"Go to the wag. Check it out. Could be someone in there. Doc, Lori 'n me'll take out the five by the fire. No chances. Like Trader used to say. Blast first and weep later. Better we chill them than they chill us."

The G-12 was still set on triple burst. Jak had his satin finish Magnum cocked and ready. Lori carried her little .22 PPK. The blaster wasn't any kind of a man-stopper, but the girl was good with it and it would slow folks down. Doc hefted the cavernous Le Mat. He'd got the hammer slotted for the single .63-caliber shotgun barrel.

Ryan glanced around at them, checking his luminous chron. "J.B. goes in three minutes twenty from now. All ready?" He got nods from everyone. "Move in closer. Careful."

The sweep second hand crept slowly around the white dial. Ryan watched it, also trying to make out what sort of a wag they were going after. It was difficult to judge, as the vehicle was behind the fire, and partly obscured by some bushes, but it looked good. Could be an old Mercedes camper, or maybe even a Volvo body. It was clear that a lot of work had been done on it. Blaster ports had been cut on all sides, and there was evidence that some crude armoring had been welded on.

To Ryan's experienced eye, the wag looked good. The tires seemed solid, and he couldn't see much sign of rusting around the wheel hubs, which was always a giveaway of a wag in poor condition.

"Ten seconds... five... let's go for it. Now!"

Ryan burst through the undergrowth, gun at hip, followed closely by Doc Tanner whooping in a high, cracked voice, and Lori screaming loud and shrill. J.B. came whooping out of the far side of the clearing, followed by Jak Lauren, long white hair streaming behind him, looking like an avenging angel of death and destruction.

Krysty was last, covering the boy as he sprinted to the wag, ripped open the driver's door and disappeared inside.

There was no firefight. The five were jerked from sleep by the attackers and held at gunpoint before they were properly awake.

Jak's recon had been accurate. Nobody was lurking inside the wag. There were just the five of them. The old man had a long straggling beard that reached to his belt. His gray-haired woman mumbled constantly and appeared to be slow-witted. The little boy was very frail, with a congenital birth defect — his hands sprouted like little paddles from the points of his narrow shoulders. His face was bright and alert, but they realized quickly the boy was also deaf.

Two other people — the lad's parents — stood trembling together, eyes staring in shock at the strangers who'd come shrieking at them from the darkness. Meadsville stream had always been a safe site, away from any marauding muties or slaughtering stickies.

The boy's father's name was Renz Boydson, and his wife was called Mixy. Their son had been birthed as Boyd, but most times he was just called Boy. Renz's father was Jorg, and his woman, who was no relation, answered to Valli.

Renz was a traveling repairman. He was good with tired old machines that seemed past their best: old washers and rad-trans equipment, as well as generators and wag engines. The big trailer that was hidden among the trees held a primitive lathe and a mass of tools he'd been collecting for years.

The Boydsons made a fair living, though they frequently had to run the gauntlet of hostiles or double-crazies around the eastern fringe of the heart of the Deathlands. It was the wag that gave them life, food and security. The chassis was off a Mercedes camper, with parts of a Volvo body grafted onto it. The engine was reliable and exceedingly powerful, but so heavy on gas that Renz had adapted the interior to hold five twenty-gallon cans.

The wag had once belonged to a stupe preacher, who'd got it from a woman trader who'd seen the light through his hellfire sermons.

Renz had got it from the preacher, whose corpse, cleaned of flesh, now rested at the bottom of an old quarry, eight miles from Flanders. A bullet from Renz's Luger had been drilled through the center of his forehead.

Renz, hands in the air, glared at the strangers. His first waking thought had been muties, then he'd guessed that some other trader or traveler had followed them and run the ambush. But these six weren't like anyone he'd ever met. Valli was weeping quietly at his elbow, and he snarled at her to shut up with her sniveling.

The leader was obviously the man with the patch over his left eye. He was tall and well built, wearing dark clothes and a long coat. He was hefting a blaster such as Renz had never seen. The second-in-command was the small man with the battered hat and the glinting glasses who carried a machine pistol.

"Keep quiet and give us no trouble, and you get to live some more," the man with the eye patch said. "We want the wag. Nothing else."

"Mebbe some stew," the young boy said. He didn't look much older than Boy, but he walked with a terrifying air of crazed menace. With hair like spun snow and eyes like the embers that glowed in the middle of the fire, the boy looked like something built by a mountain shaman for a midnight ritual.

One of the attackers was a dotard who looked even older than Jorg, and he was holding a handgun that had two barrels.

Renz looked at the two women. Despite the danger to them all, he felt himself stirring excitedly. The tall, slender blonde wore clothes that seemed designed to beg a man to take her. And the other, a few years older, had hair like living flames. Both women also had blasters, holding them with ease that only comes with experience and use.

The wind soughed through the branches of a grove of fragrant sassafras trees to the west, brightening the ashes of the fire, stirring dancing spurs of orange and yellow from the smoldering ends of the branches.

"Yer take wag and we'll all done get chilled," Renz said, addressing his words to the one-eyed man.

"You get to live. The keys in it, Jak?"

"Yeah. Juiced and ready't'go."

"Start it up. No, I guess you're right 'bout that stew. Smells good. Krysty, you an' Doc serve us out a bowl each."

The meat was rancid, with a ragged lace of rotting gristle around each piece, but the turnip greens and sweet potatoes were fresh and good. Renz and his family sat together, guarded, watching with sullen resentment. Jorg had begun to moan at his son for letting them be taken so easily.

"Chillers come out the brush and take food and the wag. You sit there and don't do nothing to stop them."

"Shut the flap, you old ass-lapper. They got the blasters, ain't they?"

"You ain't worth doodlysquat, you little fucker!"

"Our food! Our wag!" Mixy groaned. "We got no food or nothing. What's you going to do't'them? Tell me that."

Renz didn't know. His philosophy of life was very simple. If someone was more powerful than you, then you crawled, belly down. If you were stronger, then you beat the shit out of them. These six strangers turned his guts to water.

"Want us't'take the rest of the food?" Jak asked. "There's some dried stuff an' self-heats in the wag. Last us a coupla days."

"No. Leave 'em be. Get aboard. Start her up. Krysty and Lori, go with him. Doc, you too. Me and J.B.'ll watch 'em here."

"How about their blasters, Ryan? Better to take them with us?" Krysty pointed with the toe of her boot to the pile of pistols and shotguns by the fire, where Jak had left them.

"Leave them. Once we're on the way an' the doors are closed, it'd take more than them flea-flickers to harm us. Get moving."

The albino boy led the way, followed by the girls and Doc Tanner. Ryan watched Renz and the rest of the family. Behind him, there was the deep roar of the wag engine as it kicked into life.

Jak clashed the gears, making the heavy vehicle lurch forward. It bumped into the stump of a tree with a rending crack. Both Ryan and J.B. glanced around to see what was happening.