Axler, James - Deathlands 13 by Axler James

Author:Axler, James
Language: eng
Format: epub

Chapter Twenty-Three

The city was silent. The air tasted fresh and clean, with just a faint flavor of woodsmoke. They still had a little food left from two days earlier, but that would soon be running out.

Ryan stretched, bracing his shoulders. After a cold night, he invariably felt stiff, his old wounds and injuries coming back to haunt him, each one with its whispered memories of pain.

He brushed them to the back of his mind. "Time to be up and doing."

J.B.'s eyes opened immediately. From hundreds of similar moments Ryan knew precisely what his old friend would do and in what order.

The glasses first, unfolded from a pocket of his coat, followed by a swift check of all his weapons. Then he sat up. "Nothing?"

"Not a sight and not a sound."

Mildred awakened and stretched, her mouth gaping open in a huge yawn. "God, it's freezing. Any sign of Krysty or Doc? Stupid question. Sorry, not properly awake yet."

"We'll have a bite of dried meat, then go look," Ryan said.

DOC HAD BEEN DREAMING. The visions of the night were rarely about the present or the immediate past. Occasionally he had black nightmares about the period in the Darks when he had been a plaything for Jordan Teague, baron of Mocsin, and his skull-faced sec boss, Cort Strasser.

Mostly his dreams were of the late 1890s, summery dreams of picnics with Emily and the two children, Rachel, toddling in her frills and petticoats, and little Jolyon, lying on a blanket, kicking his chubby legs.

But the idyllic dreams were almost always shadowed by clouds across the sun, or the faint, menacing rumble of distant thunder.

Last night they'd been on a sloping, shingled beach. Jolyon had been close to the edge of the rippling waves, with Rachel tending him. Doc himself had been sitting up, smoking a pipe, Emily's head in his lap, her long hair streaming over his thighs. Suddenly he'd seen triangular fins cutting the water, heading toward the beach. The notches in the dorsals revealed that they were a pod of killer whales, driving toward the two little figures on the beach. He'd wanted to run to pull them to safety, but his wife's head was heavy and he didn't like to disturb her sleep.

He'd awakened, sweating and gasping, just as one of the creatures had lunged from the waves, surrounded by a surging swell of foaming green and silver.

Krysty's eyes were open, looking up at him from his lap. "Bad dream, Doc?"

"Not one of the very best. But how are you this fine morning?"

"Better. My head feels as though it's been rolled between a couple of millstones. That'll pass."

The place where they'd spent the night was now illuminated by the first, gentle light of dawn. Doc had dozed, waking frequently, straining his hearing for any warning of the scalies' return. But all he'd heard had been the rustling of rats, one of the most common nighttime noises in Deathlands.

"I think we should move if you feel strong enough. We don't want our reptilian friends of yesternight to find us here.

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