The way had been fairly easy up until this point, as the remains of old roads and sidewalks were still visible, and hadn’t been infested with the thick-stemmed plants, instead being covered by a carpet of what appeared to be a creeping vine of some kind. It had a sentience within it, and a couple of times the tendrils responded to the way Doc’s swordstick came down, the smaller point concentrating the weight it carried enough to cause the tendrils to rear and try to grasp at the cane, wrapping themselves around its length.
The building on the street corner still had three floors upright, even though the rubble from the wrecked upper floors spilled across one part of the intersection, cutting it off from an easy access. The lobby of the building was intact, the plate-glass doors standing open, miraculously in one piece, although pitted with small stones that had fused to the glass, and a web of minute cracks that connected the stones.
“We’ll rest up here,” Ryan announced as they gathered. “We need to recce the surrounding area before we go any farther. It’s getting thicker out there.”
“And more humid and sweet smelling,” Mildred added. “We really need to find out how thick those mother plants get, because we can’t risk what might be in that sap.”
“Want me recce?” Jak asked, knowing already that Ryan had selected him.
The one-eyed man nodded. “Take a look at the map, try and get us in the right direction if possible.”
“Always route if look hard enough,” Jak said with a grin. He took the map from Ryan and studied it. Jak couldn’t read well, but a diagram or map was a different matter. From his earliest days hunting on swamps and bayous down in Louisiana, Jak had learned to look at a diagram as he would a spore on a tree. The fact that there was little, if any, writing on the map made it easier for him to absorb.
He handed the paper back to Ryan. “Hope not hide entrance too good,” he said with a twinkle in his eye. Ryan laughed. There wasn’t an entrance constructed in the whole of the Deathlands that Jak Lauren couldn’t find.
When the albino had slipped through the doors and disappeared noiselessly into the vegetation, Ryan and the rest of the companions made themselves as comfortable as possible in the lobby of the building. It wasn’t difficult, as much of the furniture had been left intact. Only the elements that had penetrated this far, and the brave tendrils of plant life that had ventured into the less welcoming atmosphere, had made any effect.
There were three large leather sofas scattered across the rich carpeting, now overlaid with mildew and growths of moss. The leather had a layer of dusty, almost verdigris-like spore, which J.B., Dean and Mildred cleared from each one. Otherwise, they were probably as comfortable as they had been before skydark.
Doc settled his weary frame on one of them, reclining until his head rested against one arm.
“Wake me when young Jak returns, my dear Ryan. I fear I must rest…” His voice was already drifting off to sleep.
“Not before I check those wounds,” Mildred muttered, moving across to him to run a medical eye over Doc’s dressings. The wounds hadn’t been that deep, but when any antiseptic procedures were at a premium, Mildred could never be too sure.
The wounds weren’t infected, and Doc was asleep before she had finished.
“I think we all need that,” Krysty said, noting that Ryan himself looked weary.
“I’ll take first watch, Dad,” Dean added.
The one-eyed man assented, and they rested while Dean and Mildred took the first watch.
JAK SKIPPED across the roots of stunted trees and over the beds of creeping vines with scarcely an impression, and no sound at all. Despite his heavy boots, he was able to distribute his weight in such a way that he left no sign of his passing…or at least, no sign to anyone other than one as skilled in the arts of tracking as himself.
The details of the map were in his head, and he applied them to the landscape around. As he moved farther into the forest, the thick-stemmed plants were joined in the landscape by small, stunted trees with no height but trunks at least three times the thickness of any other tree Jak had ever seen. Their gnarled and twisted roots broke ground regularly, surfacing beneath the creepers to form an ankle-breaking obstacle should an unsuspecting foot catch in them.