James Axler - Homeward Bound

The big brown eyes followed every movement, growing wider and wider until it looked as if they might pop right out of their sockets. Not one of the animals moved as Ryan drew closer.

"Come on, come on," he muttered. The rain was ferocious, lashing in from over the river valley, tearing at his face like thousands of fine wires. Ryan licked his lips, suddenly concerned that this might be an acid rain that would blister and peel his skin. Apart from a hint of salt, it tasted normal. His hair was quickly plastered to his skull, making his face seem leaner and more brutal. It trickled down inside the eye patch, and he shook his head to clear it.

The nearest of the mutated creatures was only five paces away from him. Though they were trembling, the fur quivering, they didn't seem particularly frightened of the advancing man.

Ryan's boots slopped in the loose mud that washed down from higher up the side of the wooded hill.

"Come here, out of the cold," he whispered, bending and reaching out. His fingers touching the wet pelt, feeling its amazing softness. The animal made a thin, mewing sound, but it didn't try to escape, and allowed the man to pick it up.

One by one he brought them into the relative warmth of the cavern. Eleven in all. They were placed gently in front of the glowing fire to dry out. The little animals didn't try to struggle or run away, sitting where they were put, their round heads turning slowly and wonderingly to gaze at the six people. They seemed particularly fascinated by Krysty Wroth's flaming red hair.

Ryan dried himself off, his shirt and pants steaming as he stood close to the warm fire. Lori picked up one of the creatures and cuddled it on her lap, whispering to it. The animal's tiny paws touched her gently on the arm, and its eyes rolled wider and wider.

"Lovely and soft and such fat little guts," she said.

"Fucking cute," Jak said, grinning broadly at the row of animals, perched together, solemn-faced, like hairy, portly monks.

"Yeah," Ryan said. "They dried out yet?"

Krysty stooped and touched one, stroking her fingers across the long fur. "Seems dry to me, Ryan. You ready for this?"

After they'd slit the throats of the cuddly little bears, they skinned them and roasted them over the fire.

The little creatures made real good eating.

Doc Tanner belched and rubbed his stomach. "I beg your pardon. Considering how small those little furry bastards were, they had meat as tough as buffalo." He sat down on the beach, tugging at his right boot. He took it off and shook a handful of grit out of it, then pulled the cracked knee boot back on. The wind had risen, and it snatched his stovepipe hat off, sending it rolling along the sand at a fine pace.

"Why not let it be gone?" Lori asked. "It was old and smelling."

"You think so, my dear dove of the north?"

"Sure."

The others watched, amused, as Doc rose to his feet and set off after the hat, proceeding like a stately galleon under full sail. His coat, an uneasy mix of gray, brown and black furs, billowed about his shrunken shanks. His tangled hair skittered across his narrow shoulders.

"Is he really going to dump that hat?" Krysty asked. "I'll believe it when I see it."

"Must be two hundred years old, that hat," J.B. said.

"Like throwing away part of history," Ryan added.

"Get another easy. Look him go," Jak said, grinning.

The wind was teasing Doc, allowing him to get almost within reach of the black hat, then flipping it away so that it rolled on its battered brim, always just below his grasping fingers.

"Go, Doc!" Lori yelled, jumping up and down with excitement.

The hat spun into the lapping edge of the Hudson, subsiding, giving up its flight and allowing Doc Tanner to pluck it. The old man stood there for some moments in silent contemplation, holding the hat and turning it around and around, slowly, head bowed over it.

"He's saying goodbye," Krysty guessed.

All of them stopped what they were doing. Jak was beginning to untie the mooring rope. The river had risen a foot or more during the night, but the raft was still held securely. J.B. was putting the backpacks on the raft.

"Adieu, old companion!" Doc shouted, his voice loud and clear. Taking the stovepipe hat by the rim and running a hand caressingly over the dent in its crown, he spun it far out into the main stream of the Hudson, where it settled like a wing-broke raven, floating the right way up. The river took it, revolving in a stately manner, carrying it away, downstream to the south. They all watched it until it was only a small black blur against the deep blue-green of the water.

As Doc rejoined them, the other five gave him a round of applause and three rousing cheers. Doc's cheeks cracked into a broad smile, showing his strong white teeth. He bowed in an old-fashioned, elegant manner.

"My dear, dear friends. How can I thank you for your generous reception of my cathartic act. That hat was too much a symbol of my past. My long, long past. And now I look forward." He paused. "When I remember to, that is."

Hordes of pale lilac asters thronged the sides of the river as they drifted south. The water was still as clear as crystal glass, and filled with fish of all shapes and sizes.

But after their feast on the small bears the previous night, none of the six felt hungry enough to try to catch any.

"Must be close to Newyork," Ryan said to Doc. "Light'll be going soon. It's so wide here that we might have problems getting a place for the night. And the city's rubble's supposed to be double-bad. So they used to say."

"I heard that in Mocsin," the elderly scientist said. "The sec boss..." He shuddered.

Ryan pursed his lips in a silent whistle. "I know him. Strasser. Fireblast, but he was a bastard fitted for six feet of mold."

He remembered the man well. It had been when he'd first met up with Doc Tanner. Strasser had been the sec boss in the ville of Mocsin. The ville of Jordan Teague, the baron. Strasser had always worn black, head to toe, and had a fringe of hair around a shaved skull. Thin was the word for Strasser. Thin body, thin face, thin eyes and lips. Lips that Ryan Cawdor had smashed to bloody pulp with a thrown blaster.

"He talked about New York. He'd been there. Traded there. Drugs and children. He said they were all ghouls, cannibals, night crawlers, blood tasters, dark watchers, death lovers."

"From what I hear, Strasser was right for once," J.B. said.

They passed another ruined bridge, its eastern section more or less complete. The shattered remnants of an old passenger wag hung poised on the brink, stuck there since the missiles had burned its driver to a crisp a century earlier. One day the rest of the bridge would rot through and the automobile would plummet down with it into the ever-patient Hudson.

A few minutes farther on the river narrowed down from more than two miles across to less than one. On their right the banks rose high in a series of wooded bluffs that Doc said he thought had once been called the Palisades of New Jersey.

Now, at last, on the left, the six companions began to witness the silent, twisted horror of total urban destruction.

No trees grew on the eastern bank of the Hudson, other than the occasional stunted ash or sycamore. Ryan's rad counter began to cheep softly, the needle creeping inexorably through the orange and holding not far from the red that showed a dangerous hot spot.

The old Cross-Bronx Expressway vanished behind them, swallowed up in the pale gray mist that came drifting in from behind the bluffs. It wasn't possible to make out anything still standing that even vaguely resembled a building. It was a rolling, melted sludge of concrete wilderness. Nothing remained higher than a tall man in that part of what had been the Bronx.