“Thank Gaia, Doc was able to chill that thing!” Krysty husked the words out through a hacking cough, choking on more seawater that came up from her lungs.
Ryan nodded, almost imperceptibly. It hurt his aching neck muscles to even move his head. “Wanted to blast that son of a gaudy myself,” he croaked, “but it didn’t occur to me until just now that I couldn’t have.”
Krysty gave him a puzzled look that he could barely see in the half light of the moon and stars above.
A grin cracked his salt-caked lips. “We’d already been under…blasters are fucked by the sea. They hadn’t been under—they were the only ones who could do it. Now they can’t.”
The full implication of his words hit Krysty. The seawater had jammed the mechanisms of the blasters they carried and the other raft had been immersed. So chances were that their blasters were now also next to useless until such time they had been dried out, oiled and cleaned. Which left them, apart from the knives carried by Ryan, J.B. and Jak, next to helpless…even assuming that they were fit enough to defend themselves against any threat that may arise when they hit the shore. “I know,” Ryan said simply as he caught her eye and was able to read what ran through her mind. “Shit happens. We’ll just have to trust to luck.”
It took the rafts a couple of long, cold hours to finally reach shore, one last wave taking them far enough in for the weighted bottoms of the craft to hit the sand beneath the water. In their respective crafts, they felt the increased drag of the plastic on sand as the tide ebbed but failed, this time, to pull them backward.
Half asleep, the muted impact nonetheless made Ryan shoot wide awake, his eye opening and adjusting to the night time light.
“Krysty, we hit shore,” he whispered. -The woman grunted sleepily and moved, her eyes slit-peering at her companion.
“Land?” she asked, her voice fogged with sleep.
“Yeah…yeah!” he croaked in louder tones. “Fireblast! We’ve got to get out and get this ashore before it starts to drag back.”
“Uh…” Krysty could do little more than grunt, but through her weariness her brain was working to kick her into gear and to force her tired and aching limbs to respond to what they had to do. She automatically checked Mildred, who was either still unconscious or merely sleeping, and then began to struggle to her feet, joining Ryan. The one-eyed man was already standing, shakily but with a growing strength as adrenaline pumped through his system, clambering over the side of the raft and falling into the shallow tide, cursing as loudly as his sore voice would allow, regardless of anyone or anything that his cries may alert.
His sodden feet splashed in the shallows as he leaned over and grabbed the ropes on the side of the raft, pulling it toward the dry sand. He slipped and fell backward into the surf, but could only laugh hoarsely in relief at hitting land at last. As he picked himself up, Krysty hauled herself out of the raft, and as Ryan scrambled to his feet, she joined him in pulling the craft out of the foaming shallows that lapped around their ankles and onto the safety of land.
“Get it clear, then get Mildred out. We have to try to get her warm soon as possible,” Ryan muttered in hoarse and urgent tones.
Krysty saved her sore throat and nodded, pulling hard on the ropes lining the raft as her feet sought purchase in the soft sand, dragging her silver-tipped Western boots from the water-and-sand mixture as each footfall sunk into the surface.
Each inch seemed to pull and strain on muscles that protested with each exertion, but before too long they had the raft on dry sand. Paradoxically, the last few feet were the hardest, as there was no water to give the heavy plastic, with Mildred’s deadweight, even the slightest of buoyancy.
“Bastard sea,” Ryan spit as he leaned into the raft and tried to lift Mildred off the floor. His muscles protested once too often, the lactic acid forcing him into a spasm of weakness.