LITMIR.BIZ

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and the muzzle aimed skyward, then unsnapped the pistol’s jointed rammer from its barrel clip. He measured the powder, poured it into the shallow chamber, and levered the rammer to seat a lead ball on top of it. After flicking away the little ring of excess lead the lip’s tight fit trimmed off, he put dab of grease over the bullet to lube the barrel and keep the sparks from other chambers from causing spontaneous ignition when they fired. Rotating the cylinder a full notch, he proceeded to load the next chamber, and the next, and the next, and so on. His rate of speed was as steady as his hands. After he finished the ninth chamber he securely snapped the rammer back into its clip.

      The .63-caliber shotgun chamber he loaded last, using a homemade wooden ramrod to seat the aft wadding, grapeshot and front wadding. He capped all ten chambers, lowered the hammer into one of the safety notches between nipples and slipped the massive blaster back into its hand-tooled Mexican holster.

      Just under five minutes had elapsed from start to finish.

      In the meantime, the other companions had taken stock of what was left of their ammo. J.B. had six high-brass rounds in his M-4000’s tubular magazine. Mildred and Krysty had full cylinders in their revolvers. They had used up their speedloaders; between them they had eight loose shells. Jak had two .357 Magnum bullets left in his revolver and nothing in his pockets. Of the six, only Mildred and Krysty could swap cartridges back and forth interchangeably as they both carried .38 Specials. They evened things out with Jak, giving him a couple of bullets each. Jak could fire their .38s in his .357, but they couldn’t shoot his cartridges because of the Magnum’s longer case.

      J.B. was the first to dig into one of the looted backpacks.

      “Well, lookee here!” he exclaimed, holding up a plastic-wrapped, gold-colored brick for all to see.

      Taped to the outside of the kilo of C-4 was a sealed blister pack that contained blasting caps and electronic trigger, radio detonator and two sets of lithium batteries—one to set off the cap, one for the remote detonating device. As a backup, there was also a coil of thick, white blasting cord.

      Ryan and the other companions quickly dumped out the contents of the other five packs. There was no ammo. No food. No water. Just predark plastic explosive and detonators. There was enough plastique piled in the middle of the road to turn a square city block into rubble.

      “Well, we know the stuff still works,” Mildred said.

      “Stickies found that out the hard way,” Krysty said. J.B. turned the brick over in his hand and read the text on the packaging. “Check the address,” he said, showing Ryan what was written.

      “What is the significance of the label?” Doc asked, staring down at a brick he had picked up.

      “Back in the day,” Ryan explained, “when J.B. and me were running with Trader, there was a rumor going around about a predark industrial plant in western New Mex, where the government used to turn high ex into C-4. Supposedly the finished product was stored in deep, blastproof bunkers in the desert. Looks like our dead scroungers stumbled on the motherload.”

      “Worth big jack,” Jak said appreciatively, toeing the pile with a boot tip.

      “To the right buyer,” Mildred said. “The trouble is, we’re a long way from the nearest baron.”

      Ryan nodded. Mildred was on target, as usual. HE was a useful tool in the defense of territory, and in taking territory away from someone else; it was a weapon of war. For the hellscape’s smaller scale, everyday business of robbing, extortion, forced servitude and the like, it was serious overkill.

      “It’s still worth plenty to a middleman,” Ryan countered. “We’ve got to find someone who has what we need, short-term. Ammo, food, water and gas for the bikes. If we can trade away a small part of the stash, we can haul the rest of it east, where it will bring the most jack. Check the fuel in the bikes.”

      They unscrewed the gas caps and J.B. peered inside each of the tanks.

      “Fuel levels are pretty much the same,” he told Ryan. “Not enough to get all of us to Louisiana, that’s for sure. If we’re lucky we can get mebbe another twenty miles before we start to run out. Radblasted stickies burned up all the extra gas in their victory dance.”

      “Then we’re going to have to detour south to trade for bullets and supplies,” Ryan said.

      “Why south?” Mildred asked. “Beaumont is due east on this road. We’ve easily got enough gas to get there. Couldn’t be more than ten miles.”

      “Beaumont is a no-go,” J.B. said emphatically.

      “It was hit hard on nukeday,” Ryan elaborated. “Nothing there but glow-in-the-dark rubble and twisted steel. Trader always gave it a wide berth and beelined his convoys for Port Arthur ville on the Gulf shore. If the head man down there is still the same, he’s a thieving pile of crap—”

      “A giant thieving pile of crap,” J.B. interjected.

      “—but,” Ryan continued, “it’s still the closest place to swap some of the C-4 for what we need.”

      Jak used a hand to shield his unsettlingly red eyes from the glare as he looked up the road. “Port A ville mebbe thirty miles,” he said.

      If the companions had been riding solo, Ryan knew they might have made it on the little fuel they had. They wouldn’t split up, though. Not a chance under these circumstances. Not of their own volition.

      “How much water have we got?” Mildred asked J.B.

      The Armorer produced a scarred, two-liter plastic bottle from his backpack. It was half-full of a cloudy, slightly brown-tinged liquid. There was a layer of fine sediment at the bottom. Ryan took the container; the sun beat down on his head and shoulders, the heat sang in his ears as he held it up for all to see.

      “That’s it?” Krysty said.

      “That’s it,” Ryan said. Another question had to be asked, even if he already knew the answer. “We can drink it all now, or we can drink it later. What’s it going to be?”

      The companions were accustomed to privation, to hard, long marches over difficult terrain. The consensus was to drink it later, when they really needed it.

      The companions repacked the C-4, saddled up and rode off at a steady, fuel-conserving twenty-five miles an hour. The breeze blowing over Ryan’s sweat-lubed body felt like air-conditioning.

      ABOUT AN HOUR DOWN THE ROAD, J.B. lost power first. As he dropped back, his engine went dead and he and Mildred coasted to a stop. Krysty and Jak braked their bikes and turned back to join them.

      “I make it we’re still five or six miles from the edge of Port A ville,” Ryan said as he swung off Krysty’s backseat.

      “Too far to push the bikes in this heat with so little water,” Mildred said.

      The motorcycles were valuable, all right, but they weren’t worth taking the last train west for. Certainly not when they had sixty kilos of operational plastique to trade.

      “Jak,” Ryan said, “scout ahead and find us a good spot to hide the bikes. If we can barter some gas in Port A ville, we’ll come back for them later.”

      Doc dismounted from the motorcycle’s rear seat and the albino sped away. Jak returned a few minutes later with a typically terse report. “Gulch behind rock pile, not see from road,” he said. “Quarter mile up.”

      They abandoned the three motorcycles in the shallow ravine, about one hundred yards from the edge of the ruined two-lane highway. It was a good location, and they could easily find it again from the sandstone outcrop.

      Before they set off they shared the last of the water, which amounted to a couple of good swigs per person.

      The companions left the gulch lugging one extra backpack each, about twenty-five pounds of additional weight.

      It took them almost three hours, walking at a steady pace to reach the outskirts

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