pointing toward where Ryan waited. He tensed, even though he knew they couldn’t
possibly make him out in that weather and light. The pointman turned back,
throwing off the shiny black hood. Another slash of silver lightning showed Ryan
the face. And the hair.
Green hair.
“Hunaker! Hun, over here!”
The woman stared through the rain, mouth sagging with surprise. “Ryan? Ryan, you
old bastard! Ryan!”
She ran toward him, then stopped and stared at him, and to their mutual
embarrassment, she began to weep.
Chapter Twelve
DAWN WAS ABOUT an hour away.
The rain had stopped and the electrical storm had passed, grumbling its way to
the south of them, leaving a quiet night. All the new arrivals had been fed and
found bunks in the war wag.
Only J. B. Dix remained awake, talking to Ryan, telling him what had finally
gone down in Mocsin. Around them, in the slumbering forest, the sentries still
patrolled. They would all be on the move by first light.
J.B.’s report was characteristically terse.
“Convoy blew, knocked us all to hell and back. Sam an’ Hun was laid out colder
than a ten-year winter. I got my shoulder bruised some. Figured it was broke,
but it’s not. Girls came around and we got out. Koll found the old man, Doc.
Gotten scrambled brains, Ryan. I don’t know about him at all.” J.B. stopped and
shook his head, the glowing embers of the dying fire glinting off the
steel-rimmed glasses. In the half light, his face looked more sallow and pinched
than ever.
“Where d’you pick up Charlie and the guy they was huntin’? Kurt? He looks near
dead, Kurt.”
“Him and the Trader both. I looked in on him. Can’t be more than days now,
Ryan.”
“Yeah.”
“Fishmouth Charlie and Kurt was on the edge of Mocsin. She was near carrying
him. We stopped with them to draw breath. Kurt was mumbling about when he was a
blaster with McCandless up in the Darks. Claimed he knew the way to find the
fogs. Said there was a big, big secret up there. A Redoubt, he called it.
Figured we’d bring him. We liberated these clothes from some of Strasser’s
killers. There’s been a small fight. Few bodies around.”
Ryan guessed from J.B.’s taciturn description that it had probably been a
desperate battle, but there was no point in pressing J.B. for that kind of
detail. It was the results that mattered to the weapons master, not how they
were obtained.
“I figured you’d gone this way,” Dix continued. “Strasser’s bound to come after
us. He went ape-crazy. Saw him twice but I couldn’t get a clear shot at him. I
think our bombs fired the whole town. A rising wind did the rest. I looked back
and Mocsin was most gone.”
“You made good time,” Ryan said. “Another few hours and we’d have been gone and
in the hills. You’d never have caught us.”
“Rock and a hard place, my boy,” Dix said cheerlessly. “Managed to beg a couple
of buggies from some sec men who didn’t need them anymore. Ran out of gas three,
four hours ago. Been on foot since then. Had to be the Darks.”
“Yeah,” Ryan replied with a nod. “It’s the Darks.”
They sat in silence for some minutes. J.B. had retrieved one of his favorite
thin cheroots from his locker in War Wag One and reclined on the cool earth,
gazing into the smoldering coals of the fire.
Ryan broke the silence. “Strasser will guess it’s the Darks.”
“He can’t have much of a force left,” Dix muttered. “Either he catches us real
soon, or he doesn’t catch us at all.”
“I’ll rouse everyone. They can catch up on missing sleep over next day or so, if
we keep out of trouble. I’ll get ’em out and start the show.”
The sky was noticeably lighter to the south and east, but it was streaked with
dark, oily smoke that showed up against the red tinge of dawn. Something big was
burning out of control. That would be Mocsin.
Behind him, Ryan heard the familiar noises of the war wag coming to life.
Everyone knew his task and his place. Inside the vehicle there would be little