two-lane blacktop.
Ryan adjusted the focusing screw, turning the milled edge until the faces of
their attackers swam into sharp detail. He saw the usual brutish, vulpine
expressions that he knew from Baronies and communes all over the Deathlands.
Small men with a taste for cruelty.
He ranged along the line, stopping at one of the sec men who pushed through to
the front.
“Strasser,” he breathed.
The high-definition, directional mikes at the back of the war wag were out of
action, but he did not need them to know what Strasser was shouting after them.
The whole set of the man’s body told it all.
The gaunt body, taller than any of his men, agitated with anger. As Ryan watched
him, Strasser pulled off the visored cap and threw it in the mud, kicking it
with his boots. Rain glistened on the bald skull, trickling over the thin
cheeks, into the host of a mustache. Ryan grinned with wolfish satisfaction as
he saw there was still blood clotted around the police chief’s mouth where the
thrown pistol had struck him.
Strasser was shaking his fist at them. Far behind him, in the fast-brightening
dawn, Ryan could make out a monstrous column of greasy smoke rising from the
tomb of Jordon Teague.
The ruined tomb of Mocsin.
AS THEY DROVE STEADILY toward a kind of safety, the Trader took to his bunk once
more, the rush from the action leaving him drained and sallow. Ryan organized
the crew into their usual rotas, as far as was possible with their shrunken
force. Only then did he find a quiet spot and sit down to relax. After a while
Hunaker came to join him.
“Have a word, Ryan?”
“Yeah. What?”
The woman seemed oddly ill at ease, rubbing her cropped green hair, adjusting
the slim-bladed knife on her hip.
“Come on, Hun. What’s got you? Still feelin’ for Ange?”
“No. Well, some I guess. She was a sweet kid and I figured we might… Oh, burn
all that, Ryan, it’s over and out. That’s not what…”
“What?”
“When we was back in Mocsin, me and Sam an’ Koll an’ J.B. was talkin’ and we—”
“Hun. You want me to pull your helldamned liver up through your neck?”
“No. Why d’you—”
“I’m tired. Just say it.”
“Sure.” With a rush, like a swimmer entering cold water. “We was talkin’ ’bout
you and we thought nobody knows what your name is. Ryan. Just Ryan. Got to be
another name. Not even J.B. knew it.”
Ryan grinned at her. “That all?”
“Yeah. You don’t mind me askin’ like this?”
“No. Why should I? It’s Cawdor. Ryan Cawdor. Not a secret, Hun.”
“Ryan Cawdor. That’s not too special, is it? So how come you never told nobody
before?”
“I guess because nobody ever asked me before.”
They smiled at each other, a look passing between them that held a certain kind
of gentleness as War Wag One, now the only war wag, ground deeper into the
Darks.
Chapter Thirteen
KURT DIED JUST BEFORE SUNSET on the next day.
The flight from the blazing carnage of Mocsin and the horrible death of his only
friend, Fishmouth Charlie, finally and irrevocably tipped the balance of his
mind into madness. The war wag’s medic, Kathy, did what she could, loading him
with sleepers, but it was obvious that the shrieking had taken him over.
“Claws an’ teeth! Claws an’ teeth!”
Over and over and over again, even when the drugs were shutting down the lines.
Even when his eyes were closed and his pulse had eased, still the peeled lips
kept moving. The charred skin of the face twitched as though worms crawled
through the muscles around his mouth. Always the same. Always about the fog that
he’d seen, long months back, on his terrible journey into the peaked wilderness.
“Claws an’ teeth.”
The two-lane blacktop had given way to the broken and weed-infested concrete of
a wider highway. It made for generally better motoring for the war wag, enabling
Ches or Hunaker to drive on at a steady pace. All the doors were open and clean
air flowed through the vehicle, purging it of the stench of sweat and death.