by James Axler
In Deathlands nobody except the hopelessly insane ever went walking anywhere for pleasure. The very idea would have been greeted with cackles of disbelieving laughter.
There was a warehouse that held half a dozen deflated rafts, a gas-powered generator linked to an air compressor, a changing room that held the rotted shreds of oilskins and orange life jackets. Another, smaller building had been used for administration, and contained a desk and some filing cabinets as well as a tiny word processor and a couple of radios.
The only thing that was interesting to Ryan and the others was the larger building—and the tracks that led from it down to the edge of the river. Deep scuff marks marred the ground as though something had been dragged down there, with the deeper imprints of three pairs of feet in the soft, pale sand.
Ryan, Jak and J.B. knelt alongside the tracks, staring intently at them. Jak touched the edges of the footmarks, looking at the way the sand crumbled in at his touch.
"Not long," he said finally.
"Yeah. Wind would've faded them more. I'd guess at less than two hours." Ryan looked questioningly at the Armorer.
"Maybe even less than two," J.B. replied.
Krysty called to them from the storage building. "Engine in here's still real warm! And there's a kind of boat, half blown up."
Ryan ran toward her, followed by the others, and entered the cool, damp-smelling concrete building.
J.B. had gone immediately to the little gas engine, laying his hand on the top. "Right," he said. "Can't be more than an hour. Could be less."
The big raft lay on one side, like a dying amphibian, its flanks streaked witn mold, half-inflated.
"Obvious what happened," Ryan said. "Strasser got here, dumped his wag, found this place and started trying to blow up one of the boats. He got mostly through it and then… either got bored and picked a smaller one or realized it would be too big for three of them to handle."
They spent ten minutes trying to get the stubborn gas generator to run, taking turns on the starting cord until it coughed into smoking life. Over the years Ryan had plenty of experience of trying to get prenuke machinery to work. It wasn't generally the best fun in the world.
"Join up that lead to the big raft. Jak, sort out enough paddles for us all, and a few spares. Mildred, see if any of those float jackets are of any use. Doc, find some lashing cord."
For a quarter of an hour there was a scene of organized chaos. An additional complication was the fact that the nozzle that connected the generator to the raft was faulty and kept slipping off in a violent hiss of escaping air.
It took the combined efforts of Ryan, J.B., Krysty and Jak to get enough air into the chambers of the big raft.
"We'll never get it full," J.B. panted.
"I guess this'll do," Ryan said. "Turn off the engine, Jak."
The sudden silence in the building was startling.
Ryan straightened, holding the small of his back where he could feel a kinked muscle. He looked around at the others. "Report," he said.
Mildred snapped to attention, clicking her heels. "Private Wyeth, Second Class, reporting, sir! Regret none of those life jackets would keep a gerbil afloat for thirty seconds. Sir!"
Doc straightened at her side. "Report that I took over paddle duty from Corporal Lauren, sir. Also found enough cord to bind an army. A dozen paddles all collected and ready to stow, sir."
Ryan returned the salute. "Well done, both of you. Put you in for a commendation when we get back to base."
"Thank you, sir," they chorused.
"Then I guess it's time we got this boat on the river."
THE REMAINS OF a short jetty jutted into the river on the inside of a bend where the water flowed more slowly. All working together, the six friends managed to walk the big inflatable down to the edge, making sure that there was a stout piece of rope to tether it to a solid metal stanchion near the main building.
Before embarking, Ryan went and searched quickly through the small office, finding maps of the river that provided details of the various tours on offer to tourists: half-day morning, half-day afternoon, full day including packed lunch, overnight raft ride, with tent accommodation and an evening barbecue, two-day trip, all food included, and a three-day trip that would take you close to the Grandee.
"Three days." He took one of the brightly colored maps, even though it only gave sketchy details of the actual river journey, showing a number of rapids and one or two portage points "depending upon water conditions."
Whoever ran the raft operation had given exotic names to some of the more hazardous stretches of the river—Hell's Teeth, Dragon's Drop, Demon's Drop, Devil's Drop. Ryan thought that some of them showed a distinct lack of imagination. Bustagut was better. So was Piledriver.
From the map, and bearing in mind that it would have been drawn up before the nukes shattered the earth and altered the landscape, it didn't look an impossible journey. It seemed as if there were a couple of places where they'd have to get the unwieldy raft into the shore and manhandle it around particularly steep vertical falls.
"Right," Ryan said to himself, carefully closing the tumbledown door and stepping back into the bright sunlight.
CORT STRASSER HAD also taken one of the maps, wishing within five minutes that he'd taken several of them. The spray was bad enough, but they were frequently hit by waves of solid white water. But his memory was crystal clear and he felt fairly confident that he could recall the more dangerous parts. He'd taken the longer steering paddle and put himself in the stern of the clumsy yellow raft. A rope around his waist was tied to one of the mooring rings, though he had some doubt about whether he was really safer that way if anything happened. It was obvious that the material of this raft was somewhat frail, and if the craft went down it would take everyone with it.
Rosa was crouched in the middle, head down, face showing no expression at the tumbling and lurching as they went over the next set of rapids.
Rafe was kneeling in the bow, face streaming with water, trying to point out any particular hazards to Strasser, raising a right arm or a left. The speed of the racing river made it extremely difficult to control the direction of the raft.
In the quieter, slower passages of the river, Cort Strasser took time to stand up, balancing against the pitching of the craft, looking behind him for any sign of pursuit.
But there was nothing.
THE BLUE-GREEN water was calm in the eddying launch place, and they had no problems in getting the unwieldy craft safely afloat. Ryan still had worries about their failure to inflate all the sections fully. The material sagged wearily and there didn't seem very much freeboard. But he'd wanted to get moving and the plastic had seemed dangerously fragile.
"Tie on to the nearest metal ring," he said, "but make sure you use a knot that you can get untied real quick. If anything happens in this river you got seconds. No more."
"Take front," Jak said, clambering with his customary nimbleness to the rounded bow, perching himself there with one of the paddles.
Ryan chose to take the steering position in the stern himself. The other four split, J.B. and Mildred going on the starboard side, Krysty and Doc to port.
The stern mooring rope ran through a thick, rusted iron ring on the side of the jetty. Ryan looked around. "Ready?"
Everyone was.
He let go of the rope, allowing it to run through his fingers. The current tugged at the bow of the raft, nudging them into the main stream of the river.
And they were off.
Chapter Thirty-Six
RYAN LOST HIS MAP even more quickly than Cort Strasser. The very first bend on the river brought a vicious back swirl. A large white rock, slick and polished, caught the bow of the raft, lifting it before any of them could react to check it, and dropping the stern so that a wave of dark water broke clear over Ryan.
He felt himself heaved into the air, only the tugging rope around his waist keeping him attached to the raft. Arms and legs flailing, he was dumped hard
in the bottom of the inflatable, mouth and nose filling with ice-cold water, choking him. The butt of the G-12 swung around and struck him on the side of the head, making him blink dizzily. The map dropped from his hand and whirled away into the white foam and vanished.
He managed to hold on to the paddle and fought his way upright, shaking his head to clear it. A quick glance told him his companions were still inside the raft, though everyone had been sent spinning by the massive force of the impact.
"Fireblast!" he gasped.
Krysty was next to recover, spitting out a mouthful of water and managing a grin. "If it's like this in the first hundred yards, then what the dark night'll it be like after a mile?"
RYAN WAS USED to bumping, sickening journeys, locked into the stinking darkness of a rolling war wag. But he'd never in his entire life experienced anything to compare with that wild ride down the white water of that nameless river in what had once been South Texas.
During one of the quieter passages, Doc called out, "Reminds me of something I recall hearing a comedian once say about flying. This is very similar. He said that it was hours of boredom, interspersed with moments of stark terror."
Jak had started throwing up within a quarter mile of their start and continued being sick for the first hour and a half. Ryan would have thought it impossible for the albino teenager to look more pale than usual, but Jak achieved a greenish pallor of a frightening hue.
Much of their diminished supply of food went overboard at the same time as the map, but there was still enough to keep them going on reduced rations for several days.
"Least we won't die of thirst," J.B. yelled, after a particularly large wave had soaked them all to the skin.
"Thirst, no! Hypothermia, very possibly!" Mildred responded, digging in with her paddle to try to pull them from a sucking whirlpool.
DESPITE HIS lean build and his appallingly depraved style of living, Cort Strasser was a creature of almost endless strength. But as the afternoon light began to dim, filling the shadows between the high cliffs with an extra layer of darkness, even the ex-sec boss began to suspect he was coming to the end of his endurance.
Their small inflatable was much easier and lighter to handle than the big raft that Ryan and his group had commandeered. Yet even that needed constant vigilance and cunning to save it from being swamped or torn apart by the jagged rocks.
He'd taken the precaution of strapping extra paddles to the side of the clumsy craft. Twice during that endless day Strasser had to use one of them. One paddle snapped like a frail twig against a wall of rushing rock while the other simply started to disintegrate into splinters.
Rafe performed heroically, though his boss still screamed raging abuse at him for every jolt and spin of the raft.
Rosa had given up. Like Jak Lauren, miles behind, she was demolished by nausea.
Fortunately there was so much water swilling into and over the inflatable that her constant puking was washed away. Several times she wept, and once screamed at Cort Strasser to shoot her and take away the pitching misery. But he laughed, his thin lips peeling back off his gleaming teeth, his eyes like small pits of raging fire.
RYAN HAD TRIED to memorize the lost map, but he quickly discovered that it would have been precious little help. The land showed all the signs of lifting and shearing that typified overwhelming quake movement. There were long patches of oily calm, where he remembered some of the demonic drops from the brochure, and sudden falls where they had to stop and drag the inflatable along narrow paths, where he was sure the map had shown easy stretches.
One of the worries was that there were virtually no places along the endless southerly gorge where they could hope to safely land. Most of the time there was only the steep cliffs, towering up to five hundred feet high on either side, plunging clear down into the rushing water.
Occasionally they'd be the target for dozens of small, white-breasted blue birds that dived at them, whistling shrilly at the invasion of their territory. Once or twice they spotted fish, leaping upstream over the foaming rapids, with the silver glint of scales, iridescent in the rainbow spray.
As Jak recovered he began to take a more lively part in the adventure, standing balanced in the pitching bow of the raft, shrieking orders to Ryan at the steering paddle, his hand waving them to left or right.
Around midafternoon, they came down a great slide of rock and water, hopelessly out of control, trusting only to luck to get them through. Their luck nearly held.
But near the bottom a slicing piece of jagged boulder snagged one of the starboard flotation chambers and cut it open as neatly as a good steel knife. The inflatable immediately rode lower in the river, allowing waves to break in over Mildred and J.B. on that side.
The next mile or so was calmer, though the river still flowed fast, carrying them at a good twelve to fifteen miles an hour.
"Can we repair it?" Ryan called.
The Armorer shook his head. Despite the relative quiet, the water was still giving a constant soft roar, making conversation difficult. "No way. Even if we beached her we don't have anything that could mend a tear in this stuff."
"Still got freeboard," Doc said, trying to ring water out of the sleeves of his frock coat.
"As long as we don't lose another part," Mildred said, shaking her head so that the tiny, tight plaits all moved together, throwing off beads of water. "Any lower and we'll be sailing under this damned river, instead of on top of it."
Ryan looked at the bank. There was a gently shelving beach of golden sand, lined with clumps of sycamores and oaks, the wall of seamed rock rising steeply behind them. It would make a safe camping spot, but there were still hours of good daylight left and Strasser would be going on.
Even though the sun had gone behind the cliff to their right, the passage through the long canyon was still navigable.
"We keep going," he said. Nobody seemed to be at all surprised.
RAFE LAY HUDDLED in the bow, eyes squeezed shut, hands clasped between his thighs. He was trying to keep himself warm and stop the shuddering that racked his lean body. He'd reached the end of his limits of strength and then gone on even beyond that.
Strasser had given up trying to rouse his lieutenant with words and abuse. The river was never still and safe for long, so he was denied the opportunity to leave the steering position in the stern to go to flog Rafe with the steel-braided quirt.
The light was now fading fast. Ahead of them on the right he'd spotted a narrow strip of sand, but he lacked the power to beach the awkward raft. After the sandy stretch there was a jagged headland, which marked a sharp bend in the river. Strasser began to maneuver the inflatable closer to that bank. He'd noticed that there was often a small landing place on both sides of similar jutting crags, and he knew that he, too, was near to the end of his tether.
If they missed a chance to land and camp for the night, they might drift helplessly until they reached another of the sheer drops that they'd already portaged. But this time they would slide silently over the brink to their deaths. "Coming in!" he shouted in a croaking voice.
NOT ALL THAT far behind, Ryan was reaching the same conclusion. The day of rafting had been infinitely more tiring than he'd imagined. Everyone had pulled their weight to the best of his or her ability. But now the afternoon was near done, and it was time to get the raft out of the river for the night.
"Jak!"
"What?"
"Keep a good look out for someplace to pull in for the night."
The boy cupped his hand to his ear. "Can't hear, Ryan!"
"Place for the night!"
Jak waved a hand to show that he'd finally understood the message.
They'd just reached a point where huge earth slips had come down on both sides of the river, narrowing it to a hurtling, boiling cascade. Ryan steered the raft toward the center of the current, hoping that there was nothing around the next curve. They were now racing at twice their normal speed, and any sort of control was almost impossible.
"There!" Jak bellowed, right hand pointing like an accusing angel.
Ryan looked across to starboard, seeing that there was another rock slide jutting out into the stream from the right where the river made a sharp bend. There was a slender strip of sandy shore, but barely enough time to steer their inflatable toward it. Ryan was tempted to allow their craft to float on around the corner, with the hope of finding an easier landing place.
"Pull right!" Ryan shouted.
Krysty and Doc paddled furiously, bending all their strength into it, while Mildred and J.B. backed water, swinging the clumsy raft around and making it head with a grudging reluctance toward the sand.
"Take bowline!" Ryan called to Jak, who nodded his understanding.
Out of the center, the water flowed and eddied more slowly, and they managed to reach the shore without too much trouble. The bow came in with a soft, grating sound and Jak leaped with an eldritch agility, tying the rope around the stump of an old walnut tree.
Everyone climbed out and flopped on the sand, sighing with exhaustion. Ryan looked at them, wondering how long they'd be able to keep on rafting south. As far as he could judge they must now be close to halfway toward the Grandee.
"I'll get a fire going," J.B. offered, trying to wring water out of his battered fedora.
"How about Strasser?" Krysty asked. "He could be anywhere. Right around the next bend."
Ryan shook his head. "Doubt that. He had a good start on us. Likely he'll keep going till dark before he stops."
"Are we positive that the villain hasn't taken some backwater or side creek and is, e'en now, sneaking along behind us?"
Mildred looked pityingly at the old man. "I'm sure your brain's addled, Doc," she said. "Sometimes I reckon you're not even ten cents in the dollar."
