“When Krysty wakes up, we’ll see if we can get more answers.” Ryan turned his attention to survival again. Saving Krysty only to have them all die in the junkyard was worthless.
“Ryan,” J.B. called. “The coldhearts have decided to give it up. They’re pulling out.”
Ryan walked over to the window and peered out. The rain had started to fall now, coming down in a fine mist that had to be a big factor in Halleck’s decision. The wag led the way back into the rubble of the buildings around the junkyard.
As soon as the Slaggers pulled back from the front of the junkyard, though, the horsemen rode through the entrance. Ryan counted over thirty men, then looked at J.B.
“Reinforcements, mebbe,” the Armorer said. “The group we saw earlier could have been part of a bigger party. Blasterfire might have attracted them.”
“Fireblast,” the one-eyed man swore. “We know those men aren’t here for us, and they’re obviously not here for the coldhearts. Only leaves one thing.”
J.B. nodded. “The people in here with us.”
Ryan turned on the nine people across the room with the companions. “Any of you know these people out here?”
No one answered and no one moved.
“Get over here to the bastard window and look,” Ryan commanded. “If you can’t see them from in here, I’ll give you a chance to see them up closer when I kick you out of this building.” He meant it, too, because his own survival and that of the companions came first. It always did.
Every one of the adults they’d let into the building came up to the window and peered out. And all of them said they didn’t know who the men were.
“Mebbe lying,” Jak said after the last woman had walked away. “Or mebbe person baron’s men look for dead out there and they not know.”
“Mebbe,” Ryan said, but the thought didn’t ease his mind.
A flash of lightning zigzagged through the dark sky, then the heavens opened up and the chem storm howled across the broken face of the ville in wild fury. The acid rain pelted the ground hard enough to leave pockmarks against the dust, and it beat down the weeds that grew around the wrecked wags.
The horsemen spread out around the stacks of rusted wags. They dismounted and unfurled heavy canvas tarps to create tented areas out of the wags. In minutes, they and their animals were safely out of the storm, as well, though Ryan heard pain-filled curses as some of them were burned by the acid rain before they could get to shelter.
He watched the corpses of the coldhearts he and Jak had killed to gain control of the fort. The caustic precipitation ate into the flesh, causing ulcerous boils that burst when they pressed past the elasticity of dead skin. In minutes, the rain began to peel away the flesh, baring it to the white, gleaming bone beneath.
TEN MINUTES PASSED, and the chem storm beat into the ground, whipped against the piles of rusted wags and whistled mournfully through the twisted metal. It showed no signs of letting up. The baron’s men remained in their makeshift shelters, but they kept a guard posted.
“We could perforate their provisional habitats,” Doc suggested. “Mayhap the rain itself would do what threat of our combined gunplay cannot.”
“More than likely,” J.B. replied, “it’d just piss them off.”
“Break them out of those tents,” Ryan said, “gives them bastard few places to go for protection from the chem storm. Most likely place is this place.”
“True, friend Ryan. But I heartily dislike feeling like Pooh in the honey jar trapped as we are in this place. No matter how humble an abode this may be, there is no place like home.”
Ryan glanced at the old man and saw the familiar signs of dementia at the edges of Doc’s gaze. “You just hold steady, Doc. We’ll get out of this just fine. We’ve been in tighter spots than this.”
Doc grinned, baring his strangely perfect teeth. “Yes, and Hillary always hated Bill for being reminded of that.”
THE ACID RAIN CONTINUED drumming on the metal roof twenty minutes later. The stink of ozone from all the electrical activity mixed with the harsh stench of sulfur and other chems in the air, making it hard to breathe inside the fort.