“How did you know Alar was my father?” she asked quizzically.
Ryan continued eating and said nothing. As if a chief would have sent anybody else but blood kin to palaver with the outlanders visiting the tribe.
“If I may, I would like to ask a question, dear child,” Doc said as casually as possible, patting his greasy mouth clean with a grayish linen handkerchief. “Can we really leave whenever we wish?”
“Of course!” Dnal answered, sounding slightly insulted that the word of the Core should be questioned, especially by meat eaters. “Go anytime, and anywhere.”
Then she turned and pointed. “Except to the south. That is the blessed land, the origin of the Core and none may go except for the leader of the Core. For any others, it means death.”
J.B. shot Ryan a glance, and the Deathlands warrior subtly nodded in agreement. The land to the south was probably radioactive, he thought, glancing at the rad counter on his lapel. But the device indicated that they were in a safe zone. If so, why did the Core mutate into telepaths? Was it the bug juice? Merely another reason never to touch a single drop of the stuff.
“What about those?” Dean asked, waving at the nearby ruins.
“This is where we mine for the metal of our weapons and the clothing that protects us from the sand,” she said. “Explore all you wish, take anything you find.”
Turning on a heel, Dnal started to walk away into the wind, the loose ends of her wrappings jerking with whipcrack snaps. Then over a shoulder she added, “It doesn’t matter what you do. There is no water for a hundred miles. When your thirst is great enough, you will return to drink and join the Core.” As the girl walked, she soon vanished into the darkness and the windblown sand.
“Yeah?” Jak growled, easing the safety back on the blaster in his holster. “Like hell will.”
“Indeed, my taciturn friend,” Doc rumbled, placing aside his mess kit. “I do believe that it would be preferable to put lead in my head then join these antediluvian freaks.”
“How much water do we have?” Dean asked, wiping his hands clean on the sand and then on his pants.
“Three days,” Mildred answered promptly. “Not counting the poisoned stuff we’re saving for an emergency.”
“How far away?” Krysty whispered in a strained voice.
Looking at the stars overhead, J.B. hazarded a guess. He wouldn’t be able to shoot their exact position until the sun rose. “To reach the Grandee?” he said, rubbing his chin, “I’d say about three days on foot. If we move fast and head straight south.”
“Across the forbidden zone?” Dean said, casting a glance over a shoulder at the featureless blackness stretching behind them.
“Yep.”
“Damn,” Mildred murmured unhappily. “We have no choice, then.”
“Agreed. We better cook all of the meat tonight,” Ryan said, returning to his meal. “Gonna need it when we start running for our lives at dawn.”
Chapter Five
The rough brick pressed uncomfortably against Dean’s cheek as he peeked through a crack in the wall. The companions had risen just before dawn and hidden themselves in the maze of old preDark ruins. His father figured that since a lot of large sections of pavement and sidewalk were still lying about, the Core wouldn’t be able to travel through the sand under the dead city and would have to walk on the surface. He proved to be right when Dean spotted a group of the Core eerily rise from the loose sand a hundred yards away and then head for the location that had been their campsite.
Without the horses to carry the heavier supplies, the companions had been forced to abandon a lot of their excess possessions, the saddles for starters, extra blankets, rope tools, some of the roasted meat and most of their spare blasters, along with the large leather bag of poisoned water. His father thought that would make it look as if they were only exploring the nearby ruins for a source of water.
As the companions zigzagged into the crumbling array of structures, Krysty had found a perfect spot where they could watch the campsite and see what the Core did. Shifting his position, Dean heard a sprinkle of crumbling mortar fall to the ground and tightened his grip on the iron framework jutting from the side of the destroyed warehouse. Since he was the lightest and the smallest, Dean got the job of climbing up the smashed building and snuggling into a crack in the wall where he could sit and keep a watch.
Sure enough, a short while after dawn the Core arrived. The masked beings came in force and marched straight into the camp. Now they were going through the abandoned items of the companions, inspecting the saddles and tossing bits of spare wood onto the campfire to watch them smolder, then burst into flames. Only one Core member stood by itself—man or woman, it was impossible to tell with the thick wrappings—and surveyed the campsite critically, turning over small items with a spear. Squinting to try to see better, Dean could only guess that it was Alar from the respectful way the others acted. Then the leader of the Core pulled out a small vial from within its rags and the rest got busy.
Sons of bitches! Dean thought. So that was the plan, eh? Wiggling free of the crevice, he walked along the tilted floor until coming to a large hole, then jumped through, falling a few feet down to the next level and running along a stronger concrete floor until coming to the ragged end of the building. This entire side of the warehouse was gone, sheered and crumbling into the desert sands. However, a large dune was piled high against the outer walls and Dean skipped down the slope, using speed to stay ahead of the loose sand disturbed by his passage.
Near the bottom, Dean jumped clear of some rocks and landed on his boots near Ryan. His father had been standing guard with his longblaster at hand, ready to give cover fire if the Core spotted Dean. At the noise of his landing, the others came out from behind the rusted shell of a locomotive engine, weeds growing between the wheels, and a buzzard’s nest cresting the long cold smokestack.
“Well?” his father demanded.
The boy nodded. “You got it, Dad. They come with the first light, poked around our stuff some, then poured that damn jinkaja stuff on the leftover horse meat and in the water bottle.”
“Our own free will, my ass,” Krysty snorted. She had spent a bad night fighting the demons in her memory, but the training she had received from her mother pulled her through and she had the nightmares under control. Mostly, anyway. But if the hammer fell, she was going to blow away Alar with the first round. That perverted twist was never going to be allowed access to her mind again.
“Yeah, thought so,” Ryan said through clenched teeth. “I don’t care if that bug juice grew me back an eye, if they catch one of us, best to do a mercy chilling rather than take a drink.”
“Having to ace one of our own. Dark night!” J.B. swore.
Keeping a watch on their nest, a flock of buzzards circled high about in the cloudless sky, the morning sun already feeling ten times hotter than it did the previous day. Drawing his blaster, Ryan jacked a round from the ejector and rubbed the oily cartridge on his lips to help ease the growing thirst.
“Let’s move out,” he said gruffly, dropping the clip to thumb the round back in with the others. “Stay close and quiet, two-yard spread. Dean, keep that crossbow
