“Quake probably broke it open inside. Set the main nuke-power source to leaking. If we went exploring, we’d probably find it cracked wide.”
Jak, Dean and Mildred joined them, leaving Krysty standing alone in the bright sunshine.
“Going in?” Dean asked, his high voice muffled by the echoing space ahead of them.
“No.” Ryan studied the contours of the land above and around the entrance to the old redoubt. “Shame, really,” he said. “Look at that.”
J.B. read his mind. “Yeah. It would have been real easy to do.”
Mildred smiled at him. “You two are like identical twins, some of the time. Symbiosis. Knowing precisely what the other one’s thinking even before you speak. It’s kind of irritating to a mere outsider like me.”
“I was thinking how simple it would have been to have brought down the whole mountainside with a handful of plas-ex,” Ryan explained.
The Armorer put his arm tenderly around Mildred’s shoulders. “If they’d done it years ago, they’d have sealed off the rad leak.”
“Oh, I get it. And then none of them would have been sick. And they could have carried on breeding. How different life could’ve been for them.”
“No fighting Apaches,” Jak added.
“Thriving community, instead of one hanging on the edge of extinction by broken fingernails.” Ryan turned away. “All too late now.”
Krysty called out to them. “I really don’t like this place, friends. Can we get away now?”
Even as she spoke, as though nature were sympathetic to her feelings, a great bank of cloud came sweeping over the tops of the pines, from the north, veiling the sunshine, dropping the temperature and bringing the threat of rain.
Chapter Twenty-Three
It was still pouring. The cloudburst had begun almost as soon as they left the deserted ruins of the redoubt, a cold, driving, penetrating downpour that slanted in from the north. The sky had turned leaden, all trace of blue vanishing, the sun disappearing behind a great bank of cloud. The temperature fell by twenty degrees in as many minutes.
A dank mist appeared, clinging to the upper branches of the enormous trees, so that the sky-scraping tops became totally enveloped in gray white.
By the time they caught the scent of the cooking fires of Hopeville, Ryan and the others were completely soaked through to the skin.
They found that Doc was fast asleep. The woman bidden to care for him was sitting, dozing, by a smoldering pile of embers, her breath smelling of whiskey. She woke with a start as they came dripping in, blinking at them.
“Old gentleman’s been a tad poorly,” she stammered. “Slept some after…after he’d taken a nip of something to fight the fever off from him.”
Mildred leaned over Doc, laying a hand on his forehead, wincing. “He’s burning up,” she said. “It’s not the kind of fever to take you up the hill on the death cart, but enough to make you feel pretty damned rough.”
“Anything you can give him?” Ryan asked. “Mebbe Wolfe has some drugs.”
“Could ask. I guess that—”
“I’ll go ask,” Jak said, having roughly toweled some of the rain from his parchment hair. “Back in minute.”
He slipped out into the murky cold, vanishing like a wraith in the darkening mist.
The woman was sent scurrying out of the hut, and Krysty piled some fresh, dry kindling onto the fire, bringing it back to a healthy blaze. They all quickly peeled off their sodden clothes, drying themselves by the flames, shrouded in blankets as they stood around the fireplace.
The noise and light dragged Doc back from his sleep. He sat up in bed looking startled and surprisingly fragile. “By the Three Kennedys! What malign, monkish figures are forgathered here at their vile ministering?”
“Only us, Doc,” Ryan said reassuringly, seeing the fear depart from the wrinkled face. “How goes it with you?”
“Ah, it passes, dear Ryan.” He coughed. “Would there be any liquid refreshment of any sort available? My throat resembles the front garden of Death Valley, Scotty. Did I ever tell you of the occasion that I was stranded out near Sweetwater? I recall a wheel had come off our trusty Conestoga. No…?” Another rasping cough. “I fear that I am dry, barren, arid, parched. Do you begin to get the picture, my good friends?”