By the time that the water tanker driver and his co-pilot had recovered their breath from rebounding off the console, the Nomad descended from the trailer to the cabin roof with a crank rifle in hand. Prying the sunroof hatch open, he had the barrel levelled over the driver's greasy cropped hair at the crown of his head.
"Get out... now."
Lifting their eyes to the black hollows of the rotary barrels, the co-pilot smirked before he spoke.
"You can only shoot the one of us before you reload..."
The Nomad kept the rifle aim on the head of the driver.
"I know; I've already decided."
Metal tapped on the glass window outside the passenger door. Creeping his vision toward its origin revealed the angry smile of Shamrock with another recovered rifle.
"Out."
Complying with the command of the voice from the roof hatch, the two Skin Pirates opened their respective doors and stepped down from the cabin.
"An leave yew'r boots thar, both of yew." Shamrock pointed with his rifle at their feet.
In the background, Carrion and the others were gathering around the Kenworth hauler, appraising it for any damage sustained in the chase.
"We'll take her. Sabotage the other rig so they can't follow us after we leave." The trucker said as she climbed into the cabin.
Her hand brushed the underside of the steering column, reading the jagged profile of a rusting rabbit trap's jaws loaded around the ignition switch. Taking up a tool from the cabin's floorwell, she tapped the plate within the jaws, biting the haft as they sprang shut.
Turning over the engine, the exhaust stacks sent out a puff of carbon as the chassis shook back to life.
"We have to get outta here, immediately! You weren't supposed to take the tanker, that wasn't part of the plan!" Scratch told the trucker as he came to sit beside her in the cabin.
"I don't remember being shot and betrayed as part of it either?" The cigar wobbled in her mouth as she spoke.
"This is not good, not good at all. What happens when Zeus or Hercules learn about all this?! We're dead men. God help us, we're all gonna be dead men. We gotta go back and warn them, now! Before the Skins get there..."
* * *
Against the mauve pastels of dusk, they could see the pyres of Junkyard in the final miles before their arrival, streaks of amber flames twirling in the night wind as they returned with the water tanker.
The outer walls had been torn down and dragged to ruinous pieces in the immediate area around the massacre, catching the light of the burning bodies that had been doused in accelerant, many of them crushed with imprints from the wheels of the Skin Pirate's war machines.
Speechless as they exited the cabin, Carrion and the others stumbled in blank shock through the trails of burning butchery as though it were a scene from hell's bowels. Some of the remains told their story from where they lay; cables round the severed heads and ankles at opposing ends of thrown offal, the charcoal of an adult holding onto a smaller blackened body in a final embrace.
"They've taken tha rig, tha bike, an' tha car..." Shamrock commented as he stood beside Carrion.
"I know."
"They might'a gotten away... no trace'a tha others among the dead."
Carrion slowly turned, somehow insulted by the sentiment of hope.
"You really believe the three of 'em just rode on outta here while this was takin' place?"
"Maybe, they could ha' left before the trouble started." Shamrock offered softly.
"Maybe we wouldn't even recognize them, if they were set alight."
At this thought the two remained silent, the glow of the remaining fires playing off their sullen faces in a shifting warp of orange and shadow.
"You bastards, look what you've done to us!" Scratch hissed at the pair once he had arrived closer.
"We weren't tha ones that caused all this, Scratchy."
"The hell you weren't! They set a trap to catch you lot, and they used us to get to you, just like you used us to make your bargain with El Dorado. All gone... because of you! Never shoulda let your mate convince me otherwise to show you the Junkyards, never!"
"That Haitch-two belongs to us now. We paid for it in blood." Derro, one of the Scabeaters from the negotiation, spoke out from the background to support Scratch.
"We paid in blood too." Carrion lifted her left arm to show the bullet wounds she had sustained in the light of the pyres. "And you wouldn't have come back here alive without us."
"We're keepin' the water." Scratch emphasized his words.
"What, for the three of you? I've got a starving community waiting for me to deliver that tanker. You'll cause just as many deaths if you stop us from reaching them." Carrion replied.
"Hey!" A rough voice called out.
Shamrock, Carrion, and the three hooded men moved as one toward the Nomad's position, standing behind them all at the limits of the firelight.
"Up there! See that star, moving?"
Raising their vision to the manifest wonder of the night, a descending flicker of light passed over the fixed positions of celestial signs, floating closer to the earth at an angle as though it were stepping down an unseen flight of stairs.
Taking hold of a burning wand from the nearest pyre, Shamrock waved it overhead to signal the craft as he ran toward it. Copying his lead, the others reached for what torches they could before rushing into the darkness.
The basket of the hot air balloon scraped over the rock as it landed awkwardly, with the deflating envelope flapping horizontally in the wind until it had flattened in contours over the ground. Emerging from the basket frame, Liu, Socky, and another survivor shouted back to the familiar voices that were calling their names.
"Over here!"
"Liu! Socky!" Shamrock exclaimed. "Did anyone else make it?!"
"Not many. Us, and those prisoners they took back to Gaswells, if their still alive'." Socky answered as the two parties converged in the gloom.
"Who were the prisoners? Who'd they take?" Scratch asked as soon as he had heard the other speak.
"Maybe a handful... they took both ya mates I'm afraid..." Socky looked at Carrion, "The big guy and the one with the missing eye. Took 'em for an interrogation to find out who you all are, and were ya came from."
"What happened? They've stripped out everything we need, all the working machines and salvage... everyone burnt!"
"You wouldn't want to know, truly."Socky stared into the black sky, the writhing arrow heads of the distant fires shining in the white of his eyes.
"After you all left for the trade, Hercules and a horde of war machines came looking for the trucker woman and her crew. We traded them the two men, big guy and one eye, to leave Junkyards but they where greedy for violence, so they plundered our home and set the corpses on fire, driving back west to Gaswells with a chain link of new slaves in tow." Kite, the only other survivor from the balloon spoke.
"We need to get back to Audrey, take back my truck and then I can bring us and that water to a new home. You ain't got a better option than that, Scratch. You wont survive out here for much longer, they'll be back here, and they'll find you eventually."
"You wont survive gettin' your truck back either, woman, so you might as well leave the water here, where it belongs. You're truck couldn't haul ass fast enough to even get you into the wastelands, how's it gonna do any better dragging a full tanker with everyone on patrol looking for it, eh? How long do ya reckon it will take for them to run you down and crucify you and any other silly bugger they find in your company?" Scratch countered.
"He's right Carrion, yew wont be able to jus' drive back to the city with the king's treasure on show for all to see. It's safer if we hide it away, use it to bargain with Zeus, think about it; what happens when El Dorado hears 'bout this betrayal of their contract, the massacre? They'll turn off the tap and leave Gaswells dry."
"We should go and find El Dorado, tell them what happened, they'll let us in, they'll have to!" Derro exclaimed
"No they won't, they won't be lettin' anybody in now. They promised me an' the Bronze a safe place in their bunker for savin' 'em , but here we stand. But, we can at least warn them, no doubt Gaswells will have planned to attack 'em during their next and final delivery, on the assumption that we'd all be dead after today's trap and couldn't inform them of another ambush waiting for 'em."
"So, what are we gonna do?" Carrion asked.
"Hide the tanker, then drive the truck back to the Gauntlet and leave us to make our own way into Gaswells. Scratch, you drive yourself and the others north until you find a way to speak with Doctor Idaho, there must be guards or a way they can observe the surface to know who's coming, especially now that they have Shamrock's message."
All faces turned to the Nomad whom had just spoken, the sound of his voice rare in any conversation.
"How are you gonna get into Gaswells?" Derro asked.
"Through the front door, the civilized way." The Nomad smirked.