“Is the air clean?” Dean asked with a worried expression. He knew his father had to have checked already, but he couldn’t help but ask anyway. Hundreds of nukes. Why would the whitecoats set off that many? It was insane.
Patiently Ryan showed the boy the tiny rad counter on his shirt. The miniature Geiger counter was silent, registering nothing more than the usual background radiation.
“This island is clean,” Ryan stated, “but we better check the rads everywhere we go. Missiles bases, Navy yard, could be mighty bad out there.”
“Gonna be lots of muties,” J.B. added grimly, sliding the reloaded clip into the Uzi. He worked the bolt to chamber a round, then dropped the clip and worked the bolt again to eject the live round. Catching it in the air, the Armorer thumbed it back into the clip. Everything was working as smooth as silk. A man who didn’t take care of his blaster was just a corpse looking for a hole, nothing more.
“That’s for sure,” Ryan declared, standing and retrieving his longblaster. “We get the copper, come straight back here and brewing. No exploration or looting. The sooner we leave here, the better.”
Invisible from within the thick canopy of trees, he watched as they moved, as they made odd noises and did incomprehensible things. But he knew what they were. Two-legs. It had been many moons since he last saw any of the upright animals, but he remembered the taste of their flesh with great pleasure, and the urge to leap upon them right now and feed was very strong.
Then he saw a large two-leg with only one eye lift a terrible thunder stick into view and he cringed lower among the flowery vines. Many of his kind had been killed by the sticks. They were to be avoided at any cost.
Besides, there was no need to attack the two-legs here in their nest. He knew what they would do. As silent as a cloud, the mutie turned on the branch of the banyan tree and began the long climb to the ground. Not a leaf stirred as he passed through the thick growth of vines and flowers. The two-legs would to go to the dead place as all the others did, and he could capture them there. Soon his belly would be full of their good meat, and his children would sup upon entrails and sticky brains. But the eyes he would save for the females as a special salty treat.
Oh, yes, there was no need to risk the terrible pain of the booming thunder sticks. No, he would wait and let the food come to him. Then the great feast would begin.
AFTER BREAKFAST, the companions cleaned up as best they could, using the wet naps from the MRE packs on themselves, and scrubbing the pots and cups with gravel. There was no spare water to waste on washing dishes.
“Better take everything,” Ryan directed, sliding the backpack onto his shoulders. “Don’t know how long we’ll be gone. A day, a few days, mebbe more.”
The warrior made no sign that he wasn’t pleased with how light the pack felt. They were low on both ammo and food. The dead condors had helped to stretch their meager supplies, but with no way to cure the meat, the cooked birds would go rancid in a few days. At the first sign of it smelling sweet, all of the meat would have to be thrown away.
“What about this?” Mildred asked, balancing the Molotov in her palm. “Can’t take it through the jungle. Could get busted, and we need every drop.”
“Bury it, madam,” Doc suggested, rotating the cylinder of the LeMat to check the charges. “That should be safe enough.”
Brandishing a knife, Mildred went to the side of the sheet-metal building and began to dig in the rich black loam. Soon, she had a hole big enough. Dean arrived with a fistful of old rags, the tattered clothing from the skeleton. Gingerly she wrapped the glass bottle in several layers for extra protection, then covered it.
“Good enough,” she declared, patting the soil smooth so no telltale lump marked the burial site.