The Fly-By-Nights Read Online Free PDF Page A

trucks and trundles. By then everyone had seen it, and the column had come to a halt. Zach had stopped muttering; he’d already taken his pump-action shotgun from its sheath on the rack, his reflexes still faster than Garth’s own, which perhaps explained something of the Old Man’s longevity. And as Garth loaded his weapon, so they sat there, anxiously awaiting orders from up front, from Big Jon’s command rauper, where the convoy’s leader stood upright in the turret, scanning the darkness through ancient night-light binoculars.
    They waited, Garth and Zach and all the others in the trundle—their nerves jumping and hearts pumping—waited for Big Jon’s response which, if it sounded as a long single blast on a whistle, would signal a false alarm when all would be well. But if it came as three sort blasts, then everyone would know that they were coming!
    Them! Like wispy locusts floating out of the dark, sighing wraiths with their glowing eyes and ragged, fluttering shrouds: the fly-by-nights! And by then every man and woman, and most of the young ones too, they would all be assuming defensive positions—and just as fast as they could move!
    Already the men in the trundle had done loading their guns, the harsh ch- ching of steel cocking mechanisms ringing loud in the sudden silence. On the far side of the trundle Ned Singer’s hands were hovering close over the quick-release straps securing his bike to the exterior of the vehicle. Shooting a glance at Garth, he saw the youth following suit; likewise four other men, two on Garth’s side, two more on Singer’s. And as for the women, many of them with side arms of their own: they were now huddling protectively over the youngest children.
    Everyone was ready…
    Garth looked across at Layla, who was looking right back at him. Her face wore a strange expression, which like his own was worth a hundred words, or perhaps just three? So Garth dared to hope. But sometimes—times like this—the future he desired seemed way beyond his present reach, if not entirely unattainable…
    There came a shout from up front: Big Jon’s query, directed at the unseen outrider, perhaps a hundred yards or more off the port side…
    A moment’s pause that seemed to last a full minute or more, until at last the lancing beam sliced the night again. But this time it flashed green! A false alarm—thank God!—followed up at once by a single long blast on the leader’s whistle; then a massed and clearly audible sigh of relief as everyone began to breathe again… 

     
    III

     
    With the dawn came more terror, more fear; not of fly-by-nights but of the dawn itself, the fatal light that painted a crack of gold on the eastern horizon.
    Hinged panels of lead shielding were lowered from the roofs of the convoy’s vehicles into positions on the right, the side facing the rising sun: that great fireball whose lethal, seething rays would soon be pouring down upon the earth and all that moved naked over it. But in the distance and not too far ahead, extensive ruins were beginning to rear their shattered skeletal shells; while winding in from nowhere apparently, a once-metalled, potholed, bramble- and weed-strewn road led directly into the derelict town or city.
    “In the old days,” Garth’s father told him, peering ahead, “this place would have had a name. But the few maps I’ve seen date back to a time years before the war, and as far as I know it isn’t marked on any of them. It was probably new in its day, before the bombs rained down. Anyway, it seems likely that Big Jon discovered at least some indication of it, because he sure as hell led us right to it! And his timing couldn’t be better; in the next hour or so we’ll be needing all the shelter we can get!”
    Garth looked at the dull sheen of the leaden shielding, and said: “The lead shuts out the light. I quite like the light. It…it’s different! I’m not yet used to it, after the generated light in the Southern Refuge.