“I take it from your apparent relief that you found nothing seriously amiss?” he asked.
“Unfortunately, no,” she replied with a wicked grin. “I think you might just outlast us all, you old buzzard. Although,” she added, “I’m concerned that, if there’s a hairline fracture to one of the vertebrae, I can’t find it just by feel, and it would make you extremely vulnerable to another fall.”
Doc nodded slowly. “I appreciate what you are saying, but it does occur to me that the same could be true of any of us. After all, we’ve all taken at least one tumble…not to mention what we’ve been through before this.”
“So stop worrying about you, right?” Mildred queried. And when Doc nodded, she added, “As if I could be bothered about an old fool like you.”
“Madam, I would expect nothing less,” he countered.
Which just left Dean. Mildred had found some steroid and antihistamine cream in the medical supplies she had looted from the redoubt, and there was also a steroid solution in one of the sealed hypodermics that she had secreted in her coat. The injection had calmed the boy’s raging immune system, and the cream, sparingly used, had soothed the itching hives that had erupted on his skin.
But there was only one other steroid injection, and even though the cream was being used sparingly, there was only the one tube, so Mildred was a little concerned about what would happen if the cream ran out, and the effects of a possible second injection subsided, before they had completed their mission.
“I don’t understand it,” Dean complained as Mildred checked his skin. “I’ve ridden horses before, and we’re always out in the wild among shit like this, but I’ve never had anything like this.”
“Well, for a start we hardly ever get close enough to get bitten,” Mildred pondered. “Animal fleas need to jump on, bite, then jump the hell off. And we aren’t stupid enough to get close to most of the mutie critters we come across for the fleas to make that jump. And as for riding horses before… I’d guess that the problem lies in the fact that animals and insects across this pesthole land are all mutated in different ways. Those horses aren’t like any we’ve seen before, so mebbe the fleas aren’t, either. So you just lucked out, Dean.”
“Great,” Dean replied sardonically. “So what do I do if the cream doesn’t last, and we don’t nail these saboteurs first?”
Mildred stayed silent for a second. “Not much any of us can do,” she said. “Krysty’s looked for the right plants to make you something, but we haven’t had much luck. So I guess we’ve got to hope that the luck comes in nailing the bastards who are causing the trouble.”
She exchanged a glance with Dean. It wasn’t a satisfactory answer, but it was the only one. Just one more factor to be added to their race against time.
Just another pressure to be added. Like the others.
FOUR DAYS into their stay at the sec camp, Myall arrived. The companions had completed their riding training under the watchful and amused eye of McVie, and had found that the sec man was, despite his apparent humor at their mishaps, keen to assist and teach. He watched them all carefully and, after using them as the butt of his jokes, had given insights into their riding techniques that helped them master the animals quicker. They saw less of Myall, as the sec chief was called away to marshal his meager forces in the camp and workplace. There hadn’t been any more instances of sabotage, but the ville groups were at one another’s throats constantly, each accusing the other of wanting to destroy the project.
And Baron Silas was getting restless. Each day Myall had to go to the sweatbox radio shack and talk to the baron about the progress of the new sec force; Ryan always asked him on his return what the baron’s view was, and the sec chief had confided that the baron was less than pleased.
“Hell, I think you’re doing good ’cause I know just how awkward those bastard creatures are to master, and a fresh face and more of them is gonna help no end when we get out there,” the sec chief had told the one-eyed man, “but the baron wants results yesterday, and there doesn’t seem to be anything I can tell him to make him see otherwise.”