“Or trying to leave,” Dean added, observing the towering monoliths, their mirrored sides shimmering in the reflected light of the noonday sun.
“Welcome to El Dorado,” Doc muttered, drawing both of his weapons.
Adjusting his wire-rimmed glasses, J.B. frowned. “Don’t get you, Doc,” he said. “I’ve been to Eldorado, big ville in south Tex. Nothing but bars and gaudy houses.”
“I think he was referring to the old poem,” Mildred said, also viewing the predark ruins. “A fabled city of gold that nobody ever reached alive.”
“However, we’ve got a bastard lot better than matchlocks and wooden clubs,” Ryan stated, leveling the longblaster. “Okay, I’m on point with Krysty. J.B. and Dean, cover the rear. We go slow and watch your steps. Whatever aced these folks could live underground. Anything appears, shoot on sight.”
Warily, the companions assumed formation and crossed the field to enter the tall grass. These plants were green and alive, not dead weeds, the grass mixing with wild wheat and barley, almost as if this had been a farm long ago. The wind made a hushing sound as it blew over the waist-high crops.
“Watch for waves,” Krysty warned, referring to the disturbances animals made when they moved through tall grass. From the top the patterns resembled ripples on a lake and gave away the predator’s exact position as it closed for the kill.
As the grass became taller, the ground became mushy, and the shoulder-tall plants stopped at the bank of a rushing stream, the water so crystal clear they could see to the bottom. Knowing their canteens were low, Ryan called for a halt, but had J.B. test for rads and Mildred check for chems. They both pronounced it safe to drink. Happily, the companions rinsed out the canteens before filling them again, then took the opportunity to splash some of the water on their faces, doing a brief wash. The stream was cool and tasted faintly of mineral deposits. Best they’d had since arriving in the Marshall Islands.
When they were finished, the group waded to the other side. But Jak called a second halt and passed Dean several weapons before wading back into the middle of the stream and lying down. Rigorously, the teen began rubbing himself all over, trying to remove the mud of the area from his hair and clothing. The downstream runoff was black at first, then as the layers washed away, it turned brown and finally clear.
“Better,” he grunted, wading to the shore and taking back his blasters. The teenager looked like a pale drowned rat, but nobody shifted position when he came near anymore.
“Damn pigs,” Jak muttered, shaking his jacket.
“You’re preaching to the choir on that, my friend,” Doc growled.
Then surprisingly, Krysty and Mildred did the same thing, even though they didn’t seem to be very dirty.
“Goddamn, that’s cold!” the physician said through chattering teeth, both hands busy wringing the water from her beaded hair. “But I feel more like a human being now.”
Making an inarticulate noise of pleasure, Krysty wildly shook her head, the animated filaments splaying out to facilitate drying, then slowly returning to the gentle crimson curls.
“This will do until we can find some soap,” she said, squeezing the sleeves of her jumpsuit.
Greatly refreshed, the three companions dried as the group walked toward the forest, the formation of trees proving to be only a slim windbreak a few yards wide. Leaving the forest, they traversed a rubble-filled culvert, with half of a predark bridge high overhead, the span ending in the middle of empty air.
Reaching the top of the culvert, the group easily crawled under a heavy wire fence, braided with plastic strips that hid whatever was beyond. The companions found themselves standing on the gravel berm of a predark road, the smooth pavement extending out of sight in both directions. Across the road was a collection of warehouses, rusty cars with flat tires standing at ancient parking meters. Streetlights hung from power cables over every intersection, more cars stopped forever at the faded crosswalks. An assortment of houses lined the side streets, the front yards wild tangles of ivy and flowers, a few of the homes completely buried under the unstoppable advance of the resilient ivy. Not a window was broken, doors were closed and telephone lines were still connected to the poles. An unnatural silence lay heavy over the predark metropolis, and the companions fought a small shiver.