“Trees look healthy.” Krysty stared around. “But I can’t feel any sort of life.”
“No game. No fish. Not a bird in the sky.” J.B. took off his fedora and fanned it in front of his face to shoo away more of the bothersome insects. “Just these bastard flies. And I don’t fancy eating them.” He flicked at his neck. “Though they don’t seem to have any objection to eating me.”
Ryan looked around, spotting what could have been the twisted wreckage of an old fire watchtower, jutting out several hundred feet above them.
“If I go up there, I should get a view all around. Mebbe find the best way out of this blighted maze of water and islands. Take me about a half hour there and back.”
“Could we all come?” Krysty asked.
“No. We got no way of knowing how far we’re going to have to walk to get something to eat. And drink. Best everyone conserve energy.”
“I confess that I am already feeling just a trifle fatigued,” Doc said. “I shall lay down beneath yonder ridgepole pine and await your return. All that I lack is a jug of wine and a slim volume of verse.”
THE TRACK WAS DUSTY and narrow. Since there appeared to be nothing living in the region, Ryan wondered what kind of creature had made the trail.
As he climbed quickly upward, the sun broke through the sullen cloud cover, casting his shadow ahead of him, making him glad of the cover of the surrounding trees.
Ryan couldn’t get a snatch of an old song out of his mind. He could remember only the first couplet, which was about the letter T standing for both Texas and Tennessee. It dogged him, so that he found himself walking in time to it.
The path wound clear around the peak, offering him views in every direction, though the pines still prevented his seeing too far. Hopefully, by the time he reached the top, it might be possible to work out a route that would take them away from this timbered wilderness toward some sort of civilization.
A large dragonfly, nearly a foot long, hovered in front of him, the light catching its magnificent amethyst-and-onyx scales. Ryan watched it with some caution, knowing that some of these mutie insects could turn out triple-nasty.
But it flew away, wings shimmering like lightning gauze, vanishing among the trees.
Ryan finally reached the top, breathing hard from the tough climb, finding that he had been right. There were the four bent and broken legs of what had once been a fire tower, the cabin overgrown with long grass and fireweed, broken glass tinkling underfoot as he walked up to it.
The view was everything that he’d hoped.
Now that he was above the treeline, he had an uninterrupted vista for several miles in every direction.
The land that they were on at the moment was connected with the narrow causeway to the place that hid the redoubt. There was water nearly all around, but in the one direction, south, there was a stretch about a hundred yards wide that linked up with what looked like mainland.
Ryan shaded his eye, peering toward what seemed to be a thin column of gray smoke rising into the still air. Smoke almost always meant human habitation, and that would mean food. It might mean confrontation, but that was something to face when they needed to.
He didn’t take a bearing on the smoke. There was no point. He had complete confidence in his own sense of direction and knew that he could lead the others toward the fire as soon as he had descended the mysterious little trail.
RYAN HAD BEEN WALKING down the track for only a couple of minutes when he had the odd but unmistakable sensation that someone, or something, was watching him.
There was the familiar prickling at the back of the neck, and his hand was reaching for the butt of the SIG-Sauer before he was fully aware what was happening.
The air seemed still and heavy, but a quick look all around showed him nothing.
He began to holster the blaster again when his acute hearing caught a strange, almost metallic clicking, like a safety being repeatedly snapped on and off.