"Your uncle was in Vietnam?"
Eggy shrugged. "I was never sure. He was my old man's oldest brother so I guess he could have been the right age. He claimed he was but I couldn't figure how he could have gone through all that and still stayed such an asshole."
Eggy's sudden burst of intimacy came out of nowhere. It was almost as much of a surprise as the blowing up of the house. They'd ridden in silence for a further two hours, bouncing and swaying along the unsurfaced desert trail when the outburst had begun without preamble or even a clearing of the throat. He talked at no one in particular, addressing the whole of the bus with the weird confidence of someone who lets go so rarely that he's certain everyone will be paying attention.
"Pretty soon, a crowd would start to gather. My brother would pretend not to notice them at first."
"What was your brother's name?"
"It don't matter." Eggy seemed to resent this second interuption. He glared
around belligerently. "Anyone else got anything they want to ask?"
As one they shook their heads.
"Okay, like I was saying, first off a crowd would gather and my brother'd start by completely ignoring them. He'd just sit there burning his money, pretending it was the most normal thing in the world. Pretty soon some of the crowd would start mouthing off. They'd start making smart remarks to each other about how my brother was a mental case and ought to be locked up. If he wanted to get rid of his cash, he didn't have to burn it, he could give it to them. When my bro went on ignoring them, they got a bit bolder. They'd start coming onto him direct. 'Hey, fuck, what the fuck do you think you're doing? You insane or something? You gotta be fucking crazy.' You know what I mean? It was real slick, Oscar Wilde stuff. There was a pattern to it though, it always got physical in the end. They might make a grab for the money while it was actually burning but, usually, it would keep them mesmerized. Nine times out of ten, the violence would start when my bro reached into his pocket for a fresh bill. Some fool would grab for it, like he was rescuing the sacred dollar from the pyromaniac. My brother didn't actually resist, but he'd do his best not to let them get the bill and that always led to someone hitting him. Once the first punch had been thrown the dam was broken, all hell'd break loose. They'd be all over my brother and, because even then I wasn't going to stand by while a bunch of hysterical assholes beat on my bro, they be all over me too. Sometimes the cops would-come and we'd get beat up all over again. When you're a kid and the cops beat on you, it can really hurt. They can do it without leaving marks, too Jesus fucking Christ! Will you look at that!"
All heads turned to follow Eggy's open-mouthed gaze. The bus had crested a rise and in front of them, at the other side of a flat, dry valley, was a ridge of low, rocky hills. The side that faced the bus was a fairly steep escarpment. What had surprised Eggy was that someone had carved what, from a distance, looked like a giant mailslot right in the hillside. It was, however, a mailslot that could swallow a light cruiser, even if it was set sideways. The bottom edge of the vast, rectangular, manmade cave was level with the desert floor. All round the edge the living rock was reinforced with massive expanses of forbidding gray concrete. It was flanked by two enormous buttresses. Parkwood, who'd been standing up to get a better view, abruptly sat down.
"You all know what that is, don't you?"
Debbie's voice was awed. "It's a bunker, a nuclear survival bunker."
"I never realized they were so big."
"There's like as not a whole small city under those hills."
Vickers hoped that he looked as amazed as everyone else. Fortunately, no one seemed to be paying him any attention. Eggy was instantly suspicious but it was all directed at the distant bunker mouth.
"Why the fuck should they bring us to a survival bunker?"
Fenton grinned. "Maybe they think we're worth saving."
Vickers decided that it was time to ease naturally into the conversation.
"I doubt that."
"So?"
"Don't ask me. I gave up trying to make any sense out of all this when I left Las Vegas."
As the bus eased closer it became possible to make out more details of the approaches to the bunker entrance. A geometric system of roads and rail tracks fanned out from the giant cave. They ran through a complex, almost urban landscape of pillboxes, watchtowers, high wire fences and clumps of the squat pylons that enclosed electronic dragon's teeth. Vickers couldn't remember when he'd seen a place so heavily defended. He counted no less than twelve multiple launchers, each with its full complement of four Elisha surface-to-surface missiles. This wasn't to say that there weren't many more concealed in underground silos. Vickers didn't particularly want to think what might be lurking just below the surface. He knew it would, without a doubt, make the stuff that they had strung around El Rancho Mars look like a kid's Fourth of July fireworks show. He scanned along the top of the rocky escarpment. He could just about make out more structures that almost certainly housed SAM batteries. He covertly glanced around the bus. The others were taking similar stock of the formidable layout.