James Axler - Pilgrimage to Hell

"Only a marmot."

Abe had the best eyesight of anyone Ryan had ever met, except for muties. Ryan relaxed and lay back again, trying to ease the tension from his sinews. It had been a bad couple of days.

"Real bad," he muttered, hardly aware that he had spoken aloud.

"Very true," nodded Hovak to his left. She had the strained look around the eyes that they all had from the effects of the gassing. Her speech was slurred and the whites of her eyes were tinted pink. But she'd been luckier than some. When Ryan had finally stopped the war wag two hours out of Mocsin and helped Krysty to collect everyone together, seven of the crew hadn't made it, their hearts and lungs stilled by the nerve gas.

There was enough of a crew to operate the war wag, but if they came into a heavy combat situation, they'd be short on firepower. Ryan ticked them off on his fingers.

Apart from those in the vehicle, there were he and Krysty. The fire glinted off her vermillion hair as it rolled about her neck and shoulders where she slept on the opposite side of the clearing. Ches, the driver, and O'Mara were next, heads together, talking quietly. Kathy lay, smoking a crudely rolled tobacco cigarette, next around the rough circle. Rintoul, Hooley and Lint, were all either sleeping or sitting up and looking vacantly into the darkness. In all he made it twenty-four. It wasn't a whole lot to tackle the Deathlands.

The glitter of firelight off steel caught his eye and he saw the chubby figure of Finnegan, whittling away at a broken hunk of the dead cottonwood with his razored butcher's knife. The man saw Ryan watching him and held up the piece of wood for him.

"Recognize the bitchin' bastard?" he asked with a grin.

Even in the poor light, Ryan could make out in the rough planes of white wood the gaunt features of Cort Strasser.

That was a debt to lay on the table. A debt that would get settled one day, Ryan had no doubt. Though their situation was dismal, with so many friends and good comrades dead and stiff behind them, it was a damned long way from being desperate.

"Ryan."

"Yeah?"

"Here."

He rose and stretched, feeling the tightness of his muscles, picking up the LAPA and moving to squat down at the side of the Trader.

Over the years Ryan had seen a lot of men, good and bad, go and buy the farm. Some of them had been wiped away in the blinking of an eye, and others seemed to have death standing silently at their shoulders for weeks before the scythe had fallen.

He'd never seen that midnight reaper more clearly than he saw him now, in the gloom behind the Trader.

"That you, Ryan?"

"Yeah."

"Everyone fed?"

"Sure. You want anything?"

Trader shook his head. "Not less'n you can call back the dead. That mongrel, Strasser. We'll regroup and get us some more good men, Ryan. Then go back and wipe Mocsin off the earth."

"Sure. In time."

Trader nodded his grizzled head. The gas still had him in thrall and he coughed, his shoulders quivering with the effort. His face turned away from Ryan and the younger man heard him bring up saliva. As Ryan had already observed several times in the past year, the spittle was flecked with bright blood.

"Thirty years since me and Marsh Folsom found them war wags. Now that fire-blasted scab done 'em in. Just that one left." He coughed again, then straightened, pasting a thin-lipped smile unsteadily in place. "But one's enough, eh, Ryan?"

"Maybe. I wish J.B. was with us. Right now his miserable face'd look like the risin' sun."

Trader sighed. "They come and they go, Ryan. Heard someone say 'bout bein' here today and gone tomorrow. I seen better than fifty summers and winters come and go. I lost count of the dead."

"The dead's yesterday. Our worry is tomorrow. You certain we should go into the Darks?"

A flash of lightning seemed crimson against the pink-gray sky. The tumbling roll of thunder lasted several seconds. Behind Ryan, Rintoul threw another couple of jagged logs on the fire. Inside the war wag he could hear someone — Cohn, he thought — whistling. Trader was right. One was enough, when you had comrades with that kind of spirit.

Trader nodded. "Too many reasons, Ryan. All you told me these last days. The girl's story 'bout her folks. Then that man... what's his name?"

"Kurt? One hid up in Charlie's?"

"Went up in the high country. Saw a fog. Then that old guy at Teague's, one you say they called Doc. He told 'bout what you could find. Called it a Redoubt. Heard the name before. And he said the fog was a way out. That right?"

Ryan nodded. He was close enough to the old man to catch the dry, sickly odor of his breath. Like the scent of an open grave.

"So we go up there and see what there is," Ryan said. "How long will it take us?"

"No more trouble from muties, stickies or Strasser, and we can be up there close to the tree line day after next. You got guards out?"

"Sure. Two on a ranged perimeter, crossing in and out. Due for a change in about ten minutes."

"Good. Give me a hand up. Want to go lie down in my bunk. Sleep that gas away. You wake me if..." Another grin, this time more convincing. "Sure you will, Ryan."

The Trader stood, gripping Ryan's wrist to steady himself. Gripping it so hard that the marks would still be livid-clear the following morning. Ryan watched him go, seeing the way that pride held the old man erect, stiff backed, all the way through the lowering trees to the steps of War Wag One. Pulling himself up and then vanishing into the cramped interior.

A touch on his shoulder made him start and he turned to stare into the green eyes of Krysty Wroth. "He's dying," she said, voice flat and calm.

"I know it. He knows it. And now I guess you know it."

"The others?"

"They don't know nothin'." He blinked and hissed through his teeth in irritation at himself. "I keep meanin' to stop that. I mean that they don't know anythin'. I've seen the blood when he coughs."

"How long's he got?"

"Year. Month. Weeks. How do I know? I'm not a medic. And Trader won't see one."

Ryan realized he was still carrying the LAPA and he tucked it back into the looped rig inside his coat. The girl stood by him, running a hand through her mane of dazzling hair, and Ryan watched her. In the flickering light of the campfire he had the momentary illusion that the red hair had a life of its own. That it had some odd sentience. It was almost as if it responded to her hand, moving in long fronds about her fingers.

"Got to check the guards."

"I'll come."

"Yeah. Be company."

They moved away from the circle of light and into the damp coolness of the forest. Normally Ryan did not like the woods. Man couldn't see far enough. Man was vulnerable among these trees, their trunks and branches tortured and twisted from years of growing in wild weather and the extremes of toxic foulness. All sorts of muties, human and animal — and something in between — lived among these trees. But now they were moving north, into the high mountains.

"Be in the Darks in a few days."

"Peter Maritza had some old maps," Krysty said. "Back before the Fire. This was called Montana."

"I heard that. Time was I knew the names of almost all of 'em. The old States. Now I forgot 'em, don't need 'em no more."

He stopped and whistled. A low, insistent sound that carried through the darkness. After a moment they both heard a whistle in reply, from their left, close in. And then another, from the right, farther away. Ryan put his hand to his mouth and whistled once more, a double trill that faded away.

"They'll be here soon. It's Jim and Meg. Wait here and don't move around, or you might get shot. End of a sentry spell and the finger gets white on the trigger."

The girl appeared first, a rifle under her arm. She was tall and skinny, with a gray forage cap pulled low over her eyes. Ryan knew she wore it that way to help conceal her baldness. She nodded to him and to Krysty and went silently past, heading for the camp. Jim was on the outlying patrol and he came in at an easy lope, rifle at the high port.