Salvation Road

There were four more men: three were sec men, heavily built and wearing broad-brimmed hats to protect them from the worst ravages of the heat. They stood at points that covered the area surrounding the building. All held blasters, muzzles pointing down. Two had Heckler & Koch G-12 caseless rifles, while the third was carrying an Uzi. All weapons were in fairly good condition.

The fourth man stood out among the others. Standing at somewhere around six-four or six-five, he was sparsely clad, with a loose cotton shirt open to the waist, loose cotton pants that ended around his shins and leather thonged sandals. He was slim, with the loose clothing hiding most of his body, but the open shirt revealed a tightly muscled chest and stomach. He had long, raven-black hair that fell in a single thick plait almost to his waist, the plait shot through with threads of silver-gray that betrayed the encroaching middle age of its owner. On his head was perched a black stovepipe hat with a few oily feathers from a desert buzzard attached to the crown. The brim shaded his eyes, throwing them into shadow, and making the aquiline sweep of his nose and the thin, impassive set of his lips the only clues to his mood. He had walnut-brown skin, tanned and textured like supple leather, and his coloring betrayed his ancient Native American roots.

Yet despite all this, the most striking thing about him was that he carried no blaster. Even the eight-man team swarming over the roof had handblasters holstered and attached to their clothing. But this man, standing as still and silent as a ghost in the burning desert air, carried only a long-bladed knife of his own making, with a finely honed blade and an intricately carved handle that appeared to be of bone.

The sec man covering the area to the east turned and hollered across the space between himself and the silent giant.

“Yo! Crow, y’all ain’t gonna believe this, but there’s a whole bunch of people walkin’ out of the desert.”

The giant said nothing, but the shout led to hilarity from the men working on the roof.

“Shee-it, you been chasing them desert mushrooms again, Petey?” yelled a thickset, heavily scarred man with sandy hair thinning on his scalp, not pausing in his task of rapidly resetting the thick asphalt tiles as he spoke.

“Shut up, Hal,” the sec man countered. “Just take a look-see.”

The sandy-haired man stopped momentarily and looked up. Squinting into the desert haze, he could make out the straggling line of the companions as they approached slowly.

“Well, I take it all back, Petey,” he said. “Where in hell did they all come from?” He looked down to where the impassive giant stood. “Hey, Crow, y’all hear that? And they got blasters out,” he added.

There was a pause—not long enough to denote that the giant was ignoring the exchange, but long enough to impose his sense of authority. Something that was emphasized by the manner of his reply.

“I heard. They’ll all be exhausted. Must’ve walked for days, no matter which way they come. And they don’t know if we’re friendly folk. They’ll be too exhausted to be a threat.”

His voice was quiet and low, almost a rumbling whisper that carried across the hot desert air despite the almost inaudible volume.

It was a voice that commanded respect.

“What you wantin’ me to do about them?” Petey asked.

The giant spoke again without turning. “Let them come. Keep your blaster ready but down, like theirs.”

“How the hell you know that?” Petey asked, looking back at the approaching line to double-check.

There was the ghost of a shrug from the giant, but his voice was still impassive. “’Cause we’re as suspicious of them as they are of us. Stands to reason. We don’t spook them, they’ll be fine.”

“’Kay, you’re the boss,” Petey said, turning back to them.

“Sure am—and you boys on the roof remember,” the giant continued, indicating by tone alone that he had noted the way in which the work crew had stopped in order to watch the approaching line.

The hardness in his tone made them start work with alacrity.

“THEY GOING TO BE a problem?” J.B. whispered, his voice barely audible.

“Looks like they’re wary rather than hostile,” Ryan called over his shoulder.

“Let’s hope it stays that way,” Krysty added. “I don’t think any of us are up to a firefight right now.”

“I’ll second that,” Mildred commented.

Ryan continued on, his people following, until he was a few hundred yards from the waiting sec man. Noting that the large and muscular sec man had his blaster held across his chest but with the barrel pointing down, Ryan took one hand from his Steyr and waved slowly and carefully. He called out in a hoarse and cracked voice that barely carried across the space between them.

“Hey! We’ve been in the desert for three days. We don’t want a firefight, just a little water and direction to the nearest ville….” His voice petered out into a cough, the sheer number of words too much for his damaged and dry throat.

“Okay,” the sec man replied, his voice strong and clear across the distance. “Y’all just put those blasters down and leave them before you come any farther, and we’ll be just fine.”

Ryan stopped his people and held ground at the distance. Coughing heavily and hawking a dry phlegm ball that made it hard to speak, he croaked, “’Fraid we can’t do that, friend. I appreciate you don’t want strangers coming on you with blasters out, but we can’t just leave ourselves defenseless.”

The sec man didn’t reply at first. The one-eyed man’s refusal, albeit in a nonthreatening manner, left him nonplussed. Ryan took note of the work party’s leadership order by the way in which the sec man looked toward the tall, dark figure who had been standing all the while with his back to them.

The giant turned slowly and took in the companions with a long, slow gaze. Despite the distance, and despite the fact that the giant’s eyes were ostensibly hidden by the shade cast from the brim of his hat, Ryan felt his eye and those of the giant meet. He felt that he was being assessed and hadn’t been found wanting.

The giant spoke to both the sec man and the companions, and the quiet voice carried across the still desert air.

“It’s okay, Petey. You people can keep your blasters, just holster them and don’t move too fast. The sec boys here can be a mite jumpy.”

Ryan paused for a second, then assented. “Okay, we’ll do that,” he said simply, swinging the Steyr across his shoulder. Behind him, the rest of the companions holstered their blasters. Ryan waited until they had all complied, then turned back. “Okay to come on now?” he asked.

The giant nodded. It was the slightest of movements, but against the stillness of his stance was an almost shocking movement. “I appreciate your caution,” he added cryptically.

As they began to move the last hundred yards to the cinder-block house, the workers on and around the roof stopped to watch. Sensing that they wouldn’t work properly until their curiosity was satisfied, Crow called a halt to their work and the beginning of a rest break.

The men had all descended and were in the shade of a camp built to one side of the newly begun extension, the tentlike structure forming a shelter from the blazing sun. They were drinking water from large drums that had been insulated to keep them cool.

Crow strode away from the men and toward the oncoming group. His stride was lengthy, his gait loping with an easy animal grace. Ryan noted that the man carried no blaster, but was sure from the look of him that he would be no easy competition.

The giant Native American held out his hand to Ryan.

“They call me Crow, and I’m the foreman here. You screw with me and I’ll chill you before you know what’s happened. But you treat me and my boys with respect, and we’ll help you if we can.”

Ryan took the proffered hand, noting the strong but easy grip. In his weakened condition, Crow could easily have ground his knuckles to dust, but he didn’t take the advantage. Ryan immediately felt sure that he could trust the man not to chill them out of hand. But he also knew that the Native American would take any precaution necessary to defend his position.

“Name’s Ryan,” the one-eyed warrior returned in a painful whisper, then naming all his party.

Crow introduced his party by name. Apart from Petey, the other sec men were Coburn and Bronson. Turning to where the work party were gathered, he pointed out the others as Hal, Ed, Mikey, Molloy, Tilson, Rysh, Hay and Emerson. To the tired and dehydrated Ryan, the members of the work party were hard to distinguish from one another. They were all muscular, scarred and tanned. They all looked like men who had built muscle from hard work and could more than hold their own in hand-to-hand combat. He also noted that they all had blasters on their hips.

In their current condition, his people would stand no chance if they really were in any danger…and despite the fact that he trusted Crow not to chill them, there was something that niggled at him.

“So how come you people end up out here in the middle of nowhere, looking like buzzard food?” the bronzed giant asked.

“Damn wag we traded for jack and food back in New Mexico,” J.B. said before Ryan had a chance to answer. “Tank was rigged so that they could fool us on the gas, and the engine bearings were shot to shit ’cause the oil was full of crap. Had to leave the bastard thing or die with it.”

Ryan smiled inwardly at the sudden outburst from the taciturn Armorer. It was a good cover story, as all of them knew the importance of keeping the mattrans system as secret as possible. His own cover story would have been similar, but he was surprised at the sudden acting talent shown by his old friend.

Crow settled a level gaze on J.B., trying to assess his story.

“Seems to me that mebbe you’re not that stupe,” he said finally, “cause y’all seem too battle-wise to be taken in that easily. On the other hand, I guess we all get screwed over sometimes. So where were you headed?”

“Anywhere,” Ryan answered. “We don’t belong to any particular ville, and I guess we’re just looking for somewhere. We were headed in this direction when we got stranded, so I figured that we’d just keep going. There was nothing for several days back, so we just kept going forward. Bastard of a place to get stranded.”