Iron Rage. James Axler
Читать онлайн книгу.if they keep well clear of the banks,â Trace said.
âWhat if there are snags on the river?â Krysty asked. âOr mebbe sandbars narrowing the channel.â
âLike I saidâif they keep clear of the banks. Otherwise all bets are off.â
âDonât forget the rads,â Myron said helpfully.
âRads?â Krysty and Ricky said almost simultaneously.
âOh, I was getting there,â Trace stated. âNot just rads, but heavy-metal pollution, big-time. You know how you always hear talk about strontium swamps? Well, they actually got stretches of that around here.â
Ricky eyed a flock of ducks starting noisily from some reeds on the right bank. âDoes that mean those birds are muties too, if they can live around here?â
Trace shrugged. âMany of the creatures seem less affected by the rads than we are,â Myron said.
âSounds like a double-bad place for shore leave,â J.B. said, approaching from astern.
âItâs not my idea of a vacation spot,â added Mildred Wyeth, who walked by his side. She was taller than he by a slight margin, which the battered fedora he wore tended to disguise.
âThe rads wonât kill you,â Myron said. âNot right away. The swampers who live in these bogs will likely get you first.â
âSwampies?â Mildred asked.
âSwampers,â the engineer repeated, with added emphasis on the second syllable. âNot muties. People.â
âOf a sort,â his wife told them.
âWouldnât they have to be muties to survive if the rad countâs that high?â Ricky asked.
âTheyâre too mean for the rads to chill,â Santiago offered.
âHow about them?â Ryan asked. âDo they go after vessels that are underway?â
âNot much when they stay clear of the banks,â the captain said. âLike the stickies. Like most things, come to that. Thatâs another reason we stay out in the middle of the channel when we can. The riverâs lethal enough. We donât need the grief that comes from land.â
âWhich is her typically sour way of saying the river is our home, and we feel safest here,â Myron said. âRight, my love?â
That got a lopsided grin from the captain. âAnything you say, Myron.â
Ricky picked up a sprocket and held it up to the sun to be examined.
âI get it,â he said glumly. âEverythingâs dangerous. Especially everything beautiful.â
Ryan winked at Krysty and grinned. âPretty much.â
âThe real danger is the darkness in the human soul,â said Nataly Dobrynin, the Queenâs first mate, emerging from the superstructure and walking up to join the others. She was on the tall side, taller than either Conoyer, and skinny. She wore her long, dark brown hair pulled back in a ponytail that emphasized the austere bone structure of her face, and her slightly angled gray eyes. She never smiled, and intimidated the hell out of Ricky.
Surely that canât be right, Ricky thought. Stickies are double dangerous, for one thing. Rads and heavy-metal poisoning, for another.
He looked to Ryan for confirmation. He sure as nuke wasnât contradicting the somewhat-scary mate.
But Ryan frowned thoughtfully.
âThatâs true enough,â he said. âThatâs what blew up the world, after all.â
âSome would blame the cold hearts of the whitecoats, lover, never mind the darkness of their souls,â Krysty said drily.
âThat âsomeâ being you.â
She grinned; he shrugged.
âWell, âsomeâ arenât wrong,â he said. âBut they still had their reasons, which fieldstripped down to that.â
âIâd say it was the madness of shutting themselves off from the natural world in order to try to control it,â the redhead said.
âSounds like the same thing, to me,â Nataly said. She turned to Trace. âCaptain, weâre coming eight up on the confluence.â
Trace nodded. âRight. Everybody, get to your stations. Break timeâs over. The big riverâs mood doesnât look bad today, but wrestling this bitch of a barge through the turbulence where the streams join could get triple ugly triple fast.â
âYou best put your toys away and step lively too, Ricky,â Ryan said. âI think we need to have weapons in hand when we hit the Sippi. With the captainâs permission, of course.â
âWhyâs that?â Myron asked. The bespectacled engineer sounded more curious than challenging.
âJunctions are good places for bad things to happen,â J.B. stated, settling his fedora more firmly on his head. âLike crossroads. Reckon rivers arenât any different.â
âThey used to say the Devil hung out at crossroads,â Mildred said. âBack in the, uh, day.â
Ricky turned his face down to hide his grin. The âdayâ she meant was back in the long-dead twentieth century, where Mildred had lived most of her life. She had undergone a routine abdominal surgical procedure and something had gone wrong. Sheâd been frozen in a cryogenic procedure and shipped to a cryocenter in Minnesota just as the balloon was going up on the Big Nuke.
Trace nodded. âYouâre right, Ryan. Take your people to full alert. But stand ready to lend a hand if it turns out the riverâs what we really need to be worried about.â
Ryan nodded.
âGet that winch back together double quick,â Myron said, all business now.
âBut we havenât finished cleaning it,â Maggie protested.
âYes, you have,â Myron told her, his tone at once gentle and commanding. âYouâll just take it apart again and clean it after weâre headed up the Sippi for Feliville.â
âAye-aye, sir,â she said glumly. Then she sat back on her heels, looked at Ricky and suddenly grinned.
When she did that she was positively cute, he thought.
âAll right, champ,â she said. âShow me what youâve got.â
* * *
THE DECK ROLLED beneath Ryanâs boots as the Mississippi Queen chugged into the joining of the Yazoo with the Sippi.
His Steyr Scout Tactical longblaster in hand, he stood at the bow, with Krysty at his side. The rest of the companions were spread out around the eighty-foot-long vesselâs perimeter, interspersed with armed members of the Queenâs regular crew. Doc Tanner, his LeMat combination handblaster and shotgun at the ready, held a position to Krystyâs right. J.B. was to Ryanâs left, holding his Uzi, and Mildred flanked him farther astern. Jak Lauren, their young scout, stood in the stern. He was ready to run down the thick hawser by which they towed a hundred-foot barge stacked high with lumber and bales of cloth and leap aboard to repel any would-be boarders with his knives and .357 Magnum Colt Python revolver.
Finally, Ricky Morales, having reassembled the power-winch to his stern task-mistressâs approval,