It was all the old man needed to make his move.

He had a knife tied to the inside of his left forearm, and he pulled it out, launching himself at J.B. The old woman dropped to her knees with a piercing scream. Renz, reflexes honed Deathlands-sharp, dived for the scattergun with the sawed-off stock and barrel. His wife reached for the open razor she wore sheathed between her mottled breasts.

The little boy stood still.

Against double-poor stupes it might have worked. Against the Armorer and Ryan Cawdor it had about as much chance of success as trying to beat a prairie rattler for speed.

"Hit 'em!" Ryan shouted, shooting from the hip at the white-haired old man. The burst of lead kicked him into a moaning heap and he rolled into the dying fire. Blood poured from the triple wound in the center of his chest, hissing onto the flames.

J.B. dodged sideways, firing the mini-Uzi one-handed, spraying the group of men and women as he moved. Thirty-two rounds of 9 mm ammo ripped out at a muzzle velocity of just over eleven hundred feet per second.

As the Armorer moved forward, his boots slipped on an empty can and he fell, finger still clamped on the trigger, more or less holding his aim.

Renz and his family were huddled together, and the burst of fire was tight and controlled.

Boy went dancing away, half the side of his head blown off, his paddling little hands groping at the empty air as he fell, dying.

Mixy was hit through the knee and went down screaming in a welter of blood and splintered bone. As she fell, several rounds stitched across her stomach, spilling her guts into the dirt so that they tangled around her feet in crimson-streaked gray coils and loops.

Valli caught five rounds, the lead lifting her clear off her bare feet and sending her seeping corpse smashing into the lower branches of a tumbled oak. A jagged branch went straight through her, piercing her rib cage, holding the woman's kicking, jerking body several inches from the blood-sodden earth.

Amazingly, amid the carnage, Renz stood untouched. He had reached the pile of blasters, but Ryan's G-12 was tracking in his direction.

"Feel lucky, stupe?" Ryan asked, his voice loud in the sudden quiet. To the side of the clearing the wag had stopped, stalling, engine ticking into silence. Krysty led the others out of the main door, guns ready.

But it was over.

"Don't shoot me, you bastard. You chilled everyone in m'family. Even Boy."

"It's okay," Ryan called out. "All right, J.B.?"

"Yeah. Didn't figure on chilling the whole brood, though. Caught my foot."

Ryan shook his head dismissively. The family had been stupid enough to try against armed men, just holding blades. He didn't feel any sympathy for them. That's the way it always was in the Deathlands.

The raggedy man stood and watched, face blank with shock. His whole family had been iced in the blinking of an eye, and it still hadn't really registered. And now his wag was going to disappear forever. A great flow of tears suddenly began to course down Renz's filthy cheeks.

"Take me with you."

Ryan ignored him. "Back in the wag, everyone. Let's move out."

"Fuck you!"

The engine rumbled, gouts of blue-gray smoke hanging in the air, pierced by shafts of silver moonlight. Ryan gestured to J.B. to join the others, backing away slowly himself and keeping the blaster trained on the solitary man. The corpse dangling from the jagged end of the branch finally ceased twitching and hung still.

"Can't make it on my own!" Renz stooped and picked up the sawed-off shotgun, lifting it to his face.

Ryan hesitated, considering chilling the man. But bullets were scarce.

He stepped backward until he was in the open doorway of the wag, never taking his eyes off the solitary figure. Renz was holding the scattergun, staring down at the twin barrels as though he couldn't quite understand what they were.

"Get in, Ryan. I got him covered," J.B. said from behind him.

"Bastards!" Renz shouted, his torn voice ringing harsh through the forest, clearly audible even inside the racketing box of the big wag. Ryan began to close the sliding door.

The clouds had drifted away from the moon, and the clearing was as brightly lit as a stage, Renz at its center. The gun was close to his open mouth, and his eyes were fixed on the door of the wag.

The explosion was muffled.

Even as the door slammed shut, the sec locks clicking into place, Ryan saw the top of the man's head disintegrate in a great spray that looked as black as beads of jet in the moonlight.

"Did he?.." Krysty began, seeing Ryan nod the answer.

"Let's go, Jak," Ryan ordered, holding on as the vehicle began to grind its way westward.

Chapter Fourteen

The wag was big enough to carry all six comfortably, and each had a narrow bunk. The self-heats in the kitchen area of the wag lacked labels, which made meals an interesting lottery. Near the back, in its own partitioned closet, was a chem toilet. Generally the vehicle was scruffy and stank of old sweat, but during the first morning's driving they bowled along with the blaster ports and roof vents open, all working together to sweep and clean the interior.

The half-breed truck seemed in good mechanical condition. They stopped about ten in the morning because the arrow in the temperature gauge was showing signs of veering into the red. But when Jak checked under the hood he found the reading was false. One of the pistons was worn, and the exhaust roared more loudly than it should have.

"Going't'be heavy on gas," he said. "Good job's cans in back."

None of them knew it, but there was another hundred gallons of precious gas hidden away in the undergrowth near the five corpses.

It was late in the afternoon when they reached the fast-flowing expanse of the Delaware River, looking to cross it near the ruined ville of Stockton. The dash of the wag held some fragile old maps, creased and crumpled, which were held together with brown bits of tape and frayed string.

The parts of the maps that would have shown the trails to Front Royal were missing, ragged edges taking them tantalizingly close to their proposed destination. Ryan pored over them at a small table near the open port, the others peering over his shoulder.

"North along the Delaware, toward Easton. Around Allentown and on to... Can't read that name. Doc? Can you make it?"

"My eyes are not, frankly, as sharp as once they were, my dear Ryan. But I believe it must be the town of Harrisburg, and from thence to Gettysburg. By the three Kennedys and the one Lincoln, but there is a name to stir the cockles of memory. That we should be going there after..." He turned away quickly and went to sit down on his bunk, where Lori ran to comfort him.

"Then Frederick..." Ryan continued. "I recall that. The ville's close to there."

"We've got to cross the river first," Krysty said quietly. "Looks wide from that map."

"Lotta toll bridges built in the Shens," Ryan said. "Trade or jack."

"What're we gonna do?" Jak asked, climbing back into the driver's seat. "No jack. What trade?"

Ryan held up the Heckler & Koch. "I figure this is all the trade I need."

Doc wiped his face with his swallow's eye kerchief. "Least we don't have ice to cross the Delaware like... like somebody or other did, but I disremember who."

The highways weren't in bad condition. The surface was cracked and deteriorated, but most of the way it was drivable. Every so often the road disappeared under an earthslip, or was washed out of the world by a swollen river.

Occasionally they'd pass by the tumbled ruins of a small hamlet. Most buildings were totally destroyed, though the central stone chimneys remained standing — fingers pointing upward like graveyard memorials. Now and again they'd come across one or two intact buildings, scorched clapboard rotting away. A doctor's shingle would still be legible, or a rectangular crimson soft drink machine would squat outside the tumbled relic of a general store.