“No.”
“Ahead? Side?”
She shook her head in irritation. “Can’t tell. I can hear the river, close now. But I heard something else.”
Ryan pressed her. “But it wasn’t behind us? You’re sure on that?”
“Think so, lover. But I can’t swear to it. Guess it might have been a deer or something, moving through the brush.”
“Patrol red,” Ryan said, glancing at Mildred. “That means we”
“My mother didn’t raise any stupid children, Ryan.”
He smiled. “Sure. Sorry. I go first. J.B. comes last. Jak second, then you. Doc and Krysty at four and five. Blasters ready.”
“I’ll be damned glad when you get me a decent gun, Ryan,” she said. “I never was much into the NRA and all that God-given-right-to-bear-arms stuff. But I sure as hell feel naked without something on my hip around here.”
They soon arrived at the river. One thing Ryan had noticed was that the swath cut through the jungle by the marauding army of ants had almost totally disappeared under fresh, green growth.
From there to the ruins of the Wendigo Institute of Botanical Research, incorporating the Black wood Center for Chemical and Neurological Research, Military Division, with the Shelley Cryonic InstitutePrivate, wasn’t all that far.
They saw few signs of life a glimpse of what could have been a small pig or a large rodent, scurrying about its business, rooting among the leaf mold; fresh, seeping tracks of a massive snake, winding sinuously across their trail, so recent that water still oozed into the long furrows.
As they moved down from the higher part of the mountain, they’d seen a lot of birds, including bright parakeets and tiny, darting budgerigars. But in the past ten minutes the birds had disappeared and the vast tract of jungle had fallen silent.
Ryan held up his hand again. “Got a feeling there’s company around.”
“We don’t have a lot of time to wait them out,” J.B. said. “We need water. If they hold the river, we’re in serious trouble.”
“Can’t we loop around them, if they’re near that small bridge?” Krysty asked.
Ryan shook his head. “One way or another we have to get over the river, and I’m not going to try swimming it. I’ll go ahead on my own. See if I can spring the trap. Rest of you stay close, but not too close.”
“We got double-blaster on ’em,” Jak said. “Chill ’em up front.”
“No. If it’s Jorund and the rest of his men, they’ll have picked up all their blasters from the ville on the way through. If we’d had time I’d have got them and heaved them all in the lake. The Vikings could’ve got over the ridge before the worst of the weather.”
J.B. agreed. “And in this kind of hostile terrain they could be dug in well. Sure, we got the firepower, Jak. But we won’t have the chance to maximize it. Time and place give them the megacull facility over us. Ryan’s right.”
“Why can we not attempt to sneak up behind them and ambush the ambushers?” Doc asked. “Hoist them with their own petard, as it were?”
“Look at you, Doc. Look at Mildred. Look at all of us. We’re real tired. Tired man makes mistakes. Make a mistake in this forest and it’s your last. No. I’ll go ahead. J.B., give me a word.”
The two men stood together, talking quietly and earnestly. J.B. took off his glasses and wiped them on his sleeve, looked up at the pink sky through them, then replaced them on the narrow bridge of his nose. He burrowed his hand into one of his deep pants pockets, then gave something to Ryan.
Ryan took it and nodded, and they walked back to the others. “This is it. I go ahead. J.B. leads the rest of you behind. Keeps as close as he thinks safe. I’m gonna try to talk to them. Seems there’s been enough chilling, and they may listen and let us go through. We’ll see.”
Ryan half turned away, but Krysty took him by the arm. “Don’t ever do that, lover.”
“What?”
“Go someplace you might not come back from and don’t at least say ‘bye’ to me.”