Chapter Five

      The diner looked deserted, but looks could be deceiving. There had been no signs of life from the roadhouse while they were hiking across the three miles of plain between the hill and the two-lane blacktop, and certainly they had been in a position where they would have been open and easy prey if anyone in the building had wanted to mount an attack. Even so, there was no way that they were going to walk straight in without doing a recce first.

      While the others adopted defensive positions as best they could on the arid plain around the old road, Ryan and Jak went forward to carry out a quick survey of the building.

      Keeping low to the ground and fanning out to divide any possible fire, they approached the building from the side that had the fewest windows.

      Ryan took the front. There were double glass doors, with the glass still intact. One of the long windows was broken, but the other was still in place. Ryan dived to the duckboarding veranda tacked on to the front of the building to give it an old-world look. He crawled along under one of the windows, SIG-Sauer in hand. He had left the Steyr with J.B.

      He took the double doors at a roll, landing beneath a table that he flipped up with a hefty kick of his left foot. He was now in cover and able to survey the inside of the building.

      Empty. And layered with undisturbed dust, enough to suggest that it was a long time since the diner had been in regular use.

      “Jak?” he called.

      “Clear out back.” The albino slid through the kitchen door, the .357 Magnum Colt Python still in his fist, red eyes still darting side to side, aware of any movement in his peripheral vision.

      Ryan rose to his feet. “Guess we’re okay to rest up here, then.”

      He went to the side of the diner and opened the window. He could see the rest of the group, plainly visible despite their best attempts to seek cover in the sparse scrub. He gestured to them to come on, thankful that the diner hadn’t been occupied. He judged that the weather had to be harsh in this part of the country, as the land was wind and rain blasted. The forest on the gentler slope of the hill could only have grown because the sheer rock face acted as a weather break.

      Truly a rock and a hard place.

      The others had now gained the safety of the diner, and were glad to be out of the rain, which had increased in volume from a gentle spray to a hard shower that beat on the duckboard exterior of the building.

      “It’s just as well this was here,” Mildred said as she divested herself of the outer layer of her clothing. “I’d guess we’ve all had a few layers of skin softened. It’s just a matter of how long we had until it started to peel.”

      “Or how long it’ll take until it starts right now, unless we can wash it off,” Krysty added, shrugging off her coat and pulling her hair back from her face. The sentient red tresses clung tightly to her, and not just because they were damp. They could sense the damage being caused by the rain.

      “We have attained shelter. To hope for ambrosia and nectar would be too much, would it not?” Doc asked wearily, seating himself at a padded bench seat by the window. No one replied directly, and it wouldn’t have mattered, as the old man was off in a reverie, distant from his friends.

      “Mebbe not that, whatever means.” Jak smiled slyly. “But one thing for sure—this place not that deserted.”

      Ryan furrowed his brow and cast a curious glance at Jak. “Meaning?”

      “Someone use place sometime. Why else running water?”

      “You’re kidding,” Mildred said. “That would be too much to hope for.”

      She headed past Jak for the kitchen area at the back of the diner, while J.B. called cautiously, “Watch what kind of water it is, Millie. If the supply is rainwater, well…”

      Mildred poked her head from the kitchen door, good-natured annoyance puckering her features. “Give me some credit, John. Of course I’ll test it first…on you, if you like.”

      As a joke, it wasn’t even that funny. But the tension of the passing day needed some kind of diffusion, and Mildred had supplied the safety valve.

      On examining the water supply, Mildred found that a water-purification unit had been rigged in a storage tank that stood in an attached outhouse. It was a system cobbled together from pieces of salvage, but the filters appeared to have been changed recently, as there were only a few crystals attached to the copper pipes used to electrolyze the acid from the water.

      Ryan agreed with Mildred that this suggested a ville somewhere near, and one that had a good working knowledge of predark tech. Certainly, someone with a good knowledge of chemistry had rigged the filtering system and kept a mains supply maintained from a nearby reservoir or river, which suggested a small pumping system of some kind. The water pressure was erratic, but constant enough to indicate good maintenance on the pump.

      The positive aspect of this was clean water to drink, and also to shower. The rest rooms of the diner-roadhouse were supplied with showers, and the group took the opportunity to wash the acid rain from their skin. Once this had been done, Mildred tackled Doc’s wounds. The deep scratches on his hands had ceased to bleed, but needed dressing. Searching the scavenged medical supplies in her med kit, Mildred found antiseptic and some bandages. Hoping that she would strike it lucky, she searched for the first-aid kit that all such diners would have carried by law before skydark. Cursing, she found that whoever used the diner had also used most of the first-aid kit, and there were only a few bandages left. The seal on the package had long since been broken, probably for several decades, as the adhesive on the small bandages was no longer of any use.

      Doc was grateful for the bandages she could supply, and Ryan allowed the old man to rest while he organized watch. It was imperative that they take turns standing guard, as it was now apparent that the diner was in use as a way station, perhaps on a trading route.

      It was while J.B. and Dean were on watch that the Armorer made his discovery.

      The diner was lit by a small oil lamp that they had found in the kitchen, along with fuel to keep it going. There was a small generator, which again suggested that the roadhouse was in semiregular use, but it was empty, and they could find no fuel to run it.

      The oil lamp was better. It enabled them to have just enough light to see what they were doing,