The shooting had stopped, as though both sides were aware of external forces beginning to threaten them all.
Krysty turned as Ryan joined her. “I’ve never felt anything as powerful as this, lover.”
The smell of burning sulfur had drifted across the key, filling the nostrils and making the eyes prickle. The dawn had turned to dusk, with clouds towering in the eastern sky, blotting out the light, erasing all shadows.
“Upon my soul,” Doc said. “It’s looking uncommonly like the end of the world.”
Chapter Thirty-Seven
The noise of breaking glass was sudden and total.
Ryan staggered, nearly falling as the ground rocked, then gave a savage jerk to left and right, throwing him against the main gate. Every single pane of glass in the place disintegrated simultaneously as walls and ceilings warped and flexed.
The air was filled with a deafening roar that swamped the ears with sound so intense and painful that Ryan pressed his hands to his head, then looked at his fingers, expecting to see them clotted with blood.
Ever since the great nukings of 2001, the planet had been struggling to get itself back into kilter. But the deep-seated damage to the tectonic plates of Earth wasn’t that easily or quickly remedied. Now, a hundred years later, there were still constant quakes and volcanic activity.
Ryan had seen and experienced hundreds and hundreds of such events throughout the length and breadth of Deathlands, mostly very minor, scarcely even worth mentioning. But this one was in a different league.
Even above the thunderous crashing of the quake, Ryan was aware of a high-pitched clicking and whistling, as the dolphins all went crazy.
Out across the open expanse of scrub and sand, the gasoline fire had almost died away, with only occasional little bursts of purple and orange flames dancing around the blackened wreckage of the two wags.
Yoville and the survivors of his gang were out of sight, scattered among the dunes.
The earth’s rumbling faded away until it sounded like a war wag tackling a steep grade in a low gear, but the ground was still vibrating and twitching.
J.B. looked at Ryan. “Think the worst of it’s over?”
“Don’t know. But the clouds out in the ocean look real bad. If it’s happening under the Lantic as well, then there could be all sorts of shit coming our way.”
One of the older male scientists lost his nerve, running like a headless chicken, mouth gaping open, straight out of the gate, which now sagged crookedly on broken hinges.
Mildred made a halfhearted effort to restrain the man, but the ground was still moving like it had turned to oatmeal, making it almost impossible to maintain balance, and she just missed him.
Ryan watched the staggering, stumbling figure, wondering how long it would be before one of Red Jack Yoville’s gang of killers noticed him.
It was about thirty yards, and three blasters opened up more or less simultaneously, kicking the scientist onto his back into the shifting sand.
In the general confusion and near panic, the death went almost unnoticed.
The quake was now throwing up great clouds of blinding dust, making it impossible to see more than a dozen yards, with visibility shrinking all the time.
Tomwun appeared from the orange haze, shrieking out Ryan’s name.
“What?”
“Harry says there’s big waves breaking up the sea. Says the boats have all been turned over.”
It occurred to Ryan that the natural forces were combining on their side to help them toward a possible victoryapart from the unfortunate fact that those same natural forces would also probably chill them all.
He beckoned the other six around him, shouting at the top of his voice to make sure they could hear them.
“Boats are sunk. War wag gone. They lost over half their men and women by now. Can’t be more than fifteen or so left, plus the one small wag. Best chance we got is to stick real close together and go out after them.”
J.B. nodded, holding on to his fedora with his left hand. “Might be they’re ready to cut and run.”
“Could try for that wag. Take it and head north. Straight out to the redoubt before the whole of the Keys vanishes.” Krysty’s voice was hoarse, her eyes darting like a madwoman, the bright curls of hair strangely dulled, clinging to her skull like a fiery bathing cap.