Iron Rage. James Axler
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it slopped over into their own personal lives. They werenât outlaws, these people who made their livings on the riverâcertainly not by the standards of the dayâbut they were pretty clearly outcasts, who had trouble fitting into the more settled societies ashore.
Which is probably why we and they get along like bosom buddies, she thought.
Her companions and the crew worked without particular urgency to unload the boat of whatever was deemed necessary, and prepare a camp on the riverbank, which was as flat as a board and barely higher than the water. The sun wasnât going to set for some time yet, and it wasnât as if they could hide their presence.
Ryan and the captain had chosen a decent spot to ground the boat. It was a mostly clear area of dry, firm soil. The radiation in the immediate vicinity wouldnât chill them too quickly, according to Ryanâs coat-lapel rad counter. As for the amount of heavy metalsâbrutally toxicâthey might be taking in, there was no way to tell, which didnât make Mildred any too happy. But what mattered was immediate survival. In the absence of that none of the other stuff would matter anyway.
The one slightly alarming aspect was the presence of a dilapidated railroad bridge barely a quarter mile upstream. The rusty steel structure had fallen into the creek from roughly one-third of the way out from this bank almost to the far side. Likely there was still a rail line, long overgrown by weeds, leading to and from it. The problematic part was, this region was alleged to be crawling with stickies, and that derelict bridge would provide an ace nest for a major stickie colony.
Still, she thought, we take what we can get. As usual.
Ryan was hacking back the long grass and scrub surrounding their landing point with his panga. Jake was helping out with a scythe that they seemed to be carrying to trade at some point. He mowed the stuff down far faster than Ryan, and likely could have done as well by himself. But Ryan clearly felt the need to do something, especially after the enforced helplessness when they were trying to run from a bunch of boats shooting cannon at them.
At least Ryan and Mildred had prevailed on Krysty to take it easy, once they got ashore. She had insisted on carrying her own backpack off the vesselâfortunately all their gear had survived the fires and general smashing. Then she went off to the side and sat down on her jacket, spread out on the dirt. She was acting normally, aside from her not being in the thick of all this activity.
Mildred smirked. Sometimes she got her companions to stop acting as if they were superhuman, and to take some regard for their health. If you didnât take care of yourself some, your performance degraded. There was no way around that. And especially given the way they all lived, that was a fast ride to a hole in the ground, with dirt hitting you in the eyes. Such was life in the Deathlands.
Sadly, the captain would not listen to Mildredâs urging that she rest after her terrible injury and blood loss, though in fairness she wasnât listening to her own people, either. She was wading around in the water with Avery and Nataly, inspecting the pierced hull to see if it could be repaired. Or if it even had the structural integrity left to be worth repairing. After sharing a brief, impassioned hug with her, her husband had retreated below to the engine compartment with J.B. and Ricky, doing something to take care of the engines, which Mildred understood not at all and cared about less.
She decided to watch Trace closely. Strangely, aside from her losing her lower arm, and Edna and Maggie losing their lives, no one was seriously hurt. Pretty much everybody had gotten cut, scraped, bruised and burned. Even Nataly looked as if sheâd just gotten a bad sunburn on the left side of her face, once the grime and gore got washed off. Mildred guessed it hurt like bloody hell, but the first mate was stoic about it.
Well, great.
She heaved herself to her feet. Suzan and Abner MacReedy were carrying a crate of scavvied canned goods out of the hull. They were prime trade goods, too, as whatever the few-spoken Santee termed âtreasureâ presumably was. But if their day-to-day survival depended on consuming themâwell, they were cheap at the price, as long as they werenât spoiled. She reckoned she needed to get back and pitch in.
Weâre all exhausted, she thought. Surely I can take my eyes off Trace and Krysty for a few minutesâ¦
From his perch atop the cabin, which was the most intact roof section of the largely burned-out cabin, Jak yelled out, âCrocs! Lots!â
Ryan knew their scout Jak didnât cry wolf. But what really ripped his attention away from hacking at the weeds surrounding the campâand keeping his eye scanning in all directions inland, mindful of all the reasons he was trying to clear the tall grass and brush awayâwas that Jakâs falcon-scream warning was followed promptly by the cracking, booming blast of his .357 Magnum Colt Python handblaster.
Unlike the rest of them, who were extremely handy with a blasterâeven Mildred had been an Olympic-level pistol shot in her day, and carried a competition-quality Czech-made ZKR 551 revolver to prove itâJak was all about blades. At any given time he had a dozen or so knives hidden on his body, both for close-quarters fighting and throwing. He was ace with them all, and he loved getting the chance to use his skill.
Ryanâs head snapped around in time to see the grounded Mississippi Queenâs first mate and chief shipwright pick up their captain by the elbows and carry her onto the bank, sending big splashes of water into the twilit air. There were four or five others in the shallow water that he could see, including Doc and Ricky, helping unload the boat of whatever Arliss deemed necessary.
Another thunder crack ripped from Jakâs Python. Ryan saw a plume of water spurt up about ten yards downstream of the boat. The craft was beached at an angle of about forty-five degrees, with the keep of its prow driven into the soft soil of the beach, and its stern pointing west. Trace had ordered Nataly to bring her in that way to facilitate loading and unloading. The actual channel of Wolf Creek got steep fast, they told Ryan, who had no reason to doubt them.
They know their trade, and we know ours. There wasnât a nuking thing any of us could have done to stop us from winding up here, stranded on some forsaken shore in the middle of a nuking strontium swamp, he knew.
The one-eyed man hated the feeling of helplessness their bombardment had pounded into him. Into all of them, he knew, crew and companion alike.
He was already running toward the shore, transferring his panga to his left hand and drawing his SIG Sauer P226 handblaster with his right. His boots wanted to sink into the firm but moist soil. It was just this side of being straight-up mud. Out in the stream, Ryan could see what looked like random snags disturbing the waterâs oleaginous flow, except that they hadnât been there before. They were strangely bumpy. Some of those bumps showed glabrous gleams. And they were moving.
âFireblast!â he burst out. There had to be a dozen of the bastards. More. How did so many get so close without Jak noticing them? he wondered.
Then he saw what seemed like a mostly submerged log, but with eye-bumps on the near end, slide out of the lower weeds in the water by the far bank, sculling with faint side-to-side strokes of its tail.
The bastards were cunning, he thought. They snuck up on them.
âMildred!â Ryan yelled. âStay in the nuking boat!â
The physician froze with one leg over the rail. The last of the stragglers in the water had made the sanctuary of the bank. Clearly, Mildred didnât realize the big Nile crocodiles could swim quite easily in water as shallow as that surrounding the hull.
Jak fired again. Ryan could see thrashing in the water this time, and he spotted a pink tinge in some of the splashes. A couple of the âsnagsâ diverted toward it. Apparently these bastards werenât above making a meal out of one of their buddies.
But