Zero City

“Bug, worms, old shoes, leather couches and mink stoles,” Mildred said patiently. “Any old thing. After sharks, reptiles are the only true omnivores.”

“The desert is an ocean with its life underground, and a perfect disguise above,” Doc said softly to himself.

Past a corner, the squat buildings became neat rows of apartments and strip malls. A yellow sheet of newspaper blew by the wag, the faded headlines touting vital information from a century ago.

“Place gives me the creeps,” J.B. said unexpectedly. “Got the damnedest feeling we’re being watched.”

Studying the white windows on the buildings, Jak nervously clicked back the hammer of the Python and eased it down again with his thumb. “Yeah. Me, too,” he said. “Eerie.”

Holding the Steyr, Krysty said nothing, but her hair was coiled tightly in response to her disturbed frame of mind.

“Thought it was just me,” Ryan added, increasing their speed slightly. One important question kept repeating itself over and over in his mind. Why hadn’t a predark city this large and in excellent condition been looted yet? Suddenly, he had the strangest urge to turn the wag and head straight back to the redoubt.

“Hey, look there!” Dean cried, pointing ahead.

Visible over the rooftops of the two-story apartment complexes was a pair of curved metal arches.

“Must be bridges,” Ryan said, shifting gears and heading in that direction. There had been no evidence of the searchlights or the owners in this section of town. Perhaps they were across the river. It made sense to stay near running water in a desert. Then a strong whiff of sulfur made the man wonder if they were heading toward an acid rain lake?

As the Hummer took a corner, a dockyard spread before them in crumbling majesty. Rows upon rows of long warehouses lined the concrete apron of the shore. Deep recesses clearly designed for drydocking vessels notched the embankment with tall derricks standing alongside for ferrying cargo.

An opening dropped away from the dockside, some kind of a storm drain or river. But more importantly, across the span was a jumbled wall of smashed cars and trucks towering thirty feet high, and extending in both directions to curve out of sight.

“We found the source of the searchlights,” Ryan remarked, parking the Hummer a safe distance from the docks. The concrete looked solid, but the five tons of the Hummer might send them all plummeting into whatever was at the bottom of the smelly trench. Best to take no chances.

“They raided this side to fix the other,” Krysty said. “Smart folks.”

“Architectural cannibals,” Doc stated thoughtfully. “How unique.”

Removing his glasses, J.B. extracted his folding telescope and extended it to its full length. Carefully, he traversed the other side.

“Nobody in sight,” he reported, collapsing the telescope.

Killing the purring engine, Ryan nodded and climbed out of the wag. “I’ll take point. J.B. you’re on guard.”

J.B. slid his glasses back on. “Check,” he replied, patting the breech of the M-60. “Any trouble and I’ll sound the alarm.”

Spreading out so they didn’t offer any snipers a nice clustered target, the companions proceeded closer to the edge of the concrete. The smell was worse here, the reason soon painfully obvious. A hundred feet down was a sluggish yellow river reeking of sulfur and other chems.

“Must be runoff water from the desert,” Krysty guessed. “We already knew they got bad acid rain here.”

“Now how the hell do we get across this?” Mildred asked, clutching her med kit.

“We don’t,” Jak said, jerking a thumb to their left.

Nearby, the great arches of steel were all that remained of the predark bridge crossing the river. A wide road led to paved ramp extensions that ended in melted gobbets of cooled metal only feet from the embankments. An identical section stood on the other side of the river. But the center span of the bridge was completely gone. Worse, two more smashed bridges were visible upriver, hundreds of severed steel cables dangling limply into the brackish flow of the polluted river.

“Well, if we dive in, the fall wouldn’t hurt us,” Mildred said, sounding half serious. “But nobody could live for long in that water. Plus, there’s no way to climb up the other side. Those support pillions are thicker than the Hummer.”