by James Axler
"Too busy to grab some chow?" Dean queried.
"What? More of those shitty crackers? I didn't see you snatching up stuff in the galley, Dean," J.B. retorted. "You were clinging to Doc's ass with both hands last time I looked."
"The lad was merely giving me a push," Doc protested.
"Enough!" Mildred ordered. "Not another peep, John! That goes for you, too, Dean. Doesn't matter who got what and what was left behind."
"At least everyone did have presence of mind to hang on to their blasters," J.B. said grudgingly.
"Lot of good that does us now," Dean grumbled. "Can't eat bullets."
"Bullets can chill your scrawny hide," J.B. said.
"Bickering isn't going to help a thing," Mildred told them.
"Dean's right. There's no food, except for the emergency jerky rations in our pockets. No water, except what's left in the canteens. Face it, people. We're fucked blue," Ryan said wearily.
The sound of defeat in the one-eyed man's voice was much more upsetting than their current status. If Ryan was giving up, there was no hope for any of them.
"Bullshit, Dad," Dean said. "That's not what I meant."
"What did you say to me?" Ryan asked.
"I said, bullshit. We're not dead yet. You're the one who always told me to not give up until I was six feet under. Well, I'm not, and neither are you," Dean said angrily. "So, I'm not. I'm just griping because I'm hungry, and even some stale crackers would taste good right now."
Ryan pondered that one for a long moment.
"I must be getting old," he said finally. "You're right, son. We're not dead yet."
"I do not want to hear a word about you claiming to be old, Ryan," Doc said. "You have no earthly idea."
'What do we do?" J.B. asked.
"Nothing. For now. What can we do?" Ryan said. "But I'm not giving up yet."
RYAN WAS HALF-ASLEEP and wanted to escape by dreaming. His body was drenched in warm sweat. There was no relief from the hellish sun that was now directly overhead and pounding down on the lost and drained group in the raft.
He was still too awake to dream. He wasn't fully immersed in the type of REM sleep that would normally have kept him deep inside the images his mind was replaying, and he stirred restlessly.
Once again he was in the sea near the rapidly sinking Patch, attempting to find Krysty and Jak after they had been lost, but all he was surfacing with was handfuls of water. He couldn't see a thing either above or below the waves, not even where the boat had been before he leaped into the churning waters. He knew his lifeline was secure as long as it was being held by J.B., so he went down and came up again and again, diving into the gloom and reaching out with both hands for an arm or a leg, but there was nothing to wrap his fingers around and save.
That was the way the search had ended—with empty hands.
A groggy Ryan opened his eye and half closed it again to escape the sunlight.
There was no way to cheat this one as he had cheated the odds so many times before, no way to pull a hidden weapon or signal a backup, no way to outthink or outfight a storm. Ryan had no control of nature, no way to smell a hidden bomb while wrestling in the middle of such weather.
She was gone. Krysty was gone, along with Jak. Ryan could feel no sense of loss for the athletic young albino, at least not now. The loss of Jak would be dealt with in time. Ryan had lost other loved ones and could still summon up an ache in his psyche for them when he dwelled in that forlorn section of his soul. Jak would join other companions that had been sacrificed to Deathlands. His bravery, his courage, his always dependable loyalty wouldn't be forgotten.
Still, there was no grief for Jak. He couldn't grieve for his friend until he was able to accept that Krysty was no longer going to be at his side, in his bed, in his mind. She'd been swept away, vanished before he even had a chance to look upon her beauty and hold the image in his brain for a last time.
And even though his conscious mind wouldn't accept her death, the second brain knew. The primordial part of every human psyche that stretched back to the dawn of mankind had taken in the full measure of the facts, digested them and accepted the only logical outcome.
Krysty Wroth was dead.
And as he slumped in his own nook of the raft, his lone eye shining bright with unshed tears, Ryan leaned the blind side of his face against the wet plastic and dealt in his own manner with yet another bad hand dealt to him. Dean was right. He wasn't the kind of man who could just accept defeat without a fight to the death.
Ryan Cawdor dealt with the pain by wanting revenge.
.
AFTER LONG HOURS of misery, the sun fell and night stepped back into place. There was talk and debate, and ultimately no solution to the problem. In the relative cool of the darkness, everyone fell into restless sleep, and this time, minus the rain and the heat, actually got some needed rest during their second night spent in the raft.
Everyone succumbed except for Ryan, who saw something that made him feel as though he were experiencing a nightmare. The only difference between this one and the numerous others he'd endured while having his molecules scrambled during the transitional phase of matter transfer was that he was wideawake.
He'd been staring at the water when a series of splashes appeared unexpectedly at the edge of the raft. Fearing the worse, Ryan peered intently at the glassy surface while putting his right hand on the butt of his SIG-Sauer. If some sort of mutated killer shark or radioactive electric eel or giant crab monster he didn't like decided to show itself, he had no problem with blowing it away.
He wanted to kill something. The placid personality he'd been inhabiting since the boat had gone down was smothering him. He had to rid himself of the grief and anguish soon before it fed upon his own soul and swallowed him up, drowning him just as effectively as the sea had fed upon Jak and Krysty.
However, he wasn't expecting a human head to raise itself up from the inky black liquid.
The back of the head was all he saw. Lank hair from the head was long and blond and in a mass of tangled curls that all dripped water. Ryan held his breath and waited for long seconds, until the head turned to a profile view that was human and not human.
The being spotted Ryan, then spun completely around for a face-to-face look. As they met each other's gaze, Ryan sensed no fear in the intent of his aquatic visitor, only curiosity. Ryan felt the same way. He'd never seen anything quite like the humanoid paddling patiently in the water next to him.
The face was primarily a pair of eyes, oval orbs of milky white tinged slightly with a coating of lemon yellow. Blue veins were running like a predark road map through the milk, and the pupils were saucer shaped. Below the twin ovals was a pair of vertical slits in a slight protrusion that might have been a nose, and a half-moon mouth with the corners turned downward. The lips on the mouth were pencil thin and dark purple, and the skin of the face was peeling in several places, as if the creature had been caught outside unprotected and suffered a slight sunburn. The new skin under the peeled-away epidermis looked shiny and wet, not dry.
Ryan decided that he knew what he was looking at—some kind of water mutie.
"Help?" the mutie asked in a slow, dragging voice.
A question? Ryan couldn't be sure. He couldn't be sure of anything anymore.
"Sure," he said. "Help."
Then, without a sound, the face was gone, and Ryan was left gazing at himself in the black mirror of the ocean's surface.
LATE IN THE SECOND DAY, as Ryan drifted in and out of a dehydrated haze, he thought he saw movement on the horizon. Not wanting to raise false hopes in the others, he kept quiet and rubbed his good eye, trying to keep what he thought he saw into focus. Salt from the dried seawater on the back of his hand stung when he wiped it across his line of vision, and his eyesight momentarily clouded up, but Ryan kept his gaze on the dot.
Dean noticed his father staring and decided to see if his young eyes could help identify whatever had cap
tured his father's rapt attention.
The boy saw the dot, too, and realized it was moving toward them.
"Hot pipe, Dad! You see what I see?"
"Yes, son, I believe I do," Ryan murmured.
"Looks like…people," Dean said. "They're swimming over here."
"What's swimming?" J.B. asked, taking a look. All of the group was now staring at the approaching sight. The one absentee was Doc, who snored on, oblivious to the mounting excitement
"Shit," J.B. said. "More shipwreck victims? No room in the raft."
"Relax, John," Mildred said to him. "As fast as that pair seem to be moving, I doubt they're interested in setting up quarters with us."
The couple stopped, then paddled easily in the salt water, peering at the group from a distance of about thirty feet.
"Now what?" Dean asked
"Up to them," Ryan replied. "Guess we wait."
The manlike creature that Ryan had seen over the side of the life raft had returned with another of his kind. His companion was smaller. Once or twice, she flashed the group in the raft with an impressive set of breasts that were dotted with the fibrous scales that also covered the male creature's chest, so they all felt comfortable terming her as female.
A long hour passed and started to spread into a second, yet the creatures wouldn't go any closer to the raft.
"Muties," J.B. said.
"Eh? What? No, no, Nanette, not the bailing twine," Doc cried out as he awakened from his slumber.
"Shh! Don't go insulting our rescuers, John," Mildred admonished. "Just because they're choosing not to swim over closer and talk doesn't mean they're deaf."
"Rescuers? I think you're giving those two credit they don't deserve," the Armorer replied. "They don't look like they have half a brain between them."
"They can communicate," Ryan said.
"How do you know?"
"I heard one speak to me, J.B." Ryan said. "I was half out of it at the time, but the big one said 'Help' as plain as day. But that doesn't mean much if they just want to stay where they are and watch us like some kind of free peep show. Hell, they may be waiting for this sun to cook us into big slaps of jerky so they can have a snack."
"Is that what you make of them, Dad?" Dean asked. "Think they're waiting for all of us to die?"
"No. My gut says that's not the case. He came back," Ryan mused, rubbing the beard stubble on his chin. "Came back and brought a friend. No blasters, no blades."
"No clothes," Dean said.
"Could be they do want to help us out. I imagine they're just as nervous about us as we are about them," Mildred said.
"Such queer-looking mutations almost make one believe in the existence of mythical Atlantis," Doc said, unable to keep himself from joining the conversation, weakened condition or not. "Perhaps our little raft has crossed over into their realm. Their magical jeweled city could be on the floor of the ocean directly below us."
Doc reached forward and grabbed Ryan's shirt. "Imagine, Captain," he said, his eyes misted over, no longer seeing Ryan, but another leader entirely as he continued to spin his theory, "imagine an entire populace of water breathers! What better way to escape the hellish holocaust that has spread its poisonous fire across all of the lands of the planet?"
As Doc continued to speak, his voice became pitched higher and higher. All in the raft recognized the symptoms—the older man was entering into the mind-set he sometimes exhibited after a particularly grueling mat-trans jump, or after any other type of strenuous mental and physical activity. Shipwrecked and afloat with no provisions for several days was exhausting to the healthiest of men, and while Doc was as tough as dried leather, even he had his limits.
"Doc might not be that far off the beam about our visitors," Mildred said, squinting and trying to get a better look at the pair.
"What? Atlantis? Sure, Millie," J.B. said. "And those two are going to come spurting up to give us a lift back to shore on their dolphins."
"Not Atlantis. We're in the wrong part of the ocean, anyway," Mildred retorted. "No, I mean what he said about there being no better way to escape the disease, the violence and the mental pain of living on the surface than by going down below, beneath the sea."
"Under the sea," Doc sang in an unfamiliar tune, "under the sea, dear, just you and me, dear, under the sea."
"I doubt those two are true amphibians, anyway," Mildred added, ignoring Doc's musical outburst. "They've been keeping their heads above water with no problem. They might be able to stay under a long time, but they seem to live on air just as easily as breathing oxygen through some kind of gills. The mutations appear purposely induced."
Ryan recalled some of the horrors he'd seen back when taking a stroll through the Anthill's laboratories. They had been generating many of the same sorts of survivalist mutations there.
"Could be right, Mildred," Ryan said.
"Look at their eyes. I'll bet they're covered with a second protective membrane. That's what makes them so damned pop-eyed."
And then, as if they had heard Mildred's theories, both of the muties' heads vanished beneath the water in unison.
Chapter Thirteen
The color of the ceiling was industrial off-white. A bare light bulb, shining hot, hung a few inches from the painted surface. There was a roughness in the paint, a kind of swirling pattern.
Krysty closed her eyes in an attempt to adjust to what she had just seen, then reopened them.
The ceiling and bulb were both still there. She was flat on her back, and looking up.
"Ryan?" she said, almost not recognizing the sound of her own voice. The one-word question came out in a feeble croak. She cleared her throat and coughed hoarsely. Her mouth was as dry as chalk.
Krysty turned her head to the right, then left, taking in her surroundings. She was in a small room, no windows, a single closed door with a twelve-inch square of glass inserted at eye level. The walls were the same industrial off-white as the ceiling. She glanced down to a carpeted floor. The carpet was well worn but clean, its color a neutral dark blue. Very unassuming, very unthreatening.
She tried to sit up, and suddenly the beigeness of the room erupted in a variety of colors, all violent and nauseating. She laid her head back down on the pillow, and the sick sensations disappeared. She began a mental inventory. What had brought her to this place?
Then she remembered the water, the storm and the fall into the abyss.
Krysty lifted herself to a sitting position, this time much slower. The walls stayed bland. She swung her feet over the side of the bed—realizing for the first time she was barefoot—and let them fall onto the carpet. The woman sighed deeply. She was wearing a cotton pair of canary yellow pajamas, a matching set of top and bottom. She was alive, and dry, and wearing a man's nightclothes.
How she'd ended up here remained to be seen.
Krysty staggered on her feet as she stepped over to the door, consciously willing the returning small explosions of color to go away. She tried the doorknob, which was locked. How utterly…predictable.
She craned her neck and tried to see through the door's viewing portal. Outside was a hall, and directly across from her was a door that appeared to be identical to the one she was now housed behind. Printed on the door in stenciled black paint was the word Unit 2. No matter how she turned her head, all she could really see was the single door for Unit 2, along with the walls of the hall, which came complete with a silver handrail.
After looking at Unit 2, Krysty decided she was probably in Unit 1.
She turned back and took in her room. There was an open closet with a pull curtain near the head of the small single bed, and a bare end table stood between the closet door and the bed. She stepped over and pulled aside the curtain to the closet. Empty. She pulled open the drawer of the end table. Empty again.
"Enough of this," Krysty said, willing her voice to sound as menacing as she could make it. She balled up one fist tightly and began to pound on the door.
Time for some answers.
ACROSS THE HALL from Krysty in Unit 2, Jak had been awake for the past two hours, glaring at the locked door that held him prisoner. There were no hinges to lift, no inside locks to pick. The ob glass in the door was unbreakable and thick, offering nothing but a cloudy view of a door labeled Unit 1.
A realist, Jak had determined he wasn't going to be escaping through the door anytime soon. He'd turned his bed over in hopes of finding a bit of metal bedding he could use as a weapon, but the beds were of a single piece, cast in curved metal, with a soft mattress stuffed with foam pellets. The pillow was also self-contained, with no zippers or fasteners. Jak had used his teeth to tear it open, only to find more of the same foam pellets.
The end table was also a single piece of lightweight metal. The tabletop and drawer were empty and useless.
He climbed on the bed and managed to reach the Spartan light bulb gleaming overhead. He took off his pajama top and used it to protect his fingers from the heat, intending to unscrew the bulb…until he realized doing so would plunge him into near darkness. Jak decided that would be a pointless endeavor, and he stepped back down to the floor and shrugged back into his nightclothes.
The pajamas were another reason he was in such a foul mood. Jak hadn't been pleased to find his clothing and weapons taken from him. No Colt Python. No throwing knives. No boots. He was dressed in a pair of deep burgundy pajamas.
Jak was miserable. He despised being closed in.
So he lay on his bed, a few of the stray foam pellets spilling out from where he had torn open the pillow, and sulked.
Until he heard Krysty's pounding.
That caught his interest. He hadn't thought of knocking to announce himself.
Jak got to his feet and pounded on the wall of his room.
AS KRYSTY HAD INTENDED, others also heard the strident thumping from Unit 1, which was soon joined by identical sounds from Unit 2. At the end of the hallway, hidden from the line of vision the secluded units allowed their inhabitants, sat a man behind a desk.
