced state of decay, some only piles of masonry to show where once stood mighty edifices attesting to the power of man over nature.
“Ah, the suburbs,” Doc stated, wiping his sword blade clean. “We can relax, I think.”
His 9 mm Uzi pressed to a cheek, J.B. looked out a blasterport. “I’ll relax when this muck-eating rad pit is far behind us.”
“Which way?” Mildred asked, as a swarm of the big black bugs, without any vines attached, scuttled out of a sewer grating and took off to the south. “Never mind, follow them. They should know the shortest rout• out of here.”
“When in doubt,” Ryan agreed, “follow the escaping prisoners.”
Unfolding a small plastic sheet, J.B. checked his pocket map. “Nothing much to the south. No more towns worth mentioning, no fiatland for farms.”
Jak cracked open an ammo box and started reloading his revolver. “Bottom land best. Hill for taters.”
J.B. refolded the map. “If you say so.”
“Isn’t there a redoubt we’ve already been to in northern Virginia?” Krysty asked, from the rear of the tank. The redhead was nearly finished getting dressed in a khaki jumpsuit she found in a locker.
“J.B., how far away is the redoubt?” Ryan asked.
“King’s Bay? Roughly 120 miles.”
“Mildred, can we make it?”
“I’m not sure,” the physician replied, studying a gauge. “Fuel levels are less than half.”
“Anything closer?”
The map was scrutinized. “Nope.”
“Then it’s our best bet.” Ryan worked the choke, trying to thin the mixture of fuel and air. “We’ve been on the run since we got out of that bastard Ohio redoubt. Mebbe we can find some supplies along the way, but we know there’s fuel in long storage at Virginia. Then we can rest and decide what to do next.”
“Fine by me,” Doc said, accepting his frock coat from Krysty.
Ryan glanced at Krysty as she took the front seat vacated by Mildred. There was no need for him to ask; he already knew her opinion on the matter.
“So let’s roll,” Mildred said, sitting next to J.B. “The sooner we’re out of here, the better.”