“How did you know about our boat?” Ryan asked the woman.
“Mike told me. Mike and Ida,” she replied.
“Mike and Ida?” Dean retorted. “What kind of stupe names are those?”
“Mike and Ida are what we call the two Dwellers who saved your ass, boy,” Shauna said. “You’ve seen them, so you know they’re muties. Far as I can tell, Mike must’ve heard the explosion, mebbe he was even out that way when it happened. He’s the one who found you, came back and discussed it with his people. They sent him to me, and we were all in agreement to bring you in.”
Ryan tamped down his rage and released his grip on Shauna’s arm.
She rubbed her upper arm vigorously to return the circulation. Ryan’s fingers had clamped down like steel bands.
“Now,” she said, “I’m letting all of you keep your blasters, just to show we can trust one another. Here at the commune, our day-to-day survival depends on our word.”
“My word’s good,” Ryan said. “You’ll have no trouble from us.”
“You speak for the ones with you?” came the voice behind the shotgun.
“I do.”
“I’m coming out, then.”
A tall lean man with long blond hair and brown eyes stepped from hiding. For a change, he wasn’t wearing one of the jumpsuits. He wasn’t wearing much of anything at all but a pair of oft-repaired, cutoff blue jeans and a worn pair of sandals. Besides staying cool in the heat, the reason for his lack of clothing was undoubtedly to maintain a rich brown tan, and to show off the ornate tattooing that covered his entire body.
The shotgun was still leveled at the group.
“Name’s Alan Carter,” the man finally said, lowering the weapon. “I heard who you are. I’m sec man for the commune.”
“Real trusting for a sec man, aren’t you?” J.B. asked.
“Not really. But you said the magic word when you mentioned Poseidon,” Carter responded. “I, for one, would like to see him dead, and any enemy of his is a friend of mine.”
Ryan took in the pattern of tattoos that wrapped around Carter’s chest, back, neck, arms and legs. The canvas his body had provided was a work of skin art. The subject seemed to be a mix of demons and machinery: skeletons with blazing skulls atop roaring motorcycles; green-faced monsters with pop-eyes and fangs, their tongues lolling out long and wet behind them as they shifted gears with floor-clutch rigs as big as their freakish heads; even homed devils atop rocket ships, waving their pitchforks as they blasted off into the great beyond.
“Nightmarish,” Doc said, also gazing upon the tattoos. “How do you sleep at night?”
“By closing my eyes.”
“About the accident…were there any casualties?” Shauna asked.
“Two,” Ryan replied, his voice nearly catching in his throat. “A man and a woman, Jak Lauren and Krysty Wroth. I don’t suppose your Mike found any more survivors?”
“No, he didn’t.”
“They’d be pretty hard to miss. Jak’s a full albino and Krysty’s got the reddest hair this side of a sunset.”
“Sorry, Cawdor, but no. You and your buds are it.”
“Mebbe another one of his mutie friends?”
“No bodies, no trace. Nothing,” Carter said.
“Take a moment to wash up,” Shauna said, gesturing toward the community baths. “I’ll get supper going earlier than usual in your honor. After you’re done, come inside the big tent here. Obviously we need to talk.”
Chapter Fifteen
“Funny, I still feel wrong speaking of them in the past tense. I can’t think of them as being dead. Not yet.” Ryan stood on those words and began to pace along the earthen floor of the large central commune tent. The rest of his friends minus Mildred, who was checking the injured child, and Alan Carter and Shauna Watson were seated at various places along the numerous tables inside the tent. Normally this was the community dining room, but it also served as a place for meetings.
A meal was being prepared at the back of the tent while they talked.
“Before, Krysty’s death seemed to be fate spitting down on my head again,” Ryan continued. “Now I’ve got a face and a name to put on who took her from me.”