They were about a hundred paces away, and Ryan squinted through the narrow gap in the wired glass at what looked to be a battered truck. The tires were gone, burned to sticky black tar, and all the windows were broken. The piles of charred wood heaped at the bottom of the vehicle still smoked, sending gray coils skyward.

The metal of the wag was rusted deep orange, even around the wheel hubs, and it had settled into the earth.

"Been ambushed?" J.B. asked as the others crowded forward for a look at the wreck.

"Looks that way. Still a lot of smoke. Best wait a while before we go past it. Anyone could be waiting for us."

They sat and watched, the smoke slowly clearing. There were no bodies visible, which could mean the attackers had taken them prisoner. Or it might mean the wreck held roasted corpses.

"Want me to move on?" Jak asked, sounding bored to the teeth with hanging around.

"Whoever did that can't be far off. Don't forget Krysty said she saw someone spy-watching us. So they know we're here."

There was something about the wrecked truck that somehow didn't sit right with Ryan, something out of place that nagged away at the back of his mind. But he couldn't quite grab hold of the doubt and examine it.

"Okay," he said. "Slow and easy. Double-care, friends."

Ryan saw the two figures first, torn and ragged, stumbling on the broken surface of the road. Their clothes were strips of blackened material and hung off their bodies. Their faces were smudged with dirt, oil and smoke, hair flattened against their heads. Their hands were empty.

"Stop, Ryan?" Jak asked, tongue flicking to lick his dry lips.

"Everyone looking? See anyone?"

The answers rattled in like machine-gun fire. Nobody could see anything threatening from their ob-slits.

"Stop," he said. "Keep double-red alert. Nobody move or open anything."

It was impossible to tell the sex of either of the people who had staggered to a halt in the center of the highway. They were both of average height and lightly built. As far as Ryan could see, neither had any obvious mutie defect.

As the wag stopped, both of them held up a hand, palm outward. Suddenly the one on the left collapsed like a doll, lying sprawled in the dirt.

"Survivors from an ambush?" Krysty said. "You going't'help 'em, lover?"

"Pull alongside them," Ryan ordered. "On my side." He wound down the window a couple of inches. He realized that the person still standing was a woman. The other was a male.

"Help us, mister. Got 'bushed by muties. Came out and blocked road. Set us alight 'fore we could do anything."

The eyes were deep cornflower blue, the voice hoarse and ragged. Beneath all the dirt and oil Ryan guessed she might have been a good-looking woman. Her body was lean and muscular. One firm breast protruded through a tear in her jerkin.

"Help, mister!" moaned the man on the ground, head half-turned to stare up at Ryan. "We'll die if'n you don't."

"How d'you get out?" Ryan asked, still conscious of some incongruity about the wrecked wag nibbling at his gut.

"Luck, mister," the woman replied. "There was a dozen of us. Tried to fight the dead-eyes in th'open. Too many of 'em. Chilled most of us and took a coupla kids with 'em. Me an' Jem runned in the brush. They let us go."

It made sense.

Ryan had lived long enough in the Deathlands to know that the one predictable thing about muties was that they were utterly unpredictable. And he'd seen enough ambushes to know the way death came grinning out of a clear sky. They could be telling the truth about what happened.

"You got blasters?"

The woman held her arms wide, spreading her legs in a parody of the classic sec-search position. The rags were so tattered and thin that he could clearly see she was naked underneath them — naked except for a wide leather belt.

"What d'you think, mister?" the woman said, seeing Ryan eye the man. Other than a similar wide belt, the man was visibly naked under the scorched shreds of clothing.

"What d'you want from us?" Ryan asked. "We can give you a coupla cans of self-heats. Some water. Mebbe old clothes. That do?"

"Take us with you." The man clawed his way to his feet, helped by the woman. He stared wildly in both directions up and down the road. "The muties'll get us if'n you leave us here."

"We don't have the room," Ryan said.

"We can make room for the poor folk, lover," Krysty said behind him.

"It would only be the merest Christian charity, Mr. Cawdor," Doc added.

Ryan turned in the swivel seat. "You say 'Christian,' Doc? That's not a word you hear an awful lot around Deathlands these days."

"Indubitably so, my dear Ryan. But that is a sorry comment on how we live. Oh tempora and oh mores, indeed. If I may be forgiven the classical tag."

Ryan ignored the ramblings. Looking back at the woman who seemed much the stronger of the pair, he said, "We can't take you." He didn't apologize. Like Trader used to say, it was a sign of weakness.

"Please, mister. You can fuck me. Or fuck Jem here. Any of you can. Make you feel..."

"You want food and clothes?" Ryan said. "We don't have the time."

"No, mister. Just take us with you. Take us for a day, that's all." She was babbling, the words stumbling and jostling each other in her terror. If she was acting, she was very good.

"I told you. Drive on, Jak. So long, lady."

The boy engaged one of the ten forward gears, and the truck began to creep ahead. The woman looked hopelessly at Ryan. He began to wind the window up once more.

"You going't'the Susqua? We can save you."

Ryan didn't answer her, though Jak glanced sideways at him.

"Be a trap there. They get strangers at the toll crossing."

"Hold it," Ryan said to Jak. "Best hear this."

"We can save you. Me an' Jem. Take us on and we can save you all from the chillers." Ryan reached back and triggered the lever that opened the side door of the wag.

Chapter Sixteen

Her name was Chrissy. Jem was her man. They'd been traveling west because they'd heard from some traders that there was a good life in the clean lands toward California. Then the muties had come and ended the dream.

Jem rested, falling instantly asleep under a gray blanket in a rear bunk. She told Ryan all about the squatters who controlled the crossing of the Susquehanna, how they tricked travelers and slaughtered them.

"They're cannies, mister," she whispered.

"What're cannies?" Lori asked.

"Eat meat," J.B. replied.

"We eat meat," she replied.

The Armorer shook his head. "Not human meat, we don't. But cannies do."

"By the three Kennedys!" the girl exclaimed. "Double-nasty!"

"Yeah," J.B. agreed.

"How do they work the trap?"

Chrissy looked at Ryan warily. "I tell you an' you put us off?"

"No. Tell me. The truth." There it was again, like a scab that couldn't be picked. Something about the ambush didn't sit right with him. But what was it?

"They got a lotta blasters. And the road's blocked so you gotta stop. No way around. An' they talk sweet and tell you to get down. Seem okay, but it ain't. That's how they does it."

"When do they hit you?"

"Some kinda word they got. Like one'll say casual that it's bastard cold. That might be the word. You gotta watch 'em. Only way is to step down and talk a whiles. Put 'em off guard. Then you can hit 'em."

J.B. leaned forward. "What if they hit you first?"

The woman seemed caught off-balance. "They... they won't. Not the way they do the chilling. Always same way."

"How far's the river?" Ryan asked.

"Coupla miles."

"We'll be ready."

"Ryan," Jak warned.

"I see 'em."