Chapter Twenty

 

 

Both Ma Jode and Judas Portillo, accompanied by eight snot-nosed, ragged urchins and three mongrel dogs, came to see them leave the landing.

 

The raft drifted slowly off into the current, steered by Krysty, with Doc and J.B. working the sweeps, letting the Tennessee take them away south.

 

"We going far?" Mildred asked. "I was sort of surprised you told them we planned to stick with the river. Way that old woman kept eyeing our blasters, I wouldn't be surprised if we didn't find we had some company downstream."

 

Ryan was sitting on the roof of the makeshift shelter, enjoying the early-afternoon weather. "What I tell them and what we're doing is two different things, Mildred. And you're right. I saw some skulking and whispering going on, and half a dozen men with muskets left just after we went to visit the battle site."

 

"So we leaving the water?"

 

He nodded. "Sure are. Get us around the corner, then we'll break away from it and strike off west."

 

"I'm sure there used to be a big dam to the south," Mildred said.

 

"River's changed its course." Ryan squinted behind them. "Ma Jode told me that. Said the actual battle was nearer the Tennessee than it used to be."

 

"Whole damned country's changed its shape," Doc said sadly. "Sea to shining sea. California to New-york. State slid into the Pacific, most of it, and New-york had been transmogrified into the ruined haunt of ghouls and ghosts."

 

They floated south, the settlement vanishing behind them into the shimmering heat haze. The sides of the river were lined with luxuriant bushes and a row of aspens that trembled in the faint northerly that rode at their shoulders.

 

"Man could get used to this," J.B. said, pushing back his fedora and taking off his glasses, polishing them furiously on his sleeve.

 

"You're quiet, Jak," Ryan commented. The albino was lying on the front of the boat, chin in his hands, watching the water as it bubbled under the rough bow.

 

"Nothing to say. Battlefield depressed me. Didn't want talk. Now out in open again, feel better." He grinned suddenly. "Still got nothing to say."

 

"That bruise better?" Mildred asked.

 

The teenager nodded. "Some."

 

 

 

THEY'D TRAVELED ABOUT A MILE when Ryan pointed to the western bank and they steered into a narrow inlet.

 

It was lined with wild rosebushes, unusually scented, that filled the air with their fragrance. Ryan waited, the SIG-Sauer cocked in his right hand, while Jak leaped ashore with the line, tethering the raft to a sturdy dogwood.

 

As they started to get off, Krysty pointed behind them, across the river and a little way downstream. "Looks like we just missed the reception committee."

 

A group of raggedy men had emerged from behind a raised shoal at the top of the far bank. All of them held long muskets, and they were waving their arms and shouting. But the Tennessee carried any words away.

 

"Bastards!" Mildred exclaimed angrily.

 

"Not surprised," Ryan said. "Best surprise is no surprise, like Trader used to say."

 

The woman stared across at the men. A couple had raised their blasters, and they saw the puffs of black-powder smoke. One ball hit the surface of the water about fifty yards short of the raft, and the other simply disappeared.

 

"Way out of range," J.B. said. "Still, just a slight chance getting a hit from a spent ball. Best get out of sight of the sons of bitches."

 

Doc favored the friends with a wide grin. "That puts me in mind of the famous last words ofI disremember, but I believe he was a ranking officer in the Civil War."

 

"Make it fast, Doc," Ryan urged as they saw another mute burst of fire from the men on the far bank, none of the balls coming anywhere near them.

 

"His last recorded words were, 'Stand fast, my gallant lads. They could not hit an elephant at this range. Aaaargh!'" Doc clutched melodramatically at his breast.

 

They all laughedall except Mildred. She glowered across the steady current of the river at the small group of men still firing at them. Finally she drew her Czech target revolver.

 

"No way, Millie," J.B. said, shaking his head at the ZKR 551. "Not even you."

 

"Want a bet, love?"

 

"No. Man bets against you over a shooting stands to lose his jack."

 

"That's a good range, even for you and even for that blaster," Ryan said doubtfully.

 

"Go for it," Krysty urged. "Teach that murdering scum a sharp lesson."

 

Another cloud of powder smoke rose into the air from the far side of the river and, just as J.B. had predicted, one of the spent balls ricocheted off the water, like a wrist-skimmed stone in a child's game of ducks and drakes, and thudded into the sodden timbers of their raft.

 

Mildred immediately took up the classic shooter's standing pose, feet slightly apart, right arm holding the blaster outstretched, left arm at her side. She looked along the sighted barrel with both eyes wide open, slowing her breathing. "Trick's to squeeze the trigger real gentle between beats of your heart," she said softly.

 

It was a goodish range for a hunting rifle, but for a handblaster it would be a phenomenal shot.

 

The men opposite saw what she was doing, and their dancing and jeering intensified, rising this time above the ageless whispering of the Tennessee.

 

There was a long pause, and Ryan found that he was holding his breath along with Mildred, peering out through the haze at their would-be killers.

 

"Fireblast!" Ryan whispered, awed beyond belief as he saw one of the capering rednecks throw up his arms, then fall motionless to the dirt, life quitting him on the instant, leaving him a bundle of sprawled flesh and rags alongside the silent-flowing river. His comrades immediately fell silent, one stooping over the corpse.

 

"Best move," J.B. said. "Get them fired up, and they might find a way across and come after us. Leave while we're ahead of the game."

 

"Amazing shot," Jak said. "Good as any I ever seen you do."

 

"Didn't allow enough for windage and thermal off the water," the woman said, calmly reloading the spent round. "Aimed at his chest and took him through the mouth."

 

Ryan was grinning as he limped toward the west, ignoring the impotent spluttering of muskets from the far side of the Tennessee.

 

 

 

THEY MADE STEADY PROGRESS through a roasting afternoon, finding the ruler-straight remnants of an old farm road that ran from horizon to horizon across the baked land. It had obviously once been good wheat country, but it had long reverted to nature, with patches of dense scrub and mesquite and occasional stands of oaks and beeches and the shadowy deeps of a large forest hovering at the northern horizon.

 

Jak found a pile of tangled string and amused himself by making a slingshot, picking up small rounded pebbles and winging them at old rusted cans and rotted tree stumps.

 

To nobody's surprise, the albino teenager immediately showed phenomenal skill with his new weapon, eventually bringing down a rabbit on the full run at all of fifty yards, the stone cracking its fragile skull open just behind the limp, trembling ears, bowling it over in a dusty flurry of kicking paws.

 

"Supper," Jak said, consistent in his habit of using the absolute minimum of words.

 

 

 

"OUGHT TO HAVE KEPT that sling," Ryan said as they sat around a small, bright, smokeless fire that evening, savoring the rabbit on spits of green wood over the dry branches of apple from an ancient predark orchard. "You had a real skill with it."

 

Jak hadn't bothered to keep it, chucking away the cunning construction of knotted cords shortly after his spectacular success with the rabbit.

 

"Bored." He leaned back, shirt pulled up over his flat, muscular stomach, studying the shrinking yellow-purple bruise, touching it gently with his long pale fingertips. "Anyway, easy make another if want to."

 

"Bruise better?" Mildred asked.

 

"Sure. Still slows me some around edges."

 

"I reckon you might have broken a rib," she said. "Not that there's much we can do if you have."

 

"Not much use for all your medical skills out in the untamed wilderness of Deathlands, is there, Dr. Wyeth?" Doc teased, belching his pleasure at the meal. "By the Three Kennedys, but that coney was damnably as good at the second tasting."

 

Mildred was lying on her back, her head in J.B.'s lap, while his nimble hands worked at some of the beads that had come loose from her braids. "One day, Doc, you old goat, you'll have something bad wrong with you and you'll come yelping for a doctor. And I'll be the only one for ten thousand miles and a hundred long years. And don't you forget it."

 

 

 

AFTER THE MEAL Ryan stood and stretched. "Think I'll go check out the neighborhood."

 

"If you meet any nice couples, then invite them back for cocktails and a late-night coffee," Krysty said, smiling up at him. Her brilliantly red hair reflected the golden highlights of the flames, spread out on either side of her narrow face like a bridal veil of living fire. Its relaxed condition was a true indicator that she didn't sense any immediate danger close to them. Her eyes glittered at Ryan like burning emeralds.

 

"I'll do that." He paused, trying to remember details from some of the old mags, vids and books of what else neighbors used to do before the missiles rained down. "They can watch our vacation movies."

 

Mildred laughed delightedly, clapping her hands. "Brilliant, Ryan. If all else fails, ask them if you can borrow a cup of sugar."

 

"I'll take a couple of canteens and see if I can come across some good water. Last lot's already turning brackish in this heat."

 

He patted the butt of the SIG-Sauer in an automatic reflex before stepping off into the darkness, choosing to move north through the dry land, moonlight throwing weak shadows across a narrow, winding game trail.

 

 

 

THE MOON HAD SNEAKED from behind a bank of low cloud that rested on higher ground to the far north, and the land darkened for a few minutes.

 

Ryan kept going, his excellent night vision, even with only one good eye, carrying him safely and silently along. He paused in midstride, hearing what might have been the echoing cry of a coyote.

 

Might have been.

 

"Wolf?" he whispered to himself, the blaster suddenly cocked and ready in his fingers.

 

Another animal answered the first one as the moon broke through again. They were close together and not all that far ahead of him. Ryan spotted the glint of water just to his right, where there was a clearing in the brush.

 

He moved with extra care, sensing a change in the night. There was a new stillness, and even the light southerly breeze seemed to have dropped away. Not a leaf was moving on any of the bushes around him.

 

The double howl and response was repeated once, and then there was a deep, brooding silence. The cicadas had stopped their ceaseless cheeping, and it felt to Ryan as if the world around him were holding its breath.

 

He stooped by the edge of the water, cupping his left hand and dipping into the cool fringe of the small pond. He brought it to his lips, his head turning constantly, sniffing at the air like one of the feral creatures of the night. The water was cold and fresh. It lay in a shallow saucer of cropped grass and was obviously a drinking hole for deer and all kinds of small predators. Ryan checked carefully up and down the rutted strip of dried mud and found no human tracks nor the spoor of any larger beasts.

 

The moon had brought back the noises, and the insects began to buzz again. Ryan slowly filled the two canteens, hearing the water gurgle into them, swishing it around and rinsing it out before repeating the process and capping them off. He hung them on his shoulder. He'd left the Steyr back at the camp. The hunting rifle carried a Starlight nightscope, but it wasn't the kind of weapon for a casual evening recce. The SIG-Sauer was snug in its holster.

 

He decided to walk a little farther, hoping the exercise would help to stretch and strengthen the muscles around the fast-healing wound in his right thigh.

 

The land was fairly flat, and he strolled toward the fringe of the forest, pausing yet again when the veering breeze brought the smell of smokea cooking fire, with meat on it, meat that smelled like it was burning.

 

"Burned?" Ryan said to himself.

 

At least wolves and coyotes didn't light themselves fires in the evening, unless they were some kind of new mutie that Ryan had never heard of.

 

Which was always a possibility in Deathlands.

 

The smell grew stronger with every step, and he crouched, squinting above the tops of the dark chestnuts, spotting the coil of smoke, pale against the moonlit sky.

 

He drew the blaster once more, making sure that the canteens didn't chink against each other, catfooting between the spaced trunks, seeing that the fire was in a clearing less than a hundred yards into the woods.

 

As Ryan moved closer, constantly stopping to check that nobody was going to coldcock him on his blind side, he could make out two ragged figures hunched over the fire. Both had long hair, and they were talking to each other in a conversation that seemed to be mainly unintelligible grunting accompanied by violent gestures.

 

Only when he was very near could he be certain that they were male and female.

 

Ryan waited a couple of minutes, checking that the couple carried no blasters, seeing the glint of metal at both waists that told of hunting knives. When he felt safe, he walked out into the circle of the fire, blaster steady.

 

"Come to borrow a cup of sugar," he said.