by James Axler
“Shit! He’s heading out the other side! Wake the others! Teams of two check every wagon!” Ryan yelled as he headed for the vehicle the man had disappeared near. As he splashed through the mud, he heard J.B. sound the alarm by the simple expedient of firing a round from his M4 carbine.
At the same time, at least two dozen figures surged out of the darkness toward various wagons and people. Surprised queries turned to shouts and screams of alarm as the people of the collective were in a fight for their lives against the foe that had crept up on them almost unawares.
At the sodden lean-to, Ryan ducked under the waterlogged flap and found his guess was correct—the only sign of the kidnapper was a trail of muddy boot prints heading toward the wagon. Taking cover behind a wheel in case someone was waiting in ambush, Ryan crouched and swept and cleared under the vehicle before scooting under it to emerge from the other side. The moment he straightened, a heavy weight fell on him, forcing him to his knees. An iron band clamped around his throat, cutting off the air as his assailant tried to force him to the ground.
But Ryan had fought far too many people to be caught by surprise by this tactic. Even as his assailant hit him, he was already bending over, using his enemy’s own momentum against him while reaching back and pulling with his free hand to drag the person over his head and slam him into the ground. Unable to keep his choke hold and stay atop Ryan at the same time, the intruder slid over his opponent’s head and splashed down flat on his back in the mud. Ryan brought the butt of his blaster down on his head in a blow that would have knocked out a normal person. This one, a tall, skinny man with black, brush-cut hair, attempted to rise, which only earned him another hard shot from the butt of Ryan’s blaster. This time he went down and stayed down. Ryan looked around for other invaders or scavvies in trouble. He heard J.B., Mildred, Ricky and Krysty calling to one another as they moved among the wagons.
“Spread out! Check every one!”
“Clear here!”
“Take those two!”
A high-pitched scream made Ryan turn toward the next wagon, which was axle deep in mud, but still rocking back and forth as if someone was struggling inside it. Ryan waded through the sludge to get to the back and see what was going on.
Inside, three children were trying to fight off a mud-covered attacker, who had his back to the opening. Ryan climbed over the tailgate and stepped up behind the guy. Raising his SIG Sauer, he brought it down hard on the back of the man’s head.
The blow staggered the man, and he shoved the small teenager he’d been trying to carry off into the other two, who were holding on to their sibling. He turned to regard Ryan, and a white-toothed smile appeared through the mask of mud on his face.
“Priority subject in range. Capture at all costs.” He stepped forward, reaching for Ryan with both hands.
“Good luck with that, you fucked-up son of a bitch!” Ryan said, batting the man’s questing hands aside with one hand while bringing up the butt of his blaster and smashing it across the man’s face in a blow that should have broken his jaw.
His opponent dodged the weapon, then lowered a shoulder and charged into Ryan while he was still unbalanced from not connecting with his adversary. Already off-kilter, he stumbled toward the gunwale and hit the canvas top, which came loose under his weight, spilling him over the side and into the muck outside.
Although Ryan got an arm up to break his fall, he still got a faceful of mud and rainwater and had to spend precious seconds coughing and wiping his vision clear. Hearing a loud splash next to him, he got to his feet as a hand grabbed the back of his neck and tried to pull him upright. Ryan went with it, arching his back and snapping his head back in hopes of connecting with his attacker’s face. That didn’t happen, however, and instead the man kept pulling him back, then brought his free arm down in a powerful chop to the one-eyed man’s solar plexus, stunning the large nerve center there and making Ryan drop back to his knees.
It felt as if a bomb had gone off right next to him. His limbs felt like lead, and everything was muffled. It was almost impossible to see or hear anything. White flashes burst behind his eyes, and there was only the singular thought to get up, get up, get up—
Somehow, he was able to sense movement in front of him through all that, and Ryan threw himself aside as something grazed his shoulder. He forced an arm up to grab whatever had come at him and realized he had caught the guy’s leg. Ryan heaved up with all his strength, tipping the man off balance while getting a leg under himself and pushing up to rise to his feet.
His opponent tried to compensate for the move but couldn’t stay upright. Ryan kept pushing, forcing him over onto his back, then jumped on his chest to make sure he stayed down. The man hit the mud with a resounding splash, but was already trying to shove Ryan off and get back to his feet. Raising his mud-covered blaster, Ryan brought its butt down on the guy’s head once, twice, three times, until he stopped moving. He sat back on the man’s legs, breathing hard and wiping muck off his face. He could still hear a faint pounding in his ears and shook his head to clear it, but the sound didn’t go away.
No, he thought as he looked around, seeing the others locked in combat with more of the kidnappers. It’s getting...louder? Ryan rose to his feet and began heading toward the nearest knot of fighting people when the source of the noise suddenly became obvious.
With a dull roar, a large wave of muddy, brown water sluiced out of the gully and swept across the entire encampment. The flash flood carried debris from the hills along with it—plants, rocks and even small trees uprooted and turned into dangerous projectiles carried along by the silty tide.
All those in its path were knocked off their feet and washed away. The eight-foot-high deluge hit the outer wagons, which were still mired in the mud, and completely washed over them. The next wagon in the circle was blasted free by the wave and floated along with the water. Everywhere people tried to get to some sort of cover or shelter before the wall of water took them, as well.
Seeing the onrushing brown tide coming right at him, Ryan shoved his blaster into his belt and lunged for the wagon next to him as the initial wave hit. He got his hand on the wood as his feet were knocked out from underneath him, but his grip was firm. He began hauling himself up when a tree trunk swirled by, its roots smashing into his side and knocking him off the wagon.
Stunned by the blow, Ryan tried to grab the trunk, but it kept spinning in the water, and he was unable to get a firm grip on it. He tried to regain his footing, but the water was flowing too strongly for him to brace himself, and he kept getting knocked off his feet, swallowing muddy water with each dunking.
Struggling to stay afloat in his sodden clothes, Ryan struck out again for the tree trunk, which was bobbing in the current a few yards away. He’d almost reached it when he felt a crushing blow on the side of his head, and knew nothing more.
Chapter Twenty-Three
Dawn arose on the battered remains of the wagon train and encampment, which had been scattered along a two-mile stretch of plains that was now covered with fresh silt from the storm and flood, rapidly drying in the heat.
Krysty, J.B. and the others had been fighting off the invading force when the flood hit, and all of them had been swept away with everything else. Each had spent the rest of that harrowing night trying to stay alive in the terrifying mess of water, wagons and people.
Doc had made out the best, getting to a wagon that had stayed upright and floated along with the water. He’d even improvised crude poles to steer his rough boat and keep other flotsam from smashing it, and had pulled in a half dozen people throughout the night. In turn, they had found another floating wagon, and had lashed the two together for stability and the ability to collect more people. It had become the de facto headquarters of the Silvertide group, with people arriving at it, dropping off other survivors throughout the night. Doc was still in it now, regaling the ch
ildren with old myths and legends, and allowing the rest of the adults to continue damage control and to police the area.
Of their own group, Ricky had fared the worst, getting caught on the very end of the circle and being swept out nearly a mile before the wave finally had gone far enough to dissipate across the plain. He showed up an hour before dawn, covered in mud and sporting a fresh set of bruises from being tossed about in the water.
Most of the Silvertide collective had also regrouped by morning, but they were in a very bad way. At least a dozen people were still unaccounted for, but no one knew if that was due to the flood or the attack during the night. At least three oxen had been lost, as well. Most of the other animals had been able to swim through the wave, and were now being regathered. The wagons and all of their gear had also been scattered, with clothes, blankets, boxes, jars of food and other items strewed along the entire run of the flood zone. All of the wagons had suffered some damage, at least two of them damaged enough that repairs would take a day or so—and that was assuming they recovered all of the necessary tools.
Everyone was also on the lookout for the kidnappers, as well as the previously missing collective members. Krysty and J.B. had issued a warning for anyone who found either to not approach the person or body, but instead come to get one of them immediately. So far no one had found any outsider bodies, including the two she was most concerned about.
Now, as Krysty scanned the horizon, she tried to keep her rising fear from knotting her insides. Two of the missing people were Ryan and Mildred. He’s tougher than this, Krysty thought. There’s no way a flood would take him out.... However, the alternative didn’t settle her mind much either.
The search for survivors was taking much longer than anyone would have liked, too. The ground was still too soft to handle the wagons or the windriders, so everyone was out on foot looking for the missing people.
A shout went up along the line, and Krysty ran over with others to see a family rejoicing in their reunion with their little girl, who’d been found naked and huddled in the branches of an uprooted tree. She was quickly wrapped in a blanket and taken back to their secondary improvised camp on top of the hill where the guards had been posted the night before.
Her lips pressed into a tight line, Krysty joined the others in giving thanks that the child had been found safe and sound, and sending a silent prayer to Gaia to help them find Ryan and Mildred soon, as well. As the group dispersed to continue the search, she saw J.B. and Jak returning from scouting ahead. Her heart sank when she saw the look on the Armorer’s face, but she didn’t betray a hint of emotion as she left the larger group to join him.
“Anything?”
“Not a trace.” J.B. pushed up his fedora and rubbed his forehead. “The flood washed away all the prints or tire tracks. Even if we could find anything outside the flood zone, the rain would have wiped out anything else.”
“Fuckers ghosted in, took people and disappeared under nose,” Jak said flatly.
“Yeah, they vanished, all right...and we still have no way of finding them,” J.B. said.
“Do you think they were both taken?” Krysty asked, hoping for a different answer to the one already in her mind.
“You know Ryan as well as I do. He’d never let something like this pissant flood take him down.” J.B. shook his head. “Only reason he isn’t here is ’cause someone’s got him somewhere else.”
“Okay, then how do we find him?” she asked.
“If we had any sort of map of the area, that would be something,” J.B. said. “The predark government had missile silos scattered all over the U.S., especially throughout what they called the Midwest, so it makes the most sense that these people are probably holed up in one of them. But without a location, if they hid the entrance, we could be searching for years and not find it.”
“That’s not an option,” Krysty said. “There has to be some other way.”
“Think I don’t know that?” J.B. frowned at her, then took a deep breath. “Sorry ’bout that. I’m as worried as you are.”
Krysty reached out and placed a hand on his arm. “I know, just as I know we’ll do whatever we have to do to find them. Did you have any other ideas about how?”
“Well, once we get everything sorted out, the only thing I can think of would be to put some of us out as bait and hope they come to us. They’re able to follow us pretty easily, and they seemed to have a hard-on for ol’ snow-hair here.”
The albino spit into the dirt. “Come at me, I take that slug, shove up ass.”
Even under the circumstances, the teen’s blunt assessment made J.B. grin ruefully. “Be that as it may, we put him out on the plains, see who comes to call. Might be they come find him, then we go find them.”
“Mebbe... Let’s hold off on that until we don’t have any other choice,” Krysty said. “After all, he could still be out there somewhere. Mebbe just injured or trapped, and can’t move.”
“If he is, we’ll find him,” J.B. replied. “And Millie too. Bet your last bullet on that.”
“What about the truck?” Krysty asked.
“Ricky’s working on it right now. Won’t know until it dries out,” the small man replied. “It got flooded good, and we’ll have to poke around inside to make sure nothing’s soaked or shorted. I’ll let you know once we have it up and running.”
“Do that.” Krysty turned back to the endless plains, scanning the horizon as if she could somehow pick out Ryan’s body from amid the square miles the flood had covered.
Closing her eyes, she reached out with her senses and concentrated on trying to pick up on that strong spark of life that resided within her lover. But she couldn’t sense anything from him. If J.B. was right, and he had been taken, he was being held somewhere beyond her powers of detection.
Come back to me, my love, she thought. Or I will come and find you...and make those who are holding you pay dearly.
* * *
RYAN’S EYE FLUTTERED open, and the first thing he saw was a dim, fuzzy, golden light overhead that sharpened into focus as he came out of unconsciousness. He looked around to find himself in a sterile white room, containing just the bed he was lying on. He tried moving his arms and legs, but found them strapped securely to the metal frame.
Raising his head, he saw that he had been undressed and clad in a simple light blue hospital gown. Great—figures I’ll have to fight my way out of here naked, he thought.
Oddly, for all of the abuse he had gone through in the past couple of days, particularly the tossing and turning he’d endured during the flood, he felt pretty good. His muscles didn’t hurt as much as he would have expected them to, just an occasional twinge here or there, and his face felt as if it had healed almost perfectly. On the other hand, his throat was scratchy and dry, and he was very hungry.
On the other side of the room was a white metal door with a wire-embedded safety window in it. Ryan saw bright lights and occasional shadows pass by outside, telling him where he was. Well, J.B. wanted to find the redoubt, he thought as he lowered his head back onto his pillow. Looks as if I managed to do that all by myself.
Fortunately, now that he was here, there could be an opportunity for him to escape. All he would need to do was wait for the right situation. The door opened and three people entered. Two of them, a man and a woman both wearing white lab coats, weren’t familiar. The third, however, made Ryan’s jaw drop.
“Morgan?” Ryan asked through his dry throat.
Ryan had last seen this man on the East Coast, running what had been a fairly unique operation: a large underground mall that had catered to traders and folks in the area, and even had its own population living there. When a crazy man had led a mutant army to attack it, the mall had been destroyed during the fighting. After Ryan and his companions had saved his life, Morgan had taken them through a hidden tunnel and left
the area to find a new life for himself. If this was where he’d ended up, from one underground bunker to another, Ryan felt sorry for him. Even worse, if Morgan had also been taken over by the parasites, then Ryan didn’t think the man was going to help him, but he had to try to get the former leader on his side.
The three were followed by two men in the dark blue jumpsuits Ryan recognized as the same ones worn by the kidnap party back at the ville. The sec men carried brand-new M4 carbines, which they held at port arms as they took up positions to the right and left of the door.
“Ryan Cawdor.” Morgan nodded as he held out a cup of water. “It is good to see you again.”
“Wish I could say likewise, Morgan. How about you get me out of these—” Ryan lifted his pinned wrists as high as he could “—and you and I can catch up?”
“I’m afraid that will not be possible,” Morgan replied. “Here, let me.” He stepped closer and held the cup to Ryan’s mouth, letting him drink his fill.
Like the others of this group Ryan had encountered, he was also speaking in oddly slow speech. He was dressed neatly, in a light blue jumpsuit, and had his salt-and-pepper hair cut short. Once Ryan had drained the cup, Morgan stepped back and nodded at the white-coated man and woman. “This is Dr. Evan Markus, and this is our bioengineer, Dr. Carole Phieks. The doctors are here to examine you, and then...we will see what the Mind wishes to do with you.”
“See what? What are you talking about?” Ryan asked, but Morgan didn’t answer. Instead, he stepped back, and let the two doctors approach.
Dr. Markus pushed a small metal table on wheels next to the bedside. It was covered with various medical tools, none too horrible looking, but Ryan knew what horror they could hold. Both doctors stared dispassionately down at him. They looked fairly normal, without any outward evidence of mutation or deformity. But then again, many of the whitecoats the companions had encountered seemed fairly normal on the outside. It was what was in their minds that concerned Ryan. He had survived a few procedures that would have killed other men, and he knew enough to distrust all whitecoats.