Chapter Twenty-Nine

 

 

The first tremulous gleam of the false dawn lightened the sky with its promise of light to come. But the trail up toward the outlying houses in the small ville of Alma was still in darkness, rutted, muddy and treacherous.

 

Krysty had encouraged the others along in her wake, with poor old Doc struggling with the cold, the dark and the altitude, panting and wheezing at the rear.

 

"Got to get there," she kept saying. "Come on, guys, we got to get there. Ryan needs us triple bad."

 

"But we don't know where he is," J.B. said. "Could be up at Fairplay by now."

 

She shook her tightly bunched hair. "No. Closer than that. Much closer."

 

"Suppose cold hearts still around?" asked Jak, who had kept up effortlessly with Krysty, over the steepest part of the old highway.

 

"Can't feel them," she replied, breathing hard. "No smell of fresh fires. No lights. I'm certain that they're well ahead of us up the mountain someplace. Probably in Harmony itself. That's my feeling."

 

"Feelings!" Doc snorted. "Feeling appealing while the dealing is reeling. Peeling apples and pealing bells. Congealing like the faint aroma of performing seals. If we don't stop soon then my feeling is that blood will begin to gush from my mouth, nose, ears and eyes. I am certain sure that I can feel a nosebleed just waiting to begin."

 

Krysty stopped and swung on him. "Doc, there's plenty of times I find you real cute. This isn't one of them. Ryan's life is on the line and we need to get there. Faster we go, the better the chance. Even our fastest might be too fuckin' slow. Right?"

 

Doc nodded, the moon glinting off his silvery hair. "Right," he repeated. "I am properly chastened. Let us proceed and I shall strain every nerve and fiber to get there with you."

 

 

 

RYAN HAD MANAGED to beat back yet another attack.

 

But now he had blood streaming down his cheeks and over his good eye from a score of bites from the mutie rodents. As he thrashed about, fighting them off with his right arm alone, there had been a sonorous crunching sound and he had felt himself starting to slip down, water splashing in his face.

 

The furry mice had retreated, leaving another forty or fifty of them crushed or drowned.

 

But Ryan had reached the end of the line.

 

When they came again he would have to let go of the room joist that he clung to with all his failing strength. Then the shifting, sliding rubble of the building would quickly tug him below the surface.

 

Of the optional ways of dying, he was now certain that it was going to be drowning.

 

"Better than being rat food," he muttered.

 

 

 

"BANDITS CLEARED this place," the Armorer said as they paused to look across what remained of Alma. "Must've been the endless rain put out all the fires and saved some of the houses off the main street."

 

"Soon be dawn," Mildred added, huddling her shoulders against a cool wind that was blowing up the valley from the north, behind them.

 

"Another day, another dollar," Doc mumbled, running fingers through his thinning hair.

 

"You think this place is where Ryan's trapped?" J.B. asked.

 

Krysty nodded, looking around at the burned-out buildings and the rivers of water and mud that seemed to run everywhere. As J.B. had said, several of the buildings at the back of the main street were all right, though she could see that there had been a major earth slip to one side that had felled a solid block of four houses, reducing them to tangles of matchwood.

 

"How we find him?" Jak said.

 

Krysty looked around, almost as though she expected to see a celestial finger of blazing gold pointing to her lover, or a column of living fire and a glittering angel beating on a sounding gong of brass.

 

"Close, that way," she said hesitantly, pointing over toward the ruined homes.

 

"Best way's to shout for him," the Armorer stated. "Spread out a little and all walk through yelling out his name. Best I can think of."

 

Krysty chose the side street that held the tumbled houses, her blaster drawn and cocked, calling out at the top of her voice for Ryan.

 

 

 

IT WAS VERY DOUBTFUL that a single person in Deathlands could have survived as long as Ryan under such appalling, life-threatening circumstances.

 

But everyone had a breaking point, a point at which hope ran out and the senses became numbed and the muscles could no longer hold on.

 

Finally, even Ryan reached that point.

 

The massed vermin had attacked him once more and, against all the odds, he'd beaten them away.

 

Now he was stretching every sinew to hold his head strained back, the oil water lapping at his mouth. Every breath was a desperate struggle, and every single breath was more painful than the one before, with the increasing pressure around his ribs that was crushing his lungs.

 

He could make out a lightening in the sky, the glow reflected off the hundreds and hundreds of tiny black eyes that were all fixed on his weakening struggles.

 

It crossed his mind that at least he was going to die in daylight and not in the blackness of night.

 

"And with my boots on," he whispered to himself.

 

For a moment he relaxed and his face dipped under the water, making him cough and splutter.

 

When he broke the surface again, his ears were filled with the high-pitched squeaking of the mice. Something, probably his own submersion, had disturbed them.

 

Ryan was suddenly conscious that the ordeal had affected his mind. It seemed to him that the mutie rodents' cries were mouthing his name, mocking him, as death crept inexorably closer, by an echo of his name.

 

"Ryan! You here?"

 

His mind was instantly crystal clear. "Here! Over here in the ruins of the house. Quick!"

 

He couldn't help noticing the high thread of ragged panic in his own voice, but he didn't much care about that.

 

"I hear you, Ryan."

 

"Krysty! This way."

 

Boots scrabbled among the wreckage and a shadow appeared between him and the rising sun.

 

"Gaia! Go away, you little bastards!" A hunk of wood landed among the massed rodents, finally sending them scurrying back to their dark holes.

 

"Be careful. Whole place is a booby trap . One wrong move and it'll take me under ."

 

Krysty reached down and touched him on the cheek. "Hang on, lover. Soon have you out."

 

She raised her voice. "Found him! Over here, but step careful."

 

"Everyone all right, Krysty?"

 

"Sure. Don't talk. Can I help?"

 

"Support the back of my neck if you can. But watch where you move."

 

"Don't worry. Couple of minutes and we'll get you free. That's all."

 

But it wasn't all.

 

 

 

DOC HAD SCRAWLED figures in the mud with a pointed stick. "It is a simple problem in three-dimensional physics and mathematics. There are disparate stresses acting here and here, with the weight being transmitted through the longitudinal cross section of the roofing timbers. As far as we can tell, below the water, there is a similar maze that holds Ryan trapped by the legs and waist."

 

They had been there for over an hour. It had been possible to take only one positive step to remove the immediate risk of Ryan drowning in the muddy water that was flowing into the retaining bowl of the wreckage.

 

At Doc's instruction, J.B. had fired a dozen rounds with the Uzi into one of the walls of the ruins, opening up a small hole through which the rain spillage poured, lowering the level to around Ryan's chest.

 

The other thing that Jak and Mildred had done together was to drag the ragged corpse of the woman from the shambles, so that Ryan no longer had to stare at the grinning memento mori.

 

"Think should drop other beams along Ryan. Take weight off of him." Jak looked at the others. "We try and move timber it'll all collapse like house cards."

 

Doc nodded. "I believe that our ivory-headed young companion might have deduced a possible solution. Try and build a sort of cage, as it were, around Ryan. If we can find something strong enough to use as a lever."

 

"This could take us days," Mildred said. "I know he's not in immediate danger from drowning anymore, but most of his body's been immersed in freezing water for about ten hours or more. Hypothermia's becoming more and more of a reality to steal his life out from under our eyes."

 

"We could get a fire going and boil plenty of water," J.B. suggested. "Pots and pans all over the ville. Then we could pour it in around him and take off the biting chill."

 

Mildred kissed him on the cheek, making his sallow face blush. "Brilliant! Hot water and plenty of it."

 

"You ladies can undertake that." Doc grinned, showing his wonderful set of teeth. "John Barrymore Dix and Master Lauren and I will work on the lad's scheme. Come gallants all, and let's away, to try our fortunes on this happy day."

 

 

 

RYAN WAS AWARE OF the sun moving steadily across the bright blue sky, visible through the cracks and holes in the wreckage that surrounded him. Noon came and went.

 

The hot water helped a little in taking off the chill, and he could actually feel life returning to his numbed lower legs and feet. Krysty stayed close to him, making sure the miniature mutie rodents didn't return, keeping up his spirits while they brought each other up-to-date with their news.

 

They agreed that the prospect of finding Harmony untouched by the murderous gang of norms and muties was remote. They had both seen too much evidence of the brutal murders committed by the thugs.

 

"Part of me wants to get you out and then turn around and head back for Glenwood Springs. Up into the hills to the redoubt and jump out of here," Krysty said. "And part of me wants to go ahead and look. Just for my peace of mind. Whatever we find up there in Harmony won't be any worse than my imagining what might've happened."

 

Ryan nodded, reaching up to hold her right hand in both of his. Jak had managed to work away the timber that had trapped his left arm.

 

"We'll see what's there. I got me a big blood score against these swift and evil bastards," he said. "Seemed you couldn't turn a corner of the trail without coming on another violated, crucified corpse."

 

Jak appeared, carrying a length of tubular steel scaffolding across his scrawny shoulder. "Think this could do trick." He moved cautiously, feeling timbers shift and whisper under his weight. He looked down into the dark depths of the water and slid the end of the tube down, angling it between Ryan's trapped legs, through a gap in the timbers.

 

"Watch what you're doing with that," Ryan warned. "I have hopes of fathering more children."

 

He felt the steel easing between two of the main roof joists that kept him helplessly trapped.

 

Jak grinned proudly. "That'll do it."

 

He called to Doc, Krysty and the others to come quickly and lend their weight. "This'll do it."

 

With both arms free, Ryan himself was able to give them some help, bracing his feet against the bottom of the pole, sensing where the snarled, twisted mass of broken wood was weakest.

 

The others had all managed to find a platform for their own pushing and pulling, standing and waiting, gripping the steel pole, until Jak gave them the word to start.

 

Mildred suddenly laughed, breaking the tension.

 

"What's funny?" Krysty asked.

 

"The way we're all standing here. One of the most famous war pictures in American history was the Marines raising the flag over Iwo Jima after it had been captured from the Japanese in the Second World War. It occurred to me that we look exactly like that photograph."

 

Jak knelt on the slick planking of what had been the floor of the attic. "You ready, Ryan?"

 

"Sure. Let's do it. If I feel things breaking up, I'll be the first to yell."

 

Jak stood again, finding a place on the steel for his own white hands. "Now," he said.

 

Ryan was at the heart of things, his whole body sensitive to the slightest movement of the gripping timbers. The scaffolding pole was firmly grounded, and everyone's weight made it bite hard into the wreckage. There was a squealing sound, and one of the joists snapped with a report like a revolver shot.

 

"Hold it!" Jak yelled. "You all right, Ryan?"

 

"Sure. Some of the pressure's gone off of my chest. Try and tilt it a bit more that wayyeah. Bit more. That's it. Now go for it again."

 

Once again everyone strained. Doc's knee boots slipped and he fell sideways, splashing himself with the water. "By the Three! Sorry, people"

 

"Shifting something," Ryan said.

 

The weight on his chest was much easier, but something was still gripping his left ankle like a mantrap. More wood split and cracked, and he could finally take deep breaths.

 

"Done it?" Jak asked.

 

"Nearly. Lot easier and I could almost climb out. Except for my foot. Left foot."

 

Jak slapped the cold steel. "Easy all," he said, then knelt and peered into the murk. "Need to get down there and slide end of pole into exactly right place."

 

"I could do that," Krysty said.

 

Jak grinned at her. "No. Me. Smallest. Agile. Slip down easy."

 

"You could get yourself caught," Ryan protested. "No way anyone could rescue you from that tangle down there."

 

"Take chance." He drew one of his throwing knives. "When right place I'll rap with this. Listen for it. Then shove with all strength."

 

Without another word he slipped down into the dark water and disappeared, though Mildred, leaning over, could still see the white flare of his hair, floating like a baby's caul around Jak's narrow skull.

 

Ryan could feel the teenager's lithe body, twisting sinuously around his legs, while the end of the steel scaffolding pole also moved from side to side.

 

"Listen for the sound," he whispered to the others. "Been down there close on a full minute," J.B. warned. "Can you signal to him to come up, Ryan?"

 

"No."

 

Jak seemed motionless and the tip of the pole was no longer moving. "Eighty seconds," J.B. said. Simultaneously there was a swirl in the water, as though a large fish had passed by, and there was the clearly audible chinking of the steel blade on the tube. "Go," Doc roared, and everyone threw their strength against the twenty-foot length of steel.

 

Ryan felt the pressure slip off his ankle and he kicked out, reaching to pull himself up onto the section of planking, looking behind him for "Jak!"

 

The young man erupted from the water in a froth of bubbles, a blade gripped in his teeth, his hair flattened against his face, eyes wide, panting with the effort.

 

"By the gods!" Doc exclaimed. "You look damnably like Israel Hands from Treasure Island. Well done, young man, wonderfully well done."

 

Ryan embraced the albino, feeling his own body still trembling from the tension of the experience. "Thanks, Jak, thanks."

 

"We've got a fire going, lover," Krysty said. "Let's all get ourselves dry."

 

"Best offer I've had in days," he replied.