dying to urinate.
He jammed down the door handle, smacked the door open and flung himself out of
the cab, diving to the parched and sparsely grassed earth. He hit the ground,
somersaulted, was up on his two legs and running, charging through a group of
women who were staring at the truck with lackluster eyes. His breath coming in
great wheezing gulps, he came to a stop and swung around.
Nothing. The stickies were no longer on the truck’s roof nor clinging to the
sides nor, as far as he could see, underneath either. He stared at the other
truck, which was braking in a cloud of dust behind the first. Nothing there.
Maybe, he thought, they’d hopped off as the trucks were speeding through the
trees. In which case they were still around. He glanced fearfully at the wooded
area they had come through, but he could see no unnatural movement in the trees.
Maybe they’d simply beat it, got disgusted with the whole jig and cleared out.
Hah! he said out loud. No way. No way, my friend. Stickies had one-track minds.
And what about the Trader’s buggies? Where in hell’s name had they got to? No
sign of them. No sound of them, either. Had they just given up the chase, turned
around and headed back the way they’d come, to the road, satisfied after their
single kill?
But that didn’t seem too likely. In one respect the Trader’s warriors were akin
to the stickies: they had one-track minds.
RYAN’S NOSE WRINKLED. The stench from the camp below was like a fist between the
eyes. Months, maybe years, of rot contributed to that smell: bad food,
excrement, urine, dead bodies flung anywhere to decay. A stomach-churning stink,
a monstrous miasma that, he thought grimly, if you could distill it and bottle
it, would probably be as efficient in destruction as strong poison. Not that
those who existed down there would notice anything. They were surely used to it
by now, and worse.
“Hell, Ryan, we’re gonna need masks to go down there.”
“Yeah, pretty ripe.”
“Ripe ain’t the word.”
“Don’t worry, Abe. Couple of mortars should do it. We don’t need to go in
blazing.”
They were crouched on a low, bush-topped bluff that overlooked the pest hole of
a camp from the south. Ryan had spotted the two trucks while dealing with the
jeep, but then held back from following them too closely. It was easy enough to
watch where they had gone, even more simple to follow at a distance and hide the
two buggies in the trees that grew this side of the canyon.
“See.” Ryan pointed down at the cluster of buildings, to one building in
particular, larger than the rest and built away from the center. “That one.
Seems to be in better shape than the others, and it’s bigger. Old storehouse
probably. That’ll be where the honcho hangs out, and that’ll be where the
weaponry and fuel will be stored. And the explosives. The honcho’d want to keep
an eye on all that valuable shit. Hit that and we solve the problem.”
“What about all those guys? We let ’em live?”
“They aren’t going to be zipping around attacking land wag trains now. They’ll
be lucky to survive out the year. Winter comes, no food…” He snapped his
black-gloved fingers.
Abe, a tall, lanky individual with a thick mustache and long, flowing hair tied
up in a knot at the back of his head, nodded. He knew Ryan’s rules. The Trader’s
rules, really. No killing for the sake of it. No killing unless you or your
buddies were in danger, or unless other, innocent, folk were in danger.
“We can back one of the buggies up here fast, before they catch on to the noise,
and just take out that storehouse,” Ryan was saying. “If I’m wrong she won’t go
up like a firework display and we’ll maybe have to think again, because they
must have materiel somewhere, and that’s what we have to destroy. But I don’t
think I’m wrong.”
“Could use a rocket.”
“Waste of a rocket. We got plenty of mortar shells.”
“Hmm. Okay.”
Abe half rose and turned when Ryan suddenly swore. The tall man stooped, turned