They had barely finished checking the bodies when Jak returned to them, wiping the leaf-shaped blade of one of his throwing knives on the sleeve of his jacket, whistling under his breath.
Ryan glanced across at him, eyebrows raised in a question. As more lightning hissed close by and thunder filled the forest, Jak simply nodded.
“Good.”
“Think they were those Children of the Rock?” Krysty asked, looking around at the carnage.
“Could be. But we’ve come across this sort before. Let’s get him down off the tree,” Ryan said, pointing at the tortured body.
“Seemed more like a crowd of penitents,” Mildred suggested, reloading her blaster. “I vacationed a few times in the Southwest and came across them down there. All across New Mexico, and into Colorado. And parts of Arizona. They were real big on crucifixion, I recall.”
“And flagellation,” Doc added. “Mortifying the body to cleanse the spirit.”
They managed to lever out the long iron nails, carefully lowering the raggled body to the wet ground. The center of the storm seemed to have passed them by, and the rain had eased to a steady drizzle.
“We aren’t going to bury him, are we, lover?” Krysty asked.
“No. Carry him back down the path and put him in the river. It’s in flood, and he’ll get carried well away from here. It’s all we can do for him.”
“How about the rest of them, Dad?” Dean asked.
“Leave them. Soon as we put him in the water, we can move on again. There’s far too much blood and too many corpses in this part of Deathlands.”
THE CHEM STORM WAS behaving oddly. Having rushed upon them, it had eased away to the south. But within ten minutes the wind had changed and the rain turned back into a torrential downpour, battering at the trees, driven by the howling wind into the faces of Ryan and his companions.
By the time they’d struggled through the darkness down the winding, treacherous path with the heavy body, all of them had taken at least one fall and were covered in slick, dark mud.
“River’s around the next bend,” J.B. panted. “Need to cross it if we want to get north and west along the highway and get in among the really tall timber.”
“Listen to that noise!” exclaimed Doc, who was wrestling with the dead man’s legs. “It sounds to me as though that little river has become something of a flood.”
Jak was out at point and he suddenly reappeared, shoulders hunched. “Bad news,” he yelled, cupping his hands to his mouth.
Ryan rubbed at his good eye. The water had penetrated behind the patch over his missing eye, stinging the socket. “What is it, Jak?”
“River’s up.”
“Much?”
The teenager grinned wolfishly at the question, holding his long-fingered hands as far apart as they would possibly go. “Plenty,” he called.
“We get across?” yelled the Armorer, who was supporting the shoulders of the slippery, naked body, barely managing to keep it up out of the dirt.
“No way. Fucking impossible!”
As soon as Ryan rounded the corner and saw the state of the river, he knew that Jak was correct. There was no way at all that they could cross the foaming inferno that interrupted the trail ahead of them.
Chapter Ten
They heaved the corpse into the river, taking the greatest care that none of them lost their footing and followed it into the tumbling torrent. It dipped and rose, riding the whirlpools and rapids, one arm reaching out of the white frothing bubbles, as though the dead man had revived and was seeking help from the silent watchers on the bank.
“Poor bastard,” Mildred said very quietly.
“Least blood price paid. Paid good odds.” Jak smiled at the woman.
The lightning and thunder of the chem storm had passed, but the wind had risen to something close to hurricane strength and the rain was so heavy that if you stood with your face upturned there was a risk of drowning. The water was icy cold and tasted of rusty iron on the tongue.
The rippled blacktop vanished beneath the turbulent river and reappeared, tantalizingly close, on the other bank. It was barely twenty yards from side to side. Ryan had no doubt that when the rains ceased, the river would drop within hours and they would be able to continue their journey.