“Yeah.”
“Come then,” she said, moving to the tip of the cushioned seat. “It’ll be a squeeze, but we can all fit on my bike. After what you did, it’s the least I can do, and my bike is much faster than walking. Hop on.”
Dean started forward, but Ryan stopped him. “We have our own transport.”
“Really. Then may I travel with you for aways?” she asked. “For protection, until I’m closer to my ville.”
“How do you know we’re going that way?” Dean asked suspiciously. Beautiful or not, he was getting a bad feeling from this woman. She was amazingly clean in a world of scabs and dirt, and yet behaved like a gaudy slut. It was confusing. Dean decided to take his father’s lead in the matter.
Amanda laughed, a golden sound of distant bells. “The road has only two directions, and you’ve already been to the Wheel.”
“Wheel?”
“The city.”
As they started off, Amanda asked, “By the way, can my bike fit inside your truck?”
Ryan didn’t correct the guess. “You can ride alongside.”
She smiled demurely, as if a hostess offering a guest a sweetmeat, and fluttered a hand. “And what if after my ordeal I’m too weak to ride?”
“Tough,” Dean said, continuing through the weeds. He was liking this woman less and less by the word.
Amanda sat there for a minute. The two outlanders kept walking away as if she were no more than a common quiff. It was outrageous! Men and women died to be with her, killed kin to lie with her, and they turned their backs? Wordlessly, she stepped off the bike and pushed it across the concrete apron and into the rustling morass of dry weeds and rotting tires.
She was hard-pressed to keep with them. They moved as fast as panthers, pausing for nothing and never looking backward to keep track of her progress.
“A yule ruler,” Ryan said, “off by herself?”
“I’m on a mission,” she replied curtly. “I stopped here for gas, relaxed my guard for just a second and they jumped. Never got off a shot.”
“Not wise to ride solo,” Dean told her. “Everybody gets tired, and tired is dead.”
“Or worse,” Amanda agreed, pulling hair over the left side of her face to hide the bruising. “They hadn’t started on me yet. Not really. And if they knew who I was…”
“Not friendly neighbors?”
“Sworn enemies. They stalk this road and rob travelers of goods and life. A major priority was to see if I could find a way to deal with them.”
“Deal?” Dean asked.
A lone woman tackle a whole gang? Dean said nothing, but it raised his suspicions.
“What was the other part?” Ryan asked, half listening to her, but closely watching the shadows under the vehicles around them. Time was pressing, but he knew it was better to get her story while she still felt gratitude toward them. Soon enough pragmatism would return. This section of Deathlands wasn’t hard-hit by either radiation or the acid rains. So it seemed•as if every madman and mutie had run here to claim new territory. He needed to know what was what, so they could get out intact.
She could think of no reason to lie, so told them the truth. They had saved her life. “I left the vile to try and sneak into the Wheel and deal with the problem of the tank commander who rules the city.”
“Kill,” Dean said.
Amanda switched off the bike. “No. Negotiate a treaty, pay him off, seduce him, marry if needs be. Anything to bring peace between the Wheel and Novaville.”
Knowing the info was totally wrong, Ryan said nothing, waiting to see if she would volunteer any additional data.
“Well, it’s dead,” Dean stated, a touch of pride in his voice “Wasn’tanormoramutie,butamachine, and we killed the thing. That is, my father dropped a building on it.” He pantomimed the event for her. “Smashed flatter than dust”
Turning toward them, Ainanda tugged on her collar, exposing a great wealth of cleavage.
Unmoved by the display, Ryan thought the seduction tactic odd for a woman who had just been brutally assaulted.
Dean swallowed hard.