“Relax.” TK pulled down my weapon. “I know him.” He lifted a hand in greeting. “Oi, Toog. Some new friends I’d like you to meet.”
He introduced the wary figure to us. The newcomer was about five seven, thin, wiry like others of his kind. Only his eyes showed, white pools into nowhere. Even his hands were mitted as if he had scabies. Those eyes, as white as an egg, mesmerized me.
“Toog’s been a friend for a long time. Ever since Billy caught desert fever and almost died two seasons back.” My foggy, tired brain pondered on how long a Talyon year was.
“You’re welcome to join us, Toog,” he said. “We’re just sitting down to a meal. This here’s Wren and that there’s Rusco.”
Toog dipped his head in thanks, accepted Wren and I as equals, seeing as we were friends of TK’s.
A trap door led inside the igloo of sanctuary, camouflaged to look like the other junk metal and plastics in the pile. Inside it was dark and surprisingly cool, protection at least from the mad boys.
“Toog’s one of the few who fled from the crawlers, searching other ways. He’s one of the good ones, Rusco. You’ve nothing to fear.” He glanced at my clenched fists on my assault rifle.
To my relief the house pets stayed outside.
“Raised those dervishes from babies. I fed them, tamed them and watered their backs. Now they’re loyal to me, as long as I keep feeding them.”
“What do you feed them?” asked Wren.
“Dead meat. Anything I can catch. I look for the condors or buzzards circling overhead. Anywhere they’re circling means fresh meat is about. Sometimes they sight a sick crawler wandered off to die or some fresh carrion. Rest of the time I hunt whatever I can for food with my bow.”
I nodded as if nothing could be more natural.
The floor was fine white sand, the ceiling beamed with girders; the walls, dried mud, making it cool and dry inside, and a relief to my pounding head. Billy went running over to a shelf of pots to gulp water from a beat-up bucket. I saw the old man kept a crude, fire-stoked stove complete with chimney. Buckets of water ranged around, dozens of them; a chest of junk for fuel, elsewhere a few potted cacti, some low cots. Spartan but serviceable. A mystery where TK got water.
He motioned us to a low steel table with woven place mats in the middle of the room. While we sat around it, the old man fired up the pot-iron stove, rustled up some food, banging various pots and before long he served us a piping-hot soup of green vegetables and some crunchy brown sticks.
I dove in, famished. Munching away, I lifted my spoon to him. “This is not half bad, TK. What is it?”
“The green stuff’s cactus, high in trace minerals and nutrients. The desert insects, those brown sticks you’re shoveling in by the forkful, are common to this region, easy to catch and super high in protein.”
I dropped my utensil on the plate, coughed, and my mouth hung open.
Wren smirked. “What’s the matter, Rusco? There’re more in the pot where that came from. Grasshopper is a novelty on Talyon.”
Loosing a sigh, I studied my company. Toog with his quiet, diminutive movements, never taking a mouthful too swiftly, Wren, her challenging stare, as if everything was wrong in the world, and TK, a glint of amusement in his gray eyes, watching us as if we were all a study in social experiment.
TK read my mind about the next question about the water. “Don’t worry. I have to manufacture my own liquids. I have a rig further down. I call it the hydrophon.” He grinned. “My back’s not what it used to be in the old days so I rig up the AGs and get Billy to help me haul a barrow of filled buckets to this place.”
I nodded. “Seems as if you have everything worked out. Except maybe the bloodthirsty scorps and the zombie mummies lurking about your doorstep.”
“Them…well, I have my ways of keeping them at bay. Xig and Xag, those two brutes outside, help me with that. They’ve killed many wandering crawly boys who’ve come nosing around. If word got out me and Billy were holed up here…” He let the idea hang in dead air.
“So you’ve survived,” I said. “I’d count that as impressive. Was there ever a better yesterday?”
“Dezran City used to be a self-supporting community. A bunch of us used to live in scattered settlements. Along the foot of the desert ridge, not like the big metropolises you see on the settled planets. Talyon was different, had a fresh start, even though it served as the recycling center of the solar system. Then they came and burned up the town.”
“Who’s ‘they’?”
“Some glory-seeking warlords out to make a name for themselves. Heard this place was fair game, rich in mining, beryllium and other elements, and laid waste to the city.”
“Sounds like any of a dozen lowlifes I know.”
TK shrugged. “The strongest of us banded together and we became fighters. In the end, ultimately refugees, living hand to mouth. Many of us drank poison water, I don’t know what else: some became the mutants you saw out there. Messed up their heads, burned their skin, deformed their bodies. That’s why they’re all wrapped up in rags. Used to be human, but they went—feral, let’s say. If you saw them—” he shuddered and cast a sharp look at Toog.
Toog stirred and spoke in a lisp. I caught a flash of harelip beneath the cowl as if his teeth were set the wrong way. “Some genetics
