Weakly, the dull red sun shone down upon the frozen landscape of western Pennsylvania, the tainted light reflecting off the blanket of snow covering the ground to almost blinding levels.

Tall mountains rose in the far distance, the jagged peaks lost in listless clouds of toxic chems and radioactive isotopes. Softly, a low breeze whispered across the arctic landscape, rustling the needles of the pine trees and kicking up some flakes that swirled around the U.S. Navy battleship lying on its side on top of the mesa. Icicles hung off the long barrels of the cannons, the decks thickly coated with frost, and bird nests festooned what little rigging remained. Inside the bridge, several corpses lay in a pile jammed against one corner of the sideways room; nearly every bone visible was cracked into a jigsaw puzzle. The complex bank of controls was dark and lifeless, only the gauges for the nuclear power plant buried in the hold still registered any activity. The massive navy powerplant was still dutifully generating electricity for a crew, machines and engines no longer in working condition.

Caught in an offshore nuclear blast, the crew had perished instantly as the huge vessel was sent hurtling through the sky to finally crash into the western woods, leaving the vessel lying in a crude patch of bedrock.

A low rumble shook the forest, disturbing the serene tranquility like a stone dropped into a lake. The sleeping birds were roused, conies popped their heads into view, elk raised their antlers high, and something stirred in one of the lifeboats of the great ship. A human eye was pressed to a hole in the canvas covering the sideways boat, and it glared with hostile intent.

Just then, throwing out a wide contrail of black smoke and loose snow, a convoy of armored war wags thundered over the horizon.

The flanking vehicles were modified Mack trucks, the bodies made of overlapping sheets of iron, steel, aluminum, tin, whatever could be scavenged in the ruins of Deathlands. A dozen blasters jutted from blasterports, and each vehicle was topped with a pneumatic catapult, a brace of .308 machine guns and edged with coils of barbed wire. They were war wags, death machines, armed escorts.

However, they looked like toys compared to the massive lead vehicle. It was longer than an express train engine, and equipped with a dozen oversize tires, the burnished metal hubcaps edged with razor-sharp spikes to keep people and muties away from the vulnerable rubber. The angular chassis was smooth steel, scored, scraped and dented from countless fights, but never penetrated.

The sides of the rolling fortress bristled with the long vented barrels of .50-caliber machine guns, along with the stubby barrels of 40 mm grenade launchers. The curved roof of the military wag was studded with rows of spikes, and festooned with multiple coils of concertina wire. At the front was a fat cylinder of unknown function, the end capped with an insulated lid held in place by hydraulic lifters. At the rear of the machine was the more conventional metal box of a U.S. Army rocket launcher, the honeycomb of tubes full of deadly warbirds, the louvered rear vents deeply scorched by chemical fire. Claymore mines ringed the entire chassis, along with halogen spotlights and loudspeakers.

A sturdy cage of welded iron bars covered the front of the Herculean wag like the barbican of a medieval castle, the gridwork edged with more concertina wire. Behind the protective barrier was a wide sheet of Plexiglas. There were several deep gouges in the window, along with a score of small-caliber bullets and arrowheads deeply embedded into the resilient material like flies in amber. Behind the windshield, the interior lights were turned off, effectively making the window a one-way mirror. The Plexiglas reflected the moonlit snow and trees, and it was impossible to see who, or what, was in control of the horribly beweaponed behemoth.

On top of each vehicle was a flexible pole crested with the white flag of peace adorned with a large letter S with two vertical lines running through it, the universal symbol of a trader. Although, nobody knew the origin of the ancient symbol these days.

At the sight, a scream of rage came from the lifeboat, and the insane hermit living there scrambled from his filthy nest of human scalps to scamper like a monkey across the vertical deck to reach a depth-charge catapult. He checked the homemade charges—made from the massive stock of fulminating guncotton in the ship’s armory—then hastily spun a small wheel, setting into motion a complex series of gears, and the catapult began to smoothly rotate.

“Mine! All mine!” he screamed, his eyes wild, the unkempt lengths of greasy hair matted in his own filth. “Nobody can cross Thunder Valley! Nobody!”

The crazy wrinklie was dressed in a bearskin, held closed with toggles of carved bones, and around his throat was a grotesque necklace of dried ears: norm, animal and mutie.

Checking the angle and direction through a built-in telescope, the cackling hermit tracked the approaching trio of vehicles invading his private domain.

“Just a little bit more, fools…” he whispered in excitement. “Come on, just a little more…yes!”

Yanking in the lanyard, he fired the catapult. With a dull thud, the device sent a depth charge arching high into the crisp moonlight, and then down it hurtled straight to the convoy of wags.

Instantly, the vehicles became covered with stuttering flames as dozens of rapidfires cut loose, filling the air with hot lead. Then the M-60 started to chug, and the Fifties spoke in short burst.

Riddled to pieces, the depth charge exploded in midair, the blast shaking the entire valley and knocking snow off the pine trees.

“No!” the hermit screamed, clawing gouges in both cheeks with his ragged fingernails. “No, this ain’t happen! Ain’t!”

Going to the catapult, he quickly reset the machine and fired again, but the results were the same, and by now the convoy was dangerously close to the dead battleship, the headlights starting to catch details of the hull and deck.

Once more a depth charge flew, and this time it was destroyed so close to the battleship that the hot wind of the explosion buffeted the hermit and shrapnel tinkled on the metal deck.

Shrieking insanely, the hermit abandoned the launcher and raced to another lifeboat, one that he rarely entered. Ripping aside the protective canvas sheet, he unearthed a bulky Vulcan minigun, the deadly tribarrel rapidfire covered with animal hides as protection from the evening chill. Throwing switches and pressing buttons, he fed the machine power, and the triple-barrels swung up smoothly, responding to fingertip pressure. The hermit then climbed into the sideways seat he had carved from human bones, and engaged the last belt of 40 mm shells into the superblaster.

“Gonna get aced now!” he screamed, flecks of white foam dotting his chapped lips. “Thunder Valley belongs to me! Do you hear that? It’s mine, mine-mine-mine!”

“Yes…” The word floated up from the loudspeakers of the lead war wag, rolling across the snowy fields like the moan of a ghost. “We finally do hear you, and now know exactly where you are.” There was a pause. “Goodbye.”

A scintillating ray of starkly unimaginable power lanced out from the top of the lead war wag. It hit the frosty deck, instantly vaporizing the snow and ice to the sound of a million windows cracking. The steel warped, buckled and then exploded into steaming plasma, throwing out white-hot gobbets of molten steel.

The entire battleship groaned from the uneven heat expansion. The hermit screamed in terror as the laser moved along the vessel, igniting the ancient rigging, setting fire to the lifeboats, detonating the depth charges before it swept across him, the massive stores of 40 mm shells all cooking off at once.

The predark ship bucked like a wounded animal, pieces of wreckage forming a geyser over the shaking trees. Something inside the ship ignited and secondary explosions began hammering the craft from within, tearing off chunks of deck and stairwells in wild profusion. Streamers of flame lanced out in every direction, then the main ammunition stores detonated and the battleship vanished in a silent explosion of white light.

Seconds later, hearing returned to the men and women in the convoy and the concussion arrived, brutally rattling the vehicles. Blasters fired indiscriminately, dishes broke in the galley, a toilet surged, windows cracked and a man cried out as a swinging door slammed him in the face. Loose ammo spilled dangerously across the trembling floorboards, a spray of electrical sparks erupted from a bank of comps, the radar screen winked out, a missile launched from the aft pod all by itself.

“Haul ass!” a man commanded into a hand mike, his voice repeating in every vehicle. “Get the frag out of here!”

Lurching into motion, the war wags charged backward from the writhing fireball filling the valley. They barely made it to the treeline when an avalanche of snow arrived, mixed with hundreds of small woodland animals. Birds, conies and squirrels pelted the escaping armored vehicles like a shotgun blast of life. Then came the wreckage from all of the other vehicles destroyed by the madman, wooden cart wheels, tank treads, rubber tires, engines, bicycles, car hoods, motorcycles, horse saddles, everything and anything imaginable, along with a graveyard collection of gnawed human bones and horribly decomposing body parts.

Rolling below the crest, the wags dropped out of the hellstorm but kept going until the roiling force of the detonation eventually began to diminish and then fade away.

With ringing ears, the crew of the lead war wag stared blankly at the blood-smeared windshield, each of them lost in private thoughts.

Unbuckling his seat belt, Roberto Eagleson stood, then grabbed a ceiling stanchion to sway for a moment before regaining his balance. The big man was heavily muscled, but his long arms hung loosely at his sides as if taken from another body. Wearing blue jeans and a leather jacket, his clothing was spotlessly clean and without patches, an unheard-of condition these days. But the trader believed in the power of advertising. Look tough and a lot of coldhearts would simply step aside and leave the convoy alone. And for the coldhearts not impressed, Roberto carried an S&W .357 Magnum blaster in a fancy shoulder holster, and a sawed-off shotgun rode at his hip, his shirt pockets sewn into cartridge loops for the deadly alley sweeper.

Reaching up for a mike clipped to a ceiling stanchion, Roberto thumbed the switch. “Goog…” He paused to cough and clear his throat. “Good shooting, Tex,” he said, the words echoing slightly along the metal hallway. There was the faint trace of an accent in the words, a whisper of his Spanish ancestry. “Quinn, I want a damage report in ten. Abduhl, check the tanks to make sure we don’t have any leaks. Eric, Suzette, check over the comps and get us up and running again pronto. Jimmy, check the laser for any cracks in the lens, and you better bring a rag and a bucket, it’s pretty messy out there.”

The control room crew chuckled weakly at the joke, their hands moving across the array of controls, checking electrical systems, water, air, fuel, tires, motors and the all-important blasters.

“Well, that was fun,” Jake Hutching said, forcing his hands to release the steering wheel. The pulped remains of small animals covered the front windshield to mix with the melting snow to form a ghastly pink sludge that oddly resembled human brains.

“Kind of nice to know what skydark looked like, eh, boys?” Jessica Colt said, trying not to grimace, both arms wrapped tight across her chest. The pretty woman barely reached five feet tall. Dressed in tanned buckskin, her long blond hair was tied back in a loose ponytail. Knives jutted from the top of each of her boots, and a hulking big Russian T-Rex .44 revolver rested on a shapely hip.

“What’s wrong?” Roberto demanded, noticing her odd posture.

His second in command might be small, but she had generous breasts, and they bunched up like a gaudy slut on the prowl for business with her arms in that position.

“Nothing, just a bruise…” Jessica started, then saw his stern expression. “I busted a rib.”

“Healer to CNC,” Roberto said, thumbing the mike again. “Shelly, on the jump, we have injuries!”

“I’ll be there as soon as somebody removes whatever the frag is blocking my door from opening,” a woman replied from the intercom on the wall. “I swear that this…Okay, I’m free. On the way, Chief!”

“Acknowledged,” Roberto said.

“Nuke that drek,” Jessica shot back, hobbling to the corridor door. “I can still walk.”

Roberto glared at the woman, but she just glared right back defiantly, and he dismissed her with a curt wave. The man had never met a woman more aptly named. She resembled a Colt blaster in every way: small, cold and deadly, yet smooth to the touch of the right man. She was even a pistol in bed, too.

Shying his mind away from those kinds of thoughts, Roberto hung up the mike and pulled a walkie-talkie from a recharging unit set into the metal wall. “Scorpion to Big Joe, what’s your status?”

“Alive and undamaged,” Scott Gordon replied from War Wag Two. “We just have to clean what used to be a moose off the windshield and we’re good to go.”

“Acknowledged,” Roberto replied, feeling a knot of tension ease in his guts. He took every conceivable safeguard to protect his crew. They were like kin. The one time he had been reckless, Kathleen got aced. He would never forgive Ryan Cawdor for his part in the loss of the Lady Trader, even if it was accidental.

Just then, the ceiling speaker crackled.

“This is Tiger Lily to Scorpion,” Diana Dunn said in a thick Southern accent. “We’re undamaged and hot to trot. Say the word and we’re good to go!”

“Roger that, Tiger Lily, we just have to patch some ribs,” Roberto replied, sitting again to ease the pain in his stiff leg. “We should be back on the move in an hour.”

In less than half that time, the three war wags rumbled into motion and started carefully forward, zigzagging through the steaming wreckage filling the valley. The explosion had toppled over trees and uprooted boulders, which was not really surprising, but mixed with the gigantic chunks of the battleship, the combination made for difficult and treacherous passage. Several times, crews had to plant explosives to blow clear a path, and once, Roberto was forced to unleash the laser again. At such a short range, the beam didn’t just punch through a target, it damn near vaporized the steel, and then the convoy had to wait for the pool of bubbling metal to cool enough for them to cross without risking the tires. This was going to take longer than expected. But the prize on the other side was worth any effort. Civilization.