“We’ll pull as well,” Mildred said. “Give more chance.”
“Yeah.” Dean’s worried face appeared above Ryan. “All go for it, Dad.”
“You got it, son.”
The strap became as taut as steel. Ryan drew on all of his strength, gaining additional force from his free left hand. Muscles creaked in his shoulders and across his broad back. With a convulsive effort he kicked both feet together, feeling the suction break for a heartbeat.
“Pull,” he gasped through gritted teeth. “Coming.”
He heard groaning from above him as the four friends gave it everything.
“More!” Ryan panted out the syllable, aware that the mud was reluctantly relaxing its hold on him.
“Moving,” J.B. yelled triumphantly. “One more good one’ll do it, Ryan.”
Now he was free to his belt, the middle of his thighs.
“Hold it there.” J.B. called down. “Can you hang on a second while we reorganize it up here? Angle’s wrong now. Just hold on.”
“Sure. Not much farther.”
As they changed positions above him, there was a heart-stopping moment when the straps loosened and he slipped down a few inches. But they managed to hold the grip and started the upward haul again.
There was a sullen plopping sound as his combat boots broke free of the sticky mud.
From then on it was easy, pulling him free until he could reach the jagged edge of the broken flooring and roll himself up and over to safety.
All five of them lay back, panting with the effort. Dean was beating the dirt with his fist, whooping breathlessly. “Hot pipe, we did it!”
“Thanks, friends,” Ryan said, shaking his head in relief. “Close call. Best try and find myself some fresh water and get cleaned up.”
“Strip that SIG-Sauer, as well,” J.B. warned.
As Ryan sat up, a thought occurred to him. “Hey, where’re the others? Doc, Jak and the woman?”
Chapter Twenty-Eight
It took only a few minutes to be sure that Jak, Doc and Emma had vanished from the suburb as totally as if the tornado had sucked them up and spread their atoms into the dark sky.
“Could the whirlwind have snatched them?” Dean asked. “The ghoulies are all gone.”
“More likely the ghoulies took them,” Ryan said. “Probably got a maze of their tunnels dug under the ville. Often the way they play the game.”
“We going after them?” Mildred asked.
Ryan nodded. “Sure. One thing first. No, two things. Got to clean myself up.”
“I’ll do the blaster,” J.B. said. “Save time.”
“Sure. Then we take a good look for some sign of where they’ve gone.”
THE STORM HAD LEFT PLENTY of fresh water around the devastated suburb of Washington Hole, though a lot of it had simply raised the levels of the quagmire that underlaid the place.
Ryan found a shopping plaza where the central fountain now overflowed with clean rainwater, stripping off and scrubbing away as much of the filth as he could. By the time he’d finished, J.B. returned the SIG-Sauer to him, looking in immaculate showroom condition.
“Greased and ready to kick ass,” Mildred announced.
“Now let’s take a look for the others,” Ryan said, using his sleeve to wipe a few drops of water from the puckered socket of his left eye.
It was less than half an hour since the attack of the ghoulies and the appearance of the tornado.
Even to experienced trackers like Ryan and J.B. the recent cataclysmic storm had destroyed any marks that might have been left by their friends.
After three-quarters of an hour of careful scouting, Ryan called the others together. “Wasting time,” he said. “No chance of seeing where they’ve been taken.”
Dean coughed into his hand, gently attracting his father’s attention.
“What is it, son?”
“All the basements are flooded, like the one where you nearly drowned.”
“Yeah?” Ryan’s mouth dropped open. “Right, Dean! Ghoulies can’t have taken them under the ground.”
J.B. banged himself on the forehead, nearly dislodging his fedora. “Stupe! Well done, Dean.” The boy turned pink with pleasure at the rare praise from the Armorer. “Means we got to look farther afield for tracks. They’ll have moved after the rain eased, so if we spread out we can find the trail quicker.”