Deathlands 073: Labyrinth

Author:James Axler
Language: eng
Format: mobi
Tags: Science Fiction
ISBN: 0373625839
Publisher: Gold Eagle
Published: 2006-03-01T05:00:00+00:00

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Chapter Seventeen

From the vantage point of the silo dome, with the sun angling up over the horizon, Jak and Doc watched the procession snake through the corn fields below, heading for the lake.

“The people of Little Pueblo have come together for a celebration of some kind,” Doc said. “With our friends as unwilling participants.”

“Chill Ryan and J.B.?”

“If that’s their plan, they certainly seem jubilant at the prospect.”

“Can’t save Ryan and J.B.,” Jak said, the edge in his voice betraying anguish and frustration. “Too many blasters.”

“We can only do what we can do, my boy. If our dying would free them, both of us would gladly surrender our lives. Under these circumstances, our deaths would accomplish nothing. We have to trust that our companions will endure until we can effect their escape. Mildred and Krysty are not with them.”

“No. Not there.”

“Then they are either already dead or being held captive back in the ville. If the good ladies are still alive, we have an excellent chance of freeing them, as the township is most certainly deserted.”

“Stop talk. We go.”

They climbed down the long, rusting ladder. When the procession had passed, they left the cover of the silos and ran back along the predark highway toward the city center. As usual, Jak set the pace and picked the route.

With the sun slanting above the canyon rim, they made much better time on the return trip, despite the slight uphill grade. Cutting across the abandoned lots wasn’t a problem when all the ankle-twisting junk and the chest-deep, water-cut gullys were visible.

Jak led them through what in predark times had been neighborhood backyards. The wooden privacy fences that had once separated the properties had washed away, rotted, or been used as firewood. Only the metal wire fences remained, and they were largely flattened. Here and there, rusting hulks of predark wags, primarily pickup trucks, lay on their caved-in sides or roofs. Not all remnants of the previous culture had been uprooted and swept away. Tiny brick patios still bordered gutted foundations. There were driveways leading nowhere. There was even a basketball half-court, missing its backboard and stanchion. The reservoir’s runoff had undermined the plate of concrete; it was crazed with settling cracks. Similar cracks marked the exposed concrete slab foundations and cinder-block basements.

The albino headed for the cover of a precariously leaning cinder-block wall.

Darting around a coil of detached metal fence, he jumped a yawning ditch and two strides later, dropped down behind the short section of wall. Doc made the jump as well. He knelt down beside Jak, breathing hard. Over a low spot in the cinder block, they could see one story down into the basement, where a rusted-out, full-sized SUV, with no seats, windows or doors, sat up to its wheel wells in fine silt.

“How much farther?” Doc said, when he stopped puffing.

“Halfway there,” Jak said. “Ready?”

“By all means proceed, dear boy.”

But before they could rise from cover, they heard men’s voices on the far side of the wall.

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