With the aid of Ryan’s long machete, they hacked through a screen of tumbled vegetation about forty feet thick, which screened off the walkway and ultimately kept the location of the redoubt and its gateway a secure secret.
On the far side was a crumbling road, winding southward. Standing on the cracked pavement, they heard no sign of life, just the occasional crying of a distant bird and the endless clicking and chirping of insects.
“There’s more water,” said Krysty, pointing ahead. “Cross the road.”
It was a slow-flowing muddy-brown river, wide as the eye could see, moving toward the east; it washed out the remains of the highway. Finnegan, still visibly shocked by the near miss from the mutie alligator, dipped his hand cautiously in the water to wipe off some of the blood. He touched a finger to his mouth.
“Fresh. Not salty like the other.”
“How come this has risen, but the swamps back there look like they’re ’bout the same height they was before the war?” asked Krysty, puzzled.
At first no one answered; then Lori spoke.
“All rivers bigger. No people drink them.”
“That’s the fucking most stupid thing I ever heard,” laughed Hennings. “Rivers rise because there”
Doc Tanner interrupted him with a raised finger, crooked like a claw, the nail yellow as old ivory. “Mock not, my somber-hued brother. Think that we are close to the delta of the old Mississippi River. I would surmise that even now, a century later, barely one-fiftieth of the people live and work in its basin. No factories to drain it. No rest rooms, flushing away millions of gallons. No drinking, as Lori said. No commercial uses at all. No wonder the levels of the streams and rivers have risen.”
“You figure we’re stranded here?”
The old man looked sideways at Ryan. “It is conceivable. Perchance we should go back and try the gateway.”
“What the bastard big freeze does perchance mean?” hissed Finnegan, but nobody answered.
“East or west?” asked J.B.
Ryan looked both ways. The vegetation was stiflingly thick to the east; to the west it looked a little clearer. Along the edge of the river there almost seemed to be some sort of cleared pathway.
“West,” he replied.
It was a path.
Not very wide, flirting with the water, but it was most definitely a trail. After a few paces, Ryan dropped to his knees among the bushes, peering at the marks in the soft ground.
“Animal?” asked Hennings.
“No. There’s something looks like deer. Cloven hoof, sharp. But there’s human feet. Deep tread, working boots. Recent. Let’s be careful.”
The warning wasn’t really necessary. Even young Lori had been with them long enough to realize that life was lived astride a singing blade.
While she had been with them in Alaska, one of the party had mentioned problems to Ryan. She recalled his answer.
“Problems? Solving problems isn’t our business. We deal in death.”
She sensed what that meant.
As before, Ryan led the way, gun cocked and ready, his finger on the trigger. Everyone followed in their places, their own blasters ready for instant action.
Once Ryan thought he caught the sound of human voices ahead. But Krysty’s mutie hearing didn’t register anything, so he figured he was mistaken.
It was an error that within an hour would culminate in the death of one of the party.
THEY FOUND THE VEHICLE less than a quarter mile along the trodden path. It was beached, like a long-dead swollen whale, pulled in among the trees, its rear wheels still in the water. At first glance it looked like a boat on wheels. Its six wheels held it about eight feet above the mud; it had small metal ladders on each side, and the biggest, fattest tires that any of them had ever seentheir diameter was at least six feet. Ryan poked at the tires, finding them amazingly soft and underinflated.
“Swamp buggy,” pronounced Doc Tanner confidently. “Deep tread on the tires. Go through or over just everything you can imagine. Land or water. As well as anything that lies between.”
J.B. clambered up a ladder and peered inside. “Seats for eight. Couple o’ cans of gas. Steers with a rudder kick-bar. Box of old scattergun shells. Fish hooks. Something looks damned like a ramrod. Figure it can’t be. Only blasters from two hundred years back use a ramrod. Muzzle loaders.”