Chapter Three

      Fleeting visions of a bad mat-trans jump boiled in Ryan’s dreams, constantly punctuated by distant blasterfire. Or great preDark war machines charging after the man with their cannons clicking on shells no longer there. Or sec hunter droids snapping deadly scissors, or…

      With a start, Ryan awoke to find both hands tied to the pommel of the saddle. For a split second, he thought they had been captured and his blood surged with adrenaline, his wrists breaking apart the twine as he clawed for the blaster on his hip. But surprisingly, it was there and as the mists of sleep faded away, Ryan saw the other companions leading their horses along the brightly lit desert. Fireblast, just a bad dream.

      “Good afternoon, lover,” Krysty said, glancing sideways. “Nice to have you back.”

      Afternoon? Had he really slept that long? The dull ache in his back from sleeping in the saddle seemed to confirm that, and the sun was high overhead, the air stifling with heat.

      Licking his dry lips, Ryan started to reply when a faint clicking sound reached his ears. When he realized Bloodfire that his usually silent rad counter was the source, he flipped his lapel and took a look, recoiling in shock when the counter revealed they were in a lethal zone. They were walking directly into a nuke crater!

      “Everybody freeze!” Ryan roared, grabbing the reins and bringing the horse to an abrupt halt. “We’re hot!”

      “What?” J.B. replied gruffly, turning. Placing a thumb behind his lapel, he flipped the cloth. “See that? Mine is—Dark night! I put it in my backpack at the ville for safekeeping!”

      J.B. hurriedly snatched the pack from the saddle pommel, rummaged inside for a moment and removed a small lacquered box. Inside lay the precious rad counter. “Hard at the edge of the danger zone,” J.B. announced, his voice strained.

      Suddenly, the companions went pale, each person straining to sense the invisible death pouring from the featureless ground around them.

      “Which way?” Krysty asked, climbing onto her horse.

      Taking the rad counter in hand, Ryan turned about in every direction until pointing due west.

      “That way!” he said, kicking his horse into a trot.

      Scrambling onto their mounts, the rest of the companions moved with a purpose and galloped after the man as if their lives depended on it. Nothing was said for almost an hour as they raced for safety away from the lethal rads, the featureless landscape flying beneath the pounding hooves of the animals. No predator was visible to the horses, but they seemed to be able to sense the terror of their riders, and were putting their hearts into a desperate race for life.

      Reaching an embankment, the companions slowed their mounts to hurriedly walk down to the lower desert floor. Now patches of rock could be seen amid the salty sand of the desert, and Ryan called a halt to check his rad counter.

      “This is far enough,” Ryan said in relief. “We’re clear.”

      Exhaling in relief, the companions brought the horses to a ragged stop, then walked them about until facing one another.

      “Out rads?” Jak demanded, slipping to the ground from behind Dean. During the long morning walk, Mildred had taken the opportunity to clean and bandage his bad arm. It was sore, but he could use it again to fire a blaster if necessary.

      “Seems so. I’m reading only normal background count,” Ryan said, aiming the rad counter around just to double-check.

      When satisfied, he attached it to his collar again.

      Gazing back the way they had just come from, J.B. removed his hat to fan himself. “Damn good thing you woke up when you did. I was strolling us smack into a rad pit hot enough to chill us all.”

      “Radiation,” Dean growled. “Hot pipe, I’d rather fight stickies.”

      Stickies were the curse of the Deathlands. The size of a norm, stickies had sucker pads on their fingers and feet, and could walk walls and ceilings like insects. They attached their suckers to a person’s flesh and ripped off pieces until the screaming victim was only a mass of still beating organs. Ryan had once seen a sec men attacked by a swarm of stickies take a blaster and put a round into his own heart rather than be savagely torn apart by the muties.

      “Gotta go,” Jak said, hitching up his belt. “Give bag.”

      Krysty passed it to him and the teenager went behind a dune to answer the call of nature. A few minutes later he returned and passed her back the sloshing container.

      “Here,” Dean said, offering his canteen.

      Jak nodded in thanks and took only a sip, then passed the canteen back and placed a smooth pebble in his mouth. It helped a person to lose less moisture by keeping his or her mouth shut, and the salvia generated eased the pangs of thirst.

      “Which way now, my dear Ryan?” Doc asked, shifting in the saddle.

      His long hair ruffling in the dry wind, Ryan checked the rad counter carefully.

      “West and southwest are clear,” he said in a measured tone. “I’d say south by west as that heads us closer to the Grandee.”

      “River means fishing and means villes,” J.B. agreed, pulling out his minisextant from under his shirt to shoot the sun and check their position.

      “Okay, we’re about four hundred miles from the redoubt on the Grandee,” he said, tucking the priceless tool away. “Might as well make that our goal, and we can expand our search for the Trader from there.”

      “Hell, he might be there,” Ryan growled, chucking the reins to start his horse trotting.

      As the companions rode their mounts at an easy pace, the sun reached azimuth directly overhead and started to turn the world into a searing crucible. The sparkling sand reflected the heat until it was difficult to see from the reflections, and the salt infused the atmosphere, making it difficult to breathe as every breath tasted of salt and leached moisture from their flesh. Knives were used on spare clothing to form masks, and the companions regularly wet a rag and wiped down the faces of their horses. The animals were starting to heave deeply, near total exhaustion, but until shade was found, there could be no respite.

      As they walked the horses, Mildred reached into her satchel and pulled out a small leather-bound notebook to jot down the location of the radiation field. The notebook was a recent acquisition, and she often wrote her thoughts into the journal. Someday when she had the chance, Mildred planned to organize the material to leave behind a sort of legacy for others: medical knowledge, a true history of the Deathlands and its people, danger zones, etc. Perhaps nobody would ever read her words, but she felt compelled to record her observations.

      The hours passed under the baking sun, and then cool relief came as a swirl of storm clouds expanded across the sky, blotting out the sun with unnatural speed. Now lightning crashed amid the purple-and-orange hellstorm above the world, and the companions paused for a terrifying minute as there came the strong smell of sulfur on the wind. Quickly pulling out the heavy plastic shower curtains taken from the redoubt a few days earlier, the companions braced themselves for an acid rain storm, but the reek faded away with the dry desert breeze and they relaxed. Muties and sec men could be fought, rad pits avoided, but when the acid rain came only stone, steel or heavy plastic could save a person from burns. And if the acid was strong enough, the plastic would be useless.

      Doc