There were surprisingly few buggies or wags of any kind. Ryan's guess was that when the alarms started to shrill, lots of folks would have headed out of town, away from the missiles they knew would wipe away their homes. But nothing had prepared them for the reality of Armageddon. All the flix that Ryan had seen in old redoubts had warned about painting windows white to cut down the flash-blast. Blankets soaked in water over doors. Sandbags. Refuge under stairs and in storm cellars. Brown paper bags over your head.
It hadn't been like that. Best way of saving your kin from the long agony of rad-poisoning was to take out the pump-action scattergun and blow everyone's head off, and finally kiss the warm barrel yourself.
Some had done that. Ryan had seen the corpses, half the bone of the head missing, the corroded ten-gauges still between the clenched jaws.
There was one saloon wagon in a side street, its tires long rotted, stripped down to metal by years of high winds, blasted by sand. The glass remained, though its surface had been hazed until it was opaque. A branch off a nearby lime tree had fallen over the hood. Krysty moved it, revealing two stickers, peeling off the chrome fenders.
One said, "I brake for children and animals and patriotic Americans." The second one said simply: "Happiness is the biggest L.R. Missile."
Doc shook his head, saying nothing.
Around noon they found a street showing a full row of shops. Ryan couldn't get over the amazing sight. He'd seen old vids, flix and pix in mags. This was small-town U.S.A., standing there in front of his eyes. All that was missing was folks.
Some of the windows were broken, and there was clear evidence of looting. Also, the streets here were free of bones. As they stepped along, keeping to one side, Ryan glanced in at the storefronts.
Names clicked by, some registering, some not. Some of them had sold products he'd heard of. Some of them were obscure and incomprehensible.
What was Alice's Tofu Joint?What was tofu? Some kind of food, he guessed, from a placard as faded as a Brady daguerreotype.
Pick'n Mix. Garry's Auto-TunerЧ best muffler service in West Lowellton. Ynez Lobos, Realtor. Ryan didn't know what a realtor was, but he figured it was someone who looked after other people's houses for a fee.
"This is fucking way-weird," said Finnegan, spitting at a red hydrant in the street,
Tien & Quarter. Circuit City, West Lowellton Estate Protection. German shepherds, man-killers. Armed patrols around the clock and back again. Save your loved ones and your possessions. Let us do the killing for you.
"Sounds like the Deathlands now," said J.B.
Guns. Guns. Guns. Guns. The storefront shouted the word again and again. The Armorer paused, wiping at the glass. In sticky gold letters, some of which were missing, the name of the ex-owner from the year 2001 declaimed itself.
Angus R. Wells. A native of Louisiana from birth. Carry armsЧ it's your right.
"Empty," said J.B. disappointedly. "Not a blaster left in the place."
"Guess the Cajuns must have taken 'em," Ryan said, stepping around a dead snake that must have been close to fifty feet in length when alive.
The Armorer shook his head doubtfully, swatting away a hornet with his fedora. "Guess not."
"Why?"
"This place closed up in January 2001. It would have had the best and latest blasters of the day. What they called car guns and house guns. Small caliber, pretty pistols. Berettas and Colts. Big mothers like the later Pythons and the Pumas. And hunting rifles from Spain and Czechoslovakia."
"Sure." Ryan wouldn't argue with J.B. when it came to discussing weaponry.
"I seen what them double-poor dirties had. Old black-powder muzzle-loaders and muskets that were old before the winters came. Nothing from a store like this one here."
They moved a little farther on. Krysty stopped, tugging at Ryan's sleeve and halting him, while the others waited.
"What is it, lover?"
"I heard those swampwags again. Way off, behind us."
"That's no problem. If'n it comes to a firefight in a place like this, we could take on the whole of the baron's fucking sec-men army."
"There was something else."
"Yeah?"
"Whistling."
"I heard a whistle," said Lori, her blank face lighting for a moment.
"You did? When?"
The two women looked at each other. Lori answered Krysty, fumbling for the right words. "Soon gone. Not a long time. High and... weak."
"That's it. Very high frequency, Ryan. Repeated pattern of notes. Like a signal."
"Ahead or behind us?" asked J.B.
She pointed wordlessly down the street, in front of them.
"Far off?" asked Ryan.
She shook her head at the question. "Difficult, love. All these buildings. Not used to it. Even back home in Harmony it wasn't like this."
"I doubt, Miss Wroth, if there are many places like this left in the whole of the United States of America. I beg pardon. In the whole of Deathlands."
At Ryan's orders, they spread out even more.
They covered both sides of the sunlit street, their blasters ready, their nerves stretched tight with tension. In this part of West Lowellton the greenery hadn't gained so much of a stranglehold, and the street was still fairly clear and the buildings mainly undamaged.
Ryan squinted so that the line of small stores became hazy, the outlines blurring and softening. And it became like an old vid from before the wars. All it lacked were the smiling, bustling throngs of women and children, busy at their shopping. And there were no cars. All the old vids seemed to show roads jammed with wags.
On the right was an ice-cream parlor, its sign fallen down and disintegrated into splinters of chipboard. Another realtor's sign boasted that it found houses For the people and by the people. There was also a store selling do-it yourself outfits for home security, ever a barometer of social fears and neuroses.
One of the roofs that had given in to the ravages of a hundred years was composed of red shingles. It had been called the something Hut;the first word had vanished.
They first saw the graffiti in an empty lot next door.
It was sprayed in a shimmering white paint, in ornate, rolling letters three feet high, on the wall of a hardware store.
THIS LAND IS OUR LAND. KEEP OUT ALL LIVING DEAD AND FRENDS OF THE BARRON.
The paint reflected the sun, making Ryan blink.
"Over there," said Krysty, pointing to more painted lettering. This time it was scrawled across the main window of T-Shirt City.
Looking around, Ryan crossed over to examine it. TEN MORE STEPS AND YOU DEAD, it said.
He reached out with the index finger on his right hand, hugging the G-12 in his left hand. Touching the rolling letters, he stared in disbelief at his finger.
Sticky and fresh with its smear of white paint.
Chapter Thirteen
"It's like the DMZ in 'Nam," said J. B. Dix. "Read 'bout, it. No-go region, for both sides. What we heard 'bout this Baron Tourment, he controls most of the land round Lafayette. But not this ville of West Lowellton."
"White wolf," said Ryan. "Or snow wolf. Take, your pick. What we heard back in Moudongue, it's renegades. Gang of wolf's-heads. Outlaws."
"Slumgullions," commented Doc Tanner.
"How's that?" asked Finnegan.
The old-timer bared his strong yellow teeth in a ferocious grin. "Good word, is it not? A cant perversion of the tongue, but it sounds like what it means." Licking his lips, he savored the word again. "Slumgullion. A rowdy fellow, living beyond the law. And as we are all aware, to do that you most be honest."