Free Doomsday Warrior 11 - American Eden by Ryder Stacy Page B

finished it off in two glugs, and wiped her mouth, tossed the bottle into the brush.
    “Now, that’s a woman you got there. Rock,” said McCaughlin.
    The next day’s trek was an uneventful passage over gently rolling snow under pink cirrus clouds. Rockson, stopping the group at midafternoon, used the navigation devices that Schecter had provided, and also used the toy sextant that Dutil had figured angles and distance with. He announced that they were well out on the rolling plains of Arizona. Some divine power must, they reasoned, be favoring their quest.
    The citizen of Eden had been extraordinarily quiet.
    He was sitting up on Rock’s sled, watching the scenery go by. Rock, hoping he wasn’t getting sick again, spoke to him. “You all right, Danik?”
    “Wonderful. It’s so beautiful, that’s why I’m quiet. This land is so beautiful. What is there to say in the face of such beauty?”
    “I guess we Americans take for granted the majesty of the countryside, Danik. It’s a good thing someone comes along once in a while to tell us what we have. So we notice it more. So we appreciate it. You know it was all almost completely destroyed a hundred and five years ago—when the two superpowers fired their ICBMs at one another. The ignorant bastards almost destroyed it all.”
    “Stafford plans to finish their evil handiwork—make this beautiful world a no-man’s land,” Danik said sadly. “I hope we can stop him. God, I pray that we can stop him.”
    After nearly one hundred miles more, all against a fierce icy wind, the party of bold adventurers were beginning to doubt the directions given by the note-book. They should have reached the next landmark—the tall teepee-shaped building.
    Still, there was nothing to do but go on.
    They were ten miles further along than the notebook indicated, and all were depressed and feeling hopeless, when Danik himself shouted the good news: “There it is, the whale rock. We are on the right track.”
    “Thank God Run Dutil’s notes were accurate at least to the direction, if not to the distance,” Rock uttered with relief.
    Recalculating their path taking into account the navigational error of two degrees and ten miles, Rockson headed the bone-weary squad off again to the south. And after two more hard hours fighting winds and driven snow, they came upon a crumbling highway town. There in the middle of the rust spots in the snow that had been Buicks and Toyotas and Oldsmobiles over a hundred years ago, was the giant teepee. It had the look of a new building. “We buried two companions behind it,” Danik said softly.
    “It must be some sort of plastic,” Rockson said. “Plastic lasts longer than concrete. Keep the dogs back, Detroit, come with me, I want to make sure no one is in there. It looks so spiffy, I don’t trust it.”
    The team members held their sleds back behind some tumbled boulders, and Rock and the bull-necked black Freefighter walked cautiously forward, guns drawn, inspecting the many windows in the five-story bright-orange-and-yellow “teepee” for any movements. “Keep an eye on that mesa behind the building,” Rockson said. “There’s a thousand places a man with a rifle could hole up in those rocks.” Detroit nodded.
    The sign over the door, a ten-foot-high red plastic affair, said T OMAHAWK I NDIAN S TORE , save now, 50% off Indian Jewelry.
    “Good, we’re in time for the sale,” Detroit whisperingly joked.
    Rockson and Detroit cautiously entered the giant replica of an Indian dwelling. Light sifted in from outside through high windows. Tumbled chairs, smashed tables, precious items of beaten silver and turquoise—necklaces, rings, bracelets—lay unmolested in glass cases. But other glass counters by the rusty cash register were smashed. “They kept candy by the register,” Rock said, bolstering his shotpistol. “In the weeks after the nuke war, any kind of food was precious—much more precious than jewelry.” A quick survey found