Sooner Dead (Gamma World) - Mel Odom [49]
The repellant was a bad idea too. Most creatures would get a nose full of it and head for somewhere else, which could make for bad hunting if they needed it. But the scent would draw human or humanoid creatures that knew what it was.
She unwrapped one of the journey cakes they’d purchased at the trade camp. Carnegie traded hams for corn and had the grain milled at a small town north of the camp. When the grain came back to Blossom Heat, they stored it and used it.
The journey cake was cornbread seasoned with wild honey and blackberries and sprinkled with sausage. It was one of Hella’s favorites, but it tended to go bad quickly, so it had to be eaten quickly. In two, three days at most, the cakes would be gone and they’d have to stop at a trade camp again to get them. They were also expensive, and if she hadn’t salvaged as much as she had from the dead biker gang, she knew Stampede wouldn’t have purchased as many as he had.
She sat with her legs folded under herself, in the open under a spreading elm because she wanted to be able to hear the sounds of the night around her. Riley’s men often tried to stand post up against a tree or a rock, doubtless thinking that they were getting shelter. Hella knew what they were also doing was blinding their senses because those shelters also blocked sight and sound.
After she’d pinched the journey cake to pieces and fed herself, she sipped from her canteen and gazed at the stars. With all the bad weather gone for the time being, the black sky appeared shot full of diamonds.
Except one of them was falling.
Hella focused on the falling star. She’d seen them before but not often. The one she looked at was strange. It had appeared out of nowhere. The trajectory seemed slow; then she realized it wasn’t slow at all because it was getting bigger and bigger.
It took her only a moment longer to be certain that the falling star was streaking right for their position. She stood, knowing it was already too late to run.
CHAPTER 13
Stampede!” Hella held on to her rifle and watched as the meteor—she was certain that was what she was looking at—rushed closer. It looked like a fireball as it rocketed across the sky.
Back at the camp, security lamps blazed to life and aimed at the sky. Tracking lasers from the security bots kicked on and strobed the night, finally intercepting the meteor.
“I see it!” Stampede sounded anxious. “It’s gonna miss us!”
Hella saw that then, and she relaxed a little. In the next instant, the meteor hurtled by overhead, less than a hundred meters above them. Later she would have sworn she felt the heat of its passing, but she wasn’t sure if that were just her imagination adding detail. Despite the fact that it zoomed past in an instant, time seemed frozen.
Then the meteor was gone, rocketing into the horizon to the east. The sonic booms caught up with her then, cracking and thundering all around her. The ground quivered or maybe she was just shaking all over. She wasn’t sure.
The meteorite hit the ground in the distance. A huge eruption of flames lit up the night and stretched for the heavens. Then the fiery mass collapsed back to the ground. Less than a moment later, the horrendous boom of the meteorite striking the earth reached her ears.
An orange glow remained visible on the eastern horizon.
Then Colleen screamed into the night.
At first Hella tried to remain out on guard duty. She didn’t want anything to do with the madness taking part inside the camp. Riley’s men rousted everyone from slumber and called a meeting together. All the voices, the yelling and the cursing, carried to Hella over Stampede’s comm link.
“Pardot wants to break camp and get moving.” Stampede clearly wasn’t happy about the possibility.
“Why?”
“He says this is the event they’ve been waiting for. This is the ripple Colleen saw in a vision that they came here for.”
“A hunk of fried space rock?”
“I don’t know.” Stampede sighed