Page 16 of The Last True Hero
Six
LIGHT GLINTED off metal, somewhere on the valley floor below them.
"There she is, boys," Ethan Thwaites murmured the next day, idling the jeep on the top of the cliff. "Vegas."
Mia slid to the edge of her seat, peering down. Afternoon sunshine gleamed back off metal and glass. "Is that where the reivers are?"
"They'll likely make camp there," Jenny muttered. "Used to be flat plains here, but the Darkening tore the earth apart pretty good down here. Some kind of dam broke and cleared out half the population, but a lot of the buildings still remain. It's the only city from pre-D days that survived out here, beyond the Wall."
The Wall cut the Confederacy of the Eastern States off from the West. Nobody from this side of the Wall had ever crossed it, as the Confederacy soldiers manned it and were ruthless in employing their weapons. Rumor abounded that there were still cities out East full of people and technology the likes of which the Badlanders had never seen.
The cough of a motorbike ripped through the air, and then McClain pulled up beside them, dust pouring through the windows. "They're down there," he said, leaning forward to peer in.
"You sure?"
McClain pointed toward the far side of the city ruins. "Smoke. It's nearly two hours until sunset, but they look like they've made camp."
"What's wrong?" Mia asked.
McClain frowned. "It's unusual, that's all. Even the reivers usually avoid the ruins. I haven't been down this way for nearly ten years, but the local mole people tribes all say that you don't stay the night in Vegas."
He'd stayed with the mole men that haunted this valley? The mole men were notoriously private thanks to their conspiracy theories on how the Darkening began, and strangers were rarely admitted into their underground silos and bunkers. They'd been underground since before the Darkening began, and now had entire tribes down there, somewhere. Mia was almost impressed. "Deadheads?"
"Not deadheads." He shook his head. "Not sure what it is. There's a ton of predators around Vegas, so it could be anything. The mole men say thatac'tun ahilihaunts the city, though hell if I know what that is. Every settlement they've tried to start in the ruins has disappeared, so now they don't bother. It's a long valley and the mole menreallydon't like reivers, so maybe they decided to stay somewhere the mole men won't enter."
Thwaites stroked his moustache as he peered at the ruins. "In two hours, we might be able to find the reivers."
"Maybe, but we'd be walking into an ambush if we did," McClain countered. "If they're smart, they'll have set up defenses, and last night's ambush at the tor suggests there's at least one reiver in control with above-average intelligence. For a reiver. I suggest sending in a scouting party of two or three people, some of your best, and work out what we're dealing with before we make any rash decisions. The others can stay at the edge of the ruins, fuel up, and prepare a quick camp where the reivers won't notice."
Thwaites looked toward Mia. "What do you think?"
"Sounds good. I'll put my hand up for the scouting party." If only so she could get closer to see if her sister was still alive. She also needed to move her body, get out of her head. All morning, all she’d been able to think about was Joe. The boy survived the night, but this morning a raging infection had bloomed and his cousin decided to take him back to Salvation Creek. She just hoped he was okay.
"Anyone else?" McClain asked.
"Jake," she said, without a moment's hesitation. Jake had skills she could only dream of, despite her resentment. "Maybe Jenny?"
McClain nodded, and kicked the bike out of gear. "Alright then. Hopefully we don't find out what thisac'tun ahiliis."
* * *
"What is this place?" Mia whispered, turning in slow circles, examining the debris. She'd known the city would be in ruins, but she'd never expected the buildings to look the way they did.
McClain remained focused. Intent. Hunting. He barely gave the empty fountains a glance. They were getting closer to where the smoke came from. "Vegas used to be a city for pleasure-seekers."
Pleasure-seekers? Was that something like the slave towns down south? Mia stared up at the iron scraps of some sort of tower. It looked kind of like something she'd seen once, in a picture. "Paris," she whispered. This place was like nothing she’d ever seen. She wasfairlycertain she'd seen some sort of ship earlier, after all, and none of the maps about the pre-Darkening world indicated any sort of body of water nearby, beyond the huge dam that flooded the nearby river system and towns. "What kind of people lived here?"
"Don't know. Before my time."
"Before anyone's time, smart-ass." Mia snorted. A good sixty years at least.
McClain held out a hand to quiet her. He cocked his head on an angle and listened, and Mia froze. Could be Jake and Jenny he was listening to. McClain had partnered them up to cover more ground. But she wasn't sure.
Jenny learned to hunt squirrel and deer as a young girl, and despite her limp she moved like a ghost. And Jake had experience, like McClain. He wouldn't be making a lot of noise.
No, he was listening to something else. Her heart ticked a little faster.
Water bubbled up out of a crack in the ground, despite the desert surrounding the place. It seemed to spring from where a huge building had crashed down into the sodden mire. Maybe a quake during the Darkening unearthed the water table? Not that it looked drinkable. Green slime covered the pond, and lush vegetation surrounded it.
