All the while he and Correll had been exchanging views, the other two inhabitants of the room had been sitting in silence, monitoring the storm. Now one of them spoke.
“Look at that!” he whispered in awe.
Outside, the storm was showing no signs of abating. If anything, it had decided to whip itself into even more of a frenzy than ever before. Two banks of clouds, tinged in alternate shades of orange and blue, were buffeting each other from opposing directions, the cross winds that drove them making them clash with a force and speed that caused the dense mass of liquid contained within them to visibly shake, the chem-ridden clouds shuddering at impact, raining all the more heavily and driving their packets of chem-ridden water into the earth. The immovable objects and forces of the clashing clouds caused great sparks of static electricity to shoot across the sky, bolts of orange, red and blue lightning clashing and lighting up the sky until the images from the monitor screens in the darkened room were bright enough to show every line of hate and revenge etched across the face of Correll as Ryan cast an eye over the Hellbenders’ leader. The man’s eyes blazed almost as bright and fierce as the storm.
“Shit,” Correll whispered. “If this doesn’t calm down, there won’t be any Charity or any Summerfield to fight against. I figure we must be safe enough down here—unless a bolt of that lightning hits the rock full on and splits it—but it must be hell on earth to be in those villes right now.” But despite the words, Ryan could detect not a single note of sympathy in Correll’s voice.
“Let’s hope they hold out—come to that, if there’s casualties, let’s hope that your spies in each ville aren’t among them,” Ryan added. “No way we’d know if it was being chilled or fucked-up equipment that stopped them getting in touch.”
Correll didn’t reply. He snorted, almost a sigh as he breathed out heavily. There was an almost imperceptible shaking of his head as his eyes, unblinking, stayed fixed on the screen.
“Nothing we can do,” Ryan said eventually, his attention divided between the screen and the Hellbenders’ leader. “I figure we should try to get some rest and prepare in the morning as though we were setting out. If the storm’s still raging, or if we hear the rendezvous is off from either side, then at least we’re practiced for the real thing.”
His words were practical, but he tried to frame them in a manner that Correll would also find soothing. Not for the first time, Ryan was aware that the gaunt man beside him was walking a knife-edge of sanity, driven almost beyond human endurance by his desire for revenge. If Correll went over the edge, then they would all be doomed, for there was no way that the companions could detach themselves from the Hellbenders at this stage.
For a few moments, it seemed as though Correll hadn’t heard Ryan. Then he turned to face the one-eyed man, his eyes at first cold and blank, then firing with recognition as he dragged himself back from his own personal hell.
“Yeah,” he said finally with the briefest of nods, “Guess you’re right.”
Ryan turned and left the room, but as he paused on the threshold and looked back, he saw that Correll wasn’t about to follow. The gaunt man had turned back to the monitors, his eyes still unblinking.
RYAN FOUND IT difficult to get any more rest during the remaining few hours of night. The memory of Correll’s gaunt, unblinking stare haunted him. The Hellbenders’ leader was reining in all his anger and rage, all the hatred that drove him on. The problem was, if he kept doing this, then there would come a point when it would explode. And the likelihood was that it would explode when they mounted the attack on the twin convoys.
Danny had been right to point this out to Dean, as the younger Cawdor had told them. It was something of which the rest of the companions had also been aware. But Ryan felt, as the leader of the group, that there was little he could do to avoid confrontation over this matter. Their only chance of getting out was to go to the mat-trans and jump, but if they did that they would have to fight their way past Correll’s people, in all likelihood, and this would just exacerbate the man’s rage and bring it out earlier than they had otherwise thought.