“Not really,” Krysty said honestly, placing the cup aside.
“Then try this, dear lady,” Doc said offering her one of the tan sticks. “Chew it like you would gum.”
The lumpy stick resembled bamboo and was as hard as a rock. Careful of breaking a tooth, Krysty chewed and sucked until the wooden tube began to soften with her saliva and a delicious sweetness filled her mouth, completely banishing the aftertaste of the electrocution.
“Sugarcane,” Ryan said, hacking off another mouthful of condor. He chewed and swallowed before continuing. “We found a whole grove of the stuff. Jak says it’s exactly what we need to make shine.”
“What about the pipes?” Krysty asked, using her fingers to take some soft splinters from her mouth.
“Got an answer for that, too,” Ryan said, tossing away the dregs of his coffee. “We got some of the coils and metal that we need from the car wrecks here. They’re rusty, but salvageable.”
“What are we missing? Condenser pipes?” she guessed.
“Bull’s-eye. We’ve gotta have some copper tubing or we’ll never distill alcohol clean enough to run the engine. But last night, J.B. spotted the lights from some ruins to the east. Say, ten, fifteen miles at the most. There should be plenty of copper pipes there. People used a lot of it in bathroom plumbing.”
“Big,” Jak stated as a fact. “Need smaller.” Mildred scrunched her face. “About the diameter of the copper pipes used for the ice-maker in a refrigerator?”
The teen nodded. “Perfect.”
“But we can use bathroom plumbing if there is nothing else available,” J.B. asked, pausing in his work.
“Sure. But take longer cook. Refrig better.” Picking at his teeth with a splinter of wood, Ryan grunted in annoyance. A hardware store would have exactly what they wanted, but those were almost always looted.
“So we concentrate on the better houses, or any resort hotels still standing,” the Deathlands warrior decided. “Twelve feet should do us. Just remember that old copper cracks easy, so be bastard careful removing it. We can patch a small break, but nothing big.”
“Excellent!” Doc beamed. “We are practically gone already.”
“Hopefully. The ruins might be on another island,” J.B. said, gnawing on a leg. “But we can carve out canoes to get there if necessary.”
Krysty moved closer to the fire, savoring the smell of the fresh meat. “So this is an island,” she said, basking her hands before the blaze. “Okay, where are we?”
Tossing aside the cleaned bone, J.B. tapped the minisextant hanging around his neck with a thumb. “Marshall Islands, in the South Pacific.”
The aroma of the cooked birds was hitting the woman hard, and a wave of hunger rose from within. Sliding a knife from her belt sheath, Krysty cut away a large chunk of meat from the roasting condor. It smelled delicious and cut as easily as freshly fallen snow. She took a small bit and smiled. Mildred had once mentioned that these birds were almost extinct in her time. No wonder. They tasted wonderful.
“Been a while since we jumped off American soil,” Krysty commented around a full mouth, grease on her chin.
“Still are in the U.S. America owns these islands,” Ryan said, ripping open a foil packet and wiping his face with a lemon-scented towelette. Normally he saved the predark items to clean small wounds, but there was no fresh water and greasy hands on a blaster trigger would only get him aced.
“Or rather, this used to be a hunk of America,” he added. “Mildred says we gave it to back to the locals sometime around 1999 or so.”
“But the U.S. still has a lot of missile bases here, and a small Navy dockyard to fuel warships.”
“That’s wonderful,” Krysty enthused. “Mebbe we can find some ammo and new boots in the warehouses.”
“Possibly,” J.B. said, frowning. “But there are over a thousand islands in this chain, and one of them is the most famous in the world. Bikini.”
“The Bikini Atoll?” Doc gasped, dropping a half-eaten wing. “Good God in heaven, man, that was where they detonated hundreds of nuclear bombs just to test how they worked!”
“This is the area,” Ryan stated, gesturing around them.