The wag rolled over the top of a low rise, and Jak jammed on the brakes, bringing the vehicle to a shuddering halt.
"What's?.. Ah, I see it. Best get ready, friends. Looks like we might have us some trouble here."
There was a battered pair of old Zeiss binoculars hanging from a hook at the side of the front passenger seat, and Ryan took them down. The focusing screw was stiff, the lenses not properly balanced, but he got enough visual information through one eyepiece to make out that the bridge across the Delaware was well guarded. At least a half-dozen figures were standing near it, looking up at the wag, which was poised on the crest of the hill. They were all carrying blasters, which looked to be long-barreled, single-action pieces.
"They seen us," Ryan said calmly. "Shouldn't worry us more'n a mosq-bite. We'll play it this way."
Josiah Shubert held up his hand, the thumb and seven fingers spread in a warning to the lumbering sec wag to slow down. The blaster ports were all closed, and the driver was hidden by the setting sun glaring off the reinforced glass.
"Whoa down, Renz!" he shouted.
Jak went carefully through the gears, foot holding the brake. His other foot hovered over the gas pedal, waiting for the order from Ryan Cawdor to move out.
Ryan had his visor down on the passenger side. J.B. was covering the rear. Krysty and Lori were on the right of the wag, Doc on the left. All waited, crouched, behind the ob-slits.
"Back early, Renz. Forget something, did ya?"
The wag was inching forward, Jak struggling to keep the powerful engine from stalling on him. As well as the leader of the group, there were six men, mostly on the driver's side. One was by Ryan's side window, picking his nose and carefully examining what he'd excavated. The last of the men lounged against a painted pole that rested on a pair of old barrels on either side of the rickety bridge.
"Roll it down and hand the jack," Shubert ordered, his voice suddenly holding an edge of suspicion, an edge Ryan instantly recognized.
"Go."
Jak stomped down, and the wag jerked forward, slowly starting to gather momentum. The albino had his Magnum resting in his lap, and he snatched it up. Shubert jumped for the running board and hauled himself up. He had a taped .32 in his hand, and jammed it in the narrow slit of the sec window.
"You ain't Renz, ya mutie bastard! We'll chill ya right..."
"Shut it," Jak yelled, shooting the man through his open mouth. The bullet smashed a great chunk of bone out of the back of his head and kicked him into the dirt on the side of the road.
It was the only shot that anyone aboard the wag needed to fire. Ryan had been right in his summing-up of the blaster threat from the men. With their leader rolling, screaming and dying, none of them wanted to be dead heroes.
The armored radiator of the wag tore through the pole barrier, splitting it in two, one half wheeling high in the air and eventually splashing down near the edge of the muddied waters of the Delaware.
Ryan heard the thin sound of a ragged volley from the muskets, but as far as he could tell none of them struck the retreating wag.
"All okay?" he shouted, getting a chorus of positive replies.
The heavy tires thrummed on the planks of the bridge. Jak was still accelerating when Ryan leaned over and tapped him on the arm. "Slow down some, or we'll be in the river."
"Don't worry," the boy said, then grinned, eyes burning with crazed delight.
But he did slow down.
The next day they cut southward across the Blue Mountains, eventually picking up what remained of the old Interstate 78 and following it for fifteen or twenty miles as they came closer to Harrisburg and the Susquehanna River. The road was mainly in good shape, and they barreled along at a reasonable speed. They ran through a couple of heavy storms, rain streaming off the side of the highway, and gathering in deep rutted pools where the top surface had been eroded by a hundred winters and summers.
They saw very little evidence of any settlements near the road, though Krysty smelled smoke several times during the day.
It wasn't until later the next morning that they encountered any people.
Chapter Fifteen
"Some loved nigras and some wanted to chill all the nigras?"
Doc shook his head in exasperation at Lori's question. "No, no, no. And I only used the word 'nigra' because that was the epithet that was current coinage back then. It is not a good word, my sweet little child. Not a good word at all."
"Sorry, Doc. But I didn't..."
"Gentlemen in the South kept blacks as slaves. Those north of the Mason-Dixon line, as it was known, believed that all men were created equal and should all be free."
"Sounds right," Ryan said.
"Man with the biggest blaster has the biggest hunk of the freedom," J.B. commented, as cynical as ever.
Doc Tanner smiled sadly. "I fear your jaded view of life is too often correct. Certainly the Civil War ended that way."
A young deer had appeared unexpectedly out of the brush in front of the wag at a point where the road was so rough that Jak had to crawl along in the lowest gear. The ports and ob-slits were open, and J.B. felled the beast with a single shot from his Steyr AUG handblaster.
By mutual agreement they stopped at the next safe site and built a fire. The deer was skinned, jointed and roasted.
It was a beautiful spot for a camp. A scattering of aspens, their tops shimmering silver, swayed in the northerly breeze. A stream bubbled nearby in a series of little falls and pools. The whole place was rich with a profusion of wildflowers: hedge nettle, sage and fringed phacelia in a mix of delicate colors and shapes. Lori had woven herself a necklet of white and lavender blossoms, letting them dangle between her breasts as she sat and licked smears of blood from the roasted haunch of the fawn.
Krysty had brought up the subject of the Civil War, knowing from her teachings as a child that they were coming into an area where some of the most intense fighting had occurred.
Doc had been delighted to share his reminiscences with her.
"Those names," he said. "Shiloh and First Bull Run. Some called it Manassas. Stones River and Chickamauga. Chancellorsville and Antietam. The Wilderness and Spotsylvania. The sepia prints by Brady of untidy corpses along a picket fence. Even in Vermont, as a child, I saw men still dying of their wounds from those battles. And the generals. Names that tripped off the tongue like a litany of the gods of Olympus."
"Tell us," Krysty said. "Better than using a gateway as a time machine."
Doc leaned back, picking at his strong teeth with a long thorn plucked from a dog brier.
"There was Grant, above all. Ulysses Grant. And Lee and Sherman and Hood and Nathan... I don't recall his other name. But..."
"You ever meet any of 'em, Doc?" J.B. asked. "What kind of blasters they favor?"
"I was only a child. Many died during the conflict and shortly after. But I did meet General Grant. And a sorry meeting it was."
"Why?"
"You ask me why, Ryan, and I shall tell you. Indeed it will give me pleasure to tell you."
Ryan spotted the beginning of the rambling repetition that indicated Doc's memory wasn't yet completely healed. And probably never would be.
"An uncle of mine, whose name escapes me, was one of the physicians attending General Grant during his terminal illness. I visited him on the very day that the great man finally lost his hold on the tenuous thread that bound him to his corporeal self. Once severed, he would be free to roam with the immortals in the fields of Elysium."
"Who chilled him?" Jak asked, picking at the ends of a frayed length of meadow grass.
"A cancer that ravaged his mighty frame. His passing was truly a relief and a mercy after many long days of agony and anguish for all who loved him. It was a dullish sort of day, I recall. I was a lad of seventeen or so. He tried to sit and was staring out at the casement. I kept mouse-quiet in the corner of his chamber. He called out once and then fell back dead."