This feeling had been building up inside him for three days. It had actually started about two seconds after McCandless had first clapped him on the shoulder on the dusty drag outside Joe's Bites in Main Street Mocsin and offered him the blaster's job for an eighth share in whatever they found in the Darks. It was an insane proposition, and McCandless had an insane reputation. The only reason Kurt had agreed to it instantly and without thinking about it much at all was that the night before he'd bucked one of Jordan Teague's captains, felled him to the floor in the tawdry casino in the center of the Strip, and he was already making panic plans to get out of Mocsin fast. The only snag was, the next land wagon train wasn't scheduled to leave for at least a week and Kurt did not have the cash or even the creds to buy himself some wheels and the necessary amount of fuel that would take him to the next main center of population two hundred and fifty kilometers to the south. The fact that Teague's captain, an ugly son of a bitch with a walleye named Hagic, had been cheating Kurt and Kurt had spotted it made no difference. You didn't screw around with a member of what passed for the law in Jordan Teague's bailiwick. Jordan Teague didn't like it, and he had peculiar ideas on how to avenge insults in his own special brand of law. Kurt had spent most of the night shitting himself in a cross-the-tracks cathouse, a real sleazepit not even the grossest of Teague's minions would touch, before sneaking out to get some food at Joe's and running into McCandless.
McCandless was in a hurry. A hell of a hurry. He was heading out into the Deathlands there and then. The guy he'd hired as blaster had thought better of it and disappeared and Kurt didn't blame him. The very idea of venturing into the Dark Hills was clearly the product of a diseased imagination, and that about summed up McCandless's mind. Even Jordan Teague had never contemplated an expedition into the Darks. Despite the possibility that something weird and wonderful could be hidden among those brooding peaks, the fact was that over the years many had gone looking for it and only one had ever returned.
Kurt remembered that return very clearly. He had good reason to remember it. His brain switched back, the camera of his memory revealing a scene now nearly two decades old, the screen in his mind showing a crazed, babbling wreck of a human being, brain fried, wild eyed, clothes in rags and tatters, crawling toward him along the dusty apology for a once busy blacktop.
Dolfo Kaler. A man with creds in store, real estate; a power in the land. Or as much of a power as one could ever be under the gross shadow of Jordan Teague. Certainly more power than most in Teague's primitive gold-based miniempire. He had his own satraps, his own bullyboys, a fleet of land wagons, a few good trade routes mainly to the East, and fuel-alcohol supplies if not exactly on tap at least regular. Teague let him be. Kaler had solid contacts in the East, some kind of kin who would only deal with him. Teague knew that if he deeped Kaler those contacts would be lost. He kept an eye on Kaler, just in case Kaler started to dream dreams of empire, but otherwise left him alone; there was a wary truce between the two men.
But the fact was that Kaler was not greedy for what Teague had. He watched his back when Teague was around, but otherwise he was not involved with the man. He had other dreams, sparked by whispers that nagged at his brain, insistent ghostly murmurs that urged him to think the unthinkable.
Somewhere up in that vast range of hills that they called the Darks was... something. Treasure, they said. A fantastic, unbelievable hoard just sitting there, just waiting for a strong man to claim it.
That was what was said. That was what had been whispered for a generation. Two generations. More. Maybe going right back to the Nuke.
Maybe going back to before the Nuke.
So there had to be something there. It was a hand-me-down tale, a story embedded deep in the recent folk memory. Kaler, a sensible man, discounted stories of gold, jewels, fine raiments, all that stuff. It was so much crap, so much useless crap. Who needed it? So okay, Jordan Teague was starting to create an economy, a life-style, on the gold he was digging out of the seams exposed by the Nuke, forgotten through the Chill just like everythinghad been forgotten and rediscovered only a few years back. Teague was moving the stuff very gingerly to the East, and guys out there were sniffing at it, pondering its possibilities, wondering if it would do them any good. And maybe in another ten years gold would be back in fashion, but ten years was a long time and right now the only worthwhile way of doing things was barter, trade, credit. Sure, coin was coming back; it was useful. But thus far it sure as hell didn't beat fresh food, canned food, animals as long as they were reasonably pure weapons, ammo.
Especially it didn't beat ammo.
And that was what Dolfo Kaler figured was up there in the Darks. No fairy-tale hoard of goodies, but a Stockpile a major Stockpile, maybe far bigger than any of the ones that had been unearthed so far.
Anybody who was anybody now knew that, before the Nuke, the government of the day, a government that had ruled the whole land, north to south, west to east, had been rumored to have squirreled away stuff in deep-cast ferroconcrete bunkers. Now it was an established fact. Some had been discovered, opened up. There was a guy who called himself the Trader who'd found two and turned them into a business. He'd started off by chugging around the Deathlands in steam trucks a couple of years before, but now he was using gasoline. Gasoline! And trading guns in every direction. He was heavily weaponed himself too, as guys who'd tried to hijack him had discovered to their cost.
The shit was there if you could find it, but from what Dolfo Kaler had learned, the Stockpiles found up to now were small. The nagging suspicion he had was that if there really was something up in the Darks and if it was a Stockpile it was a big one. And that was why he didn't give a fart about Jordan Teague's little fiefdom. If what he suspected was true, and if he could get his hands on it, he could turn himself into king of the known world.
Dolfo Kaler's mind lovingly dwelt on boxes of guns in their original greased wraps, pristine fresh, never used. Crates of grenades. Heavy armament. Trucks. Tanks. Oceans of oil.
Power.
So he went out. He took fifty men, all of them hand-picked from his own garrison mixed in with others from his contacts in the East. Hard-bitten dog soldiers. Didn't give a nuke's hot ass about anything or anyone.
It was a mighty expedition. Seeing it, even Jordan Teague got broody. But then it had to be, because others had heard the summons the siren call that drifted into men's minds from the Darks. Others had hit the road on the hundred-klick or so journey under the sulphuric skies, across the parched earth, through the leprous forests that grew around the foothills of the Darks.
And none had ever come back.
Which meant there must have been a strong contingent of maniacal muties barring the way to it.
Dolfo Kaler knew how to deal with crazies. Blow 'em away. He bartered, he finagled, he called in every long-term debt he had out, and in the end every man jack of his team had an automatic rifle of some description and a stack of rounds. He also acquired seven MGs, four flamethrowers and a supply of precious fuel and two bazookas. Not to mention a box of grenades and a launcher.
And then he set out.
There were six big steam trucks, snorting and grinding and belching black smoke, and they shifted butt one fine spring morning when the skies were not as yellow as usual and a hazy red fireball of a sun was doing pretty well in its struggle to penetrate the haze. There must have been half of Mocsin on the edge of town to see them off, waving crudely fashioned flags and whooping and hollering fit to burst. Maybe three thousand souls to watch the biggest thing to happen to the town in decades.