James Axler: Dectra Chain

In less than twelve hours' time.

Ryan slept badly. It was always a gamble with self-heats. When you remembered that they'd been around for all those years, it was something of a miracle that more didn't die of food poisoning after eating them.

But his stomach was disturbed, and he had to go to the small, shadowless cubicles at the end of the dormitory. He could feel sweat rolling down his back, and he was gripped with savage pains that clawed at his guts. Krysty slept through it all.

When he eventually slithered into sleep, it was to find nightmares waiting for him. He was clambering over rocks near pounding waves. The spray lay slick and salty over the gray stones, making them treacherous to the touch. Tiny worms writhed everywhere, miniature jaws lined with needle teeth, snapping at his feet as he crushed them with every clumsy, staggering step. Ryan knew that if he fell they would immediately overwhelm him and fill his eyes, nose and throat.

Overlying the noise of the roaring surf was a sinister clicking, like giant claws snapping together.

It drew closer as he ran and slithered, on the sharp edge of losing his balance, arms flailing, feet slipping. There was a bright, serene moon floating low over the sea, highlighting the veil of blown spume, silver-white across the tops of the long, rolling waves.

Ryan didn't dare to look back over his shoulder, knowing that to do so would be to fall, knowing the frightful creature was scuttling behind him. The moon threw its shadow ahead of him, with the jointed, angular legs.

And the incessant clicking of the claws.

He woke curled into the fetal position, back wet with perspiration, hair matted to his head. With an effort he managed to slow his breathing, trying to relax. Eventually he succeeded in falling into a deeper and more restful sleep.

Morning came all too soon.

There was a fine mist on the sea's face, and a ceaseless drizzle sweeping in from the east carried the taste of salt. Visibility was less than a half mile, and the sun seemed reluctant to put in any land of appearance.

The tide was still high and the seven were able to haul their raft in, using one of the lengths of plastic cord that tied it to the rocks above the high-water mark.

Lori shivered. "Cold, Doc."

He shuddered with her, hunching his shrunken shoulders against the damp. "Phew! Someone's walking over my grave," he muttered crossly. "Not the jolliest of boating weather, is it?"

Ryan squinted across the sound toward where he remembered the land lay. "Figure we can hold a true course on that?" he asked J.B.

"Doubtful. Can't judge currents, directions, wind, tide. None of that. Could get swept out into the Lantic and not know it."

It was true. While they'd been building the raft on the previous afternoon, Ryan had been watching the water, noticing a vicious rip current just about where the ebb tide turned, a mile or so across, with a swirling undertow and ominous areas of flat, oily sea. If they ran into it, then their makeshift raft could break up like a paper boat.

"Best wait," Krysty advised. "Drizzle could stop in a while and then the mist'll burn off."

"Getting soaked to skin here," Jak complained, squatting in the glistening shingle, rain trickling through his snowy hair and turning it the sodden gold of a polar bear's pelt.

"No point going all the way up the blacktop to the redoubt. We'll wait."

Ryan was the leader, so they waited.

Krysty's feelings about the weather turned out to be right. Around seven the rain drifted away across the gray sea, and the mist began to clear from the east.

"I can see the mainland," Krysty said, shading her eyes.

"Long as the fog stays away we should make it. Everyone got their paddles?" Ryan held his own rough-hewn oar.

The raft bobbed at their feet, and he looked at it dubiously.

Krysty read his mind. "This or nothing, lover." Ryan found that the idea of nothing seemed almost attractive at the moment.

"All aboard that's coming aboard!" Doc yelled in a bluff, mock-nautical bellow, stepping on the nearest of the chemical drums, which rolled under his feet like the release of a logjam, nearly throwing him clear over the other side.

"Have some careful, Doc!" Lori shrieked, hurling herself on the raft and grabbing at the old man's waving ankles, pulling him back to a perch of precarious safety near the center of the craft.

The rest of them slowly climbed aboard, Jak remaining on the beach to untie the final tethering rope from the cold rocks. He ran down and hopped on with a nimble ease that made Doc spit into the sea in disgust.

The ebbing tide carried them quickly away from the shore of the island and into the open sea.

To Ryan's relief there didn't seem to be any current in the sound that they couldn't handle. Though the raft of plastic drums was clumsy and difficult to steer, their combined efforts with their paddles kept it going in roughly the right direction, toward the misty shore of what had once been known as the state of Maine.

"Sea's damned cold," Doc complained as their craft butted into a long, gray roller, sending up a shower of bitter salt spray.

Slowly Ile au Haut began to fall away behind them. Ryan took a moment to see that a lot of the top of the mountain had gone, leaving an awkward, crooked shape that concealed the main entrance to the redoubt. He guessed that this had been a result — direct or indirect — of the nuking and probably accounted for the fact that they'd never been able to find the Visitor Center and Initial Indoctrination Module. The earthslide had whisked it into a smear of stone.

"Stop lazing, lover," Krysty panted. "Many a mile to go before we sleep."

"How far d'you figure we've gone?" he asked J.B.

"Not far enough, Ryan."

"Halfway?" Jak gasped. It wasn't entirely clear whether it was a question or a statement.

"More than half," Donfil replied, still digging in his clumsy paddle with a rhythmic, almost mechanical drive, the water swirling in tiny circles about the tip of his blade.

"Yeah. Half is done. Two halfs done, way I feel now." Lori pushed her blond hair out of her eyes and continued paddling.

Doc was resting, chest heaving. "I was never much of an oarsman in my university days, I fear."

"More of cocksMan, Doc?" Jak grinned. But the old man was so tired from his labors that the crude joke didn't even prompt a blush.

"Just shut up and keep rowing," Ryan ordered. They were about two-thirds of the way across, and it was now possible to make out the trees above the shoreline. But the tide was turning, and their progress seemed to be slowing.

"Gonna make it," Ryan gasped, lips peeled back off his strong white teeth in a feral grin.

The raft was bobbing along steadily, now only a quarter mile or so off the beach ahead of them. Every yard of progress was harder than the one before as the swirling tide worked against their efforts. Some of the ropes were becoming loose, the drums rattling and banging against one another. Also, Ryan noticed that they were slowly settling deeper in the water, indicating that some of the chemical containers had tiny leaks.

Lori and Doc had both given up, tired out from paddling. Krysty, Jak and Donfil were all laboring, breath rasping, sweat-soaked. Only J.B. and Ryan kept up a steady stroke, plowing their way remorselessly north.

Away to their left and a little beyond them, Ryan had noticed some kind of disturbance of the sea. But the rise and fall of the long Atlantic rollers made it hard to see what was happening. There was some spray and tossing white water, and a horde of screaming black-capped gulls.

But the muscle-tearing effort of fighting against the pitching of the raft distracted him from trying to investigate the incident any further.