The silence in the War Rig was the loudest thing in the wasteland.
The electric engine hummed at a frequency that made Jason's teeth ache. It wasn't the roar of a diesel beast; it was the high-pitched whine of a dentist's drill.
Jason stared out the armored viewport.
The world outside had changed. They had crossed the Mississippi, leaving the lush, overgrown ruins of the East behind.
This was the Midwest. But it wasn't a dust bowl.
It was a Ferrous Plain.
The soil was red, rich in iron oxide. The wind had sculpted the dunes into jagged, magnetic waves. Every rock looked like a rusted knife.
Hemingway sat in the passenger seat, cleaning his nails with a bowie knife. Scrape. Scrape.
Howard Hughes drove. He was vibrating. His hands gripped the wheel so tight his knuckles were white. He was going through caffeine withdrawal, and the silence was eating him alive.
"Talk to me," Jason said, breaking the hum.
He looked at Hemingway's reflection in the glass.
"About my father," Jason pressed. "Ezra Prentice died in a mine collapse five years ago. I saw the body. I buried him."
Hemingway didn't look up. He scraped a piece of dirt from under his thumb.
"You saw a body," Hemingway grunted. "Did you check the dental records?"
"It was a collapse. There wasn't much left to check."
"Convenient," Hemingway said. "The Barons dig deep, Jason. They find things. And they don't let good engineers go to waste. Even dead ones."
"My father wasn't an engineer. He was a drunk."
"Maybe," Hemingway sheathed the knife. "But alcohol preserves things."
Jason clenched his jaw. He wanted to argue, but the horizon caught his eye.
It was turning purple.
Not the soft purple of twilight. An angry, bruised purple. A wall of cloud was rising from the earth, stretching miles into the sky.
Lightning forked inside the cloud. But it wasn't white. It was red.
"Storm front!" Hughes yelled, his voice cracking. "Barometric pressure dropping! It's off the scale!"
"Drive through it," Jason ordered. "We can't stop."
"You don't understand!" Hughes pointed at the dashboard. The needles were spinning wildly. "That's not rain! That's charged dust! Iron filings! It's a magnetic storm!"
CRACK.
A bolt of red lightning struck the ground a hundred yards ahead. The sand fused into glass instantly.
"Hard to port!" Hemingway shouted.
Hughes yanked the wheel. The massive six-wheel truck drifted, kicking up a rooster tail of red dust.
They hit the wall.
It wasn't like hitting fog. It was like hitting a brick wall of static.
SCREEEEE.
The radio screamed. Sparks showered from the control panel.
"Warning!" The truck's computer voice garbled. "Magnetic interference! Critical failure in drive coils!"
The engine died.
The hum vanished.
The War Rig skidded across the sand, losing momentum. It groaned to a halt in the middle of the purple swirling hell.
Silence returned. But now it was heavy. Charged.
Jason felt the hair on his arms stand up. He touched the metal door frame.
ZAP.
Blue static arched from his finger. It stung like a wasp.
"We're dead in the water!" Hughes screamed, tearing off his goggles. "The EMP fried the breakers! I need ten minutes to reset the core!"
"We don't have ten minutes," O'Malley called from the rear turret. "Contact! Three o'clock! Shapes in the dust!"
Jason looked out the slit.
Shadows were moving in the storm. They weren't soldiers. They moved like crabs, low to the ground, scuttling over the dunes.
"Scavengers?" Jason asked.
"Rust Eaters," Hemingway racking his shotgun. "They hunt the storms. They want the metal."
CLANG.
Something hit the side of the truck.
It wasn't a bullet. It was a heavy iron hook on a chain.
CLANG. CLANG.
More hooks slammed into the armor. They were magnetic. They stuck fast.
The ropes went taut. The truck rocked.
"They're reeling us in!" O'Malley fired the roof turret. Click.
"Gun's dead!" O'Malley yelled. "Solenoids are fried!"
"They aren't trying to kill us," Jason realized, watching acid smoke rise from the hooks. "They're trying to peel us."
The shadows emerged from the dust.
They were men in ragged suits covered in scavenged magnets—speaker cones, hard drive platters, industrial coils. They carried crowbars and jars of acid.
They swarmed the truck.
They started stripping the armor plating while the crew was still inside.
SCREECH.
A crowbar jammed into the door seam. Sparks flew.
"Technology failed," Hemingway kicked the door open. "Try physics."
He jumped out.
The wind howled, whipping sand into his beard.
Hemingway swung his sledgehammer.
CRUNCH.
He hit a scavenger in the chest. The man's magnetic armor crumpled inward, crushing his ribs.
Jason grabbed a flare gun from the emergency kit. He jumped out the other side.
The air tasted like copper. The static charge was so strong he could feel it in his fillings.
A scavenger lunged at him with an acid jar.
Jason ducked. He kicked the man's knee. The scavenger fell, the acid splashing onto the red sand, hissing.
O'Malley joined the fray, using his jammed rifle as a club.
It was a brawl in a lightning storm. Brutal. Close quarters. No fancy tech. Just bone and iron.
But there were too many of them.
Dozens of Rust Eaters swarmed over the dunes, drawn by the magnetic signature of the truck.
"We're getting overrun!" O'Malley shouted, cracking a skull with his rifle butt.
Jason looked at the truck. Sparks were arcing from the battery stack on the roof. The storm was feeding on the War Rig's power.
"The lightning!" Jason yelled. "It wants the ground!"
He looked at Hughes, who was frantically pulling fuses in the open engine bay.
"Howard! The grounding spool! Where is it?"
"Back bumper!" Hughes screamed. "Why?"
"Just spool it!"
Jason fired a flare into the air. It burned bright red, illuminating the chaos.
The Rust Eaters looked up, distracted for a second.
Jason ran to the back of the truck. He grabbed the heavy copper wire spool.
"Throw it!" Jason yelled at O'Malley.
O'Malley grabbed the end of the wire. He threw the heavy copper coil into the heart of the approaching swarm.
The wire unspooled, flying through the air.
Jason jammed the other end into the sand. Deep.
"Get back!" Jason screamed. "Touch the truck! Ground yourselves!"
The crew grabbed the metal frame of the War Rig.
KABOOM.
A bolt of red lightning struck the copper wire.
The electricity didn't hit the truck. It followed the path of least resistance. It surged through the wire, straight into the cluster of Rust Eaters.
The sand exploded.
The magnetic suits of the scavengers acted like lightning rods. The charge arced between them in a chain reaction.
ZZZT-ZZZT-ZZZT.
Bodies flew backward. Magnets fused. Acid jars shattered.
The shockwave knocked Jason off his feet.
He lay in the sand, ears ringing. The smell of ozone and burnt hair was overpowering.
The storm roared overhead, but the lightning had discharged. The pressure dropped.
"Engine reset!" Hughes shouted from the cab. "Green light across the board!"
The War Rig's motor hummed to life. The headlights blazed on.
"Go! Go! Go!" Jason scrambled into the passenger seat.
Hemingway hauled O'Malley into the back.
Hughes slammed the accelerator.
The wheels spun, kicking up glass and red sand. The truck lurched forward, crushing the fused bodies of the Rust Eaters.
They roared out of the storm.
The purple clouds faded behind them. The static cleared.
Jason slumped in his seat, panting. He looked at his hand. His knuckles were raw.
"Physics," Hemingway grunted from the back seat. He wiped scavenger blood off his hammer. "Works every time."
Jason looked ahead.
The storm had cleared the air.
In the distance, rising from the flat red plain, was a canyon. But it wasn't made of rock.
It glinted silver in the twilight.
"The Boneyard," Hughes whispered, staring through the cracked windshield. "God help us."