Around the road were several fields, one containing a few gangly stalks of corn, another a regimented orchard full of dead apple trees, their pointed branches like reaching talons, black nails clawing for the cloud-dulled sky. Several cawing birds, large with dark plumage, braved the rain to swoop into the fields, picking off insects or rodents that their sharp eyesight had spied.
As Jak sprinted ahead, scoping out the area about them, Krysty fell into step with Ryan, sidling close and wrapping an arm around his waist.
“Seems like a nice place,” she drawled, looking up into Ryan’s good right eye.
“No one’s tried to kill us yet,” Ryan stated. “I could grow to like that.”
Behind them, Mildred was taking inventory of the contents of her medical kit, checking her dwindling supplies as she walked along the churned-up remains of the cracked strip of road.
J.B. and Doc took up the rear, walking beside each other, the older man swinging his lion’s-head cane with a flourish as he took each step.
Watching the road with alert eyes, J.B. said quietly, “What was going on back there, Doc?” he asked. “You seemed pretty out of it.”
“Old ghosts,” the old man replied thoughtfully, “come back to haunt me once again. Emily. My dear sweet Emily.”
Emily was Doc’s wife, J.B. knew, back from a hundred years before the nukecaust. Doc had a strange life’s journey. He had been born in the nineteenth century, and had lived the life of an academic before finding himself the subject of a cruel experiment in time manipulation. Against his will, Doc had been pulled through time by the scientists of Project Chronos, into the tail end of the twentieth century.
However, those same scientists—“whitecoats” in the Deathlands vernacular—had reckoned without Doc’s intellect, and had soon become exasperated with his continued attempts to hinder and outright retard their progress. Using the same time-trawling technology, they had dumped their irascible subject far in the future, and Doc had suddenly found himself in the Deathlands, one hundred years after the nukecaust, fending for himself as a court jester.
But that hadn’t been the worst of it. Poor Doc Tanner had physically aged, like a time-lapse film, and found himself a man in his thirties trapped in the body of one much, much older. It had been a cruel fate, and had almost unhinged Doc’s mind. For a while, during their early companionship, J.B. had known the old man to snap into visions and memories, convinced he was back home with his wife and children.
“Jump nightmares aren’t easy on anyone,” J.B. pointed out. “Gotta shake it off, Doc.”
Doc sighed his agreement. A part of him had taken perverse joy in seeing his dear Emily again, and he regretted letting the dream fade, however horrific its conclusion had been.
As the companions trudged along the cracked highway, they heard a rumbling in the distance. Fifteen minutes later, a posse of wags, four in all, trundled past them. They were led by two old truck rigs belching putrid black smoke from their upright exhaust pipes. Behind the rigs, a horse-drawn wag bumped over the cracked road, a woman and baby visible inside the rotten shell of the four-wheel drive that the horses pulled, the animals themselves looking tired and hungry, bony shoulder blades close to the surface of their matted coats. Finally, a tractor that had been converted to carry passengers in a covered section stretching behind it puttered along. The companions stood to one side and watched as the convoy made its slow progress along the bumpy road.
“Guess we’re on Main Street,” J.B. muttered, casting a significant look at Ryan before turning his attention back to the passing wags.
Like most people in the Deathlands, the companions were wary of strangers. Life was a series of rules of survival, primary among them was the simple edict of “chill or be chilled.” Communities, little baronies called villes, may work together for the purposes of farming and social cohesion, but outlanders were invariably treated with contempt. Chilling a man for the boots he wore wasn’t unheard-of, even if those boots didn’t fit and leaked water like a sieve. In the Deathlands, having was better than not having, pure and simple.
“I wonder where they are going?” Doc said amiably, as the wags continued down the broken tarmac.
“Same place we’re going, most likely,” J.B. replied. “As far down the road as they can until they either find something worth stopping for or die of exhaustion.”
The old man snorted with amusement. In that single sentence, J.B. had summed up the motivation that kept the restless companions themselves moving ever onward, mat-trans by mat-trans.
RYAN AND HIS GROUP continued walking along the broken road for another twenty minutes until, as dusk fell and the putrid drizzle continued its relentless assault on the travelers, they spotted a scattering of ramshackle buildings arranged on either side of the blistered blacktop. The wags were just pulling over, placing themselves beside similar parked vehicles, and Ryan could see that they were stopping off in the dirt beside a cluster of three large wooden buildings.
Ryan held his hand up to bring his companions to a halt, and Krysty called to Jak to wait. Then Ryan pulled the scoped SSG-70 Steyr rifle from his back. The one-eyed man rested the butt of the weapon against his shoulder and peered into the powerful magnification lens of the scope.
“Couple of sec men,” he said as he studied the clutch of buildings ahead, spotting two well-armed toughs patrolling the area as the wag riders disembarked. Then he spotted another sec man through the scope, and yet another a moment later, both of them brandishing assault rifles with holstered blasters at their hips. “Make that three,” Ryan continued in an emotionless voice. “No, four. Sentry post half-buried across to the right of the road, pillbox design. Can see a light there, someone’s inside.”
“Anything else?” J.B. prompted as Ryan slowly scanned the horizon through the scope.
After a moment, Ryan shifted the rifle from its resting place against his shoulder. “Looks friendly,” he announced, relief on his scarred face.
Even as he said it, the sound of blasterfire tore across the fields, cutting through the stillness.
Chapter Two
Ryan peered into the scope again to examine the little settlement. Beside him, J.B. had produced a pair of minibinocs from inside his voluminous coat, while Jak simply narrowed his eyes, using his hand to shade them from the dwindling sunlight of dusk. Behind them, Doc, Krysty and Mildred became alert, checking their weapons in readiness.
Locating the flashes of blasterfire through the magnifying scope, Ryan saw several members of the wag train blasting shots at something he couldn’t immediately recognize. Whatever it was, it was the color of shadow and it moved liquid fast and low to the ground as the drizzling rain continued lashing at the soil. As Ryan tracked the dark mass, parts of it broke away, and he realized it was a pack of dogs, or maybe wolves. One of the creatures bolted across the darkening field and leaped into the frightened crowd emerging from the convoy. It moved as a blur across the gun’s magnifying lens, and Ryan felt his breath catch as the creature grappled with an elderly man, its powerful forelegs driving its prey to the ground. The hound shook its victim by the arm as he tumbled to the mud, ripping at the man’s forearm amid a gush of blood.
Without a moment’s thought, Ryan instantly steadied his breathing, calmed his heart rate and gently squeezed the trigger on the Steyr rifle. A bullet sped from the rifle’s muzzle with a loud report, zipping through the air and driving into the creature’s head where it reared
