“A recruitment station?” J.B. asked as they turned into the parking lot of the strip mall. Set between a vegetarian sandwich shop and an insurance agency, the small store was brightly decorated with American flags and printed inducements to earn valuable college tuition by joining the military service of your choice.
“This is why I checked the money in the liquor store,” Ryan said, parking his bike. “Wanted to make sure this was still American territory and that there would be a recruitment center.”
“Won’t be any blasters there,” Dean grumped.
“Good, that means no droids,” Ryan said, going to the glass door. A bell tinkled as he walked inside. “We’re here looking for maps.”
“Maps?” Jak stated, blocking the door with a folding chair. “What for?”
“The location of the National Guard armory,” Ryan said, going to a file cabinet and rifling the top drawer. “A lot of phone books don’t list the address of the armories in case of riots. Just the phone number. Also, makes them harder for enemy outlanders to find. Ah, got it.”
Going to a desk, Ryan cleared the top with a sweep of his arm and began unfolding the old map. “But these recruitment posts often do training at the armory,” Ryan finished, gently smoothing out the wrinkles. The yellow paper tore, and he moved with greater care.
“These things are from my time,” Mildred said petulantly, softly touching the remnants of an American flag hanging from a tarnished brass pole. “I have no knowledge of this.”
“You loot enough ruins, you find these things out,” Ryan muttered.
“There it is,” Krysty said, stabbing the map with a finger. “Near the big lake. Good thing we have bikes. That’s twenty miles away.”
“Hope that’s still on the mesa,” Dean said. “Could have fallen off when it rose.”
Using only fingertip pressure, Ryan folded the crumbling map as carefully as possible, then placed it inside his shirt. “Let’s find out,” he said, heading for the door.
AN HOUR LATER, the companions were traveling along the bypass of the city, skirting a canal that was broken in two, the jagged bottom sticking over the side of the mesa like the teeth of a saw.
The day was becoming hotter as the tropical sun rose in the sky, muted thunder rumbled defiantly as the climbing orb burned holes through the orange-and-purple storm clouds. Stretched across the eternal storm were the fuzzy black lines of altocumulus clouds, the dense plutonium vapors resembling prison bars, making it appear as if the whole world were in jaila dire penitentiary that the prisoners themselves had set on fire for no sane reason.
Banking the bikes to follow the endless curve of the bypass, the companions slowly circled the predark city. There were very few cars on the roadway, which seemed odd until they drove past a Mack truck hanging out of the side of an apartment building. When the neutron bomb aced people and electronics, the speeding vehicles had sailed off the bypass from simple inertia. Maneuvering closer to the berm, they could see countless wrecks in charred impact craters spaced irregularly along the suburbs below the elevated bypass.
Rich with the smell of sulfur, the wind blew through their hair, and the companions kept a watch on the quivering gauges of their motorcycles as they settled in for a long drive. The armory was on the other side of the metropolis, many miles away.
Faded white billboards flashed, and gradually the bypass began to move away from the culvert. Soon the roadway was cutting between rows of low buildings only eight or ten stories high. Mountains of concrete and steel compared to almost any ville, but were mere foothills in comparison to the monolithic giants of downtown.
“Triple red!” J.B. shouted, throttling down his bike, both hands holding the handlebars steady as he savagely braked.
Fighting his bike to a halt, Ryan said nothing as he studied the obstacle blocking the roadway. A huge spiderweb stretched between two of the low buildings, the bottom level of the thick strands only a couple of feet off the smooth concrete.
Fat white blobs dotted the precise geometric expanse, a few cawing like condors, one sounding like a weeping man, another thrashing wildly as the occupant of the cocoon still fiercely struggled to escape.