Ryan didn’t mention what the man had told him. Time enough for that if the weather took the turn that Emma had predicted for them at breakfast.
THE WEATHER WAS an odd mix of a chill breeze and overpoweringly humid air.
The early-morning sky was a strange sulfurous color, the deep yellow overlaid with high streaks of crimson. The wind was constantly veering, coming in gusts from the north at one moment then driving in from the southeast.
Emma’s mouth was twitching with nerves, but she didn’t say anything until they were a good quarter mile away from the ville. “Sorry, Ryan. I’m so sorry.”
He grinned and put his arm around her, feeling her trembling. “Don’t worry, Emma. It’ll be fine.”
Chapter Twenty-Six
Joaquin stayed three hundred yards behind them, riding his stallion at a slow walk, reins trailing. He had three sec men with him.
“Getting to be like itch can’t scratch,” Jak moaned. “Why not call them close and use Steyr? They only got muskets. Chill easy.”
Ryan shook his head. “No reason for that. Visibility’s good enough. We can see them just as well as they can see us. Take the broad view, Jak.”
“What?”
“Two possibilities. No tornado, they’ll finally let it be and ride away.”
“If there is tornado?”
Ryan looked up at the darkening sky. “Well, if there is, and it looks like it might just happen, then you have to ask yourself what do they plan to do.”
“Ride in and take Emma away,” J.B. said. “No, I don’t think so.”
“Nor me,” Ryan agreed. “We got them outnumbered and outgunned. They can wait and watch. That’s all.”
THEY ENTERED A PLACE where the nuke-blasting had been less severe. From a hillside it had been possible to look out toward the center of the Washington Hole, the square miles that had been the throbbing and vibrant heart of the great capital metropolis of the United States, the center of the most powerful democratic country in all the world.
It was as people had described it.
“Wasteland,” Mildred said, taking a deep breath. “Can’t believe that something can be wiped away so thoroughly that it’s just a huge crater of barren blackness.”
Doc tapped the ground with his sword stick. “In olden days they would have pulled down every wall, stone by stone, plowed the ground and seeded it with salt so that nothing would ever grow there again.”
“Rad counter’s showing orange into red,” J.B. warned. “Not a place to linger.”
Ryan looked up at the sky, which seemed to be growing more menacing every minute. “Might start thinking about getting some cover. Could be that Emma’s right.”
“Can’t we go back to the redoubt and jump out of here again, Dad?”
“Soon, son.”
Emma looked across at the boy. “You’ll be miserable through most of the long separation, Dean,” she said in the flat toneless voice that indicated she was way beyond control. “But it won’t last forever.”
Jak tapped her on the arm. “Dean and Ryan already been separated,” he said. “Seeing past, Emma.”
Her eyes stared at him, struggling to focus. “No. Definitely future.”
THE SUBURB of old Washington was relatively untouched. Usually such places would have been turned into the epicenter of shantytowns and pestholes. But it was immediately obvious why this place was shunned by norms.
During the quakes, rivers and streams were often diverted. Here, in outer Washington, they had run together, breaking through shattered storm drains and sewers, until the whole region was underlaid by a swamp of brackish, slow-moving sludge that filled the cellars and basements and oozed out into the first floors of many of the buildings.
The sky had become like pewter, dull gray, menacing, with banks of black clouds that swirled around as though propelled by some life of their own.
Ryan glanced behind, trying to spot Joaquin and the sec patrol, but they had vanished into the maze of tumbled ruins.
“Nothing here,” Krysty said. “Why don’t we cut and run, lover? Wasting time in this sinkhole.”
“Not worth going in, is it?” he agreed. “There’s not likely to be anything worth the looking.”
“Horrible stink,” Dean commented, pinching his nose and pulling a face.