LITMIR.BIZ

      Chapter Six

      Yellow flames danced against the backdrop of the snow-dusted prairie beyond.

      The bus driver never slowed. “Brace yourselves!” Ryan shouted. He saw Krysty and Mildred turn away from the front of the bus and throw themselves on the mounded baggage. He did likewise.

      The snowplow blade hit the gate. Whether more weakly constructed than it appeared, or weakened by the flames, it flew apart, sending flaming planks and posts spiraling away like pinwheels.

      The bus took off down the dirt road, which was basically a pair of ever-deepening ruts running northeast to southwest.

      “Tie on!” Ryan shouted over his shoulder to his companions. As far as he could see, the six of them now had the roof to themselves. The handful of cultists who had climbed up here, presumably not as keenly honed to a survival edge as the companions, either had been tossed off by the wag’s wild maneuvering, or had bailed voluntarily.

      A mob tottered in slow pursuit of the wag, black figures silhouetted against yellow flame. They faded rapidly as the school bus jounced off across the countryside.

      Lying on his belly, Ryan used his belt to fasten himself to the steel rail of the roof rack. His companions chimed in with shouts as they finished making themselves fast.

      “Weapons out!” he called when Doc called the last acknowledgment.

      “The rotties can’t catch us on foot,” Mildred said.

      “Do you know there’s not a hundred of ’em waiting out here?”

      “Weapon out,” Mildred said.

      * * *

      THE GREAT PLAINS were never as flat as they appeared, Mildred thought. The dark land scrolling past them mostly looked like the top of a billiard table. Yet she ached in elbows and thighs and breasts from being slammed on the metal roof every time the bus bounced over an unseen obstacle or crashed down onto ground as hard as a baron’s heart, each time threatening destruction to its ancient suspension. Meanwhile the back of her was freezing through from the ice-blast wind of passage, especially her legs, covered only by the thin fabric of her camo pants.

      Every bounce also reminded her that the dark country abounded with hiding places for lurking foes. Not just the changed, either. Lethal predators abounded in the Deathlands, animal, mutie and human.

      Shadows seemed to flit across the shadowed land. A score of times Mildred opened her mouth to cry an alarm, or slipped her gloved finger into the trigger guard of her Czech-made .38-caliber target revolver. Each time she held herself back from screaming or shooting. And each time no attack came.

      She was horribly aware that didn’t mean the threats she thought she saw in the shadows weren’t real.

      The bus picked up speed, trading the occasional bone-slamming jolt for a constant rattle that felt as if it might detach Mildred’s retinas. But she gritted her teeth and hung on.

      Because one thing she’d learned, more than a century before she’d ever opened her eyes to this terrible new world, was to endure.

      * * *

      AN HOUR LATER the bus rumbled to a stop in a sandy wash next to a slowly moving stream. Steam rolled from under the hood. The engine hissed and pinged as it cooled.

      “What’s happening?” Ryan called.

      “Driver says he thinks we’re far enough away to take a break.” Krysty called back. “He says we’ve come about thirty miles.”

      “Great,” J.B. said. “I could stand to try to winch my bones straight again. The knots in my muscles’re getting knots in them.”

      “All right,” Ryan said. “Everybody cut loose. Keep eyes skinned and blasters ready.”

      “Really, friend Ryan,” Doc croaked, “sometimes you belabor the obvious.”

      Ryan stood and stretched. He felt about the same way J.B. did—as if some triple-size mutie had grabbed his ankles and tried to bust boulders using Ryan as a hammer.

      The door opened and passengers spilled out onto drifted sand. Some fell weakly to hands and knees.

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