They could see small, dark figures silhouetted against the light violet of the sky, scurrying toward the middle of the bridge, swinging hand over hand like tiny malevolent insects. Unlike the muties from farther upstream, these wore long cowled robes that concealed their faces and most of their bodies.
“They got no blasters,” Jak said.
“Some got stones. And those two on the left have hunting bows,” Krysty exclaimed, pointing with the muzzle of her P7A-13 handgun.
34
The raft was swooping fast toward the bridge, pitching and rolling. Ryan squinted ahead, clutching his G-12 caseless, trying to estimate how severe the threat was. Getting involved in a firefight in these circumstances was highly hazardous. The enemy, if proved hostile, held all of the jack. To try to blow them off their vantage point would be difficult at best, and extremely costly in ammo at worst. Even an ace shot like Ryan Cawdor couldn’t guarantee wreaking much havoc from the unsteady plat-form of the waterlogged and rotating raft.
“Hold fire!” he yelled, hoping everyone could hear him above the pounding of the white-topped waves surround-ing them.
“Be hard to chill ’em,” Jak shouted from the front of the raft, where he crouched with his beloved Magnum, the spray washing over him.
“Doc! You an’ Lori take that steering oar and try to keep the bastard steady. Keep her going forward and hold her from circling.”
The girl and the old man staggered to the stern, Doc slipping and coming within an inch of toppling into the swollen waters. But they clawed a hold on the misshapen branch that trailed in the river, throwing their combined weight against it, gradually controlling the swinging of the clumsy craft. It was some improvement, but the chances of pulling off any accurate shooting were still dozens to one.
There were about thirty people on the fragile bridge, making it pitch and dip even lower.
Oddly none of them was showing any obvious signs of aggression toward Ryan and his group, no waving of fists or throwing of stones. The couple with bows simply held them, unstrung, in their hands.
35
J.B. glanced toward Ryan, the unspoken question clear on his face. He reached up and wiped spots of water off his wire-rimmed glasses, shaking his head in puzzlement.
“Why don’t they…?”
Ryan readied himself. “Mebbe they aren’t against us.”
Doc heard him above the sound of the river. “Wrong, my dear Ryan. Anyone who is not for us, must be against us.”
They were less than two hundred yards from the bridge.
One hundred yards.
“They’re going t’let us through,” Jak yelped, staring up at the hooded strangers.
“Mebbe,” Ryan muttered. It was true what Doc had shouted. In the ravaged world of Deathlands you had few friends. And a mess of enemies.
Twenty yards.
A fish leaped in the air off to the left, bursting in rain-bow spray, taking everyone’s eyes for a crucial moment.
“We making…” began Lori, eyes wide with the ten-sion of the second.
Dangling monkeylike from the center span of twisted cords, one of the silent watchers reached out as the raft floated directly beneath him-or her-and opened a hand, allowing something to drop. The object landed with a metallic thud on the logs, hitting the mast and wedging itself between two of the knotted creepers.
It was oval in shape, about the size of a man’s fist. The top was dull, steel glinting through a number of gouged scratches. There were scarlet and blue bands painted around it.
“Implo-gren!” J.B. shouted in a thin, cracking voice, shaken into dropping his normal laconic mask at the sight of the bomb.
36
It had been a similar implosion grenade that had bro-ken through the creeping fog when Ryan had entered the first mat-trans gateway. Using some very basic experi-mental anti-grav material, the hand bombs created a sud-den and extremely violent vacuum so that everything around the edge of the detonation was sucked into it. The displacement was more ferocious than with a conven-tional explosion. Very few of the implo-grens had been made, and it flashed through Ryan’s mind, even at that moment of maximum danger, to wonder how these iso-lated villagers had gotten hold of one.