James Axler – Cold Asylum

The mother stooped her head on its slender neck and touched the twitching body, pushing as if the fawn were teasing her, trying to make it rise and run off with her.

“Oh, that’s heartbreaking.” Mildred looked away from the tragic pastoral scene.

Eventually Dean threw some stones at the deer, forcing it to scamper off into the trees, leaving the young one behind, its blood staining the grass.

RYAN GLANCED AT HIS CHRON, seeing that it was only a couple of hours past noon. The ashes of the fire still glowed, and the stripped carcass of the little deer lay to one side.

Mildred got up and nudged the blackened bones with the toe of her boot. “Poor little Bambi,” she said, barely managing to stifle a belch. “But it sure tasted good. Maybe an onion and ginger sauce would have gone well, along with a puree of creamed carrots, snow peas and a piping of whipped potatoes. Followed by some of my mother’s hot apple pie and a slice of cheese. Still, mustn’t grumble.”

“We moving on?” Krysty asked. “Explore a little more of this garden of Eden?”

“Not the best of metaphors, my dear Krysty,” Doc mumbled sleepily.

“Why?”

“Have you forgotten the cunning snake that tempted Eve with the fruit of wisdom, and thus brought about the total ruination of mankind?”

Krysty smiled. “One thing I haven’t seen around here is a snake. Mebbe we’ll be all right, Doc.”

Ryan stood and blushed leaf mold off his pants. “Enough talk. Time to walk.”

THOUGH THE LAND had looked to be fairly flat from near the entrance to the redoubt, it flowed up and down in a number of gullies and dry washes. Ryan had glanced behind them, trying to locate the actual sec doors, but the angle of the hillside defeated him, keeping them hidden.

There was the occasional oasis of meadow, spotted with lupins and asters, but it was mainly mixed forest, with the tall pines having the edge.

Twice during the next half hour they all heard distant rumbles of thunder, far off to the east. From a grassy knoll Ryan saw that the sky in that direction was darker, streaked with the pink and purple flares of a major chem storm. The light breeze was coming in from the northwest, so there was no great danger of the storm moving their way.

From habit he checked the miniature rad counter clipped to his coat, seeing that the shading was a pale yellow, indicating some minor problems in the vicinity, but nothing serious enough for them to worry about.

They traveled on for a half hour, making their way up a gentle slope, with the predominant conifers giving way to groves of oaks. The sun was hot, throwing pools of light among the leafy shadows.

It was a heaven of a day.

Chapter Fifteen

Ryan dozed, lying on his back, his eye closed, relishing a time out of war, a time of relaxation in a gentle and safe environment. There were no venomous muties or ravening animals or thuggish sec men. Just the wind soughing through the leaves and the afternoon sun declining slowly to the west.

Krysty lay fast asleep at his side, and Dean whittled with his turquoise-hilted knife at the stump of a broken willow branch that he’d picked up along the trail.

Michael was climbing a chestnut tree on the far side of the clearing, a tree so massive that it must have dated from well before skydark.

J.B. was more restless. He sat for a while, then unloaded and reloaded the shotgun with the Remington flechettes. Then he reached out for a handful of desiccated pine cones and juggled two of them, introducing a third and then trying for four, dropping the whole lot He stood again, moving to watch the teenager making steady progress up the tree.

“See if you can spot anything toward where I thought I saw that ville,” he called. Michael waved a hand to show that he’d heard him.

On a stretch of level ground, covered in fine leaf mold, Doc and Mildred were arguing over the Battle of the Little Bighorn.

Using twigs, they’d marked out the winding course of the river, making small hills from the dust to represent the bluffs and steep-sided coulees.