“Another day, another dollar,” Doc mumbled, running fingers through his thinning hair.
“You think this place is where Ryan’s trapped?” J.B. asked.
Krysty nodded, looking around at the burned-out buildings and the rivers of water and mud that seemed to run everywhere. As J.B. had said, several of the buildings at the back of the main street were all right, though she could see that there had been a major earth slip to one side that had felled a solid block of four houses, reducing them to tangles of matchwood.
“How we find him?” Jak said.
Krysty looked around, almost as though she expected to see a celestial finger of blazing gold pointing to her lover, or a column of living fire and a glittering angel beating on a sounding gong of brass.
“Close, that way,” she said hesitantly, pointing over toward the ruined homes.
“Best way’s to shout for him,” the Armorer stated. “Spread out a little and all walk through yelling out his name. Best I can think of.”
Krysty chose the side street that held the tumbled houses, her blaster drawn and cocked, calling out at the top of her voice for Ryan.
IT WAS VERY DOUBTFUL that a single person in Deathlands could have survived as long as Ryan under such appalling, life-threatening circumstances.
But everyone had a breaking point, a point at which hope ran out and the senses became numbed and the muscles could no longer hold on.
Finally, even Ryan reached that point.
The massed vermin had attacked him once more and, against all the odds, he’d beaten them away.
Now he was stretching every sinew to hold his head strained back, the oil water lapping at his mouth. Every breath was a desperate struggle, and every single breath was more painful than the one before, with the increasing pressure around his ribs that was crushing his lungs.
He could make out a lightening in the sky, the glow reflected off the hundreds and hundreds of tiny black eyes that were all fixed on his weakening struggles.
It crossed his mind that at least he was going to die in daylight and not in the blackness of night.
“And with my boots on,” he whispered to himself.
For a moment he relaxed and his face dipped under the water, making him cough and splutter.
When he broke the surface again, his ears were filled with the high-pitched squeaking of the mice. Something, probably his own submersion, had disturbed them.
Ryan was suddenly conscious that the ordeal had affected his mind. It seemed to him that the mutie rodents’ cries were mouthing his name, mocking him, as death crept inexorably closer, by an echo of his name.
“Ryan! You here?”
His mind was instantly crystal clear. “Here! Over here in the ruins of the house. Quick!”
He couldn’t help noticing the high thread of ragged panic in his own voice, but he didn’t much care about that.
“I hear you, Ryan.”
“Krysty! This way.”
Boots scrabbled among the wreckage and a shadow appeared between him and the rising sun.
“Gaia! Go away, you little bastards!” A hunk of wood landed among the massed rodents, finally sending them scurrying back to their dark holes.
“Be careful. Whole place is a booby trap . One wrong move and it’ll take me under .”
Krysty reached down and touched him on the cheek. “Hang on, lover. Soon have you out.”
She raised her voice. “Found him! Over here, but step careful.”
“Everyone all right, Krysty?”
“Sure. Don’t talk. Can I help?”
“Support the back of my neck if you can. But watch where you move.”
“Don’t worry. Couple of minutes and we’ll get you free. That’s all.”
But it wasn’t all.
DOC HAD SCRAWLED figures in the mud with a pointed stick. “It is a simple problem in three-dimensional physics and mathematics. There are disparate stresses acting here and here, with the weight being transmitted through the longitudinal cross section of the roofing timbers. As far as we can tell, below the water, there is a similar maze that holds Ryan trapped by the legs and waist.”
They had been there for over an hour. It had been possible to take only one positive step to remove the immediate risk of Ryan drowning in the muddy water that was flowing into the retaining bowl of the wreckage.