Axler, James - Deathlands 04 by Axler James

Author:Axler, James
Language: eng
Format: epub

Chapter Thirteen

"By GOD, BUT THIS was such a good country once," Doc said, voice low, hushed by the staggering natural beauty of the sight ahead of them.

By Ryan's calculations they'd walked around three miles, having left that ruined wag standing like a slaughtered behemoth at the side of the snow-covered road. The blizzard had faded away behind them, with skies to the south that were like frozen lead. It was still bitingly cold, but the driving wind was also gone. The sun shone through a dome of blue, laced with high fluffy white clouds. The air tasted clean and dry, with none of the acrid toxics caused by the lowering chem-clouds in other parts of Deathlands.

Suddenly, over the rim of the trail, they'd come across what Ryan had recognized immediately as the Crater Lake they'd been talking abouta bowl of jagged rocks surrounding a massive lake of the bluest water he'd ever seen in his life. Now, gazing with awe at the tranquil scene, they all sat on small boulders that bordered what could once have been a parking lot for domestic wags.

"Hell of a fine country," the old man mused. "Must have been like this most everywhere before we came trampling all over it in nailed jackboots, despoiling the earth."

Krysty nodded agreement. "I saw pictures in old books back in Harmony. Pictures of what the old ones called paradise. I guess as a young girl I always thought that their paradise must have been something like this."

Rare in the wastes of Deathlands, there was a profusion of natural life, with no visible evidence of any mutations from radiation.

Ryan was no expert, but he recognized great stands of hemlock, fir and pine around the rim of the huge crater. Guessing, he figured the lake must be close to five miles across, with a circumference of thirty miles. A couple of islands broke the surface of the lake. One, on the far side, was small and shaped like a ship. The other was closer and larger, with a miniature volcanic cone at its center. Ryan thought for a moment he saw some isolated movement on that island.

"Look. Big fire," Lori said, pointing away to the west. A distant forest was divided by a great swath of blackened stumps where a lightning strike had triggered a fire that had raced across half the face of one of the surrounding peaks.

It was hard to believe the evidence of their own eyes at the living creatures that moved around them, seemingly oblivious to the presence of humans.

Marmots lolled in the clearings, bellies splashed yellow. Their brave indifference to Ryan and his friends was a clear sign that this wasn't an area where man was a hunter.

In the high branches of the trees that shaded them, squirrels chattered at one another. Ryan saw a badger snuffle for roots as it lumbered across a sun-splashed glade. A bobcat, lean and tawny, padded by within twenty paces of them, not even bothering to turn its head in their direction.

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