Sooner Dead (Gamma World) - Mel Odom [37]
“Thank you.” Hella bit off a chunk. The salty flavor spread across her tongue and filled her senses. When she breathed out, she exhaled jerky fumes. She didn’t like staying in camp towns, but the prevalence of food—and so many flavors—made a good argument for regular visits. Plus, seeing Faust again reminded her how much she missed him.
“Not a problem.” The guard put the jerky away. “Right here in Blossom Heat, we stay hip deep in wild pigs. If we didn’t eat them as often as we do, they’d overrun us and eat us.”
The other guard chuckled, but the line was obviously an old joke.
“I heard there was a face-off in the main building last night.” The first guard chewed his jerky and watched her.
“Gossip gets around.”
The man grinned. “It’s a trade center. That’s what folks do here in between haggling, selling, and buying. Is anything going to come of the bad blood?”
“I don’t know. Did Trazall leave last night?”
“Nope.” The guard pointed to a collection of tents and a handful of wagons and ATVs on the north side of the wall. “They’re still there.”
Only three men tended the cook fire in the camp area. Hella knew the men were guards posted by Trazall. She recognized one of them from the confrontation. “How many men?”
The guards exchanged looks and smiled. “That what you come up here for? Get a headcount?”
Hella smiled back at them, as if letting them in on a secret. “I don’t think knowing how many are out there would hurt. Do you?”
“I counted twenty-six riders. Including Trazall.”
“Trazall stayed down there last night?”
The man shook his head. “Nope. He stayed inside the walls. Got himself a room.”
Hella nibbled at the jerky and thought about that. So far she and Stampede hadn’t seen the insectoid. That bothered her. Trazall was someone she wanted to keep an eye on.
“We’ll see Trazall coming if he decides to brace us, Red. Don’t worry.” Stampede’s voice was calm.
“Not worried. Just like to know.”
“We’ll know. Faust has got people on Trazall.”
“Trazall doesn’t have to be the one that makes the move.”
“You’re getting to be a real pessimist. You know that?”
“You should be proud.” Hella smiled. She looked out over the countryside and at the creek that meandered through the forest less than a klick away. Boats traveled the creek, and a lot of them stopped to trade at Blossom Heat. She wondered what it had been like in the ancient days, when the world had been filled with buildings and traffic. The idea was hard to imagine. She loved the open places and didn’t want to think of them being filled in by structures and humans thick as ants. Trade camps were bad enough.
“Primo.” The second guy reached into his chest packet and took out a pair of binocs.
“Yeah?”
“I thought I saw something in the tree line to the east.”
Curious, Hella looked in that direction down the row of guards lining the catwalk. One hundred fifty meters away, the guards in the sniper tower talked among themselves.
“Clancy.” The first man’s voice was tight.
Hella didn’t hear the answer because Clancy was at the other end of a radio connection.
“Yeah, I think there’s movement out at the eastern perimeter.”
Beyond the guard tower, a half klick away across the barren expanse of land shorn of trees, Hella tracked the landscape. The morning sun made it hard to look in that direction because the light slanted in at just the right angle to be near blinding.
The first guard, Primo, dropped his assault rifle from his shoulder into his waiting hands. “Clancy says he sees guys out in the bush. Must be three or four dozen. All of ’em just waiting. Go sound the alarm.”
The second guard hurried down the catwalk to a crank-driven air horn.
Primo turned to Hella. “Gonna need to you clear the catwalk, kid.”
The guard tower exploded into flaming pieces that rained down over the camp. A deafening boom battered the inside of Hella’s skull, and the catwalk shivered, making her stomach clench.
Before the second guard reached the air horn, the back