Fortunately the gateway and the control room hadn’t been damaged, secure and safe behind the massively thick vanadium-steel sec doors.
J.B. checked his lapel rad counter, finding that it was flickering faintly between the yellow and orange bands, but nowhere near the red.
“Safe enough,” he said, breathing in the warm air, as he looked out across the expanse of desert.
The pocket nav comp had confirmed that they had, indeed, landed once more in New Mexico. They all emerged into a narrow, dusty passage that ended in a gaping hole, where the earth had been sliced away, destroying virtually the whole of the redoubt concealed above it.
“Wonder how things are with Jak and Christina,” Dean said, wiping away beads of sweat with the sleeve of his coat. “And their baby. What was”
“Jenny,” Krysty replied. “Jenny Lauren.”
The only moment of drama on the trek to the Lauren spread was when Dean spotted a mutie rattler.
The snake was one of the biggest that any of them had ever seen. At least fifteen feet from poison sac to bony rattle, its vivid colors stood out against the gray sand.
“More scared of us than we are of it,” J.B. said, drawing a cynical laugh from Mildred.
“Now how do you know that, John, dearest? Firstly I’m so petrified I’m nearly pissing in my pants and, secondly, that snake doesn’t look scared of us at all.”
The rattler reared up, nearly as tall as a grown man, its head weaving slowly from side to side. It was coiled square on top of a narrow ridge, in the partial shade of a big flowering cactus.
“Could put one through its brain,” Mildred offered. “Happy to do it.”
“Best not to set the echoes ringing with a bullet,” Ryan warned. “Keep watching it, and we’ll go around.”
“Fine with me,” Mildred said.
“I will most heartily lend my acquiescence to that motion.” Doc looked around at the others, pale dust folded into the creases around his eyes and mouth. “All in favor indicate by saying ‘Aye,’ in a loud clear voice.” Nobody spoke. “Carried by a policy of silent acclamation.”
“Shut the fuck up, old man.” Michael turned and spit toward Doc, narrowly missing the toes of his boots.
“Peevish boy.” Doc stared at the teenager, forcing him finally to look away. “It’s time that you revealed more evidence of maturity, Michael.”
“Fuck you, and fuck the world!”
They circled around the patiently watching rattler and kept heading for the Laurens’ home.
They were, by Ryan’s calculations, nearly halfway to the homestead, which nestled in among the low hills northwest of the redoubt, when, without a moment’s warning, Michael seemed to stiffen. He then crashed facedown, raising a cloud of dust and sand around his prostrate body.
“What?” Ryan queried, turning to look back.
“Keep off him a minute,” Mildred ordered sharply. “Might be some kind of fit. Let me check that he hasn’t swallowed his tongue.” Michael’s whole body was arched backward, and one of his arms seemed to have become trapped behind his head. Mildred knelt by him, still not touching the young man.
“Arm’s dislocated at the shoulder,” J.B. commented, looking down at Michael.
“I know that, John. Trapped it when he fell. Airway’s clear. Some kind of clinical shock felled him, I think. Better try and get that damaged shoulder returned into place as quickly as possible. Turn him on his back for me. Slow and careful, please.”
Michael’s eyes were wide open, each reflecting a perfect shrunken image of the golden sun. His breath was slow and steady, his heartbeat slightly slower than normal. The arm was out from his side at a crooked, unnatural angle, the fingers hooked into claws.
“Hold his head still, Ryan. John, take his legs and try and stop him from moving.”
“What’re you doing?” Dean asked.
“Watch and learn,” Mildred replied. She sat alongside Michael, carefully placing her right foot into the unconscious young man’s right armpit. The toe of the calf-length boot pressed snugly under the limp arm.
Doc turned away, studying the distance that expanded around them. “Forgive me if I avail myself of a rain check on watching this,” he said. “I once had a severely dislocated knee while on a walking vacation, and the memory of the pain is still quite peculiarly fresh.”
“Now,” Mildred said, taking Michael’s wrist in both her hands and bracing herself. “Hold tight. May make him jump some.”
She pushed her foot down hard, simultaneously jerking with all her strength at the arm. There was an audible click, as the joint relocated, the head of the bone popping back into the socket. The young man gave a whimper of pain, but Ryan and J.B. held him still.
“Good.” Mildred stood and dusted herself off. “Be a bit sore for a day or so. Muscles shouldn’t be too badly damaged. Tendons and ligaments’ll have stretched some, but he’s fit and strong.”
She smiled across at Dean, who had gone slightly pale. “There. Not a thing to try if you don’t know what you’re doing.”
Michael came around a few minutes later and got up without a word to any of them. He rubbed at his shoulder, easing it a couple of times, wincing in pain.
“How’s it feel?” Mildred asked.
“Like a clumsy, bloody-bones butcher’s been working on it,” he replied.
“You ungrateful, miserable little shit!” Krysty took two steps toward the youth, making him back away from her bright-eyed anger.
“Touch me and you’ll regret it,” he roared. “Just leave me alone.”
“Be glad to, Michael. When you start behaving like the Michael Brother we’ve known as a friend, then I’ll be glad to see you back again.”
Limping slightly, muttering to himself, Michael set off, leading the way toward Jak’s place.
The foothills were appreciably closer, and the day was wearing on. Michael had, at one point, gone two or three hundred paces ahead of the rest of them. J.B. had commented on it, but Ryan had shrugged.
“We can see all around. No dead ground. No real risk of an ambush. Rad counter’s showing safely into the green. Tell the truth, J.B., but I’d rather be without his company when he’s in this kind of foul mood.”
Mildred walked beside the Armorer, her quilted denim jacket slung over her arm. “I’m seriously concerned about Michael, you know, Ryan.”
“What do you think’s wrong?”
“The last jump seemed to slide him into a depressed state. And that made him vulnerable to the approach from Dorothy. Then, when she vanished like that, out of the mat-trans chamber, it pushed him another few notches down the slope. I don’t see the good signs of him climbing his way back up the slope. Mebbe it’s still a part of the trauma from being time-trawled.”
“I could greatly sympathize with the poor lad over that.” Doc sniffed. “There have been occasionsmany occasionswhen I have doubted my own fragile grasp on the rudiments of what sometimes passes for sanity.”
“Woman back in Harmony ville when I was a girl got depressed.” Krysty brushed an insistent wasp away from her face. “She had great mood swings, weeping one minute and laughing the next.”
“What happened to her?” Mildred asked.
“Slashed her wrists during one of the bleak, black dog nights. In a warm bath. Time her father found her it was way too late. Nothing anyone could do.”
“You think Michael’s permanently crazed?” Ryan whistled between his teeth. “Can’t go around in Deathlands with a triple stupe. Get us all chilled.”
Mildred shook her head, the tiny beads plaited into her hair making a faint clicking sound. “Can’t tell, Ryan. Ask me about all the subtle effects of low-temp surgery and I’m your woman. Psychology never was one of my strong points. Sorry.”
Doc was beginning to find the long hot walk through the hundred-degree day a strain. “I don’t suppose that a rest is anything of a possibility, is it?”
“Not all that far now.” Ryan stopped and squinted ahead of them. “Yeah. I can see the place. Pale roof. Better catch up with Michael in case he goes charging in and Christina puts a long-nose .45 round through his skull.”
The shimmering heat of the deserts of the Southwest, combined with the clear air and enormous distances, made distance judgment difficult. Even Ryan, for all of his experience, underestimated how much farther it was to the Lauren ranch.
The sun was sinking away to the west and they’d finished all of their water, and the white roof still looked to be a couple of miles off.
Doc was finding it harder and harder going, stumbling and twice falling into the soft sand. Michael had rejoined them and seemed to be making more of an effort to be friendly, helping Doc, and even carrying Dean on his shoulders for a quarter mile or so despite the boy’s amused protests.
“Someone coming toward us.” It was Krysty who spotted the pale rider. “Jak?”