Trader sniffed and spat. “Don’t need a redhead mutie bitch to tell us that.”
Ryan already bad the SIG-Sauer unbolstered, and he half turned toward the older man, aware of that same dangerous flush of bitter anger.
Controlling it.
“We can always walk right out. Head south and east and we’ll be back with Abe around dawn. Is that what you two would like, huh?”
Neither J.B. nor Trader answered him.
Ryan carried on. “Then we find a nice quiet stone box and set our backs to the wall and wait out the night. That the general idea, is it?”
“For fuck’s sake, Ryan” Trader began the sentence with anger riding high and strong in his voice, then allowed it to trail away into the moist dripping stillness around them. “Let’s get settled.”
“Sure. Sure.”
IT WOULD HAVE BEEN unthinkable to spend the night in such a place, at the heart of a huge nuked ville, without taking every precaution.
Ryan picked out a corner unit, to one side of the mall, where nobody could come at them from the back without being spotted. He offered to take first watch. J.B. picked second and Trader agreed that he’d be on guard through the last part of the night, toward first light.
They all nibbled at some of the beef jerky that they’d taken from the ranch outside Seattle, drank some water. Then the Armorer and Trader lay down, each wrapped in a single blanket, to pass the night.
Ryan sat close to the entrance, where he could look both ways out across the atrium space. His blaster was in his hand, and he leaned his back against the cold wall. J.B. had folded his glasses and tucked them safely in a pocket, lying down and falling almost instantly into a quiet sleep. His scattergun was close beside him.
Trader was less peaceful.
He had twitched and snored as he started to doze off, then began to make a peculiar clicking sound, a noise that surprised Ryan by its shrill, piercing quality, and he nudged the old man with his foot to partly wake him. Trader had simply moaned and muttered, then rolled over onto his other side, still snoring, but not so loudly.
Ryan listened to the oppressive stillness that gathered all around him. He’d read enough horror comix and books, as well as occasionally watching flickering bits of ragged vids, to know that abandoned shopping malls were a favorite resort of monsters and ghouls.
The mouth of the mall acted as an echo chamber for the far-off sounds of the night. Ryan heard screams and barking and snuffling, but nothing seemed to enter the catacomb. Water dripped across the far side of the building, and he once heard what might have been a large frog or a lizard, splashing through one of the dark stagnant pools that lay between the pillars.
It was tempting to get up and stretch his legs, perhaps walk around the cavernous mall for a little while.
But to do that would make himself a vulnerable target if there was anyone watching for him.
He became aware of a thin, fluting sound, like someone playing a tinny, repetitive dirge, the music floating in and around him. Trader seemed aware of it, stirring in his sleep, then becoming quiet again.
Ryan listened to the tune, finding that it was peaceful and restful, lulling him away from any thoughts of potential risks within the deserted mall.
It was very odd that the reedy music had seemed to be so far away, drifting in from somewhere over the western slopes of the distant Cascades, carrying the first flavor of ice and snow. But now it was closer.
A warm, sensual sound enveloped Ryan in its beauty, taking away the threat of imminent danger from the creatures of the night beyond the mall.
It took him back to his early childhood, before violence and hatred had marked him for its own, in the gentle, blue-misted Shens, when life had been secure and he had known brief periods of true happiness.
All of that came to him borne on the feathered wings of the swelling music.
He ran barefoot over cropped turf beneath a golden summer sun, the scent of clover fields filling his nostrils.