A ghostly scream moved among the trees, so low they almost couldn’t hear it over the gentle rustling of the leaves.
“Cougar?” Krysty asked, stepping forward, blaster in hand. Nothing was moving amid the trees nearby but a few squirrels. She looked again as one spread its arms, extending the thin membrane between its fore and hind legs, jumped and sailed away. A flying squirrel. The Earth Mother had a strange sense of humor sometimes.
“Killed lots cats,” Jak answered, wiping his hands clean on the grass, then a rag. “Never heard that.”
“Spider?” Dean asked.
“No vocal cords,” Mildred answered, packing away the cheese and drawing her own weapon. “They can’t scream. Then again, maybe a mutie can, I don’t know.”
The cry of anguish came again, louder this time.
“That’s human,” Ryan said, standing, “and it was coming from the south, not the west.”
“Could be the owners of the cats,” J.B. said, scooping needles and dirt onto the pile of trash. Exposed food would attract scavengers, and predators would follow.
“Only one way to find out,” Ryan replied, gathering his longblaster. “Leave the packs, we’ll travel faster. Two yards spread, no talking. Recce only. We find trouble, we back off.”
The companions started to gather loose tree branches to toss over the bundles. When the backpacks were safely out of sight, they checked their weapons and started out with Ryan in the lead.
After a few hundred yards, the forest thinned to scrub brush, and the companions heard another cry, female this time, and something else they couldn’t quite identify. Angling around a small mesa, they traveled swift and silent through a valley, following the irregular remains of a predark road. The pavement curved around the mesa, disappearing into a collapsed brick tunnel, pieces of trapped cars still sticking out from under the rubble. They could hear several people screaming now, men and women combined, plus some sharp explosions that rolled over the landscape, echoing into the distance.
“Grens?” Jak asked softly.
“Blasters,” Dean said, scowling. “Don’t know what kind. Odd noise.”
“Those are black-powder longblasters,” J.B. stated, wrinkling his nose. “I know the stink.”
More weapons discharged, closely followed by screams of pain.
“This way,” Ryan said, heading into the rosebushes edging the ancient roadway.
Carefully pushing their way through the thorns, the companions exited on the side of a sloping hill overlooking a crescent-shaped lagoon. Palm trees lined the white sand shores, and a large ville of log cabins was surrounded by a stone block wall, made mostly from bricks and sidewalk slabs. A large section of the wall was smashed to pieces, and several of the cabins were on fire, the smoke masking whatever was happening on the shore. Then the wind shifted direction for a moment, exposing the beach and the lagoon.
“Look there, a ship!” Mildred whispered, pointing excitedly.
“More than that, it is a whaling schooner, madam,” Doc rumbled. “A windjammer from my own time period. Somebody must have found one intact in a naval museum. By the Three Kennedys, she’s a beauty! Look at that rigging. It’s in perfect condition.”
“Windjammer mean no motor?” Jak asked.
“None. Just sails.”
“Smart,” the teenager commented. “Wind free.”
“And it has cannon,” J.B. said, gesturing with the Uzi. “See those hatches along the gunwale? Flip those up and out come the big blasters.”
“Artillery?” Dean asked worriedly. “Can they reach us up here?”
“Not black-powder cannon,” Ryan answered. “They’re short-range weapons, and only fire solid balls of metal. Twenty pounds each or more. We’re safe at this distance.”
The boy gave a low whistle. “Twenty pounds! That’d chill the spider.” J.B. nudged the boy. “Good thinking.”
“Ship would need lamps,” Mildred offered. “Maybe we could buy some alcohol off them.”
“The solution to our problem could be right there,” Krysty said, her hair waving uneasily. She wiped sweaty hands on her khaki jumpsuit to dry them.
“More likely it’s fish-oil lamps, dear lady,” Doc countered, checking the load in the LeMat. “But it can do no harm to ask.”
“Worse comes to worst, we could sail back to the continent on a ship that large,” Ryan said, rubbing his chin. “If the hull is in good condition. Let’s get closer and see why they’re fighting. Mebbe we can cut a deal.”