Starfall
Chapter One
Ryan Cawdor rested his forefinger lightly against the Steyr rifle’s trigger as he swept his gaze over the urban shockscape of the ravaged ville. He hunkered in the late afternoon shadows draped carelessly over the smashed remains of what had once been a concrete-and-steel building in downtown Idaho Falls, Idaho, before a nuclear warhead had nearly blown the city out of existence a hundred years earlier.
He kept the bilious green-tinged sunset behind him, an old gunfighter’s trick and the first rule of a predator. His position also carried his scent away from the area he surveyed. The last bath he had taken lay nearly four days’ hard travel behind him; he knew he carried a strong musk that an alert animal, mutie or man could detect.
The cold wind, full of the threat of approaching winter, swirled around the big man. He felt it rake through his clothing for a moment, searching across his flesh with frozen skeletal fingers. The touch lingered even after the wind passed on, chilling him to the bone.
Then the scream rent the air again.
The effort sounded strained and thin, as if the screamer’s pain had almost crossed the threshold into sensory overload. It keened through the tumbledown buildings, bouncing from the haphazard walls that still stood.
“Lover.” The voice was soft, undemanding.
Ryan gazed over his shoulder at the fire-haired woman hunkered down behind him. He spoke without hesitation. “We wait.”
She nodded reluctantly.
The scream died away, winding down rather than getting cut off short. The screamer still lived.
“Mebbe by the time we find whoever’s screaming, it’ll be too late.”
“Better to be late trying to save somebody rather than being early to your own lynching.” But the words sounded hollow even to Ryan’s ears. Even being intelligent about a play wasn’t always easy.
The saying had belonged to the Trader, the man who had finished Ryan’s training in survivalism in Deathlands. In his day, the Trader had been a man strong enough, big enough and violent enough to become a legend. His word had been his bond, and a law unto itself. He had saved individuals and once or twice sent a whole community straight to hell when it crossed him or threatened anything that was his.
“I know.” The woman grimaced and put a hand to her head. Her other hand held a .38 Smith & Wesson Model 640. “It’s just getting hard to take. More than just screaming now. I can almost hear words.”
Ryan had nothing to say to that. Krysty Wroth had a gift, inherited from and cultivated by her mother, and it hinged on mutie abilities that Ryan never even pretended to understand. But he did understand her pain and frustration because he saw it etched into her beautiful face, saw the way she carried it in her movements. All the hard years of his own youth, all the carnage he’d seen and caused while traveling with the Trader and the war wags, hadn’t completely dehumanized him. But it had hardened his sense of purpose. He was determined to live and to bring his small group through whatever waited up ahead intact.
Krysty was hurting, but she wasn’t going to die from it. At least, that was the present thinking.
He scanned the terrain again. The shattered remains of the building they stood on gave him a vantage point almost twenty feet above the ground. If they had been in a forested area or the plains or mountains, the advantage would have been enough.
The blasted remnants of the ville proved to be another matter. Idaho Falls had been a small but thriving metropolitan area back before the nukecaust that had ended the world. In addition to the destruction caused by the bombs, a hundred years of chem storms and nuclear winter raised scars that stood out on the buildings.
Rusted hulks of cars, trucks and buses lined what used to be streets. Acid rain had scoured most of the paint from the vehicles. Windows that had survived the end of the world had been claimed by the survivors.
Looking out over the broken maze of streets and structures, Ryan was certain nothing remained that they could salvage themselves. But the companions had come to the city to trade with the survivors that still lived there, or to take what they needed any way they could. Supplies—especially when they traveled near rad-blasted areas and remnants of unrecovered villes—remained a concern. And they intended to gather any information about the area they didn’t already have.