Off in the corner of the control room, a tall man was sitting on the floor with his legs crossed, humming a wordless tune. His skin was dark black, but his long hair and beard were silver, the same as his strange eyes. In spite of the cold mountain air coming in through the vents, he was dressed in only light clothing, his shirt open to expose a muscular chest covered with the scars of a hundred knife fights, along with an irregular pattern of circles that boasted of surviving a stickie attack, an event so rare it bordered on the miraculous.
Glancing at the doomie, Roberto remembered seeing Yates once stop a bar fight by merely revealing his chest and letting everybody see the incredible scars. The drunken rage of the ville sec men turned to awe, and Yates spent the rest of the night telling his tales of survival over and over again, as the crowd poured endless glasses of shine until dawn arrived. The damn scar was almost a protective charm, as if escaping from the last train west, Yates could no longer be a passenger. Pure shit, but still, Roberto felt better when Yates was around to guard his flank. Not his six, of course. He only trusted Jessica that much.
Just then, the radar beeped, as if detecting another unit somewhere, then it went silent, so the crew ignored it and continued in their assorted tasks. It had to have just been some static from the background hash, nothing more.
Over the long miles, the shale-covered ground began to slope more and more steeply, and the speed of the convoy sharply accelerated until the vehicles were almost careering down the steep slope.
“Easy now,” Roberto warned, neatly folding the useless map. According to it, they should be in the middle of a fragging lake. “Take your time, we’re in no hurry…”
“Tell that to the fragging tires!” Jake shot back, working the brakes and shifting gears steadily. “There’s so much loose rock covering the ground we’re losing traction and starting to slide.”
“I sense danger…” Yates intoned, his eyes closed, his head turned toward the windshield as if he could still see.
“Tell me something I don’t know, ya fleeb!” Jake shot back petulantly.
“The wall approaches!” the doomie cried, raising both arms.
Suddenly the radar started to beep, the tones coming faster every second.
“Son of a bitch, there’s something dead ahead!” Jake shouted over the noise of the device. He tried the brakes and the war wag started to slip sideways. Knowing that would only make them flip over, the driver eased off the pedal and fed the engines more juice, accelerating their speed, but straightening the vehicle. “If we crash into something, at least it’ll be head-on!”
“Should I toss out the anchor, chief?” Jessica asked, going to a corner and resting a hand on a large lever.
“We’re going too fast,” Roberto growled, studying the landscape rushing past the wag. “It’ll only snap off, or worse, rip us in two!”
Breathing hard, the woman removed her hand from the lever. “Then what are your orders, sir?” she demanded.
Roberto caught the honorific and understood that was her way of saying she had no idea what to do next. But that was okay, because he did. Reaching over, he tapped a button on the intercom. “Eric, are you ready?”
“As ever, Chief,” came the smooth reply. “Just say the word.”
The radar pinged away, the noise almost a continuous tone by now. Speeding over a low swell in the ground, there was suddenly a rocky cliff directly ahead of the charging wag. A dark rill of cooled lava, studded and jagged. A wall of death.
“Wait for it…” Roberto commanded, listening to the radar and watching the rill rapidly approach. It if was thicker than a yard, their journey ended here and now. “Steady…no rush, plenty of time…and fire!”
There came the thud of the missile pod opening, then the crunching-paper sound of a rocket building power, immediately followed by the whoosh of a launch. Something flashed ahead of the wag, trailing smoke and fire. Then a tremendous explosion rocked the world and the radar stopped beeping.
Everybody tried not to hold their breath as the war wag plowed into a cloud of dark smoke, and they could dimly see the shattered remains of the thin rock wall on either side for less than a second, before they were through!
Jouncing over some uneven ground, the wag seemed to go airborne for a few seconds before crashing back down. The entire vehicle shuddered, loose items flying free, then there was the sound of shattering glass, a muffled cry of pain.
The war wag leveled out smooth and true once more, and there came the low hum of tires rolling along on a paved road!
“A road!” Jessica exhaled, one arm hugging her chest, the other wrapped tight around the periscope. “We’re on a predark road!”
“Just like Yates predicted!” Jimmy shouted in delight, beaming a smile at him.
Wordlessly, the big doomie nodded as if all was right in the world.
“That’s gotta mean we’re near the Nowhere Bridge,” Roberto said confidently, reaching out a shaking hand to retrieve a ceramic cup from a recess in the wall. The contents had slopped about some, but he didn’t give a damn. They had made it through and were still sucking air.
“Request permission to piss in my pants, sir,” Quinn said with a rueful grin. “Aw, too late, again.”
The tension broke in the room, and everybody laughed, bodies relaxing now that the worst of the trip down Hellfire Mountain was behind them.
“Get that man a mop!” Roberto commanded with a grin, taking a sip from the mug. Blind Norad, it was awful, but he swallowed the stuff anyway. He wished to hell there was coffee sub, but the convoy had run out of that months ago, and there’d be no more until they reached the stockpile near Tumbledown.
This muck was just some of the homemade brew that Matilda concocted back in the kitchen out of burned bread-crumbs, chicory and who knew what else. It smelled like coffee, and tasted sort of similar. Okay, it tasted nothing like the real stuff. However, it was hot and eased the chill on his leg, which was all that really mattered. Locked inside the safe under his bunk was a sealed can of the real stuff, predark Colombian dark roast, but that was being saved for a special occasion. Like finding Cascade.
“You sure we’ll find it there?” Jessica demanded, returning to her chair near the blaster rack. She slung a leg over the arms and sat sideways. “This is a hell of a gamble we’re taking.”
“It’d be a much bigger gamble to try for Cascade without any fragging proof,” Roberto replied, sipping the tepid brew.
“The proof exists.” Yates spoke in a hollow voice, making a vague gesture. “The box is red, and near a stone of fire.”
“Does that mean lava, or coal?” Jessica demanded, but the doomie would not, or could not, say any more.
Easing the velocity of the war wag to a more manageable level, War Wag One took the lead, and the other convoy vehicles assumed a standard triangular formation as it rolled along the ancient roadway. The median was full of tall weeds, and they passed a car on the side of the berm, the wreck alive with bees. Several miles down the road, the wags had to go around a toll station choked solid with cars, trucks, buses and army tanks smashed together, forming an impassable barrier of rust, weeds and old bones.
The countryside was gradually leveling out, the steep foothills becoming rolling hillocks. Made of concrete instead of asphalt, the highway was in much better shape than expected.
However, a murky shadow began to creep across the world as the red sun slowly moved behind Firestorm Mountain. Suddenly darkness covered the land, yet the cloudy sky was still bright with the orange and purple of toxic chems. It was as if the convoy had gone underwater. Jessica turned on the halogen headlights, and the beams cut bright