imagination.
A century ago, the whole town had been blasted away from above. Its streets and houses had been scoured clean of inhabitants. Families had been destroyed with the demonic breath of the neutron bombs. Russian submarines off the coast had lain still and patient and received the signal that told them this was no drill. No false alarm. No testing situation.
And the people had died and the houses remained. It was a cemetery, fifty miles wide and forty deep. Only in the swamps had people survived; many of their descendants were now muties. They avoided the ruins of the old villes, fearing the contamination they once harbored. The whole of West Lowellton was like some giant time capsule, frozen since that dread January day a hundred years ago.
Ryan was fascinated and wanted to investigate each home and shop they passed. But J.B. warned him of the need for food and shelter.
'That Baron Tourment's going to have patrols of sec men after us, Ryan.'
'Sure.'
'Look at 'em later.'
'Yeah. Guess so.'
There were surprisingly few buggies or wags of any kind. Ryan's guess was that when the alarms started to shrill, lots of folks would have headed out of town, away from the missiles they knew would wipe away their homes. But nothing had prepared them for the reality of Armageddon. All the flix that Ryan had seen in old redoubts had warned about painting windows white to cut down the flash-blast. Blankets soaked in water over doors. Sandbags. Refuge under stairs and in storm cellars. Brown paper bags over your head.
It hadn't been like that. Best way of saving your kin from the long agony of rad-poisoning was to take out the pump-action scattergun and blow everyone's head off, and finally kiss the warm barrel yourself.
Some had done that. Ryan had seen the corpses, half the bone of the head missing, the corroded ten- gauges still between the clenched jaws.
There was one saloon wagon in a side street, its tires long rotted, stripped down to metal by years of high winds, blasted by sand. The glass remained, though its surface had been hazed until it was opaque. A branch off a nearby lime tree had fallen over the hood. Krysty moved it, revealing two stickers, peeling off the chrome fenders.
One said, 'I brake for children and animals and patriotic Americans.' The second one said simply: 'Happiness is the biggest L.R. Missile.'
Doc shook his head, saying nothing.
Around noon they found a street showing a full row of shops. Ryan couldn't get over the amazing sight. He'd seen old vids, flix and pix in mags. This was small-town U.S.A., standing there in front of his eyes. All that was missing was folks.
Some of the windows were broken, and there was clear evidence of looting. Also, the streets here were free of bones. As they stepped along, keeping to one side, Ryan glanced in at the storefronts.
Names clicked by, some registering, some not. Some of them had sold products he'd heard of. Some of them were obscure and incomprehensible.
What was
'This is fucking way-weird,' said Finnegan, spitting at a red hydrant in the street,
'Sounds like the Deathlands now,' said J.B.
'Empty,' said J.B. disappointedly. 'Not a blaster left in the place.'
'Guess the Cajuns must have taken 'em,' Ryan said, stepping around a dead snake that must have been close to fifty feet in length when alive.
The Armorer shook his head doubtfully, swatting away a hornet with his fedora. 'Guess not.'
'Why?'
'This place closed up in January 2001. It would have had the best and latest blasters of the day. What they called car guns and house guns. Small caliber, pretty pistols. Berettas and Colts. Big mothers like the later Pythons and the Pumas. And hunting rifles from Spain and Czechoslovakia.'
'Sure.' Ryan wouldn't argue with J.B. when it came to discussing weaponry.
'I seen what them double-poor dirties had. Old black-powder muzzle-loaders and muskets that were old before the winters came. Nothing from a store like this one here.'
They moved a little farther on. Krysty stopped, tugging at Ryan's sleeve and halting him, while the others waited.
'What is it, lover?'
'I heard those swampwags again. Way off, behind us.'
'That's no problem. If'n it comes to a firefight in a place like this, we could take on the whole of the baron's fucking sec-men army.'
'There was something else.'
'Yeah?'
'Whistling.'
'I heard a whistle,' said Lori, her blank face lighting for a moment.
'You did? When?'
The two women looked at each other. Lori answered Krysty, fumbling for the right words. 'Soon gone. Not a long time. High and... weak.'
'That's it. Very high frequency, Ryan. Repeated pattern of notes. Like a signal.'
'Ahead or behind us?' asked J.B.
She pointed wordlessly down the street, in front of them.
'Far off?' asked Ryan.
She shook her head at the question. 'Difficult, love. All these buildings. Not used to it. Even back home in Harmony it wasn't like this.'
'I doubt, Miss Wroth, if there are many places like this left in the whole of the United States of America. I beg pardon. In the whole of Deathlands.'
At Ryan's orders, they spread out even more.
They covered both sides of the sunlit street, their blasters ready, their nerves stretched tight with tension. In this part of West Lowellton the greenery hadn't gained so much of a stranglehold, and the street was still fairly clear and the buildings mainly undamaged.
Ryan squinted so that the line of small stores became hazy, the outlines blurring and softening. And it became like an old vid from before the wars. All it lacked were the smiling, bustling throngs of women and children,
