Genesis Echo (Deathlands 25) by James Axler

“Sure. Not best idea. Left warning anyone came by.” He realized how infectious Jak’s clipped way of speech was.

“Bad rad leak,” the albino said.

“How far to where you’re camped?”

“Less than mile. Good wag?”

“Good enough.”

They reached the Volvo, and Jak greeted old and new friends alike with a formal clasp of the hand.

“Come meet others,” he said.

“Be good,” Ryan agreed. “Been a long time.”

THE TALK AROUND THE FIRE was like the most complex Navaho rug, intricately woven and interwoven, with everyone wanting to add their own strands to the pattern. Dean told his father about a bobcat he’d nearly shot, Mildred and J.B. whispered to one side of the fire, Jak was in earnest conversation with Trader and Abe about how best to balance a throwing knife, Doc and Sukie were the quietest.

Ryan and Krysty decided, unspokenly, to save their private talk for bed.

THEIR BLANKETS LAY between the land wag and the fire, giving them the best of seclusion and warmth. By twelve, the night had turned bitingly cold. Away beyond the truck, by a nest of young sycamores, the horses moved quietly.

Krysty lay on her elbow, her breathing returning slowly to normal. “That was good, lover,” she said.

“Always is,” he replied.

“That’s glib. You know what I mean. After all those weeks away, that was very good.”

He lay flat on his back, her thigh resting over his, just brushing against his cock, making it give the first faint stirrings of revived life.

“Good to be all back together,” he said.

“I suppose so.”

“Suppose?”

“Doc’s new woman. Sukie. There’s unease between them, isn’t there?”

“Partly over that letter she took. But I think she’s learned her lesson.”

“She riding with us?”

Ryan smiled, his teeth white in the ruddy glow from the dying fire. “Who knows, lover? Still a lot of talking to be done in the next day or so.”

“Doc was upset at leaving Judas at the ranch,” Krysty said. “Funny. Best example of a love-hate relationship that I ever did see.”

“Couldn’t have gotten it on the wag. Judas would’ve kicked out the walls.”

“You left it tied or free?”

“Free. Doc suggested, at the last moment, that he’d ride the mule up here. Too slow, we figured. But it can leave the spread if it wants to do that. Got enough sense. More sense than a lot of people.”

“Talks cheap, Ryan.”

“I know it. Just don’t look for trouble when there isn’t any. Fact is, being with the old man again hasn’t been easy. Still thinks he runs J.B. and me, like when we rode the war wags together. Had some straightedge moments.”

“Better? Has it been getting” Krysty gasped as he took one of her nipples between finger and thumb and gently squeezed and rolled it. “That’sYeah, lover Oh, yeah.”

The conversation rested on the back burner for the next fifteen minutes or so.

THEY MADE LOVE for a third time, just as the faint glimmer of the false dawn was seeping into the canyon, over the jagged tops of the hills around.

Ryan had awakened, blinking his good eye open, feeling the remnants of a dream in which he lay in a bed with a dead man, whose bony fingers, gloved in dangling shreds of stale flesh and papyrus skin, were gripping his own mouth and nose, making breath impossible and death certain.

His heart was pounding, and he was aware on waking of the wonder of having the woman he loved at his side.

Krysty, deeply sensitive, felt Ryan’s distress and came from sleep with him. She folded her arms around him and clutched him to her until the darkness of the nightmare had eased away and he was quiet.

“Bad?” she whispered, glancing around to see if anyone else had been disturbed, checking them all off in her mind J.B. and Mildred, bundled together; four separate hammocks that were Dean, Jak, Trader and Abe; and a last blurred heap of bedding that concealed Doc and Sukie.

“Not good. Rad-sick man at the ranch.”

“Ronny Warren?”

“Yeah, that was the name.”

“Poor bastard. He and the woman thought they’d found their hearts’ desire. Turned out they’d just taken their bane to their souls.”