Salvation Road

Crow nodded slowly. “Uh-huh. Just unlikely to see anyone coming out of that desert alive. There are old stories from way back beyond skydark about that place among my people. Travelers don’t come back.”

“Mebbe we just got lucky,” Ryan said evenly.

Crow nodded again. “Mebbe. And mebbe the best thing you can do right now is get some salt and water into your bodies, mebbe some rest.”

Ryan assented. “If you don’t take offence, we’ll take our rest in shifts. You can never be too careful, right?” And he fixed the giant with his piercing blue eye.

Crow returned the stare evenly. “I can see that. Join the others and eat. Take water. We have a supply delivered from Salvation every two days.”

“Salvation?”

“The ville we come from.” With which he led them toward the sheltered area where the workers were drinking and eating from a pot of some indistinct stew that bubbled over a small heater. “Please, partake with us,” he said, indicating the food and water, and also deflecting any further inquiries about Salvation.

The companions took dishes from a small table, and also plastic cups that were beaten but well scrubbed, despite the dust that seemed to drift into the shelter from the air outside. They took food from the pot and water from the insulated tank.

“Water running low,” Jak remarked to Crow as he scooped a cupful. “You sure this okay?”

“Delivery’s due,” the Native American answered simply.

Jak nodded and joined the others as they sat and ate between mouthfuls of water that tasted sweeter and more intoxicating than any brew that they may ever encounter.

“I fear first watch may be beyond me,” Doc said weakly. “In point of fact, I have a notion that I may not even reach the end of my meal.”

“It’s okay, Doc, I’ll cover you,” Dean said.

“I don’t think any of us are up to it,” Ryan husked, his throat raw despite the soothing coolness of the water. “But anyway, I’ll take first.”

“I’ll go second,” J.B. put in.

“Play it by ear from there,” Mildred added, addressing Ryan. “I don’t know if you could really plan a watch right now, as some of us may be more heat affected than others.”

Ryan agreed, casting a glance at Jak, who was beginning to fade into semiconsciousness even as he tried to eat and drink.

“Reckon as you’re right,” he said. But even as he spoke, he became aware of a leaden feel in his limbs that hadn’t been there before—a numbness that was beginning to spread. His speech had been slurred, which it hadn’t been before, despite his fatigue.

He looked at Krysty, but the Titian-haired beauty was already beginning to fall into the same state as Jak. Changing the direction of his gaze, which in itself seemed to drag, as though he were moving in heavy, deep water, he could see that Doc had slumped into unconsciousness.

“Dark night,” he heard J.B. curse. Slowly, like dragging himself through molten lead—an impression heightened by the burning fatigue in his limbs—he looked to the Armorer.

J.B. had noticed Jak slide into unconsciousness and Dean begin to shake his head slowly, as though trying to clear it. The boy tried to rise to his feet, but slumped forward as his legs failed him.

“Tranks…in the…in the water…or the food…” Mildred stammered, her plaits shaking in futile motion as she tried to clear her head.

“Fireblast, Crow,” Ryan cursed. “Why did you lie?”

The giant Native American shrugged. “Got the boys to slip something into what was left of the water. Couldn’t take any chances. You’d do the same,” he added.

Ryan knew the foreman was right, and he was more angry at himself than at the giant. He should have known this would happen. The only excuse he could give to himself was that his acute sense of danger, and his survival instincts, had been dulled by the dehydration and the effects of the sun.

But that would be no consolation if they were chilled.

Ryan managed to stagger to his feet. From the corner of his rapidly blurring vision he could see the workmen going for the blasters they had holstered, but they were stayed by the subtlest of hand gestures from their foreman.

“Leave him,” Crow said softly. “He has every right to be pissed. But he’s no danger to us now.”

The words became strung out and distorted as the drug took effect. Ryan swayed on his feet, trying to reach for his SIG-Sauer. Every movement seemed to take an eternity, and his numbed hand failed to respond, even though his arm did move, albeit at an incredibly slow rate. He could see J.B. fumble with his Uzi, falling forward to the ground before the blaster was fully in his hands.

The world narrowed and darkened around Ryan. The one thing that cut through his befuddled mind was why they hadn’t just been chilled there and then? What did Crow intend for them?

As the blackness descended, even that question became an irrelevancy that drifted into the void.

Chapter Five

The pounding in his head made J.B. open his eyes. He knew that the light pouring in would hurt like the darkest night, but he figured that if he could see who the rad-blasted hell was pounding his skull he could at least fight back against them.

The outside world was a blur as he squinted and gradually opened his eyes, but at least he was soon reassured of the fact that he wasn’t under attack. There were two shapes in front of him that stood out from the light around—one was stocky and light, the other tall, thin and dark. Neither was in an attacking position, as both were several feet away from him.

The Armorer furrowed his brow in concentration as he tried to recall what had happened. Everything was clear up until the time that they had been fed and watered by the workers they had stumbled upon. After that, there was only drowsiness, the insanity of the nightmares that troubled him and the thumping at the forefront of his skull.

J.B. groaned, and not only from the pain. It suddenly occurred to him that all of them had fallen for the oldest trick going. While low and in need of water and salt, unable to really focus or concentrate, they had been disarmed by the apparent friendliness of the workers and hadn’t questioned the willingness of the party to share valuable water.

But why weren’t they chilled?

His speculations were halted by Crow’s low yet penetrating voice.

“Is that a groan because you’re hurting, or because you were duped?”

The Armorer groped instinctively in his breast pocket for his spectacles and registered surprise that they had been carefully placed—obviously with some thought—where he usually kept them when they weren’t being worn.

As he pushed them up the bridge of his nose, he noticed that Crow was smiling, almost to himself.

“Better now you can see? You’re the first to come around, so I guess you didn’t drink as much as the others. And I wouldn’t try that yet, either,” the foreman added as J.B. tried to raise himself to his feet, finding that he hadn’t recovered enough equilibrium to do more than make the covered shelter spin dizzyingly around his head. J.B. slunk to the floor again.

“I guess I should mention now that we stripped you of all your weapons when you were unconscious,” Crow continued, “just in case you get a little angry when you try and check for them. Left you all the medical supplies, though. I’d love to know where you got them, but I guess you’ll tell us if you want. You’re certainly a mysterious group, and if you thought I bought that story about the wag, then you didn’t reckon much to me—”

“Why not? I’d believe it,” J.B. interjected, tacitly acknowledging his lie.

Crow laughed, a deep, rumbling sound. “Sure, you would. So would some of these boys. But they—and you—weren’t bought up on the legends of this area before skydark.”

J.B. gestured his acknowledgment, then asked, “So why aren’t we chilled? That’d be the obvious thing.”

“If that was the idea, then I tell you, my friend, that you wouldn’t have got within a hundred yards of this site. I would’ve let the sec boys cut you down afore you had the chance to raise your blasters. And let’s face it, you were in no shape.”

“Okay,” J.B. said, rubbing his aching forehead and looking at the ground intently as he tried to focus his spinning vision. “So what do you want from us?”

Crow shrugged. “Don’t want anything from you, really. I meant what I said. I don’t want to have to chill you, and I guess if I’m honest I didn’t like having to trick you. But you’ve got to understand that I know jackshit about you, and I couldn’t let you walk around with all that hardware. And let’s face it, there was no way on this or any other world that you were ever going to give them up without a struggle. By the by, my friend, I take it from the amount of ammo, plas-ex, grens and blaster power that we took from you that you’re the dude who keeps this outfit in working order when it comes to the hardware?”

J.B. nodded. “You could say that.”