James Axler – Watersleep

Neither Jak nor Krysty particularly liked the sound of that.

Chapter Fourteen

After the two muties disappeared, Ryan feared the worse.

Perhaps he and the others were nothing more than a curiosity, five incredibly stupid outlanders baking and dying in the heat. How long could they last out there in the Lantic without food or drink? How long before they used their own weapons to ease the pain of the weaker ones?

Ryan knew land was close by. J.B. had used his minisextant and confirmed that the coast of Georgia was within their grasp…with the boost of an outboard engine or a sail or even paddles for the bastard raft they were currently calling home. The storm couldn’t have taken them that far off course.

Suddenly the raft shifted and began to lurch for­ward.

“I take back every bad thought I’ve been thinking about the fish man and his wife,” Mildred announced, sliding to the right, then to the left as the raft shifted again. “I think we’re getting a lift.”

“Those muties must be strong as horses if they’re going to try and push us all the way in to shore,” J.B. noted. “If that’s what they’re attempting to do.”

“What else could it be?” Mildred retorted. “This isn’t the easiest way to go about trying to sink us.”

“We heading in the right direction, J.B.?” Ryan asked, shielding his eye and trying to scan the hori­zon.

“I believe so. I’d have to do another reading to be sure, but land should be straight ahead.”

“What if they tear a hole in the raft?” Dean asked, shifting again as the raft surged forward a few more feet.

“He’s got a point,” J.B. said. “Be easier to pull us with a rope.”

The Armorer took the coil he’d used back during the sinking of the Patch to secure Ryan in his frantic and futile search for Krysty and Jak. The lean man lashed one end of the line to a hard plastic ring at the nose of the raft and dangled the other end down into the ocean.

“Think they’ll find it?” Dean asked.

The answer came quickly as the rope went taut in J.B.’s callused hands.

The jerking stopped, and they began to make smoother progress.

Time passed. About every half hour or so, the rope would slacken and the raft would slow and come to a stop. Then, in less than ten minutes, after the muties had gotten their wind back, the trip would resume once more.

All told, the journey took approximately three hours.

The first thing Ryan and the others saw as they approached dry land was a windmill, rotating slowly from a perch high atop a meshlike latticing of scav­enged wood and metal. The fan blades of the wind­mill were painted a serene deep blue, much darker than the azure of the afternoon sky.

As they came closer to the shore, more windmills were revealed to their line of sight, smaller ones join­ing the first, all shapes and sizes. There were dozens of the rickety-looking support structures, each one with a bladed wheel on top, each wheel turning easily in the stiff breeze coming in from the sea. Some of the contraptions shared the same color of blue as the tallest one they had seen first; others were painted in warmer colors, such as red and yellow. Amusingly enough, a few were adorned with a shocking coat of pink.

A shambling maze of wooden steps led down into the mass of windmills from a dock located at the wa­ter’s edge. Ryan saw no other boats or seaworthy crafts. In fact, there was no transportation to be seen at all.

They were now close enough to hear the creaking of the windmills as their blades turned in the breeze.

“Bless my befuddled soul, but we are in Holland,” Doc muttered as he got his first real look at the com­munity of windmills. The old man was still in a semi-state of delirium. “Wooden shoes for everybody, I insist! Tulips of all hues for the taking. Once, tulips were as valuable as precious metals and fine gemstones. An entire economy built on the bulb of a flower, now lost, now common.”