He was restless, tossing and turning, tangling the sheets about him. Once during the night he dreamed, his right hand touching and fondling himself, bringing himself to an erection of terrifying proportions. Beneath the pillows was a silver-plated pearl-handled Magnum pistol that he'd found in the loft of a big house on what had once been the exclusive side of West Lowellton. His hands reached for the heavy pistol, caressing it, stroking the cool metal.
And all the while he was asleep.
Just before dawn he began to thrash and mumble, but the words were inaudible Ч apart from the repeated muttering of, "Strangers, strangers."
Ryan and Krysty took the last watch of the long night. They took turns circling the swampwag at a distance of between fifty and a hundred paces. The false dawn came whispering in, with a pink glow in the east and the promise of a fine morning. Then darkness returned, followed at last by the sallow light of true dawn.
"Wake the others, lover?" she asked.
"Soon. Let 'em sleep long as they can. A jump really scrambles up your head. And losing Henn like that..."
The sentence trailed away into the stillness. The air was cool, with a faint mist hanging over the trees behind them. They heard the delicate clicking and chirping of insects, rousing for the new day, and the songs of birds to the east.
The Atchafalaya Swamp was coming to life.
Krysty laid a hand on Ryan's arm, just below the elbow. "Why do we do this, love?"
"This?"
"Keep running. Fighting. Now... dying?"
"I figure you can live easy or hard. Easy, and you never stand up for a thing. Hard, and..."
"And what, Ryan?" Her grip tightened on his arm, making him wince at her latent power.
"Once you start with fighting and killing, Krysty, then it's killing and killing and more killing."
"Why? When do you stop?"
"When the reason for the fighting and the killing is done and ended."
"When will that be?"
"Maybe tomorrow. It's always going to be tomorrow. Until one day you find it's come. That's all there is."
About a mile ahead of them, a thin column of gray smoke was curling up into the morning sky. Ryan and Krysty noticed it simultaneously.
Ryan set his boot on the ladder into the swampwag, "Time to wake 'em," he said.
Chapter Six
After some discussion they agreed that the safest bet was to leave the buggy behind, hidden under cover, ready in case they needed a fast-footed run from danger.
J.B. suggested that they split into groups, circle around and then meet back at the swampwag, but Ryan insisted they stay together.
"No. With Henn gone we're low on blaster power. You, me an' Finn. Doesn't mean Doc and the girls don't pull their weight, but we're the professionals. Best we stick close."
The promise of a good day was vanishing fast. The sky was chameleonic, shifting from a pale blue streaked with pink to a deep purple with black clouds slashed across it.
Ryan, as usual, took the point position, keeping as far as he could to the side of the blacktop, in among the shadows, blaster at the ready, finger close on the trigger. Krysty came second, twenty paces back, on the opposite side of the road. Then Doc and Lori, who were becoming increasingly difficult to separate, with Finn a farther twenty yards behind them. J.B. brought up the rear, keeping a good hundred paces off, on the same side of the road as Ryan.
The temperature was already rising, humidity making the going tough. Ryan estimated that it was already close to the hundred mark. He was glad that he'd left his beloved fur-trimmed coat behind in the gateway.
A large mosquito, wings shimmeringly iridescent in the hazy light, settled on Ryan's left wrist, readying itself to feed. "Bastard!" Slapping at it, he crushed it in a smear of blood.
There weren't many signs that the blacktop was actually used very much. Oases of vegetation sprouted from cracks in its surface. A sharp curve to the left was followed by one to the right. At each turning Ryan held up a hand, slowing the others until he checked out what was around the bend.
Moving back, he called the rest to him, using the prearranged signal of touching the top of his head with his left hand. One by one they came up, J.B. at the rear.
"Road goes straight, but we're close to a ville of some kind. And there's a guard box over on the left, near a side trail."
As they neared it, moving closer together, Ryan was first to see that the small building wasn't a guard box at all.
"It's a phone booth," said Doc wonderingly. "I vow that it has been..." He seemed awestruck. "...many a long year since I have seen such an artifact."
The box, with some of its glass still intact, leaned to one side. The letters 'AT&T' were still visible on it. The group stopped to gawk at it.
Above them the sky had darkened as it had the previous afternoon, with a jagged spear of silver lightning occasionally crackling down. To one side there was a large pool, reflecting the sullen clouds. Beyond the water several buildings were silhouetted in the distance, seemingly fairly undamaged.
If a whole large city had really escaped the nuking of 2001, it would be an astounding thing to see. Certainly Ryan Cawdor had never seen anything like it before.
Finnegan stepped closer, stopping about a dozen paces from the booth.
"Some fucker's in there. I can hear it moving."
"Get back, Finn," ordered Ryan. "Don't take any chance with..."
The words died in his throat when he saw, as they all did, the creature that Finnegan had disturbed.
"A fucking rat," said Lori. It was the first time any of them had heard her swear.
In the Deathlands there were all kinds of mutie creatures. But none of them had ever seen a rat like this one. It was much larger than usual, hanging on the plastic receiver cord, gnawing at it, while its fiery red eyes stared at the invading humans. Its coat was white as driven snow.
"Albino," said Krysty. "I had a pet mouse back home called Blanche. She was like that. Pink eyes and white coat. No pigment."
Almost contemptuously the rat scurried down the cable, pausing in the open door to pick its way delicately over splinters of broken glass, then running across the road and stopping on the edge of the bushes. Finnegan drew his Beretta 9 mm pistol, steadying his right hand with his left.
"No," snapped Ryan. "Don't be a stupe, Finn."
"Why not? We can waste any local double-poor swamp muties."
"Just like Henn did? Come on, Finn."
During the brief conversation the rat made a leisurely escape.
There were further columns of smoke, and soon they could actually taste the flavor of roasting meat. Finnegan was all for pushing on at best speed, going in with blasters spitting, taking what they wanted and icing anyone who stood in their way,
He was overruled by the others.
"Slow and easy, Finn, Usual way. Let's go and do it."
Spreading across half the roadway was a tumbling mass of brilliant azaleas, a rainbow of brightness, dazzling in the dullness of the morning. Away beyond were the buildings of the town, but the smoke from cooking fires was closer. It emanated from a dip in the land in which lay a maze of shallow swamps.
"Flowers pretty," said Lori, staring open-mouthed at the display.
"Road sign, yonder," said Krysty, pointing to a small rectangle of dark green, well over a mile beyond the flowers.
"It name the ville?"
She stood on tiptoe, straining, her face wrinkled with concentration. "La something. Yeah. Layayette. Lafayette, and it says West... Can't... West Lowellton. Nearest place looks like it's called West Lowellton. Maybe Lafayette's farther."
Doc looked across at her. "I believe that Lafayette was a city, Miss Wroth. Perchance West Lowellton is a suburb of it."
A dozen muties appeared from behind the azaleas. Suddenly and silently. One second the road was clear; the next second the creatures were there.