James Axler – Deathlands

“What if the river stays high?”

“Then we go upstream until we find a place that we can get across.”

She smiled at him. “Thing I love about you, Ryan Cawdor, is your permanent optimism.”

He grinned back at her. “Thing I love about you, Krysty Wroth, is the way you pretend to believe my permanent optimism. Really helps.”

“Thanks, kind sir.”

THE STORM finally moved on, the sheeting rain sinking to a wearisome drizzle that reduced visibility and dripped from the mournful trees.

“Been hours,” Ryan said, wiping moisture from the face of his tiny wrist chron and peering at the liquid-crystal display. “Be lucky to get back tonight.”

“Think they’ll send out a search for us?”

“Doubt it. Not yet. J.B. will have seen the storm and heard about it from the women. He’ll guess that we probably got ourselves caught up in it. Had to shelter. Evening’s coming on. They won’t worry until around the middle of tomorrow.”

Krysty sighed. “Could’ve used a quiet night in bed. Still, least we can probably find somewhere dry to hole up. Climb a tree, lover? I don’t fancy staying on the floor with all the wildlife around here.”

Chapter Twenty-Five

Ryan’s best guess put dusk roughly a half hour away.

Already the sky was darkening, and to the far west there was only a faint sliver of scarlet from the setting sun. The jungle was growing quiet as all the living creatures readied themselves for the night.

Some to be hunters.

Most to be the hunted.

“Least that bastard rain’s finally packed in,” Krysty said. “I don’t believe that I’ll ever get dry. My skin’s turned into one large pink prune.”

“I’m hungry. Should’ve picked some fruit while there was still plenty of light.”

They’d reached the top of the steep ascent, coming out onto a plateau that ran into a hogback ridge and was now widening slowly toward what they guessed was probably another river, or a tributary of the same flooded river that had barred them from returning directly to the village.

The trail was very narrow, parts of it washed away by the storm, twisting and turning under low branches. About two hundred yards ahead of them was a huge flowering bush that marked the junction of several trails. Beyond that there was a pool, covered with a thick smear of bright green lichen, and the obvious signs of a number of campfires having been lit near to it.

“Looks like folks stop there,” Krysty said. “Does that make it a good place or a bad place for us?”

“Cat could jump either way. If we were in Deathlands, then I’d likely say we should risk it and camp for the night. But it isn’t and I don’t.”

“So, where? It’s starting to get kind of cool. Some sort of shelter would be good.”

He looked around them. “We’ll go down to that joining of the trails. There’s a biggish tree there with wide branches and good foliage. Don’t know what kind of tree it is. Never seen one like it before.”

Krysty stretched, rubbing at the small of her back. “Doesn’t sound like a goose-feather mattress, lover. Sure you can’t find us a good motel?”

“Where the best surprise is no surprise,” he replied, quoting the old predark slogan of a motel chain, a saying that Trader had adopted to his own use.

“Right.” She flapped a swarm of tiny gnats away from her face. “Be good if these little pissheads could go away and sleep someplace for the night. And leave us alone.”

Ryan took her in his arms and kissed her hard on the lips. “It’ll be fine,” he said, when they finally broke apart from each other. “Just fine.”

IN THE TROPICAL FOREST, darkness fell like a dropped cloak. One moment they could see the glitter of a scarlet light off the still surface of the pool. Next moment it was blacker than the inside of a beaver hat.

Ryan had led the way down the slippery track to the flowering bush. It carried enormous clusters of white-and-orange petals that gave off a faint scent of pepper and lilac. The tree that stood at its heart was easy to climb and had broad branches that were just as accommodating as they’d seemed from higher up the trail.