insisted they stay together.
'No. With Henn gone we're low on blaster power. You, me an' Finn. Doesn't mean Doc and the girls don't pull their weight, but we're the professionals. Best we stick close.'
The promise of a good day was vanishing fast. The sky was chameleonic, shifting from a pale blue streaked with pink to a deep purple with black clouds slashed across it.
Ryan, as usual, took the point position, keeping as far as he could to the side of the blacktop, in among the shadows, blaster at the ready, finger close on the trigger. Krysty came second, twenty paces back, on the opposite side of the road. Then Doc and Lori, who were becoming increasingly difficult to separate, with Finn a farther twenty yards behind them. J.B. brought up the rear, keeping a good hundred paces off, on the same side of the road as Ryan.
The temperature was already rising, humidity making the going tough. Ryan estimated that it was already close to the hundred mark. He was glad that he'd left his beloved fur-trimmed coat behind in the gateway.
A large mosquito, wings shimmeringly iridescent in the hazy light, settled on Ryan's left wrist, readying itself to feed. 'Bastard!' Slapping at it, he crushed it in a smear of blood.
There weren't many signs that the blacktop was actually used very much. Oases of vegetation sprouted from cracks in its surface. A sharp curve to the left was followed by one to the right. At each turning Ryan held up a hand, slowing the others until he checked out what was around the bend.
Moving back, he called the rest to him, using the prearranged signal of touching the top of his head with his left hand. One by one they came up, J.B. at the rear.
'Road goes straight, but we're close to a ville of some kind. And there's a guard box over on the left, near a side trail.'
As they neared it, moving closer together, Ryan was first to see that the small building wasn't a guard box at all.
'It's a phone booth,' said Doc wonderingly. 'I vow that it has been...' He seemed awestruck. '...many a long year since I have seen such an artifact.'
The box, with some of its glass still intact, leaned to one side. The letters 'AT&T' were still visible on it. The group stopped to gawk at it.
Above them the sky had darkened as it had the previous afternoon, with a jagged spear of silver lightning occasionally crackling down. To one side there was a large pool, reflecting the sullen clouds. Beyond the water several buildings were silhouetted in the distance, seemingly fairly undamaged.
If a whole large city had really escaped the nuking of 2001, it would be an astounding thing to see. Certainly Ryan Cawdor had never seen anything like it before.
Finnegan stepped closer, stopping about a dozen paces from the booth.
'Some fucker's in there. I can hear it moving.'
'Get back, Finn,' ordered Ryan. 'Don't take any chance with...'
The words died in his throat when he saw, as they all did, the creature that Finnegan had disturbed.
'A fucking rat,' said Lori. It was the first time any of them had heard her swear.
In the Deathlands there were all kinds of mutie creatures. But none of them had ever seen a rat like this one. It was much larger than usual, hanging on the plastic receiver cord, gnawing at it, while its fiery red eyes stared at the invading humans. Its coat was white as driven snow.
'Albino,' said Krysty. 'I had a pet mouse back home called Blanche. She was like that. Pink eyes and white coat. No pigment.'
Almost contemptuously the rat scurried down the cable, pausing in the open door to pick its way delicately over splinters of broken glass, then running across the road and stopping on the edge of the bushes. Finnegan drew his Beretta 9 mm pistol, steadying his right hand with his left.
'No,' snapped Ryan. 'Don't be a stupe, Finn.'
'Why not? We can waste any local double-poor swamp muties.'
'Just like Henn did? Come on, Finn.'
During the brief conversation the rat made a leisurely escape.
There were further columns of smoke, and soon they could actually taste the flavor of roasting meat. Finnegan was all for pushing on at best speed, going in with blasters spitting, taking what they wanted and icing anyone who stood in their way,
He was overruled by the others.
'Slow and easy, Finn, Usual way. Let's go and do it.'
Spreading across half the roadway was a tumbling mass of brilliant azaleas, a rainbow of brightness, dazzling in the dullness of the morning. Away beyond were the buildings of the town, but the smoke from cooking fires was closer. It emanated from a dip in the land in which lay a maze of shallow swamps.
'Flowers pretty,' said Lori, staring open-mouthed at the display.
'Road sign, yonder,' said Krysty, pointing to a small rectangle of dark green, well over a mile beyond the flowers.
'It name the ville?'
She stood on tiptoe, straining, her face wrinkled with concentration. 'La something. Yeah. Layayette. Lafayette, and it says West... Can't... West Lowellton. Nearest place looks like it's called West Lowellton. Maybe Lafayette's farther.'
Doc looked across at her. 'I believe that Lafayette was a city, Miss Wroth. Perchance West Lowellton is a suburb of it.'
A dozen muties appeared from behind the azaleas. Suddenly and silently. One second the road was clear; the next second the creatures were there.
'Fireblast!' breathed Ryan, dropping into a blaster's crouch, gun braced against his hip, checking to make sure the others had fanned out.
About forty paces ahead, the swampies stood in a frozen group, staring at the invaders as if they were men from deep space.
Ryan checked them out, trying to guess precisely what their mutation was, wondering if it might be safest to simply chill the whole lot of them in a raking burst of lead. But there might be three hundred of them around the next bend.
The first thing that struck Ryan was their stocky build. Not one was taller than about five-two, and not one, including the single woman, weighed less than about two-twenty. Most of them had negroid features, with flattened noses and thick lips. Their hair was short and curly, and came in all shades from black to white, through red and yellow. Ryan noticed that their eyes protruded slightly, surrounded by nests of scars, like old tattoos.
None of them had fingernails.
As they glared at Ryan and his companions, their mouths sagged open as though their noses were blocked. There was not a blaster among them, though several had peculiar small crossbows strapped to their forearms. Each one, including the woman, wore long pangalike knives at the hip.
They were dressed in cotton shirts and patched short trousers, with flapping sandals on their feet, hacked from chunks of old tires.
For several heartbeats nobody moved on either side.
Then Finn opened fire.
Immediately all the others started shooting. After all, who was going to stand there shrugging his shoulders and complaining he hadn't been involved in a tactical planning discussion?
Two utilities raised their feeble little crossbows as if to retaliate, but the wave of fire sent them crashing down in a tangled heap of thrashing arms and legs.
Ryan saw his triple bursts wipe three of them away. First the woman, two 4.7 mm rounds smashing into her neck, nearly severing the head from the torso.
'High,' muttered Ryan, automatically adjusting his aim. Finn's actions hadn't entirely taken him by surprise. The chubby blaster had never been known for his patience. And after Henn's murder...
The swampy beside the stricken woman was on a crutch, half his left leg missing. Ryan shot him through the stomach, spilling his tripes in the dirt.
