Bitter Fruit
Bitter Fruit
35 in the Deathlands series James Axler
Chapter One
Ryan Cawdor squinted his eye tight against the blazing desert sun hanging like a cancerous boil over White Sands, New Mexico, and wondered what had set his nervous system to jangling a silent alarm. Without checking his wrist chron, he knew he hadn’t been outside the installation much more than ten or fifteen minutes. It was still early afternoon, with much of the day left before him and his group for the recce they’d planned.
The one-eyed warrior paid attention to the warning. Survival in Deathlands depended on a man developing senses that were exceptionally sharp, then having the intelligence to listen when they said something was wrong.
He carried his Steyr SSG-70 rifle at the ready as he jogged up one of the sharper inclines surrounding the installation area. His boots sank through the shifting sand, almost as if they were being sucked down. Pausing near the crest of the incline, he dropped to one knee and surveyed the sandy sea spread out around him.
“Something?” The voice was pitched low and carried across the desert’s surface only far enough to reach Ryan.
Without glancing to his left, Ryan knew his friend, J. B. Dix, was already in position. They’d traveled together for a long time, blooded by the years they’d spent with the Trader in the war wags and bound by mutual respect.
“An itch,” Ryan said. He was a big man, leaned out by harsh living and staying on the move, but packing muscle that still pushed him over two hundred pounds. A scuffed black leather patch covered the hollow where his left eye had been, and beads of perspiration had cut a path across his forehead following the strap. A scar gouged his face from the corner of his right eye to below his mouth, looking waxy in the harsh gleam of the unforgiving sun.
“Damned uncomfortable thing, one of those itches,” J.B. stated in a laconic voice.
“You?” Ryan asked.
“Yeah.”
“Anything?”
“No. Got an idea somebody’s eyeballing us.”
Ryan glanced in the Armorer’s direction. J.B. was a short, wiry man. His steel-rimmed glasses sparked briefly in the sun beneath the battered fedora he wore. His brown shirt and gray pants were stained from long days and hard use. The tops of his high combat boots were barely visible in the powdery sand. “Mebbe we should keep moving.”
“Reckon so.”
“Give me some cover,” Ryan said. “I’ll go down and take a look. If somebody wants in this place, they’re going to have to cross us first.”
“That’s what I was thinking.”
Ryan shifted his weight and picked up the Steyr. The safety was already off. He started down, staying as much within cover as he could.
After the business in South Dakota, Ryan and his group had made a mat-trans jump to Dulces, New Mexico. They’d taken a couple days of downtime to recover from the wear and tear of the last jump, deciding to explore the area on foot, as the wags they’d discovered in the redoubt wouldn’t start.
The journey to White Sands had been relatively quiet. The local mutie bands had been dying slowly from the radiation sickness they’d gotten from living in the area. The survivors worshiped a god they believed lived in the sands of fire, and were bound by arcane ritual to the very thing that made each generation more mutated monsters than anything human. The sustained exposure to radiation ensured none of them would live long.
Ryan paused beside a Hummer, its olive drab color faded over the decades to a sickly greenish gray. Military markings adorned the sides. Only the left rear corner protruded through the tide of sand that had washed over it. A rusted steel rod held the tattered remains of a small United States flag that fluttered halfheartedly in the thin, hot breeze.
Three other vehicles were partially visible in the mounds of sand that had washed in over the installation. All of them were unrecoverable.
Until Jak Lauren had scouted out a hidden entrance to the underground installation, the trip had looked as if it were going to end up as nothing more than wasted effort and needless risk. The albino teenager, Krysty Wroth, Doc Tanner and Mildred Wyeth were all engaged in scouring through the honeycomb of tunnels and rooms they’d found below. Ryan and J.B. had already rotated out for a respite from the heat and the dust below, which bordered on life threatening.