But not this time.
A small business section appeared ahead. A dilapidated restaurant was on the right, a crumbling bar on the left. Ancient signs, too faint to read, adorned some of the other ramshackle structures.
“Looks like nobody’s home,” Bertha remarked.
Blade scanned the cracked sidewalks and the shattered windows.
Huntsburg seemed to be a ghost town.
“Think we can stop and stretch our legs?” Bertha asked. “It’s almost noon, and we’ve been drivin’ since dawn.”
“I don’t see why not,” Blade replied. He angled the SEAL up to the curb in front of the restaurant. “It looks like the looters tore this town apart during the war,” he noted.
“Sure is a dump now,” Bertha agreed, leaning out her open window.
Blade braked, then shut off the engine.
Bertha opened her door and dropped to the sidewalk, her M-16 in her hands. “I’m gonna take a look around.”
“Just be careful,” Blade advised her.
“If you don’t mind,” Sundance spoke up, “I’d like to go with Bertha. My legs are getting cramped from all this sitting.”
“Go ahead,” Blade said. “I’ll stick with the SEAL.”
Sundance climbed out his side of the transport, closed the door, and joined Bertha.
Bertha cocked her head, scrutinizing him. “Why’d you want to come with me?”
“Do I need a reason?” Sundance inquired.
“Just so you ain’t got the hots for my body,” Bertha said. “It’s already spoken for.”
“So I heard,” Sundance stated.
Bertha’s jaw muscles tightened. “What’s that crack supposed to mean?”
Sundance started walking along the pitted sidewalk, bearing to the east. “It means I don’t have the hots for your body.”
Bertha quickly caught up with him. “You don’t?” she asked, sounding surprised.
“Nope,” Sundance told her.
Bertha looked down at herself. “Why not? What’s wrong with my body?”
“Nothing,” Sundance said, surveying the street ahead. “It’s one of the nicest bodies I’ve seen.”
Bertha beamed. “It is? Really?”
Sundance glanced at her. “I don’t lie.”
They strolled in the sunshine for several moments.
“What do you mean by nice?” Bertha asked.
Sundance suddenly stopped. “Did you hear something?”
“No.” Bertha studied the nearby buildings. “Why?”
“I don’t know…” Sundance said, and resumed walking.
“Mind if I ask you a question?” Bertha mentioned.
“No.”
“Why’d you pick the name Sundance? I know White Meat took the handle Hickok ’cause he’s wacko about Wild Bill Hickok. What about you?” Bertha probed. “Was there some old-time gunfighter named Sundance?”
“There was,” Sundance replied.
“Ahhh!”
“But he wasn’t exactly a gunfighter,” Sundance explained. “His real name was Harry Longabaugh, and he was an outlaw in the Old West. I read about him in a book called the Encyclopedia of Western Gunfighters.
He was nowhere near as famous as Wild Bill Hickok, and far less deadly.”
“Then why’d you pick his name?” Bertha asked.
Sundance grinned and looked at her. “Because I like it. The name has a certain ring to it.”
“Sure does,” Bertha agreed. Sundance cocked his head, listening.
Bertha glanced over her left shoulder. They were a block from the transport. “Maybe we shouldn’t stray too far from the SEAL,” she suggested.
Sundance stopped. “Fine by me.” He gazed up at a broken second floor window across the highway. “There it is again.”
“There what is?” Bertha queried.
“Didn’t you hear it?” Sundance asked.
“Hear what?”
“A sort of low whistle,” Sundance said, moving to the edge of the sidewalk. “I’ve heard it several times already.”
“It must be the wind,” Bertha speculated.
Sundance held up his right hand. “But there’s no breeze,” he pointed out.
That was when Bertha heard it too: a low, warbling whistle coming from the empty office to their right. She peered into the inky gloom of the interior, trying to perceive movement. What could it be? she asked herself. A bird of some kind? A small animal?
But it was neither.
Bertha was just beginning to turn, to head back to the SEAL, when she discerned a bulky shape materializing out of the darkness shrouding the office building. A stray shaft of sunlight glinted off a metallic object.
“Sundance!” she shouted in alarm, not waiting to determine if the figure was friend or foe. The M-16 snapped up, and she fired from the waist, on automatic, her rounds chipping away the jagged pieces of glass remaining in the front window of the office and striking the shape inside, propelling it from sight.
Someone screamed in agony.
And all hell broke loose.
Over a dozen attackers burst from the buildings lining U.S. Highway 322, charging through doorways and bounding over windowsills, some with guns blazing, others armed with knives, swords, hatchets, and whatever else they could get their hands on. All of them were bestial in aspect, with unkempt, bedraggled hair and apparel. Most wore tattered clothing or filthy animal hides and skins. They jabbered and yelled as they surged from hiding.
Sundance was in motion even as the first scavenger rushed from a doorway across the highway. His hands flashed up and out, leveling the Grizzlies, and his first shot boomed while the scavenger was raising a rifle, the impact of the .45 Winchester Magnum slug lifting the scavenger from his feet and slamming him against the wall. Sundance swiveled as a filthy raven-haired woman appeared on a balcony on the other side of 322, a crossbow in her hands. She was aiming at Bertha when both Grizzlies thundered, and the top of her head imitated the erupting of a volcano. The female scavenger dropped the crossbow, tottered, and fell, crashing into the balcony railing and through the railing as the rotted wood splintered and gave way. Sundance never saw her fall. He had already spun to the left, finding a trio of scavengers sprinting toward them, spilling from the mouth of the alley, blocking their retreat to the SEAL. One of the scavengers was armed with a spear, and his hand was sweeping back for the throw when Sundance shot him in the right eye, jerking his head to the right, and sending the scavenger tumbling to the sidewalk.
Bertha was firing her M-16 as rapidly as targets presented themselves.
“We’ve got to get the hell out of here!” she shouted.
“To the SEAL!” Sundance replied, squeezing both triggers, both Grizzlies bucking in his hands, and the two scavengers between the SEAL and them went down in a jumbled mass of flaying arms and legs.
Bertha took off, blasting a tall scavenger shooting at them with a revolver from the roof of the bar. His head whipped back and he vanished from view.
Sundance followed Bertha, covering her, killing two more scavengers sprinting across the street. Bullets smacked into the wall behind them.
Something tugged at his left sleeve. They were still three-quarters of a block distant from the SEAL when he heard the loud pounding to his rear.
He whirled.
A mob of maddened, bloodthirsty scavengers was pounding toward them, bellowing their rage and brandishing their assorted weapons. A grungy character in the lead was sighting a Winchester.
Sundance fired both Grizzlies, and the grungy scavenger was hurled from his feet to collide with another scavenger coming up behind him.
Bertha shot a scavenger on the other side of the street.
“Bertha!” Sundance yelled as an arrow streaked past his right cheek.
Bertha glanced over her right shoulder, spying the maddened throng pursuing them. “Shit!” she exploded, turning to support Sundance.
Sundance risked a look toward the SEAL, and he was surprised to see the transport roaring from the curb and racing down the center of the highway. The front end suddenly swerved toward the sidewalk, and Sundance leaped, his left arm catching Bertha around the waist. “What the hell!” she blurted, even as his momentum carried both of them over the lower sill of a demolished window and onto the hard wood floor of a deserted building.