into the gully where he slammed into Hooley, already a sprawled and dazed
figure.
“Number Four!” Ryan gasped. “Hellfire, I forgot how much bang-bang we piled into
that one! Must’ve been most of the dynamite for the trip!” Groggily, his ears
ringing, he got to his knees and bawled at Lint, half seen in the hatchway,
“Tell ’em now! Now!”
Lint’s head disappeared. Ryan clambered to his feet. The stickies had come to a
halt, were gawping back down along the convoy at what was left of the once
blazing truck, now only bits of burning debris scattered about among the rocks
and boulders. There was a crater where the vehicle had once stood.
“Even more reason for that bastard Teague to send his road gangs out now,” Ryan
muttered. Hooley gaped at him as though the massive explosion had turned his
brain to jelly.
“Never mind,” snapped Ryan, then growled, “If that was a four-minute fuse I’m a
dogface.”
The stickies had come out of their daze. They were advancing over the edge of
the roof again, squealing in rage and triumphant anticipation. Ryan counted at
least twenty of the brutes with almost certainly more on the way. And that was
just on this war wag.
But it didn’t matter now. The beasts were all so much dead meat.
Calmly he watched as the roof-long rods suddenly glowed into life, triggered by
Ches in the war wag’s cabin below. In a second the entire picture was
transformed into one of utter carnage as several thousand volts flowed into the
roof rails, along the metal strips that lined the vehicle’s side panels and hung
along the length of the war wag’s underside.
Seared flesh smoked and blackened. Shrieking figures were jolted into the air.
Ryan turned his eye to look along the length of the convoy, seeing the side
panels of each war wag, land wag and truck glow eerily white, almost in sequence
as, in each cab, a lever was thrown, power was generated, death created.
He saw bodies flung away from the parked vehicles, others adhering to side
panels, scorched dark brown and then black. He saw bright, vivid flashes of
light. He heard the sizzling, crackling stutter of electrical power jolting
flesh, and the squeals, now no longer furious but tormented, agonized, of
stickies that were mere microseconds from heart stoppage.
The air held a solid reek of cordite, smoke and something akin to roast pork,
stomach-churningly strong.
All along the convoy the panel glow faded, to die as abruptly as it had come to
life. Blackened bodies, glued to panels, now fell to the ground like overripe
fruit from a tree, littering the roadside in jumbled heaps of starkly, stiffened
limbs.
There were survivors, those who had not been swarming over the vehicle, those
who had not been in contact with plates or rods. But they could be mopped up
easily enough. And quickly enough. Right now, in fact.
Ryan gestured to Hooley. “Tell ’em I’m off on a buggy ride.”
He ran to the rear of the roof and jumped for the cab of the closely parked
truck behind.
THE MAN CALLED SCALE watched the carnage from the shelter of a small cave
overlooking the road. His face registered no emotion—it rarely did—but his mouth
was dry. He could not believe what he was seeing. The stickies had been the
mainspring of his great plan. Now that plan had collapsed like a house of cards.
No one had even hinted that the Trader had electrified his war wags and rigs.
And the power! The power they must have used up in maybe fifteen, twenty secs
would have been colossal. How could they afford to waste so much? It was like
pissing it away.
That weirdo prick, the Warlock, was not going to be pleased when told that all
his stickies had been grilled to a crisp, were just so many lumps of fried bacon
lying around on an old wrecked blacktop. Not pleased at all. In fact, thought
Scale, it might be wiser not to tell him. All things considered, it might be a
hell of a lot wiser not to go within a thousand miles of him ever again, avoid