Watersleep

by James Axler

  Boyd listened to the roboticlike dissertation while peering at J.B. as if the Armorer were some sort of fedora-wearing alien insect.

  "Looks like we got us a real know-it-all! Mebbe the Admiral would like to have a chat with such a gushing font of wisdom," Boyd said, looking to Bow­man for confirmation. The big man's face spoke for him. He looked as though he couldn't care less one way or the other.

  "'Gushing font'?" J.B. said in a mocking tone of voice. "What the hell kind of phrase is that? You some kind of pansy?''

  "Wouldn't you like to know?" Boyd replied, his eyes narrowing at the implications of the insult.

  "What are you gents doing here, anyway?" Doc asked.

  "Why, we're doing the Lord's work—the good Lord Poseidon. You might say we're his loyal disci­ples." Boyd giggled at his own phrasing. "Yes, sir, we're loyal, steadfast and true, preaching his wisdom up and down the coast, aren't we, Frankie?"

  Bowman shrugged his massive shoulders. "If you say so."

  "You know something? You're no fun at all, you know that?" Boyd sneered at his companion.

  "Get over it," Bowman replied.

  "Sorry to interrupt your spat, but there's something I need to tell you," J.B. interjected.

  "Did I ask your opinion, Four-eyes?"

  "Again with the 'Four-eyes,'" Mildred said with a sigh. "We've got to get you some contacts, John."

  "Oh, what is it?" Boyd asked. "I can tell you right now the answer is 'Hell no!"'

  "Don't have a question, just an observation. There's one other thing you ought to know about those H&K semiauto pistols," J.B. said lazily.

  "Yeah? And what's that, genius?"

  "Their most interesting feature is the long safety lever at the front of the grip. You have to hold it firmly before the gun can fire. And guess what? You're not holding it."

  J.B. said this so matter-of-factly that Boyd actually glanced down at his hand to see if his prisoner was right. Boyd saw that the know-it-all had been in error regarding his grip, and he was about to correct him when the angular man realized he'd been taken. In the mere fragments of a second it took his eyes to focus as he looked back up, Mildred had swiftly drawn her own target revolver.

  The change in the situation registered, but by the time he truly realized what had just happened, Gard­ner Boyd was a dead man.

  "I'm a doctor. I preserve life. But nobody calls me a black bitch," Mildred hissed, and drilled Boyd with a single shot between the eyes.

  WHEN RYAN HEARD the distinctive bark of Mildred's ZKR pistol, he, Krysty and Dean immediately started to race toward the source of the sound, which had come from the far end of the marina. Ryan glanced at his chrono. Only fifteen minutes had passed. It hadn't taken J.B. long to wander into a firefight.

  "Move," he said, drawing his own blaster as he willed himself to run faster. On his heels, Krysty and Dean struggled to keep up with the pace he had set.

  A second shot rang out, this one deeper and unfa­miliar. Ryan hit the brakes and flattened his body against one of the damp marina walls that separated the twin docks. Krysty and Dean almost collided, but managed to follow suit.

  "Sounded like a shotgun, lover," Krysty said.

  "Yeah," Ryan replied. Times like this, he caught himself wishing for some kind of portable comm sys­tem. There was no way to know which way the sit­uation had gone without an actual look-see. However, even if J.B.'s party was pinned down, he could still give Ryan their location if they had radios.

  The one-eyed man mentally made himself count to twenty before peering around the corner.

  Nothing. He walked briskly to the next bend in the wooden frame tunnel, the tar-paper roofs flapping in the strong sea winds. Ryan stopped at the next corner and took up a position, waving Krysty and Dean over.

  "Anything?" he asked the redhead.

  Krysty frowned, closing her eyes. "No. Feels fine."

  "Okay, then." Ryan leaned over and peered down an alley of boat slips.

  First he saw the Patch, then he saw his friends.

  J.B. was looking back at Ryan, knowing the gun­shots would bring the one-eyed man running.

  "What took you so damned long?" J.B. said im­patiently

  .

  "YOU DIDN'T CHILL HIM?" Ryan asked, looking down at the heap where Bowman was sprawled, breathing heavily. The hair hanging over his forehead was plastered down with sweat.

  "Nope," Jak said.

  "Why not?" Ryan asked.

  "I didn't want hear Krysty complain."

  "Don't mistake compassion for cowardice, Jak," Ryan said.

  "You two are arguing for nothing," Mildred in­terjected from where she was examining Bowman's wound. "I can't do anything for this man. He'll be dead in minutes."

  "If you hadn't chilled Boyd between the eyes, he might've told us something we could use," J.B. said to the physician. "Can't blame you, though. Knew the 'black bitch' crack was his signature on the death certificate."

  "Where's Boyd now?" Ryan asked.

  "Fell overboard," Jak said innocently.

  "Hear that?" Ryan said to the dying man at his feet. "Your last few minutes can go easy or harsh. Answer a few questions about your boat, and we won't toss you in alive."

  "I want to know about this 'Poseidon' we heard about earlier," J.B. added. "And Sommers."

  "He does not look much like a sailor to me," Doc sniffed. "From his corpulent midsection, all I can think of is Captain Bligh, except that our friend has proved he lacks the proper intelligence required to be a proper despot."

  "The brains of the pair is that triple stupe floating facedown next to the boat," J.B. commented, gestur­ing to the side of the dock where Boyd's corpse was bobbing lifelessly in the water. "I know your charm­ing companion did most of the talking, but I suggest you come up with why you two were here."

  "F-f-ferryboat," Bowman wheezed. "Supposed to get supplies from Sommers, then head back home."

  "Home? Where's that?" Ryan asked. "Farther south, or on up the coast?"

  The dying man didn't say anything.

  Jak gave him a sharp kick in the ample waistline. "Asked question," the albino said.

  Bowman coughed violently, the sound a rattling rasp. The man turned his head to one side and spit out a mouthful of pink mucus. "Upstate," he finally said, each word an effort. ' 'Was supposed to pick up package, but it was a fixed deal. Sommers was run­ning a scam. No warhead."

  "Warhead?" Krysty mouthed to the rest of the group.

  "Where upstate?" Ryan demanded.

  Bowman didn't answer; he couldn't, and no amount of prodding from Jak or anyone else was go­ing to be able to pry anything more from him. His eyes were still open, but they had gone from the wide bulge of pain and suffering to a glassy and lifeless stare.

  Each of the companions stood on the dock, pon­dering the meaning of the man's last word.

  "Warhead," J.B. said finally. "Wonder what he was planning on carrying around in that tub?"

  "Since it's our ride out of here, we might as well take a look," Mildred suggested.

  "Warhead," Dean mused. "Sounds triple deadly."

  "It is, son," Ryan replied. "It is."

  Chapter Eleven

  Ryan winced as the darkness surrounding him turned to blinding white light. His right eye strained to focus on the helm controls in front of him as a blast of thunder followed the lightning, a deafening crash so close he could feel the damp air press sharply on his eardrums.

  "Fireblast!" he growled between clenched teeth, peering out into the night through the rain-streaked windows of the boat's bridge. Ryan was many things, but a seaman wasn't one of them. He had spent time on boats, but never long enough to learn the intrica­cies. Unfortunately none of the others on board the spacious one-hundred-foot cruiser were nautically in­clined, either.

  "I can't see a damned thing," Ryan muttered, glancing over the chrome-plated controls.

  "Nothing to see," J.B. replied from beside him.

  "I've never liked boats," Ryan admit
ted, squinting as another flash of lightning lit up the sky. "I'd rather swim to the Carolinas than try and sail around in this mess."

  "You first," J.B. told him.

  "At least the rain's clean. Glad this isn't a chem storm. We'd be screwed facedown to the boards with our asses in the air then."

  "Ain't that the truth," J.B. replied. Both men had driven through enough of those hellish nuclear-spawned aberrations of nature to know their dangers.

  "Boat not take much this," Jak yelled over the din of the storm. His red eyes were shining eerily in the glow of the flickering electric lamps of the yacht's bridge as he stood in the doorway across from Ryan, his wet mane of white hair hanging limply around his skull like sodden tendrils.

  Ryan glanced away from the windows of the craft and over at the teenager. Ryan couldn't help but no­tice that while he was struggling to keep his footing, Jak was effortlessly standing and compensating for the roll of the deck.

  "Boat'll do fine, Jak. We've just got to hang on until this is over. How are things below?" he asked as the deck rose and fell below his booted feet.

  Jak's ruby eyes revealed a faint glimmer of amuse­ment. "Fine. Doc's seasick."

  "No surprise there. Doc's usually the one who pukes whenever we make a jump," J.B. replied.

  "Tell everybody to hang on. There's not much else I can do but try and keep the wheel steady until we ride this thing out," Ryan said.

  At the moment, Ryan thought that the nightmares generated by a jump were more appealing than the wild ride the companions were enduring. And then, almost involuntarily, his mind turned back to the peaceful scene of a few hours earlier.

  AFTER THEY LEFT the marina, the rest of the night had passed without incident. Morning brought up a deep orange jewel from the horizon, as if the ball of the sun had been plucked from the waters of the ocean. The course had been set by utilizing J.B.'s minisextant, some trigonometric tables left in the crumbling manual for a malfunctioning on-board nav comp and some worn and taped but still intact charts. Ryan was glad for J.B.'s knowledge. They would have been forced to set out blindly in a generally northward di­rection otherwise.

  The cruiser was making way northward, with the destination of North Carolina's Outer Banks as a stop­ping point.

  For all of the talk of a warhead, there were no weapons on board beyond what the group had carried on. A box of ammunition for Boyd's 9 mm Heckler & Koch P-7 semiauto pistol was found on a table, but the blaster had fallen into the water with its owner when Mildred chilled him. Dean had claimed Bow­man's Italian Franchi SPAS-12 shotgun and stuck it under one of the boat's bunks for safekeeping.

  The galley of the craft was the only amenity lack­ing on the tidy Patch. Empty packages and peelings in a trash can hinted of the previous existence of canned and fresh foodstuffs such as tinned meats, ap­ples and peaches. Now most of the cabinets were bare except for staple rations of stale wheat crackers, a plastic bag of jerky and part of a case of twelve-ounce tins of water. Ryan's long arm had swept the back of the cabinets and come up with a glass container of green beans.

  "We can thank that pig Bowman for all of this or the lack of," Mildred said. "He didn't look like he'd been missing any meals."

  Doc had pondered doing some fishing, but instead spent most of the trip on his back, exhausted from the trek across Florida and nauseated from the ship. An informal series of watches had been set, with some of the group sleeping during the day and others at nightfall.

  The sunset was as strikingly beautiful as the sun had been when rising. As a rule, sunsets were always spectacular in Deathlands due to the pollutants and the chemicals and, to some degree, the radiation still hovering in the upper atmosphere.

  Doc had finally ventured out into the evening breeze, his feelings of nausea passing with the coming of night. He was wide-awake and restless, and since Jak and Krysty were below sleeping, their watches over, he really had no choice but to try to socialize.

  The sky around the Patch was strikingly clear, the night open and beautiful, with a multitude of stars stretching out across the horizon. Ryan hadn't seen such celestial beauty in a long time, not since the long summer nights in the mountains of his boyhood. Back then, he'd spent many an hour outdoors, the dew wet and cold beneath his bare feet, looking at the sky and trying to sort out the stars from the glowing lightning bugs.

  Doc, taking strength from being revved up in full educator mode, had been challenging J.B. and Mil­dred to a friendly game of naming the constellations. Unlike the knowledge necessary to comprehend his numerous literary aspersions—the spouting of which put Doc in a class all by himself—both the physician and the Armorer knew a bit about the stars and the heavens. With J.B.'s eidetic memory, they were matching Doc constellation for constellation. Usually J.B.'s mental expertise only came into play when he used the minisextant to get a reading on their position, or when he was spouting out a series of specs for a piece of hardware.

  Ryan knew they were enjoying giving Doc a run for the old man's money. He hadn't seen his old part­ner this happy in a long time.

  Across from them, flat on his back in a swaying rope hammock with his hands behind his head, was Dean. For once, the boy was staying silent and not asking questions.

  "Why aren't you in there with Mildred and J.B. trying to stump Doc?" Ryan asked his son. "You falling asleep in that rigging?"

  "Don't know any constellations," the boy said, turning his face skyward.

  "Watch and learn, then," Ryan replied. "Pretend you're back in school."

  "Those days are over," Dean said. "Triple glad to be back with you, Dad. Glad to have the excitement. Thought I'd go crazy sitting at a desk all day."

  "There's more to life than roaming the countryside, and the world can change—never know when things come in handy," the one-eyed man said. "Be­sides, if you know your stars, you can always get some kind of directional fix no matter where you are. That's how J.B. does it at night when he doesn't have the sun to go by."

  "J.B.'s got a sharp memory," Dean grumbled.

  "For some things. We can all remember stuff we want to," Ryan said. "You remember Sharona, don't you?"

  "Yeah," Dean said defensively. "She was my mom."

  "Remember what she looked like? What she liked to wear? What kinds of food she liked to eat, and how she took care of you?" Ryan asked.

  "Yeah," Dean said, taking an interest now in where Ryan was going with this line of questioning.

  "Think you'll ever forget?"

  "No. Not even when I'm chilled and gone."

  "There you go," Ryan said, stepping away from the boy. "You hold things in your memory you need, or that mean something to you—or both. The stars might save your life, son. Keep it in mind, and learn.''

  "Ah, my dear Ryan. Perhaps you would like to join our little competition?" Doc asked. "I am in need of a partner, since I am currently being double teamed by the good Dr. Wyeth and her friend who seems to know all of the answers."

  "I'll pass, Doc. You seem to be holding your own, though."

  "So much has changed in my life," Doc said to his companions as they looked heavenward, "But the stars have always remained."

  "Yeah, too bad you can't recollect half their names," Mildred retorted, the tiny beads in her plaited hair rattling as she moved her head. Still, the woman understood precisely what Doc was saying, and in many ways shared the same sense of loss.

  Mildred was a time traveler of a different sort than Doc. Unlike the violent time trawling that had ripped Doc from the bosom of his family and career, she had undergone her one-way journey to Deathlands in an entirely different fashion.

  Mildred was a leading expert in the field of cryo­genics by the time she was in her early thirties. A few short years later, she was admitted to the hospital for a routine operation three days before the advent of the year 2001. During the surgery, the anesthetic trig­gered a near fatal reaction. To save her life, the phy­sicians used Mildred's own experimental techniques to freeze and place the w
oman into suspended ani­mation, where she had remained until Ryan and the others found and awakened her. Surprisingly the cryonic process had reversed the negative effects of the anesthetic.

  The constellation game was interrupted when the first signs of the storm arrived in the slender form of Krysty, who had been unable to continue sleeping be­low.

  "Air's wrong," she said quietly, stepping into Ryan's arms. "There's a storm coming. A bad one."

  Ryan was dubious, as the night sky was cloud free.

  But he knew from past experience not to dismiss any of Krysty's feelings. Her exterior might reveal noth­ing more than a tall, strikingly beautiful woman, but what lurked behind her intelligent emerald eyes was more than human.

  Nothing was ever what it seemed to be in Deathlands, and Krysty was living proof.

  Krysty Wroth was a mutant. One of her powers was the empathic ability to sense danger, whether from man or nature. Her vibrant mane of fiery red hair was the outward manifestation of this power, stirring, curl­ing, moving as if it were a separate, sentient organism as she became entranced with the vision of a pre­monition.

  It was a handy ability that had saved their lives more than once.

  "Let me take a look, see what the instruments say," Ryan said to her.

  He walked over and checked the old-style brass barometer mounted on the exterior bulkhead, tapped the glass and frowned. The needle was showing 25.5 inches of mercury. Krysty was right. Between the needle's drop and the stillness in the air, even a lander like Ryan knew they were in for a bad spell.

  "Oh, dear," came Doc's voice from behind. The old man's curiosity had gotten the best of him when he noticed Ryan checking the barometer. "That does not look good at all, my friend."

  "No, it doesn't," Ryan said. "And we don't have time enough to turn back."

  THE PARTY BROKE UP quickly after that. Jak was awakened and given the bad news. The good feelings shared quickly dissolved into the tension of worry with the discovery of the upcoming storm.

  "I knew this peaceful scene was too good to last," Mildred said, her voice bittersweet. She hugged J.B. tightly before heading down below.