triggered a burst at him, point-blank, and slugs chewed him apart, punched him
away in a spray of scarlet that paint-licked the walls and most of those in the
immediate vicinity.
They flung themselves to the floor of the truck, hands over heads, yelling and
screaming curses. In the front, the long-armed man prayed and wondered what
would happen if he just jammed open his door and threw himself out of this
madhouse. But they were going too fast, and the faster he went and the more he
swung the wheel right and left, the greater the possibility that the stickies
would not be able to batter their way in.
Ahead the dust had cleared. The speeding vehicles had hit a stony patch of
ground. Now the buggies could clearly see their prey, and those in the jeep must
know that they were doomed.
The lead buggy was firing. Tracers from its passenger seat MG flamed at the
bouncing jeep. Rounds hammered at the jeep’s rear.
The tires exploded. The buggy hurtled past at a wide angle, raking the bucking
vehicle fore and aft. A line of fire caught the jeep’s passenger and the
long-armed man saw the guy’s head burst open, the driver ducking under the hail
of lead. The jeep swerved toward the nearest buggy, hit its rear, caromed away
but stayed on an even keel. The long-armed man could almost hear the tortured
clang and scrape of metal on metal, the boosting roar of acceleration as the
jeep plowed on.
But it could not last, and it did not last. The buggies were coming at the jeep
from two different directions, MG fire from both converging. Blazing fire lines
met, crossing on the ancient, crudely armored jeep. Metal struts flew away, the
front tires were shredded to rubber strips, and the hood blew up and sailed high
into the sky. The driver was caught by two sets of fire lines and they tore him
apart bloodily, throwing chunks of him up into the muggy air. Tracers sought the
juice tank, soon found it. Fire bloomed, punching the jeep spectacularly apart,
sending it cartwheeling in all directions.
“Holy nukeshit,” muttered the man with long arms. The Trader’s men had used
nothing but MGs for their kill. They hadn’t even started on the twin cannon,
mortars and rocket tubes yet.
He wrenched the wheel, pulled the speeding, bucking truck onto a side track that
dropped away from the track he’d been on. They entered a narrow, gloomy canyon,
high cliffed, stretching away from them, undeviating, straight as an arrow
before it rose again to trees, vegetation and less dust.
The long-armed man shot a glance at Scale, who was still twisted around in his
seat, his gun pointing up at the roof. In the back huddled the others, four of
them now. The fifth lay in a widening pool of gore.
The stickies seemed to have calmed down somewhat, maybe mesmerized by the
explosion of the jeep. Stickies liked explosions—the bigger, the more eruptive,
the better; they liked looking at the flames. But the bastards never gave in.
They’d be up there now, waiting their chance, waiting to create more mayhem. He
glanced at his rearview mirror, saw the other truck still clinging to his tail,
but his own and its dust obscured the entrance to the canyon. He couldn’t tell
if the two buggies were coming up behind.
The truck hurtled along the flat of the canyon, swooped up and out of it into a
grove of trees that drooped with dirty yellow foliage. They were in a wide
natural valley, a part of the mountain’s foothills, and the camp was almost dead
center, a small hamlet of old huts and cabins clustered along one end of what
had once been a huge lake but was now only a dirty little pond of muddy,
brackish, just about drinkable water. In the distant past it had been a thriving
community, a summer resort for wealthy people who came there to fish the lake
and climb the mountains for fun. But of course the long-armed man knew only
rumors of such things, was in fact puzzled by the notion that people once