James Axler – Trader Redux

For a moment it occurred to him that the scrambled-brain feeling wasn’t unlike making a mat-trans jump while still remaining conscious.

It was total disorientation.

He could do nothing but close his eye and curl up and try to make his body limp.

And wait it out.

The quake probably lasted less than sixty seconds from the first paralyzing jolt of the deep-buried seismic plates to the time that the dust began to settle.

But the earth was still quivering and rolling as Ryan finally succeeded in getting to his feet, fighting for balance, rubbing dirt from his good eye. He looked around for the others, the heaving and pitching beneath his feet reminding him of being on a ship in the middle of the ocean.

“Fireblast!” he breathed, wincing at the deafening noise that surrounded him.

Ryan was suddenly aware of water around his feet, rising quickly to midealf. The place where he stood had been at the center of their camp and had been a dozen feet above the level of the nameless river.

He could just make out the noise of the horses, screaming in their terror. One of them had gone down, its hind legs crushed beneath a great slice of raw rock that had fallen from the cliffs above them. At first there was no sigh of Trader, J.B. or Abe.

Then he glimpsed Trader, Armalite slung over his shoulder, staggering toward him, his face gray with dust, eyes staring from a mask of shock. “Can’t see others!” he shouted to Ryan. The water was still rising inexorably, helping to settle the whirling cloud of dirt. Three of the horsestwo of the pack animals and one of the saddle mares-breasting the river, battling back toward the northern bank, heads held high above the foaming current.

“Goin’ to lose them!” Ryan yelled, grabbing Trader by the arm and pointing to the escaping animals.

A little way upriver, J.B. swung onto the bare back of another of the saddle broncs, a hat jammed on his head, despite the madness of the monster quake. Ryan watched as he urged his horse into the water, obviously bent on pursuing the fleeing animals.

A dead horse floated by, a raw stump of muscle and bone where its head should have been.

The noise level was easing, and the swaying and rippling of the ground was also becoming less.

“There’s what’s his name!” Trader bellowed, pointing with the muzzle of his blaster.

“Abe?”

“Yeah. Think so. Someone in the river. Trying for the other side.”

Ryan narrowed his eye, but he wasn’t sure that he saw anything. There might have been someone, or something, at the farthest point of what had been a shallow ford, near the far bank. Then a bunch of debris surged into view, with uprooted trees in its teeth, passing the figure. When it had cleared, Ryan was no longer able to make out anyone in the water.

“Gone!” Trader called. “Horses look to be dead or gone across. We best follow.”

It was a good idea, but Ryan had serious doubts that it was still practical.

He retreated even farther up the bank toward the unclimbable rock face, now less than six feet behind them, watching in the moonlight as the river grew higher and faster, its course twisted by the quake.

More broken branches of trees were carried swiftly by, with a large white bird, like a heron, dangling dead among them. Clouds were drifting across the face of the moon, darkening the canyon, making it impossible to see anything that might be happening on the far, northern bank.

“We’re in trouble, Trader,” Ryan said.

“Always a way out. Over, under, around or through.” He grinned at Ryan as he trotted out what was probably the best known of his many sayings.

“Looks like under to me.”

The quake had faded now, the noise replaced by the roaring of the swollen river. It had reached their ankles, and they were backed up against the cliff wall with nowhere else to go. The solid bank where they’d spent the night was being washed away, cutting their footing.

Ryan had managed to grab the Steyr, and he adjusted the strap across his shoulders.