There was a silence. Doc Tanner was hugging the trembling Lori, both of them still dripping muddy water from their new fur coats. J.B. squinted up at the sky.
“Could be a storm. Road down yonder. Mebbe best we head for it.”
“ANYONE GOT ANY PYROTABS?”
There was a general shaking of heads and shrugging of shoulders. Jak looked at J.B. “What are they?”
“Pyrotabs? Self-igniting pellets. Start a fire quick and easy.”
Ryan whistled between his teeth. “Going to get cold in a while. Need a fire.”
“I got matches. Always carry ’em.” Jak fumbled in the pockets of his jacket, pulling out various small, intriguing packages, most of them wrapped in clear plastic to keep them from getting wet.
“What’s that?” Krysty said, reaching out as fast as a striking rattler to snatch a packet of fine white powder off the boy’s palm.
“Give it back.”
“Careful, son,” Ryan warned, sensing trouble in the way the albino’s body had tensed.
“Gimme, Krysty.”
The girl eased open the self-seal top and dipped the tip of her index finger into the powder. She raised the finger to her lips then pulled a face. “Jolt.”
“Can I try?” Lori asked. “I like jolt. Quint had some. And crack. Jolt was best.”
“No,” Krysty said. “Jolt’s the worst. Mix of heroin and coke. Lift you up and knock you down all in one hard hit.”
“Quint, my husband, said jolt was good. Gave me a lot all the time.”
“Yeah,” Finnegan said quietly. “And we know all about that poisonous little double-poor bastard.”
“Give it back,” Jak repeated. “I can handle it. Only do some now and then.”
Ryan held his hand out, and Krysty put the packet in his fingers. They were all sitting on a wide ledge, overlooking the valley below. The sky was changing from pallid blue to vivid gold, with crimson chem-storms threatening from the west.
“You journey with us, fight with us, then you live by our rules. You don’t like it, then get out, Jak. One rule is no drugs.”
“I can” he began.
“Handle it? I know. I’ve seen a lot of men and women say that. And I’ve seen a lot of fucking stoned corpses.” Ryan’s voice rose in anger. “You mess around with your head and your reflexes go, kid. Your reflexes go and I don’t want you at my back when the muties come in at us. I want someone clean.”
“So you’re going to throw over cliff?” Jak asked with sullen anger.
“Wrong, Jak,” Ryan replied, holding out the package. “You throw it over. And any more jolt you got on you.”
“Don’t have more.”
“Then throw this away.”
The boy reached for it, letting it lie for a moment on the white palm of his hand as he shook his head back to clear his hair from his eyes. “Waste, Ryan. Paid good creds for this.”
“Waste of jack then, wasn’t it?” Finnegan said.
They all watched as the slim-built boy rose to his feet and stood a moment on the edge of the drop. He peeled back the top of the plastic and then shook it so that the white hallucinogenic powder exploded like a tiny cloud in front of him, the rising wind dispersing it almost instantly.
“Satisfied, Ryan?”
“Yeah.”
There was a light fluttering of rain. Toward the northern peaks they saw a jagged stripe of silver lightning, then another, the rumble of the thunder taking several seconds to reach them.
“I figure that’ll pass by,” J.B. said. “But night’s not far off.”
“You done a sighting on where we are?” Ryan asked. The Armorer carried a neat collapsible sextant with him, which could be used to determine their position. He also had an almost photographic memory for any map or plan. Once he’d seen it, then it was locked away deep inside his formidable memory.
“Yeah. Just ‘fore you came down to join us. Where we figured.”
“Oregon?”
“Near as I can tell we’re to the south of it. Those big snow-tops were called the Cascades. See that spread of trees?” He pointed to where sharp-topped pines speckled the hillsides. “Called Rogue River Forest. Up to the north there used to be a famous place. Big, deep lake in the middle of an old volcano. Called Crater Lake. Probably nuked out of sight now.”