James Axler - Homeward Bound

Around noon they passed through the shattered remains of what must once have been a sizable ville. Doc's guess was a town called Kingston, but the effort of recalling so much of his distant past had wearied the old man, and he sat down for much of the time, trailing his bare feet over the stern, gazing at their jagged wake, locked in his own thoughts. Not even Lori could tug him back for several hours.

Ryan realized just how frail Doc Tanner's hold on reality truly was.

"Let's pull her in," Ryan said a little after two o'clock in the afternoon.

"Hours of daylight left," J.B. protested, looking up at the sky, puzzled. "No storm threatening, so why stop?"

"A vacation," Ryan said, grinning. "There's a clearing to the left there. I can see a waterfall, white over the rocks. Good defense all around. Haven't seen any muties. Let's just stop, like Doc said, and rest up. We'll start again at dawn."

"Gaia, but that's a wonderful idea, lover." Krysty sighed and ran her fingers through her mane of scarlet hair so that it rippled against her skin like a wave of fire.

It was an idyllic place.

Ryan and Jak scouted the region around the landing place while J.B. held the mooring line ready for a swift flight. But they found no trace anywhere of any human footprints. Ryan checked the radiation count, taking a reading that dropped below the orange. Everything that he'd ever heard made him certain that the entire northeast industrial area had been nuked almost out of existence, leaving the place a throbbing hot spot that for a long time actually glowed at night, according to some of the older men and women at Front Royal ville.

The water that tumbled eighty or ninety feet from the lip of an escarpment was fresh and sweet without any kind of chem taste.

There were ample deadfall branches that would make an excellent fire — one with a glowing heat but very little smoke to attract any potential enemies.

Doc lay down on the gently sloping beach of soft white sand and instantly fell asleep. Lori sat beside him, plaiting a chaplet of tiny white and golden flowers that she'd found growing in an abundant profusion near the border of the forest.

Spruce, larch, white oaks and hickories dominated the sloping hillside above the beach, with tiny red squirrels and chipmunks darting fearlessly among them, showing no fright at the appearance of the humans.

"Coming, J.B.?" Krysty asked.

"Where?"

"There," she responded, pointing toward the beckoning shade of the green forest.

"Why?"

"For the pleasure of it, J.B., like Doc said. It's a vacation for us all. Rest and relax and stop your mind running on death."

"I'm happy here, Krysty."

The Armorer was sitting cross-legged in the sand, a few yards nearer the water than Doc and Lori. He had the mini-Uzi cradled in his lap, already halfway through fieldstripping it. His glasses caught the sun, and his fedora was pushed well back on his high, sallow forehead.

"Come on," Ryan urged.

"When we chilled the stickles, I thought I heard something catching on the mechanism. Something didn't sound right. The selective fire blowback's my guess. I've got to check it out, Ryan. You know that."

"Sure. Watch the boat."

The Armorer nodded his agreement, bending happily to his task.

"Jak," Krysty called.

"Yeah. You going to walk?"

"Want to come?"

The boy was still stripped to the waist, his boots off, breeches rolled above the knee. He was paddling in the shallows of the river, one of his lethal little throwing knives poised in his right hand.

"Fishing."

"You'll never get anything with a blade," Ryan said disbelievingly.

"Want to bet?"

Ryan laughed. "I know better, kid."

"Go pick flowers, One Eye. Have some fish grilled for you when you get back."

"Sounds good." Krysty smiled and hooked her arm through Ryan's elbow. "Looks like you an' me, lover."

"Looks like it." Ryan called across to J.B., "Be back 'fore dark."

The Armorer waved a casual hand.

Close together, hips touching as they walked, Ryan and Krysty made their way into the cool, scented gloom beneath the waiting trees.

"Herb the blacksmith, back in Harmony ville, knew lotsa old songs and verses," Krysty said. "Told one 'bout a lost path through the woods. How it was gone, but it was still there for those who had the eyes to see it."

Ryan could see what had prompted her line of thought. The trees were well spaced, with daggers of golden sunlight thrusting through the top branches and dappling the floor of the forest. They could hear the light breeze as it tugged at the fresh green leaves that danced and swayed. The air tasted fresh and clean. Gradually they were leaving the rolling sound of the Hudson behind them.

They picked a path between the trunks, climbing up the slope.

"It's a beautiful day, Ryan."

"Good day for a vacation."

"Look, down there."

They stopped on a grassy knoll that thrust out between the trees, overhanging the beach, giving them a view clear across the river. From that height it shone and glittered like molten glass, barely moving. A little farther above them they could hear the thundering of the waterfall.

Far below them they could easily make out the twin shapes of Doc and Lori, lying close together on the beach, seemingly asleep.

"Oddest love match I ever saw," Ryan said. "I know he's not really two hundred and thirty years old, but he's definitely around his middle sixties. And she's still in her teens."

"You disapproving, lover?" Krysty asked teasingly.

"No. Course not. I'm pleased the old goat's so happy, and the girl couldn't have found a nicer person than Doc. Specially after that double-crazy Keeper she lived with."

"Look at J.B."

Ryan, arm held loosely around Krysty's slender waist, shaded his eye against the sunlight. The Armorer had laid his coat on the sand and was stooped over the stripped segments of his blasters, carefully wiping each one, using a tiny container of oil to grease them. J.B. was in his element, relishing the vacation in his own dedicated way.

"Jak looks like a little boy at play," Ryan observed. "Not that he ever had any kind of childhood."

The white hair blended with the sun-bright sand. As they watched, the lad flicked his wrist. There was a flash of silver from the thrown knife as it splashed into the river. Jak plunged his hand into the water, coming out with something that wriggled and glistened blue-green in his fist. As though he sensed that he was being watched, the boy whirled around, scanning the wall of the forest. He spotted the man and the woman far above him and waved the trout in triumph. Jak shouted something to them, but the words were whisked away on the soft westerly wind.

"Supper should be good, lover," Krysty whispered. "Come on, let's walk some more." She waved to Jak, and then she and Ryan stepped back out of sight of their companion on the beach.

As they made love on a bank of light green moss, shaded from the sun, Ryan kept the G-12 at his side. This place was as near to an Eden as anything he'd come across in the Deathlands. But that didn't mean that it was free from serpents.

The foaming stream that fed the waterfall was only a few yards from them, chattering over the rounded stones. A miniature wading bird, wings darted with vivid turquoise and crimson, hopped and picked its way through the water. A gold-throated woodpecker hammered away at a live oak behind them, the thin sound of its rapping beak echoing around the forest. A mutie raccoon, no more than four inches long, skittered over the fawn carpet of leaf mold, ignoring the lovemaking couple who watched it.

"Makes a change to see a mutie animal that's gotten smaller," Krysty said.