“I’m like to get off this boat,” Lori said, screwing up her face like a petulant child, which made everyone laugh at her.
“Let’s head in. There’s a kind of lagoon ahead on the right. Looks like the whole bank got blasted in. Rad count still shows th’edge of orange. Must have been hotter than fireblast around here.”
Doc sighed. “Too true, my dear Mr. Cawdor. Arma-geddon day must have taken the lives of half the good people around here within ten minutes of the first bomb. Half the survivors within forty-eight hours from injuries
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and wounds. Then, of every thousand men, women and children still breathing, perhaps one or two might live be-yond the next three months.”
“Nuke winter took lots, Uncle Tyas McCann told me,” Krysty said.
“Indeed. Projections for that were not, I think, accu-rate. Many scientists said it would be winter for twenty years. After the bombs finished falling and there was a quiet between heaven and earth, the night and darkness and cold came. But within five years I think our climate was back to normal.”
“It’s still not like it was,” Ryan said. “Chem storms. Acid rain down south that can take the skin off a man in five minutes. Still places it hasn’t rained in fifty years. That’s normal?”
“Touche, my dear man. No, things were tipped too far for it ever to be what it was. But it is now as good as it will ever become.”
The six of them slowly steered their raft toward the bank. Jak, splashed in the face by Krysty, licked the spray. “Real salt now.”
“Hudson’s tidal here,” Doc said.
The raft grounded in shallow water, fifty feet or so from the bank.
By the time they’d managed to haul and wrestle the ungainly craft nearer to the bank, the threatening storm had closed in from the west. Thunder rumbled over the hills beyond the river, and jagged forks of lightning punched across the livid sky.
“Tie it up good and safe, Jak,” Ryan called, having to raise his voice above the noise of the racing storm. “Lotta rain upriver, and she could rise and rip the raft away.”
“Best find shelter quick,” J.B. urged. “Seen some buildings uphill a ways.”
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Cedars, balsams and cottonwoods were mixed to-gether on the gently sloping ground, with animal trails winding between them. The light was poor, but Ryan could make out that the spoor was mainly deer, overlay-ing something that might have been wolf.
Each of the six carried a backpack. Doc stooped be-neath the weight of his, looking tired. The incessant rocking and pitching of the roughly bound logs over the past two days was enough to drain anyone’s strength.
Ryan led the way through a bright patch of red-orange flame azaleas, picking his way between the nodding shrubs, ducking beneath some of their twelve-foot-high flowers.
“Where did you… ? Ah, I can see it, J.B. Below the ridge there.”
Ryan recognized the setup. There had been a house dug into the side of the hill, with enormously thick concrete foundations. Below it, facing the indistinct remains of a narrow road, had been a double garage with up-and-over doors. The nukes had totally removed the house, slicing off the top of the slope behind it like a gigantic cleaver. But the garage remained, set deep like a rectangular cave. Over the years, earth had fallen and been washed down around it, building up gray deposits where shrubs had rooted and even trees now grew. The actual garage was nearly filled with windblown leaves.
“Home, sweet is home,” Lori said, dropping her pack and squatting down on her haunches. “Keeper says that.”
“Good defense sightlines,” J.B. observed, sizing the place up. “Mudslide there left a narrow entrance. One person can guard it easy and watch down the hill. Get a fire going near the mouth of the garage. Yeah, Ryan, it looks good.”
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the fire smoldered and smoked at first with the dampness of the wood they dragged in. The leaves inside were so dry that they flared and sparked like tinder, but they wouldn’t sustain a flame properly. Eventually, though, Jak persuaded the fire to brighten, and it cast its glowing light all around the cavernous building.