eyes rolled up in his head and he collapsed into Mildred’s arms.
Jak ran with the pronghorn, filled with exhilaration.
After several moments the yellow, antelope-like creatures left him quickly behind, bounding across the flat Deathlands plain with graceful bounds.
He slowed to a stop, laughing, as he bent, panting, with his hands on his thighs. He watched the pronghorn bounce up and down as they dwindled across the vast flat. The red soil had begun to dry and fracture in the sun after just a couple of days without rain. Tufts of green grass sprouted from the fissure lines, as did a few white-and-yellow Deathlands daisies.
He might not be able to keep up with the beasts, but it felt good to run. And run free.
He was a child of the Louisiana bayous. He had grown up wild and hard, a feared and successful freedom fighter—or terrorist, depending on which side you viewed it from—from childhood on. And this flat, arid land was no more similar to the environment he’d grown up in than the rubble-choked streets of some urban nukescape.
But he felt at home here. Or almost, anyway. He felt alive when he was on the loose in nature. He often felt confined in villes.
Being able to run and be free of responsibilities and rules lifted a tremendous weight from his shoulders. It made him feel as if he could breathe again, for the first time in a long while.
He felt a twinge, somewhere inside him. He decided he was just hungry.
Jak’s T-shirt was soaked through. He stripped it off, then laid it across his white shoulders to keep them from burning. The pronghorns’ butts disappeared into the heat haze on the far western horizon.
He glanced up into a surprisingly cloudless sky whose blue was without pity, though not as threatening as the orange and yellow clouds that usually took it over. The sun was past zenith but still plenty high. He had lots of time to hunt or gather food before dark.
Even if this wasn’t his sort of country, Jak just seemed to have a knack for living off it.
Laughing softly, he turned and began walking back to where he’d cached his jacket and pack.
Life was good.
* * *
“OURLIFESUCKS,” Mildred said.
Even though Ryan, Krysty, J.B. and Doc were bearing the brunt of Ricky’s deadweight as they carried him, his blasters and backpack down the cut, the physician’s short legs made it hard to keep up with her friends. She was busy holding up Ricky’s arm to examine it, without raising it as high as his heart, to try to keep the mutie centipede’s venom as localized as possible. But she still had to examine the wound, because in a case like this seconds could count.
If it wasn’t too late already. She felt her face flush and the sweat roll down her back—not just from all the frenzied exertion in a humidity-drenched atmosphere that was starting to heat up despite the clouds and rain, but at the prospect of losing another member of her small and tight-knit family.
From behind came sounds too terrible to describe as the huge black jaws of the swarming centipedes devoured the hapless monster hog.
“Is the lad still alive?” Doc asked anxiously.
“So far,” Mildred answered. “Still breathing, still got a pulse. Both pretty strong.”
Ricky’s arm was completely relaxed in her grasp. The other hung loosely, hand dragging in the tiny stream underfoot as they splashed downhill.
“He just seems to be unconscious,” she stated.
“All right,” Ryan said. “I think we can stop here.”
The other companions did so with minimal awkwardness. Mildred glanced up to find herself and her friends at the bottom of a ravine. The walls were maybe fifty or sixty feet high and steep red clay. They were crowned with the dense tangles of the Wild.
The bottom, though, widened considerably from what they’d first come down. They had reached a small canyon, of sorts. There was enough room to get out of the stream, which had widened and deepened considerably from other gullies feeding into it, as the runlet they had followed did.
Gratefully, Ryan and the others set Ricky on a relatively flat, grassy bank. The rain had stopped completely, though the sky was still the color of bullets overhead. Mildred relinquished her grasp on the poisoned boy’s arm long enough for the others to extricate him from his backpack and slung rifle. Then they rolled him onto his back, and she knelt at once beside him.
Ryan came and hunkered across him from Mildred. “What have we got?” he asked.
She thumbed open the half-closed lids of Ricky’s brown eyes. “No dilation of the pupils. Strong, steady respiration, same as before. Pulse still strong. Temperature seems normal.”
She took her fingers from his neck and stretched his wounded arm out from his side. Then, bending close, she examined the bite.
“Huh,” she said. “No signs of inflammation except a little bit around the actual puncture wounds. No discoloration.”
She looked up at Ryan. The others had gathered around, as well, in a circle of concern.
Except the Armorer. She frowned in sudden irritation with the man. The kid was his apprentice, so to speak, and he couldn’t even be bothered—
Then she caught him in the corner of her eye. He was standing to the side, his Smith & Wesson shotgun in his hands, keeping a lookout while the others focused on their injured friend. It wasn’t lack of concern for Ricky that kept him apart. It was concern for his companions.
“Mildred, what is it?” Krysty asked in alarm. “Is he—”
She shook her head. “I think he’s fine,” she said. “Like I say, he just seems to be out cold.”
“What about the venom?” Ryan asked.
“Beats me,” she said. “I gotta warn you, I’m not a toxicologist. But there are certainly none of the gross signs of hemolytic toxin present. Nor of neurotoxins, though I’m on way shakier ground here. At least, not the sorts that cause death or serious nerve damage.”
“His eyelids are fluttering,” Doc said, bending over with his hands on his skinny thighs.
“Does that mean he just fainted?” Ryan asked.
“Don’t be too hard on him, Ryan,” Krysty said, laying a hand on his shoulder. “I’d be triple upset if one those things bit me.”
“I’m pretty sure there’s more to it than that,” Mildred said. The supine boy was beginning to stir. He moved his head slightly. “He didn’t seem freaked out or anything. Not enough that he was going to faint from fear. He seemed mostly taken by surprise and then—boom. Out like a light.”
Ricky’s lips moved. No sound came out. His jaw worked.
“Let’s
