Cawdor marched ahead of the others with long powerful strides, his dark hair catching in the wind, the SSG-70 Steyr blaster swinging against his shoulders as he set the relentless pace across the wasteland.
Next to Ryan, dressed in a battered, brown fedora and a leather jacket far too heavy for the temperature, trekked J. B. Dix. Where Ryan marched, J.B. simply walked, light-footed and watchful of his surroundings, his movements economical and appreciably silent.
Then there was Krysty Wroth, the red-haired beauty who was Ryan’s lover. She was a reliable whirlwind of energy and joy around which they all revolved. Strong, emotional, Krysty was a strange contradiction of facets. She had some mutie abilities—bursts of supernatural strength drawn from the well of the Earth Mother, Gaia; occasional prescience; and her mane of red hair, strangely alive and responsive to her emotional state. When Krysty was happy her hair shone like a beacon, when she was angry it crackled, curling like a vine around her head. Right now, her hair sat disheveled, drooping over her shoulders listlessly.
Dr. Mildred Wyeth walked with Krysty. Healer and caregiver, Mildred had never adopted the bleak outlook of the others. But she could still kill when the situation required it, and kill quickly.
Not as quickly as the albino Jak Lauren, the teenage survivor of unspeakable tragedy in New Orleans. Jak marched to his own beat. Even now he was off somewhere, scouting ahead or checking behind them, out of sight, using the area’s natural hiding places to camouflage himself from possible predators. Ryan was a deadly killer, but at least he was stable. Trying to tame Jak was like trying to bottle a forest fire.
And then there was Doc himself, with his ornate walking stick and his centuries’ old frock coat, his archaic turn of phrase. Theophilus Algernon “Doc” Tanner was an anachronism from a simpler age when wars were still fought face-to-face, man-to-man, not by the push of a button and the snuffing of ten thousand lives at a time.
“Doc, we go on,” Ryan told him, snatching the man from his reverie. “You know what I’d give for her,” he added quietly, glancing toward Krysty with his good right eye before looking back at Doc. “Whatever’s affected her hasn’t done spit to the rest of us, far as we can tell. Could just be a bad reaction to the jump. Catches all of us sometimes, you know that.”
Doc nodded his agreement. Ryan was right. Nine times in a row you could step through that gateway, blast your atoms halfway across the old United States, and come out the other side as right as rain, just like waking up. Yet the tenth time could bring dizziness and nausea and a person might think he or she would never be able to stand again. Krysty just got trip number ten this time around. It would pass.
He looked back at Krysty and smiled reassuringly. It would pass.
J AK SPRINTED across the plain, clouds of sand kicking up in his wake.
He chanced a look back over his shoulder in an unconscious survival instinct, making sure that nothing was following. The razor blades and jagged glass sewn into the fabric of his camou jacket glinted in the sun until another angry, toxin-heavy cloud passed overhead, cutting off the light.
Somewhere off to his right—the north—he could see a storm in full fury, attacking the Earth like a cat playing with a wounded bird. Streaks of bloodred lightning flashed down, repeatedly punching at the ground. The storm was traveling away from him, farther into the north. Caught up in its fury, a full-grown man could lose a limb to those potent bolts of electricity, or have the flesh washed from his bones by the acidic content of the rain. But Jak knew something about weather patterns, however unpredictable others might think them; he could tell this one wouldn’t be bothering them anytime soon.
He took a half step, skipping over the train tracks that ran across his path in the sand. Some tracks saw use here and there. When was the last time these saw use? he wondered. Like so much in the Deathlands, most train tracks were just another obsolete transportation system from a more complicated time. A time when the everyday had consisted of more than simply surviving another twenty-four hours.
What he had found out here, away from his friends, was worth further investigation. He couldn’t quite tell what the thing was, but he knew that Ryan, J.B. and the others would be intrigued. So he ran, fists pumping, across the sandy plain to rejoin his companions.
“I THINK SHE’S GETTING WORSE ,” Mildred announced. Doc slowed his pace and looked back. Mildred and Krysty were fifteen feet behind the group now. Mildred was walking beside Krysty, an encouraging hand on her companion’s elbow. Krysty had paled significantly, the blood drained from her face, and though she stood under her own strength, she did so with a hunch to her shoulders, as though suffering stomach cramps.
Doc raised his cane, went to tap Ryan on the shoulder before thinking better of it. You never quite knew with Ryan—his instincts were so sharp that he might just chill a man before acknowledging who the assailant was. Doc settled on a less invasive attention grabber. “Gentlemen,” he called, “we have trouble.”
Trouble. That was the watchword. That was the heart stopper. Tell Ryan that they had company, tell him that they had no food, tell him that they had radiation poisoning from the nukecaust, and Ryan would shrug and continue marching forward. But trouble was different.
Ryan stepped back to talk to Doc before the pair walked over to join Mildred and Krysty. J.B. remained at the front of the expedition, scouring the horizon in silence.
“What is it, Mildred?” Ryan asked.
“I think Krysty’s getting worse,” she told him.
Ryan looked at Krysty. Her muscles were bunched up, and she leaned her weight against the doctor. “You think, or she is?” he asked. It wasn’t Ryan being rude; that wasn’t his nature. Mildred knew that. There was just something in him, the way his brain was wired, that demanded absolutes. There could be no room for error, no room for questions or shades of gray.
“She’s worse,” Mildred stated firmly. “Without a full examination, I can’t tell how much worse, Ryan, but she’s definitely in worse condition now than when we left the redoubt.”
Ryan turned to Doc, as though for a second opinion. Doc wasn’t a medical doctor, his nickname stemmed from the Ph.D. degree he’d received from Oxford University, but he had wisdom and experience, and Ryan had always appreciated that.
Doc looked at Krysty for a moment, then turned to Ryan. “Her health is deteriorating,” he decided.
“Open your eyes, Krysty, can you do that for me?” Doc asked the flame-haired woman.
Slowly, as though it caused her pain, Krysty widened her eyes from the slits that they had unconsciously become. Doc leaned in closer to look, and Mildred followed once he had stepped aside. The whites of Krysty’s eyes had turned dark pink, bloodshot, as though irritated by smoke. Krysty blinked, her eyelids fluttering like a weathervane in high winds. Mildred told her that it was okay, she could stop now.
“Am I dying?” Krysty mumbled through dry lips.
“No,” Ryan replied firmly, automatically, his single eye holding her gaze.
There was a long moment of silence until Mildred finally spoke. “It could be an infection. Food poisoning. Rad sickness—” she ticked them off on her fingers “—muscle aches, cramps, weariness. It could just be influenza. Right now I can’t tell you. She needs a proper examination, which means you need to stop while I do that. It wouldn’t take long, Ryan.”
Ryan looked around, across the flat
