He was aware of the evil smile on Harvey’s face as consciousness slipped away from him.
RYAN WAS AWARE of the jackhammer pounding in his brain as he slowly slipped back into consciousness. He slowly lifted his head, which felt as though it had little connection with the rest of his body. Looking around the sleeping unit, he saw that he and Krysty were alone.
The flame-haired beauty was wrapped around him, her body heavy with sleep. As the one-eyed man slipped from beneath her, he remembered with a smile the way they had made love, long and passionate, savoring the opportunity to take a few moments of peace and use it in that manner, knowing that they could—just for the moment—let down their guard on the outside world and be totally wrapped in each other.
But before that? The celebration was little more than a set of random images, each distorted by that fearsome brew and its incredible strength. As Ryan planted his feet on the ground and felt the impact travel up each calf, he wondered how the others felt as they awoke.
JAK HAD AN aching head, but the will to dismiss it. Too long had he spent hunting and living in hostile territories to let a hangover get to him. He smiled as he spotted Doc, attempting to rise among a heap of bodies. Considering that the surrounding ville dwellers were used to the brew and mostly much younger than Doc, it was a measure of the old man’s constitution and wiry strength that he was conscious before the majority of them.
The albino stepped over the bodies and assisted Doc to his feet.
“My thanks, Jak,” Doc said, wincing at the apparent loudness of his own voice in his aching head, “I fear that I—in common with most—imbibed far too much last night.”
“Not much celebrate in this place,” Jak commented. “Why not enjoy?” he added.
“True, true…but there was something troubling me last night. Something I felt I had to speak to Ryan upon… But I cannot for the life of me remember. Where are the others?” Jak shrugged. “Too busy to notice.”
“A fair point.” Doc grinned. “I have not been that drunk since New Year’s in Vermont. For one wild, intoxicated moment I could almost have been back there…” His eyes misted over as he recalled his beloved Emily, and his children, Rachel and Jolyon, long since dead and buried even before skydark.
Jak took the old man’s arm. “We find them,” he said.
Doc looked confused for a moment. “What? Why, yes. It was just that I could almost see them, before that hard rain began to fall and— Wait!” He gripped Jak’s arm so hard that the albino felt Doc’s bony fingers bite into the muscle. “The hard rain—Sunchild. That’s what I wanted to remember. Something I saw at Samtvogel. They have more than just blasters, and now that they have been routed, let us pray that he does not know how to use it, or that it isn’t operative.”
Jak frowned and took Doc’s chin in his free hand so that he could focus his red eyes directly into Doc’s.
“What worry you?”
Doc seemed to struggle for the words. “Hard rain…like the cursed whitecoats and their appalling methods of destruction. It must have come from the redoubt or a silo nearby. Thank whatever God is left that they didn’t somehow detonate it then.”
“Doc!” Jak barked, snapping the old man back to attention. “What it?”
Doc’s voice was reduced to a whisper. “A nuke, my friend. They have, in the middle of their ville, a nuke. The very thing that created them. A splendid irony, is it not?”
WHEN DEAN REGAINED consciousness, he felt no pain from the blow that had rendered him unconscious. He felt no headache, nor any of the pain and nausea from concussion or waking from unconsciousness. In fact, he felt as though he were adrift on a sea of wool, muzzy but completely happy. He felt drugged.
He slowly realized that had to be the case, as he became aware of the fact that his wrists and ankles were secured and that he was lying on the table in the middle of the room.