The Mammoth Book of Apocalyptic SF - Mike Ashley [196]
I could not keep my eyes off the woman. Her legs were bare, long and brown, and I could see the cleavage of her breasts between the fabric of her bleached blouse. She saw me looking and stared at me, her expression unreadable. I looked away quickly.
She said, "Where are you heading?"
Danny waved vaguely. "South."
She looked surprised. "Tangiers?"
"In that direction, yes."
She calculated. "Then we should travel together, no? There are bandits in the area. Together we are stronger."
Danny looked at me, and I found myself nodding.
"Very well, we'll do that. We stop at sunset, set off at dawn."
Samara smiled. "To Tangiers, then."
She said something to her men and two of them took the canisters. She turned and walked towards the hovercraft, flanked by her sunshade toting lackeys.
I watched her go.
Danny laughed and said, "Put your tongue away and help me with these."
We hauled the arrays across the sea-bed and stowed them in the truck.
We stepped into the lounge to find an altercation in progress.
Skull was standing at one end of the room, Kat and Edvard at the other. Skull's face was livid with rage, his lips contorted, eyes wide with accusation.
"You told her!" he yelled across at us as we entered. "You contacted her and told her I was here!"
I looked across at Edvard. He said, "He came flying from his berth, shouting insane accusations."
"That's because you bastards told her!"
I was glad he had a broken leg; able-bodied, he would undoubtedly have attacked us.
Danny said, "Calm down. We told no one. Listen to me - we don't have a radio, okay? How could we have contacted her if we don't possess a damned radio? And anyway, why the hell would we tell her we'd picked you up?"
Skull let go of his crutch to gesture beyond the truck. "So how come she's found me?"
I moved into the lounge and sat down, watching Skull. Danny joined me, gesturing Skull to a seat opposite. Glaring at us, he stumped across the lounge and sat down. Kat and Edvard joined us.
Danny said, reasonably, "Are you sure it's the same mob?"
"How many hovercraft you think are out there?" Skull snorted. "And you think I wouldn't recognize the queen bitch herself?"
Kat said, "It's a coincidence. They saw us from a distance, and as they needed water..."
Skull shook his head. "Some coincidence! Do you know how big this desert is? The chances of two tiny vehicles meeting like this—"
Edvard said, "We didn't contact them, Skull. So it has to be coincidence, no? What other explanation is there?"
"The plane," Danny said. "You took it from them, right? What about this: that she had it tagged with some kind of tracking device? It'd make sense, a valuable piece of kit like that."
Skull held his head in his hands and sobbed.
I said, "What have you got to fear?"
He looked up, staring through his tears. "She's evil. They all are. I ran out on her because I didn't like what she was doing. She won't rest till I'm dead. And now she's found you, she won't stop at just killing me."
"You make her sound like a monster," I said.
He nodded. "Oh, she is. She might have traded solar arrays now, but she'll be scheming to get them back - and more. Right now they'll be working out how to kill us, take the truck ..."
Danny shook his head. "I don't think so. There's only six of them - and we're well armed. The truck's armoured. We can defend ourselves."
Skull brayed a laugh. "Six! Is that what she told you? She's lying. There were a dozen of the bastards with her when I left."
I looked across at Danny, who said, "Like I said, we can look after ourselves."
"Okay, but the best defence is distance. Let's get the hell away from her before she attacks us, okay?"
Danny considered. We had agreed with Samara that we would travel south together; it would be hard to shake her, especially if Skull was correct in thinking she had come for him.
Danny nodded and said to Kat, "Okay, start us up. Let's move on."
Kat and Edvard moved to the cab.