and moving to squat down at the side of the Trader.
Over the years Ryan had seen a lot of men, good and bad, go and buy the farm.
Some of them had been wiped away in the blinking of an eye, and others seemed to
have death standing silently at their shoulders for weeks before the scythe had
fallen.
He’d never seen that midnight reaper more clearly than he saw him now, in the
gloom behind the Trader.
“That you, Ryan?”
“Yeah.”
“Everyone fed?”
“Sure. You want anything?”
Trader shook his head. “Not less’n you can call back the dead. That mongrel,
Strasser. We’ll regroup and get us some more good men, Ryan. Then go back and
wipe Mocsin off the earth.”
“Sure. In time.”
Trader nodded his grizzled head. The gas still had him in thrall and he coughed,
his shoulders quivering with the effort. His face turned away from Ryan and the
younger man heard him bring up saliva. As Ryan had already observed several
times in the past year, the spittle was flecked with bright blood.
“Thirty years since me and Marsh Folsom found them war wags. Now that
fire-blasted scab done ’em in. Just that one left.” He coughed again, then
straightened, pasting a thin-lipped smile unsteadily in place. “But one’s
enough, eh, Ryan?”
“Maybe. I wish J.B. was with us. Right now his miserable face’d look like the
risin’ sun.”
Trader sighed. “They come and they go, Ryan. Heard someone say ’bout bein’ here
today and gone tomorrow. I seen better than fifty summers and winters come and
go. I lost count of the dead.”
“The dead’s yesterday. Our worry is tomorrow. You certain we should go into the
Darks?”
A flash of lightning seemed crimson against the pink-gray sky. The tumbling roll
of thunder lasted several seconds. Behind Ryan, Rintoul threw another couple of
jagged logs on the fire. Inside the war wag he could hear someone—Cohn, he
thought—whistling. Trader was right. One was enough, when you had comrades with
that kind of spirit.
Trader nodded. “Too many reasons, Ryan. All you told me these last days. The
girl’s story ’bout her folks. Then that man… what’s his name?”
“Kurt? One hid up in Charlie’s?”
“Went up in the high country. Saw a fog. Then that old guy at Teague’s, one you
say they called Doc. He told ’bout what you could find. Called it a Redoubt.
Heard the name before. And he said the fog was a way out. That right?”
Ryan nodded. He was close enough to the old man to catch the dry, sickly odor of
his breath. Like the scent of an open grave.
“So we go up there and see what there is,” Ryan said. “How long will it take
us?”
“No more trouble from muties, stickies or Strasser, and we can be up there close
to the tree line day after next. You got guards out?”
“Sure. Two on a ranged perimeter, crossing in and out. Due for a change in about
ten minutes.”
“Good. Give me a hand up. Want to go lie down in my bunk. Sleep that gas away.
You wake me if…” Another grin, this time more convincing. “Sure you will, Ryan.”
The Trader stood, gripping Ryan’s wrist to steady himself. Gripping it so hard
that the marks would still be livid-clear the following morning. Ryan watched
him go, seeing the way that pride held the old man erect, stiff backed, all the
way through the lowering trees to the steps of War Wag One. Pulling himself up
and then vanishing into the cramped interior.
A touch on his shoulder made him start and he turned to stare into the green
eyes of Krysty Wroth. “He’s dying,” she said, voice flat and calm.
“I know it. He knows it. And now I guess you know it.”
“The others?”
“They don’t know nothin’.” He blinked and hissed through his teeth in irritation
at himself. “I keep meanin’ to stop that. I mean that they don’t know anythin’.
I’ve seen the blood when he coughs.”
“How long’s he got?”
“Year. Month. Weeks. How do I know? I’m not a medic. And Trader won’t see one.”
Ryan realized he was still carrying the LAPA and he tucked it back into the