s [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]

Ryan's part. Keeping the wag's momentum going with an automatic tranny was
tough, and if he gained too much speed and lost control, there was no margin
for error-he'd drop a wheel off the edge of the road. The unpaved track was
badly rilled out in spots. The weight of the RV caused these parts to crumble,
and the spinning rear tires cut deeper potholes and ruts. The lion sitting
over the back wheels helped big time as far as traction was concerned.
As the Winnebago climbed, Ryan and the others could hear a chorus of engines
below, roaring ominously as they lumbered up the track after them. They
couldn't see the wags, though. They were about a quarter mile behind. Any hope
of the pursuit
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giving up once they saw the grade and the narrow road had long since
evaporated.
"Whoever they are," Krysty said, "they sure got a giant bug in their butts
over us."
"If they were ville folk," Mildred said, "you'd think they would have turned
back long before this. After all, they won the fight, even though a few of
them got chilled in the process. Seemed like they would write it off as part
of the cost of doing business&
and building their reputation as a big-time, take-no-shit ville."
"Makes me think it's got to be the Magus who's after us,"
Ryan said. "We caused him a good bit more trouble than we did the farmers. We
didn't just upset his plans for Bullard ville-we put an end to his carny
operation. Mebbe forever."
"And Magus doesn't give up until he's dead square even," J.B.
added. "That's a proven fact."
As the grade continued to steepen, the RV lost so much speed that they
probably could have outpaced it on foot, but abandoning their wheels at this
point was out of the question. If they did that, once the ground flattened
out, or turned downhill, the pursuers in wags could run them down. Nor was
there any discussion of some of the companions getting out and trying to slow
down or stop the miniconvoy with small arms or hastily rigged deadfalls. They
were already outnumbered and outgunned. To have split up their force would
have been suicidal.
Ryan was keeping an eye on the fuel gauge, as was J.B.
Because of the angle of the road, the tank sensor was misreading the level.
They both knew it had to be wrong. It showed more gas now than when they'd
started.
"Look up there," Dean said, pointing out the side window.
"We're almost at the edge of the forest."
All that separated them from the wall of hundred-foot-tall trees were a few
switchbacks.
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"What do you think, Ryan?" J.B. asked.
From J.B.'s tight lipped expression, Ryan knew the two of them were on the
same wavelength. In a few minutes, the RV's fuel tank was going to run dry and
they'd end up stopping somewhere, but not by choice. And mebbe not in the
right spot to permanently slow the pursuit.
"I think the next hairpin is as far as we go in this wag," he said. "I'm going
to wedge it across the road. Make our friends down below come after us on
foot. Everybody get ready to bail out."
He had to park the Winnebago so it couldn't be budged, rammed or dragged out
of the way. He knew the other wags couldn't back up without going over the
edge, so there was no way they could pull it free. The lead wag could only
push it. And the road leading up to the hairpin was so steep, there was no
traction to do this. "Everybody out!" Ryan shouted when he reached the spot he
was looking for. "Head up the road for the tree line. Triple quick!"
As the companions ran ahead, he turned the front wheels hard over, put it in
reverse and goosed the gas pedal, backing up until he bashed the rear end into
the facing slope. Then he shifted into Drive, cutting the wheels as far as
they'd go the other way, and moved forward a half yard. He put it in reverse
again and repeated the process. After shifting into forward gear, he very
carefully edged the nose of the Winnebago off the road, dropping it hard onto
its front axle, with its rear bumper brushing the sheer wall on the other
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side.
Foot traffic could pass, if it hopped over the bumper.
But nothing else.
Below him, the sounds of the other wags' engines were getting louder. Ryan
climbed out the driver's door, slung his
Steyr longblaster and beat feet up the road, past the last switchback, up to
the edge of the dense forest where the others were waiting.
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As he approached the wall of trees, he sensed something unnatural. Ryan had
come across a few other forests like this during his wanderings, lifeless
except for the tightly packed trees. In this case some kind of mutated
evergreen. There were no other types of trees, or vegetation for that matter.
There was no undergrowth. Just pale gray dust that shaded the seemingly
endless sprawl of trunks. Smothering heat and silence. No air.
Little light. It was the kind of place that gave children wake-up-screaming
nightmares, and that grown men and women avoided like the bloody flux.
The rumble of engines coming up the grade suddenly stopped.
"They're at the barricade," Ryan said. "Let's go& we've got to hurry now."
He waved the others up the road that vanished into the immense stand of trees.
J.B. went first, pulling Doc behind him on a tether. Mildred followed, then
Dean and Leeloo and Krysty.
Everyone but Doc and Leeloo had a weapon up and ready to fire.
Jak stood beside the mountain lion, who hung back at the edge of the darkness,
as if reluctant to set foot in the woods. Its huge nostrils flared, as if it
had caught the scent of something filtering down through the trees.
"What's the matter with your pet?" Ryan asked Jak.
"He's afraid," the albino said.
Chapter Twenty-Three
The Magnificent Crecca plowed the biggest of the carny wags through the
quarter-mile-long dust cloud swirling in the wake of Ryan Cawdor's RV. The
red-haired, red-bearded man had lost virtually everything. Three-quarters of
his convoy's chillers and wags had been left behind at Bullard ville. As had
all of the mutie menagerie collected by Gert Wolfram and him over the years,
except for Jackson, the singing stickie, who sat on the
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floor at his hip.
Not that Crecca had feelings for the collection of nukecaust-deformed
critters-he didn't even have them for
Jackson, who followed him around like a dog. What irked him was the wasted
effort and missing income. In the blind rush to escape the wrath of the ville
folk, all of the carny gear had been abandoned; it represented the sum total
of his working life.
Crecca had gone from being somebody important, from carny master, to master of
nothing, in the space of a couple of hours;
from anticipating the biggest score of his life to the kind of devastation he
had only in his worst, sweat soaked nightmares dreamed possible.
Much of the blame for his current predicament he laid at the feet of the
creature who sat coiled across from him in the
Winnebago's duct-tape-patched shotgun chair. The Magus was arrogant, [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]