Neutron Solstice

busy at their shopping. And there were no cars. All the old vids seemed to show roads jammed with wags.

On the right was an ice-cream parlor, its sign fallen down and disintegrated into splinters of chipboard. Another realtor's sign boasted that it found houses For the people and by the people. There was also a store selling do-it yourself outfits for home security, ever a barometer of social fears and neuroses.

One of the roofs that had given in to the ravages of a hundred years was composed of red shingles. It had been called the something Hut;the first word had vanished.

They first saw the graffiti in an empty lot next door.

It was sprayed in a shimmering white paint, in ornate, rolling letters three feet high, on the wall of a hardware store.

THIS LAND IS OUR LAND. KEEP OUT ALL LIVING DEAD AND FRENDS OF THE BARRON.

The paint reflected the sun, making Ryan blink.

'Over there,' said Krysty, pointing to more painted lettering. This time it was scrawled across the main window of T-Shirt City.

Looking around, Ryan crossed over to examine it. TEN MORE STEPS AND YOU DEAD, it said.

He reached out with the index finger on his right hand, hugging the G-12 in his left hand. Touching the rolling letters, he stared in disbelief at his finger.

Sticky and fresh with its smear of white paint.

Chapter Thirteen

'It's like the DMZ in 'Nam,' said J. B. Dix. 'Read 'bout, it. No-go region, for both sides. What we heard 'bout this Baron Tourment, he controls most of the land round Lafayette. But not this ville of West Lowellton.'

'White wolf,' said Ryan. 'Or snow wolf. Take, your pick. What we heard back in Moudongue, it's renegades. Gang of wolf's-heads. Outlaws.'

'Slumgullions,' commented Doc Tanner.

'How's that?' asked Finnegan.

The old-timer bared his strong yellow teeth in a ferocious grin. 'Good word, is it not? A cant perversion of the tongue, but it sounds like what it means.' Licking his lips, he savored the word again. 'Slumgullion. A rowdy fellow, living beyond the law. And as we are all aware, to do that you most be honest.'

There were times when Doc simply didn't make any sense to anyone.

Bedrock bedding prices. Buy nowЧ tomorrow may be too late.

The white lettering was inside a store window a few yards down the street. But it was obviously written before the neutron missiles were dropped over the Louisiana bayous.

'What do we do, Ryan?' asked Krysty, glancing up and down the street. Behind them, a small armadillo scuffled across the street, but otherwise the avenue was deserted.

'We could try and make it through the swamps to the gateway. But I figure them Cajuns are going to be looking for us. And there's those dead and alive fuckers to keep clear of.'

'What about that warning?' asked Finn, pointing back at the first of the freshly painted signs.

'Place like this...' Ryan began, pausing as he looked around the rows of long derelict buildings, '...place like this could get you cold-cocked from anywhere. Man with a good blaster could pick us all off before we got a sight on him.'

Both Ryan and J.B. had outstanding memories for trails and maps, and both had a clear sense of where they were in relation to the rest of the ville. If the Baron that everyone was shitting their pants over ruled most of the region, then West Lowellton looked like the best venture, they decided. But if there was this street-gang holding it, then they had to find some place large in which to hole up.

'Big motel,' suggested J.B.

'Yeah,' Ryan nodded. 'Yeah. There was something called a Holiday Inn. We passed it 'bout a half mile back. Be a good place.'

'There was an old vid-house near there, with a real pre-chill name. The Adelphi.' J.B. shook his head at the absurdity of the names in the prenuke ville.

'Probably showing some anticommy prop-vids. I read that was all they showed round that time.' Finnegan was leaning against the wall of a store, Barney's Beanery, that had once sold health foods. There was an addition to the sign: and gun store.

Faded by thousands upon thousands of days of sun and wind, there was some crude lettering on the wall of a store across the street.

'GOD WANTS YOU,' it said.

Underneath it, in the same white paint as the earlier graffiti, was written: 'THEN LET HIM FUCKING COME AN GET ME.'

Krysty heard the sound first.

It was a faint tinkling noise, thin and metallic, a long way from where they stood. It had an insistent rhythm, clicking away, first two fast beats, then a slow one. Two fast, one slow.

Ryan considered running for the rows of neat white houses behind the stores to lie in ambush for whomever was coming. But it didn't take a tactical genius to figure out that their attackers would have better local knowledge than they did.

'There's a chill in here,' said Finnegan, flattening his snub nose against the dusty window. 'Just bones heaped together.'

'Nothing else? No blasters?' asked J.B.

'No. Big poster on the back wall, half-torn. Says, 'Brownsville Texas is the fucking pits.' Oh, and one other over a door. Big heart with the words 'I love Lafayette.' That's all they wrote.'

The chinking sound was growing closer. Krysty looked at Ryan. 'You know there's two, mebbe three of them , doing it?'

'I can hear that.'

'So?'

'Let's, go find us that Holiday Inn place we saw on the map.'

Grimacing, Doc straightened, pushing at the base of his spine with his right hand. 'I fear I am not so supple as once was. Did you say we were all going to seek out a Holiday Inn in which to rest?'

'Yeah, Doc.'

'Then let us trust that the best surprise we get will be no surprise at all.'

'Sure,' replied Ryan, wondering what the old man was babbling about.

* * *

The large sign that had once welcomed Kiwanis, Elks, baseball teams and homecoming queens had rusted and fallen to the dirt, probably half a century ago.

'What the fuck is a Kiwanis?' muttered Finnegan, not really expecting an answer and not getting one.

As they left the shopping street on the edge of West Lowellton, the metallic drumming seemed to fade away. Krysty swore she heard someone laughing, crazed and long, but she might have been mistaken.

Ryan led them at a brisk pace, with the Armorer at the rear constantly checking that they weren't being followed. Here the streets were narrower, with older properties built on either side. Most had rickety mailboxes, many still showing the dragon's-head logo of the West Lowellton Comet and Advertiser. Off the main drag they saw more sun-bleached bones scattered here and there. On a wooden porch several skeletons were jumbled together as if a family had chosen to die together.

The sun shone through the long branches of the whitebeam trees that lined the dappled suburban streets. Intermittently they came upon the rotting remnants of automobiles, their tires long gone, settled on their hubs. They were overwhelmed by the visible tragedy of the Big Chill of 2001. It wasn't like just reading about it, or hearing from some old tapes. This was nowand this was real.