“Light’s starting to go,” J.B. commented. “Time to find a place to hole up.”
“Yeah. Feeling hungry. Don’t see much sign of fresh game spoor.”
“Stickies. Once you get a gang of those triple-rad-sick bastards sweeping through a part of the land, then it gets purged of life. What doesn’t get chilled runs.”
“Long as they keep away from us. Things go well, then we might not have to fight them.”
J.B. looked across at him and grinned. “That’ll be the day, pilgrim. That’ll be the day.”
Chapter Twenty-Seven
Once again Ryan and J.B. took to the trees for the night, finding a grove of splendid live oaks standing near a muddy pool, just off the trail, set among the mainly coniferous forest. It was the meeting point of a number of smaller, twisting tracks that snaked away in all directions.
On the map that Wolfram had given them, it looked as though they were less than ten miles from the fortress, plumb in the middle of the region that had been booby-trapped. In the failing light Ryan and the Armorer had peered carefully at the ground around the paths, looking for some signs of disturbed earth. But there was nothing to be seen.
The two friends once more used their belts to secure themselves in a fork, about thirty feet from the dangers of the ground, sitting together as the coppery sun sank to the west and the shadows deepened.
A half hour back they’d passed some bushes brimming with a rich crop that resembled large thimble-berries, tinted purple, but with an unusual scented sweetness. Both men had dark stains around their mouths from the fruit.
The alfresco meal had taken a little of the edge of hunger away, but the talk turned to what they would have liked to have eaten for supper.
“Venison,” J.B. said. “Roasted over apple wood and served with baked potatoes and fresh-picked peas. Topped off with a cherry cobbler.”
Ryan nodded. “Could do worse. Breast of duck in a black-currant sauce with creamed potatoes, flavored with nutmeg, and lashings of gravy. Sliced beans on the side. And a steamed pudding with fresh cream and molasses.”
The Armorer laughed and punched Ryan on the shoulder. “Enough. Dark night, but that’s enough! I’ll drown on my own spit if we keep going like this.”
They were silent for a while as evening slithered toward full night.
RYAN WOKE WITH A START, aware of the familiar feeling of falling, a sensation that Doc had once told him was an atavistic response, dating back from primeval days when the hunter-gatherers would spend most nights in the trees to keep themselves from the ferocious beasts that roamed the primitive continents of the world. A slip and a fall would lead inevitably to a rending death.
He rubbed at his eye, glancing around, finding that a bright hunter’s moon now shone serenely through the trees, turning the small lake into a silver mirror.
The only sound was a hunting owl, giving a soft hooting, warning of its presence, swooping wide-eyed between the trunks of the surrounding trees, weaving away toward the west as it caught the flicker of the human intruder’s movement.
Ryan aimed his index finger after it, following its jinking flight, whispering to himself, “Bang.”
Being awake, he realized that he needed to relieve the pressure on his bladder and he carefully unbuckled himself, trying not to disturb his companion. He looked all around before climbing down, feeling for the footholds on the slippery bole of the oak, the SIG-Sauer clumping against his right hip, the panga swinging on the other side.
He landed in the soft earth with a clumsy slide and a jolt, jarring his thigh that had been wounded so badly weeks back. “Fireblast!” He rubbed at it, bending and stretching to try to ease the sudden pain.
Walking a little way off from the tree to take a leak, he used the chance to exercise the stiffness from the leg, taking deep breaths of cool, damp air.
Something jumped in the dark water of the pool, leaving spreading circles.
Ryan stopped about fifty paces away from his sleeping partner, unbuttoning his pants and leaning with one hand against a stubby pine, catching the smell of pitch from a scar in the trunk, pissing steadily, the arc of liquid steaming as it splashed into the leaf mold.