THEY TOOK A BREAK about ten minutes later, resting in another clearing, all of them flopping to the ground, close to exhaustion.
“Never known anything like this humidity and heat for sapping strength,” Ryan said.
“Doc’s not handling it well.” Mildred had walked over to join Ryan and Krysty.
The old man was sitting fanning himself with J.B.’s fedora, his lips moving as he muttered to himself. In the stillness it was just possible to hear what he was saying.
“Catch the blood in the vessel with the pestle. Not the flagon with the dragon. Which has the true brew? Truth has the witch’s brew.” He smiled to himself as he mopped his brow with his blue kerchief. “Chalice from the palace? Or is that the one that holds the poisoned pellet? Caught at the court of King Arthur. If you have a boil, you must lance it a lot.”
“Off his head,” Krysty said. “Babbling total nonsense, poor old bastard.”
“Can I recce, Dad?”
Ryan nodded. “My orders are very simple. To go on a recce and find us some good fresh water, within less than a hundred yards from here. And if you sort out some food, then you get a double-plus point.”
“On my way.”
“And Dean”
“Yeah?”
“Careful.”
“Sure.”
Ryan lay back on the lush grass and closed his eye, thinking about the location of this latest jump somewhere to the south of Mexico. His knowledge of the geography of Deathlands was second to nobody. But that knowledge extended only a few dozen miles south of the big Grandee.
He dozed, his last sentient thought involved with wondering whether this might be the Shangri-la that he and Krysty were endlessly searching for. Their Paradise. Their Promised Land. The Golden City.
In Ryan’s mind there was water and pasture and maybe mountains. A small homestead, secure and solid. And himself there with Krysty and with Dean. It was a place of safety, where a man could finally stop all the running and the feuding and the fighting and the chilling.
And maybe there would be more children. That part of the picture always seemed to be a little blurred.
Someone was shaking him.
For a fraction of a broken moment, Ryan’s hand fell to the butt of the SIG-Sauer, his fighting instinct taking over.
“Dad.”
The hand moved from the blaster.
“Dad!”
“What is it, Dean?” Ryan sat up and opened his right eye, feeling the beginnings of a headache lurking somewhere behind the ruins of his left eye.
“Found it.”
“What?”
“Water. Just around the next corner. And there’s loads of fruit there.”
Ryan blinked, aware that his son’s excited face was streaked with sticky threads of yellow juice. “Sure it’s good to eat?” he asked.
“Course. Delicious. Peaches and nectarines and some other stuff I don’t know the names of.”
Everyone else had sat up as the boy came running excitedly into the clearing. Even Doc seemed to have snapped back into the real world.
“What kind of water, boy?” Mildred called.
“Hey, little water boy, set your water bucket down,” Doc sang tunefully. “And bring me a long cool drink, there’s a sweet Ganymede.”
Dean turned to the old man. “Doc, that’s not my name. Are you feeling ?”
“Feeling double fine and looking triple good, thank you, Dean Cawdor. Though I confess that I was fatigued for a moment or two due to the lack of access to the best produce of Adam’s brewery. But now you bring us the finest news. Ganymede. Cupbearer to the gods. It is drinkable, is it, lad?”
“Sure.”
“Tried it?” Jak asked, standing up. The teenager seemed to suffer from the damp heat less than the others, though Ryan knew that a hot bright sun was bad news for his deathly white skin.
“Sure.”
“No piranhas?” Mildred asked.
The boy’s smile vanished and his eagerness evaporated. “Don’t think there’s Never looked.”
“Hell,” Ryan said, “let’s go see.”
Chapter Six
There were no piranhas.
Dean led them along, scampering like Puck, beckoning for them to follow him around the curving track, past a bank of fragile violet orchids.
“Right here!” he shouted, his bright voice muffled by the surrounding walls of dark vegetation. Behind him, a small furry animal skittered across the path and disappeared, but Dean never even saw it.