“Fuck you!” Ryan exploded, trying to pull himself through the chest-high water. “You aren’t Trader! Trader wouldn’t say anything like that!” He struggled now, trying to keep his head above water.
“Dean’s just Sharona’s way of dragging you down even after she’s caught the last train to the coast herself,” Trader said.
The water closed over Ryan’s head. He fought clear of it with difficulty, smashing his arms against the ocean. But he knew the sustained effort would exhaust him in short order.
Then something closed around his crotch and yanked him down. Underwater now, he glanced down to see what had hold of him, surprised he didn’t feel claws or teeth. Some of the mutie fishes living in the rad-blasted oceans were spun right out of nightmare.
Only it wasn’t a mutie fish or a water monster that held him. It was Sharona Carson, the dead mother of Dean.
She was as Ryan remembered in her better days, golden haired and looking as beautiful as any woman could want to be. She wore a purple diaphanous gown that hugged her curves and clung to her breasts.
Before Ryan knew it, he was naked. Sharona had hold of his erection, continuing to pull him down into the waiting darkness. Ryan’s lungs ballooned up inside his chest, threatening to explode. He reached for her wrist, trying to find a pressure point.
Only this Sharona’s wrist was as hard and as slick as any sec droid’s. She held him effortlessly in one hand.
“Coming to stay with me this time, Ryan. We’ll talk about Dean. You’ll like that, won’t you?”
Weak now and barely able to move, Ryan felt his senses swirling. But he saw Sharona’s mouth open, saw her starting to take his hardness in. Her teeth glinted like diamonds, edged like razors.
Ryan screamed a denial, and the word took form in the shape of an explosion of bubbles around him. His last breath left his body as he grabbed Sharona by the hair and tried in vain to keep her razored mouth back.
She bit down.
ALBERT LOOKED AROUND, surprised to find himself in a cave. “Doc?”
There was no answer.
The cave in front of him seemed to stretch on like some dark, ugly throat. Wind blew its fetid breath over him from somewhere ahead, carrying with it the stench of sulfurous farts.
He turned and tried to go back, but all he found was solid rock blocking his way. He didn’t understand that at all. It was funny that he couldn’t remember waking up, walking out of the mat-trans unit. But it wasn’t humorous.
The fetid wind continued to blow over him, feeling like it was drying him out. He guessed that after a couple hours of standing around in it, a man might begin to resemble a hunk of jerked beef.
He drew his .38s and called out for Doc again. All he heard was the distant rolling thunder of his own voice. Having no other choice, he went forward through the cave.
Light gleamed all around. At first he thought the walls were rad-blasted and he was walking into certain death, but then he saw that lichens gathered on the rough stone surfaces. It was their internal glow that lighted the way.
The tunnel continued down, and the wind grew hotter. Albert sweated profusely. His clothes were soaking wet before he figured he’d gone half a mile.
Then the path he followed leveled out and widened, opening onto a big cave that he couldn’t see across. A small dock jutted for a short distance into the calm black water, hewed of logs that had to have been carried a long way because Albert saw no trees nearby.
Beside the dock was a long, narrow boat, whose ends rose up in five-foot-tall spires that turned into carved goat’s horns.
Because of the distance, Albert wasn’t sure if he really saw movement in the boat. But it looked like one shadow shifted slightly.
Then a self-light flared to life, held in a bony, spectral claw. It burned, creating a nimbus of light that hurt the dwarfs eyes even at the distance. The man holding the self-light wore a long purple robe that seemed mottled with black mushrooms that grew out of it.