THE SIGN WAS crudely painted, white lettering daubed with scant respect for spelling, across a broken hunk of dark blue plastic, about four feet square: Mom’s Fyness Jerkiee. Best In Weste. Just The Myle A Long This Trayle.
” ‘Mom’s finest jerky,’ ” Jak read slowly. “That what says?”
Ryan nodded. “Close enough. A mile along the trail. Hope the cooking’s better than the writing.”
“We going to risk it?” J.B. pushed back his hat, glancing up at the lowering sky. “Got to be getting closer to the HQ of these mysterious Children of the Rock.”
Ryan sniffed. “Step careful. Recce on the way in. We should have enough firepower to take on most hostiles.”
“A mile on.” Mildred looked over at Doc, who was blowing his nose vigorously into his blue swallow’s-eye kerchief. “You all right?”
He turned bleary eyes toward her. “I would be the first to admit that my health has deteriorated a little within the last few minutes, Dr. Wyeth. A closeness of the chest and tightness in the throat.” He coughed again. “And a pernicious trembling in the joints.”
“You well enough to carry on a ways, Doc?” Ryan asked. “To this Mom’s place?”
“I believe so. Let us put the issue to the testing place, shall we?”
Ryan grinned. As long as the old man could still talk like that, then he couldn’t be feeling too bad. “Fine. Let’s move onto extended skirmish line, friends. Condition red.”
A CLOUD OF DRIZZLE swept through the dripping pines, as cold as charity. Ryan, leading the way, almost missed the second notice, tipped on one side like a drunkard’s dream, half-hidden among some long-thorned brambles: Mom Jerkee. Ahed On Ryte. Soon.
The rain had stopped almost as quickly as it had started, leaving the trail dotted with silvery puddles among the wag-rutted mud.
The sky was like unpolished pewter, dismal and oppressive, casting deep shadows beneath the trees that pressed up against the edges of the track. The movement caught Ryan’s eye. His hand dropped in a conditioned combat reflex onto the chill butt of the SIG-Sauer as he half turned, crouching slightly, perfectly balanced.
Behind him, everyone reacted fast—everyone except Doc, who was busily involved in blowing his nose again. Blasters were drawn, and everyone stopped, looking around them.
In among the blackness, Ryan caught another flicker of deeper darkness, the glint of golden eyes. Now his blaster was drawn and cocked. Doc muffled a liquid cough, fumbling the massive Le Mat from its deep-cut holster.
“What is it, dear boy?” he whispered. Ryan gestured for silence, concentrating on whatever it was that had snatched his attention. The creature was larger than a beaver and smaller than a hunting dog, short legged with a long scaly tail glistening wetly behind it. It moved slowly, parallel to the blacktop.
His very first thought had been a cougar, but it didn’t seem to be making any attempt to conceal itself from him. There was something in the way it moved that put him in mind of a rat, but he’d never seen a rat that size, not even in the mutie rad-cancered hot spots in the bleakest wilderness of Deathlands.
“Other side,” J.B. whispered, pointing with the stubby muzzle of the Uzi.
Whatever the creature was, there were two more of them on the left side of the trail.
Ryan stood still and waited.
“By the…” Doc’s voice faded into silence, the words vanishing.
Ryan felt his finger tighten on the trigger of the blaster, the barrel of the SIG-Sauer swinging to cover the nearest of the creatures as it came lumbering out from the dark fringe of the forest.
It was a rat.
At least, before the rad sickness burned its way into the genetic codes of its ancestors, it had to once have been an ordinary domestic rat, the sort of rodent that would have skulked in barns and outbuildings and moist cellars.
But several generations over the long winters and the subsequent century had changed it into the monstrous apparition that fumbled its way onto the blacktop, less than thirty yards from Ryan.
It moved slowly, its overgrown claws ticking on the gravel. Its pelt was a bizarre cross between scales and fur, oddly charred. The tail was covered in leprous patches of flaking, infected skin. Its head turned slowly from side to side, trembling with some kind of frightful ague.