Men of Truth (The Wasteland Soldier #4)

TWENTY NINE

The dawn light was raw, unflinching.

They collected Yuan and Weaver and pressed south through scrubland, once more keeping parallel to the highway. Yuan looked cold, tired. She didn’t have much to say except to ask Stone to allow Weaver to travel with them. He nodded, agreeing not to abandon the automobile dealer to what would be certain death. Weaver didn’t want to be around but there was no alternative. An uneasy truce broke out.

Weaver scowled as he walked, dry-mouthed and hungry, his clothes filthy and unsuitable.

They moved in single file, Stone taking the lead, Cali behind him, then Yuan, with Weaver at the rear. They crossed waterlogged fields and saw ruined buildings. Yuan opened her pack and handed around pieces of hard biscuit. They ate as they walked. There was no point in stopping. They had no coffee, no meat, no whiskey, nothing except the hard biscuit.

Stone kept his eyes peeled for something to hunt. The hours drifted, the weak sun climbed high in the sky and still he saw no tracks or detected any movement. He had listened to stories of the Black Region and heard it was a place without hope. That it would haunt a man and end him. But Stone had been born and raised in the deserts of Gallen and that was pretty much how his homeland was described to strangers.

He studied the map, kept them walking.

Weaver grumbled a few times but no one spoke, wanting to channel every grain of energy into keeping up.

It was dusk when they heard the snarl of car engines.

Stone whipped out his machete as they took cover. He’d hoped they were beyond the Triple Death gang. The noise grew closer, barking across the silence. Remaining flat, they waited.

Two heavily-customised cars burned into view. Stone raised his head and saw no gang markings.

The vehicles flashed by, pushing north, toward the craters and sinkholes. He let out a sigh of relief and urged them on.

The landscape was bleak, dead vegetation and dry creeks, and his thoughts turned to Pavla, wondering how close she was. She had the edge. She had the location of the weapon and was armed with bullets and explosives.

Darkness was less than thirty minutes away. A stiff wind drove the clouds from the rippled sky.

He stopped, told them to break for ten minutes, and then explained how they would move through the dark, keeping in single column but with one hand on the person in front.

“I’m exhausted,” said Weaver.

Stone shrugged. “We’re not stopping.”

“I’m beat as well,” said Cali. “But Stone knows what’s what. He says we walk at night then that’s the deal, car man.”

Weaver glared at her.

“We should drink,” said Yuan, opening her pack, and retrieving the last of the bottled water.

There were a few stumbles and once or twice Stone whispered for them to stop and hold still but the night passed without incident. An hour before dawn, he guided them to the base of a low hill and told them to rest.

They collapsed. Within seconds, Weaver was asleep. Yuan drew her knees against her chest, rested her head, and closed her bleary eyes. Cali yawned, her head nodding forward.

Stone nudged her with his boot. “Keep your eyes open.”

She nodded, yawned once more.

Shrugging off his pack, he took only his machete and telescope, and weaved a path up the hill. He found a shallow depression fringed with wildflowers, dropped to one knee and expanded the telescope.

There was an exit road from the fifty-five, cutting through featureless scrubland and winding toward a tree-covered hill. It went over the hill and dipped toward a dry creek. Stone rose onto both feet, wiped the grit from his eyes. The creek was spanned by an old bridge, wide enough for two vehicles. The asphalt was scarred and marked with fresh tyre tracks, the crash barrier on the left hand side mangled.

Beyond the old bridge was Silver Road, huddled within a valley, shielded by pine trees, the faint smell of wood smoke in the air. Light picked at the horizon, revealing buildings of wood and brick and tidy looking dirt roads.

It was a second-world town, unmolested by the horrors of the Black Region.

There was a solitary man at the top of the bridge with a wide-brimmed hat and a blue armband.

In the forests, Stone saw spotters in wooden watchtowers. The bridge wasn’t the only way in and out.

He collapsed his telescope, relaxed the tension in his arms. He sucked down the fresh air, watched the town and listened to the wind, allowing himself a tight smile, but nothing more. He carried the mission of a dead man and it was only part complete. They would need to plan the robbery with care. There could be no suspicion or blame directed at them. They would need an individual to take the fall for it, a patsy. Weaver flicked into his thoughts but he was too close to them. It would have to be someone from the town.

But the half-smile drained away because Stone knew that once they obtained the weapon concealed within the bank, he would face an agonising choice between Cali and New Washington or his unsuccessful search for the elusive Pathfinder and a way back to Nuria. Jeremiah had been right on that score – the nomadic man was a ghost. He didn’t want to be found. Stone guessed the sea was only six or seven days to the south and that could be his route back. But he had no supplies and no assurance he would find transportation to cross it. And he couldn’t abandon Cali and the weapon and condemn the township of New Washington to whatever lay beyond its borders.

His head ached.

His heart ached.

He pressed his hand to the wooden memento Nuria had given him and allowed her face and voice into his thoughts for a moment.

And then he said goodbye to her. What he was doing came first. It always had. It always would.

Stone picked up his machete and telescope and trudged back down the hill to get the others.