Hellbenders

“John Barrymore, my dear doctor,” Doc enthused, “we had some doubt over whether we would see you again.”

“It’ll take more than this for you to be rid of me, you old buzzard,” Mildred replied as the four piled into the wag.

“Go, Jak,” Ryan snapped as he closed the doors. The albino hunter wasted no time. Putting the wag into reverse, he roared back toward the entrance to the arena and away from the other wags in the convoy. In the dismal light of the storm, he was unwilling to risk reversing the wag all the way through the entrance and perhaps crashing it, so he put the vehicle into a skid and turned it so that he could hit the entrance head-on and get out of the war zone.

As they broke through the almost solid wall of sand that was swirling at the entrance, where the storm was being forced through the restricted gap, the air suddenly became clearer, vision less impaired.

“Where you want me to stop?” Jak asked.

“I don’t,” Ryan replied.

“But I thought—” Krysty began, before Ryan interrupted her.

“Yeah, we were gonna regroup and evaluate, but that’s all changed. That coldheart hell in there is just gonna sort itself out in its own time. We need to head back to the redoubt, see what happens then.”

“Then I drive,” Jak said simply, increasing his speed as they pulled away from the arena of chilling and headed back for the Hellbenders’ deserted base.

The redoubt was eerily quiet when they reached base. They parked the wag, showered wearily and prepared food and drink in a subdued manner, hardly speaking. It was only when they were seated in the now all too empty meeting room that Ayesha spoke.

“Do you think any of the others will get back?”

Ryan shook his head. “I doubt it. They were ready to fight to the chilling, like their leader. Correll was that fanatical, and he instilled that into all of them. Even if a few of them survive the slaughterhouse, I doubt if they’ll have the strength left to get back, even if they get any of the wags going.”

“But we owe it to them to wait,” Krysty added.

They left it for two days, using the time to rest and recuperate. Ryan and J.B. scoured the redoubt for any armory materials that had been left behind, of which there were few; Mildred and Krysty had better luck with the med lab supplies; while Doc and Jak squabbled good naturedly over the self-heat and food and drink supplies.

Dean, meanwhile, joined Danny and Ayesha in starting to explore the old tech that was in the redoubt. From the few things the young men had been able to teach each other, Ayesha was able to add a little from what she had picked up watching her father. It didn’t take any of them much further on, and Dean soon lost heart about being able to crack the secrets of the CD-ROM in their possession, but it was a step in the right direction.

Dean also noticed something developing between Danny and Ayesha that made what happened a few days later completely unsurprising.

As they ate, Ryan said, “I figure it’s pretty clear that no one’s coming back. And I also figure our chance of getting any of that old tech is pretty much gone, as well. There isn’t enough here for all of us to survive, so I reckon we get a good night’s rest, get it together in the morning, then jump through the mat-trans.”

“That should be interesting to see,” Danny remarked, Dean having made him familiar with the machine.

“That suggests you’re not coming with us,” the one-eyed man said.

Danny shook his head, then looked at Ayesha. “No, there’s a lot here for us to find out, then mebbe we’ll try a jump and see what happens, or mebbe just go back to Charity and see if we can get at the rest of the old tech. But, seeing as you’ll be gone and there’ll be food and water to spare, mebbe we’ll just stay here for a while, out of harm’s way,” he finished.

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