“Man’s making a big mistake leaving those wags with so few guards.”
“Yeah. Well, let’s just make sure we don’t make any right along with him. The sooner we get back to that mat-trans unit, the sooner we’re out of here.”
RYAN HAD TO SLOW a little to give his friends the room they needed to reach the redoubt ahead of him and J.B. If the Armorer noticed that he was hanging back, he didn’t say anything.
But the decrease in speed allowed the jackers to draw closer.
“Going to be a near thing,” J.B. said.
“Yeah, but we’re on the downhill side of it now.” Ryan kept moving, and kept his attention spread out across the forest. The grade was gradual now, sliding into the valley where the redoubt was housed. More than anything, he needed sleep. Fatigue ate into his bones and joints like acid rain.
KRYSTY STEPPED into the small stream and followed it against the current to the base of the towering silver-leafed maple the companions had chosen as a marker to remember the trail. She carried her .38 in her fist. Liberty and his gang might no longer be a threat in the area, but they had spotted mutated beasts in the forest.
Jak and Dean were far ahead of her. She glanced back in Ryan’s direction, but didn’t see him or J.B,
“They’re okay,” Mildred said quietly. “Would have been shooting if they hadn’t been.”
Krysty nodded. Her sentient hair coiled tight against her scalp. Perhaps it was from the cold, and maybe even from the dread of the coming jump. A trip through a mat-trans chamber was never any of the companions’ idea of a good time.
She stepped out of the stream under the maple and walked along the bank. Her wet socks reminded her of the holes she had meant to have mended while in Hazard. Then she remembered that there were a few extra socks from that mall in the Carolinas where they’d picked up some necessities.
A little farther on, she found Doc and Albert waiting beside the stream. Frogs croaked in the wide spillway beneath moss-encrusted boulders towering thirty feet above the ground.
The dwarf wheezed hard, coughing a little as he tried to regain his breath. He excused himself in a squeaky voice as the two women approached.
“You did good, little man,” Mildred complimented. “This is rough country.”
“Been a rough life,” Albeit wheezed. “Had to get hard or die.” He glanced around. “How much farther?”
“We’re here,” Krysty answered.
Albert appeared puzzled. “You’ve got to be joking.” He waved at the rock and trees surrounding them. “This is a box canyon. Those jackers following us will leave our corpses out here for the animals.”
“We won’t be here by the time they get here,” Dean said. He stood on a shelf of rock twenty feet up the rock face. His Browning Hi-Power blaster was in his hand.
Krysty noted with satisfaction that the hammer on the blaster wasn’t rolled back into the ready position.
Five minutes later J.B. and Ryan joined the group. “They’re still behind us,” the one-eyed man said. “Be here in a couple minutes.”
Even now, with her mutie sensitive hearing, Krysty could pick up the sounds of men talking and breaking through the brush. They were careful men and didn’t make as much noise as most, but if a listener knew what to listen for, the sounds were evident.
“Jak,” Ryan said, “take us in. Condition yellow. Light up a torch. Krysty, you take up a torch, too. Make sure we can see where we’re headed.”
Krysty followed Mildred, climbing up onto the rock to a narrow shelf just below where Jak and Dean stood. Both the boys had already disappeared into the crack that sundered the wall of rock from top to bottom.
There had been a tunnel at one time, Krysty knew, but it had most likely caved in after the nukecaust. However, even as warped nature had taken away, it had also provided in the form of the crack that ran deep into the heart of the hill.
Krysty turned sideways and eased into the crack. The dim sunlight, already blunted by the leafy canopy overhead, darkened quickly to full black. She felt her way along cautiously, using her mutie senses, as well as her hands and feet.