Slaughter Mountain Run

168

When you emerge from the caverns you are astounded to see that the Angelinos have been completely overwhelmed by this colony of cave dwellers. The few clansmen to have survived the ambush have been trussed up like turkeys and are being guarded by a circle of spear-wielding women. The rest of the colony is so busy stripping and searching the bodies of those they have killed that they fail to notice you and Kate, as you leave the entrance quietly and make your way back to the roadster. You admire their bravery but there is something about these people, something about their appearance and their silence, that unsettles you.

You inspect the damage to the trunk. Your fears are confirmed: you no longer have sufficient fuel to reach Kent. You siphon the tanks of the clansmen’s bikes, and save what you can from the bottom of the two perforated fuel canisters, but you estimate that in total you have only enough to take you 120 miles.

As you are leaving, you notice that the cave people are preparing a funeral pyre for those who were killed in the fighting. It strikes you as a very sensible and civilized way to dispose of the dead, and makes you think that perhaps your suspicions about these people were groundless after all. Your illusions about the cave people are soon shattered, however, when Kate points out that they are not burning the dead at all: they are cooking them.

Turn to 56.

Project AonSlaughter Mountain Run