crawled up steep precipices as an enjoyable relaxation.
He said, “What we gonna do, Scale?”
Scale, still gripping his piece, muttered, “Gonna fuck me the red-hair.”
The long-armed man shot a startled glance at his leader. Had he heard right? The
noise and clatter of the speeding truck was not good for conversation but the
long-armed man could usually get the gist of something that was not yelled at
him. He could have sworn that Scale had said something about fucking the
red-haired girl. But that couldn’t be right. There were priorities, for God’s
sake.
“Scale?”
“Uh?”
“What we gonna do? Them buggies bound to find us. They’re gonna cream us.”
Scale’s head jerked around, his thick-lipped mouth gaping, his eyes wide and
crazy, the gun in his hands suddenly jammed into the side of the long-armed
man’s head.
He shouted, “So you do what you wanna do! I’m gonna get me the red-haired
bitch!”
The long-armed man slewed the truck to the right and into a narrow bush-lined
tunnel. The vegetation all around them was parched, but it was still alive; it
seemed able to survive, just, in this hostile environment, fed perhaps by the
tiny trickles of water that still infiltrated the earth from off the hills.
There were no birds in the valley and the long-armed man had never seen any
animals. Anything on four legs automatically got eaten. Just about anything on
two, as well.
The truck shot out of the tree-lined avenue and the long-armed man swung the
wheel and skidded around into what had once been a blacktopped parking lot next
to a ruined building that, a century ago, had been a shop selling guns and
fishing tackle. A weather-faded signboard was fixed to the facing wall on which
the words McPartland Brothers could just be discerned, if there had been anybody
there who could actually have read them.
But this was a decaying ville; the art of reading had long departed it. The
roofs of cabins were holed, although that didn’t matter much since rain was no
problem in this part of the Deathlands. Walls of some of the shacks sagged,
unmended. Others had no walls at all, were simply wood frames with rotting bits
of blanket draped around them, or tarps, or old animal hides brought from
elsewhere when Scale had discovered the place and moved his band in. Maybe a few
human hides, too. Smoke drifted from some of the chimneys.
The lake lay a few hundred meters to the north, most of it parched, just cracked
mud now, the dark water far away toward the center. Across the other side the
hills rose up sheer, a frowning, gloomy mass of peaks that brooded over the
valley.
Sluttish women in filthy robes wandered toward the truck, most of them at some
stage of pregnancy or other, although childbirth here was even less of a problem
than the rain. Most of the babies were stillborn. Those that survived were
usually sickly and weak, with a variety of ugly ailments and, often, limbs where
no limbs were supposed to be. There were some healthier-looking children but
these, without exception, were what remained from various land wag trains once
the adults had been massacred. Scale saved the females, if they were young and
looked strong, kept them as a kind of harem until he grew tired of them, when he
tossed them to the men. And if the women thought they got it bad from Scale,
they got it a hundred times worse from the men—usually a hundred times at a
time.
The long-armed man brought the truck to a halt and shivered. Most of those
hundred men were dead now, those in the two trucks probably all that were left.
Maybe a dozen men, unless there were a few stragglers in the tunnels still, or
hiding out in the rocks above the highway. Hellblast it, he thought, the women
outnumber us.
He said, “The stickies, Scale. What we gonna…”
Scale jabbed at him with the automatic rifle.
“Scale!”
“Out.”
“Scale, I’m your wheelman! They’ll kill me, they’ll suck me apart.”
Scale was smirking, licking his rubbery lips.
“I’ll get me another wheelman. Out.”
Completely over the edge, thought the long-armed man wildly. He was suddenly