meat now. And useless. Tough and stringy. Took days to boil up an oldy for soup.
No good at all unless you were starving and it was the only meat around. And
with Scale you were never starving. Smart shit, was Scale.
Except when it came to thinking he could take the Trader.
As the long-armed man slowed to take a bend he felt a couple of thumps on the
side of the truck, tremoring through. He glanced at the rearview mirror, saw
nothing out of line his side, then noticed the driver of the following truck had
an arm poked out his window, was waving frantically.
He said, “Anythin’ your side, Scale? We hit some-thin’?”
Scale shrugged, heaved down the window, stuck his head out.
Then yanked it back in again with a yell, jammed the window up.
“Stickies!” he snapped. “Two of ’em. Must’ve beat it back here, waited for us—I
dunno.”
“Shit, Scale, they’re with us. Let ’em in.”
“They don’t look too fuckin’ happy.”
Hands gripping the battered wheel, the long-armed man glanced at his leader, saw
that Scale didn’t look any too happy, either.
“You can talk to ’em, Scale. About the only one that can.”
Talking to stickies was a tiring business. They understood words but you had to
yell at them, enunciate each sentence, each word, each separate syllable,
extremely clearly. Some kind of lip-reading process, as far as the long-armed
man understood it. Once you’d got it into their noodles what you wished them to
do, you let them get on with it, let them create the mayhem you wanted. They
were very good at creating mayhem.
Scale eased the window down halfway. He pushed his head out and began screaming
at the top of his voice. The words were lost in the roar of the truck’s engine.
Then his head whacked back inside the cab again, and he thrust the window up. A
microsecond later a suctioned hand thudded against the glass, spread out, glued
itself on. A hideous face suddenly appeared, eyes in frenzy. The glass shook as
the sticky jerked at it furiously, one-handed.
Scale yelled at the men crouching in the rear of the bouncing vehicle.
“Blast the fuckers off! Through the panels!”
The long-armed man felt sweat begin to soak his face. He squawked, “Nuke that
idea, Scale. We get slugs zippin’ around in this space, we’re gonna get scalped
if nothin’ else!”
“Do it!” snarled Scale.
More thuds, sounding like kicks delivered with strength. The sticky at the
window had disappeared. One of the men in the back said, “They’s on the roof,
Scale, an’ we ain’t all that tight up there.”
Part of the roof had been pierced at some point during the truck’s history.
Wooden panels had been fixed over the gaps.
Scale grabbed for his rifle, squirmed around in his seat and sprayed at the
roof, the sound deafening in the confined space. Yelling, the long-armed man
ducked as hot brass flew past his head. Angry ricochets burned the air, snarling
around his ears,
Scale fought with the wheel, boot-jabbing at the brake as the truck careered
down the sloping track. In front, a misty panorama revealed itself. An angry sun
endeavoring to pierce the thickening chem clouds shot scarlet light lances
through the murk. A seared and dreadful landscape beckoned, stretching into the
unseen, unfathomed distance, dotted with stunted trees, their foliage a sickly
yellow.
A short distance away, three clouds of dust choked the already turbid air.
Ahead, the buggies were chasing the jeep sure enough.
Scale blazed more lead up at the roof and ricochets whined and buzzed.
“Scale!” screamed a man at the back, blood dripping from his face where
something sharp had sliced him—a ricochet or a shard of metal. “You’re opening
the roof up! Bastards’ll get in through the hole!”
Scale had indeed opened up most of the wooden panels, had shattered them with
ripping auto-fire. A face appeared in the torn space, greasy skinned, with angry
eyes glaring downward. It whipped back out of sight as Scale fired again.
A bulky man grabbed at the rifle, roaring, “You’ll kill us all, you shitstick!”
and tried to drag the weapon away from the demented mutie leader. Scale