James Axler - Separation

“I’ve got a feeling I know why the redoubt has been left alone,” Mildred said as they climbed, the incline becoming steeper with each footfall.

It was a rhetorical statement. They could all quite clearly see what had happened. The centuries of tide had worn the rock to a narrow bridge, the shift in the landscape fashioned by the post-nukecaust nuclear winter rendering a causeway at its narrowest point. Jagged shards of rock fell abruptly away to the razor-sharp granite below, which was consistently being lashed by the current as the tides forced water into the narrow channel. Across the divide, which seemed to be about ten yards in length, the causeway reappeared with the same jagged disruption in the pattern of the dark rock face. It was as though the tide and the earth movement beneath had caused a great chunk of the natural bridge to be ripped wholesale from the causeway and just tossed away, isolating the hill completely from the mainland. Beyond the divide, the causeway widened to join the rest of the coastline, where the greenery was lush and the land looked fertile and verdant.

“Fireblast,” Ryan whispered softly. He knew that if there was some way to bridge the divide, they would reach a landscape that offered the promise of good living and perhaps a friendly ville. To their back lay only an island and the barren hill, with the possibility of a quick mat-trans jump to another place—always assuming their constitutions could take another jump so quickly. Knowing how Doc and Jak were always affected, and from the way in which Dean had suffered with this particular jump, it didn’t seem a viable option this soon.

Jak joined the one-eyed man at the head of the divide and looked down onto the razor-sharp rocks. The albino looked across toward the far side of the gap, screwing up his red eyes to get a better view in the wind that whipped through the hole left by the missing rock.

“If bit shorter, would say try climb down, mebbe get across, then make rope across.”

Ryan nodded briefly. “String some across, then hand-over-hand. Half, mebbe three-quarters, of the distance and we could all make it. But this is a bit much for Doc, mebbe for Mildred and Dean, as well. Anyway, who could get down this side, across and then up the other?”

Jak shrugged. “Mebbe me, if water not run strong down there.”

Ryan cast his eye down to the cross-tide as it crashed on the razored rocks. He grimaced. “Yeah, try to get across those rocks with no tide and you could probably just about make it. But if one of those waves catches you, you’re fucked.”

Jak nodded once. “Cut you up like the sharpest knife.”

“Nothing to do except go back, then,” Ryan stated.

The other companions moved to the edge of the rock for a better view of the channel. Looking along the coastline that lay behind the hill and peninsula, they could see that the drop from the top of the land to the sea below was sheer for as far as the eye could see. Small strips of sand here and there ended in a sheet of rock that would impede any progress, even assuming they had a craft on which to sail around the hill and the causeway. The rock bridge, so violently severed, was their only practical hope of reaching the mainland.

“I fear this may turn out to be something of an anticlimax,” Doc said woefully.

“Mebbe not,” J.B. told them. “We’ve got two choices—go back to the redoubt and get the hell out…”

“Or?” Dean asked.

“Or we try to get to that island, see what it’s like there. Mebbe there’s some life of some kind, or mebbe just a place we could rest up for some time.”

“Life?” Mildred questioned. “John, how the hell could anyone live on there, cut off from anywhere else?”

The Armorer gave her a rare grin. “I only said mebbe, Millie,” he countered.

They turned and walked back down the incline of the road to the base of the hill.

“What do you think, Dad?” Dean asked. “Reckon we could get out to the island?”

“Not keen on making another jump so soon?” Ryan queried.

Dean tried to keep the darkness out of his voice, but couldn’t stop it crossing his brow as he spoke. “I can’t say as I’d be too happy about having to do that,” he said simply.

“That is something on which I think many, if not all, of us would agree,” Doc muttered.

“Rather chance water than go back to mat-trans so soon,” Jak added.

“I figured you’d mebbe all feel that way,” the one-eyed man said as they hit the road base and rounded the circumference of the hill. They came to the thin strip of beach that petered out into nothing at the bend of the land.

Ryan looked toward the island, judging not so much the distance or the terrain as the state of the water that lay between. For about half a mile or so the water was quite calm. It also seemed to be calm as it neared the shore of the island. However, there was about a mile of rough sea between these two points, the white water pointing to a boiling rage of current beneath the almost-calm surface.

“Do you think we can make it across that, especially with no raft of any kind—and nothing that I can see around here to build one?” J.B. asked.

Ryan shook his head. “It’s a hard call,” he mused. “I figure we’re all strong enough to make the distance. The only problem is just how much of a bastard that current in the middle is going to be.” He continued, pointing to the white water that speckled the surface, “And how deep is this channel? Are there rocks under the current like the ones we’ve just seen, waiting to rip us to shreds if we get pushed onto them?”

“That’s an awful lot of maybes,” Mildred mused before a grin creased her features. “I’ll tell you something, though. We should go back to the redoubt and have a look around. There may just be something we can use in there.”

“I doubt that,” Ryan said with a resigned tone. “I can’t remember ever seeing anything like a raft or boat in any redoubt we’ve ever been in.”

“Yeah, but when was the last time we landed up in a redoubt so close to the ocean?” Mildred countered.

Ryan paused and thought about that. “Not any time I can recall,” he said finally.

“Exactly,” Mildred said. “The way I see it, there’s a chance that whoever used that redoubt before skydark might have had something, even if only for their off-duty hours.”

Ryan’s face broke into a grin. “Now that’s something that I hadn’t thought of.”

The group turned and made its way back up the shale-and-gravel road that led to the sec door. They moved freely and quickly, knowing that they were safe from attack, and with a sense of purpose engendered by the search for a craft of some kind to take them across the channel to the island.

As they reached the crest of the hill and the small recess where the sec door lay, Mildred paused to look over her shoulder and across to the island. For just a second she felt a cold shiver run up and down her spine, rippling the muscles and causing a pool of cold sweat to gather in the small of her back. She frowned, wondering why she should have such a portent.

“That’s usually Krysty’s department,” she muttered.

“Did you say something, Mildred?” the red-haired woman asked, moving back to where Mildred was staring across the channel.

“Oh, nothing…” Mildred replied, turning from the sea to walk through the now-open sec door and into the redoubt tunnel with Krysty. They walked in silence, Krysty puzzled as to what Mildred had really meant, and Mildred pondering why she had suddenly felt as if something of significance was about to happen.

By the time Krysty and Mildred had caught up with the rest of the companions, they were already in the elevator.

“Hurry up,” Dean said urgently. “We need to scour the dorms and the storage areas.”