Deathlands 095 - Moonfeast by James Axler

Author:James Axler [Axler, James]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Speculative Fiction Suspense
ISBN: 9781426875144
Publisher: Gold Eagle
Published: 2010-11-01T04:00:00+00:00

THE SUN WAS HIGH in the cloudy sky, the heat oppressive and unrelenting. A cool breeze blew in from the ocean, making the shoreline tolerable. Just on the other side of the sand dunes, the companions would have believed that they were back in the Great Salt.

“John Barrymore, how big did you say this island was again?” Doc rumbled, wiggling his bare toes in the shallow water along the sandy beach. A length of twine dangled off the end of his ebony sword stick. A shiny hook wafted in the water. But the tiny fish darting around didn’t seem to be fooled, and were boldly nibbling on the bait and avoiding the hook entirely.

“According to my map, Clemente should be about twenty miles wide,” J.B. answered.

“And how far have we walked, sir?”

“Thirty-five miles,” J.B. muttered, thrusting away the map and paper. “Dark night, I’ve done this math over and over. Everything says this is San Clemente in the Channel Islands!”

“However…” Mildred prompted.

“In the middle of the bastard ocean!” J.B. replied hotly. “We should be drowning by now!”

“Map wrong,” Jak said simply, wringing out his socks before laying them flat on a large rock. The salt water helped kill the smell, and seemed to be doing a small bunion he had a world of good.

“Because of the nuking, it’s possible,” Mildred suggested, “that San Clemente got shoved into other islands to become a single landmass. I’ve heard of that happening before.” She paused. “Just not in this millennium.”

“Makes sense,” J.B. grudgingly relented.

Just then a sharp whistle sounded from the distance and the companions looked up to see Ryan and Krysty walk into view down the beach. Impatiently, they waited for the man and woman to rejoin them.

“Find a ville?” J.B. asked hopefully.

“More important, got food?” Jak asked, his empty stomach growling loudly. The coneys were long gone, and the wildlife that was so abundant in the interior of the island was almost nonexistent along the blazing hot coastline. For the past two days the companions had been living on the clams and sea urchins recovered from the tide pools. Each were excellent, but there was never enough of them to satisfy the companions’ growing hunger.

“We found everything,” Ryan answered, dropping his bulging backpack onto the sand. “There’s a fresh water river up ahead, and more of these bastard fruit trees than we could count.”

“What kind?” Jak asked, scurrying over. Opening the backpack, he eagerly withdrew a red and yellow sphere with a shiny skin. “What is, mutie?” he said, his lip curling. The teenager had once almost starved to death, but he would never be hungry enough to eat a mutie plant. That was just suicide!

“Don’t know if it’s natural, or not,” Krysty said honestly, lifting out one of them and polishing the skin on her sleeve. “But we saw the birds eating them, and a cougar eating a bird. That sounded good enough, so we tried it.” She smiled. “They’re wonderful!”

“They’re called nectarines,” Mildred said, taking one and biting deeply. Juice gushed from the fruit to trickle down her cheeks.

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