Everyone got out of the rig.
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 about — a 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.
Bright jays darted and scolded in the bushes that grew thickly from the top of the slope down to the dark water.
Jak pointed above them, his keen eyes spotting a golden eagle circling majestically on a thermal over the lake.
It was unlike anyplace any of them had ever known; it seemed close to a mythic idyll of peace and serene happiness. Krysty lay on her back, one foot crossed over the other, staring around her, relaxing on a soft couch of deep green moss.
"What you said, Doc, about how it used to be... Was it really like this?"
"Oh, indeed, it was, my dear lady. I swear it was like this. Of course there were cities. Great wens that soured the land and skies around themselves, blighting the environment. That was the buzz word. Environment. But there were limitless billions of acres of unspoiled wilderness."
They were silent for a moment, locked into their own thoughts. Ryan lay next to Krysty, and he felt her hand rest on his, warm and loving.
"Why keep moving, lover?"
"What?"
They kept their voices quiet, private.
"Why keep on moving all the time, Ryan? Why not stop? Stop here?"
Ryan breathed in, deep and slow, trying to find words that would be an answer, not coming up with anything that sounded right or tasted good.
"I guess...I don't know," he said finally.
"Up here the air's like... like nectar. I recall that from an old vid I once saw. Like nectar. Means sweet and fresh. There's valleys all round here," she said, indicating them with a sweep of her hand. "Fresh water and good timber. We could build us a home."
"Us? Who's that, Krysty?"
"You. Me," she said, hesitating. "All of us. We get on well. Got the skills. We could settle, like they used to on the old frontier. Mebbe try and farm some. Run the ridges of this green land, Ryan. Raise us a family one day."
It was out, the words lying in the air between them. Words that both of them had thought about ever since they'd first met. Words that neither of them had said before, not even whispered during their lovemaking, or after.
"One day, Krysty," Ryan said finally.
"One day, lover?"
"Yeah, one day."
But not yet.
They camped for the night on the rim and built themselves a small fire from the abundance of fallen branches, lighting it with a pyrotab from J.B.'s capacious pockets. As the light faded, they watched small brown deer come cautiously from the woods to feed, their hooves crunching delicately on the loose pumice that lay everywhere along the slopes, a legacy from the original eruption of Mount Mazama, seven thousand years ago.
It had been agreed that at dawn they'd split into two groups, one going east around the narrow perimeter trail, the other west. Finnegan was convinced the radio message that had drawn them on from Ginnsburg Falls must have come from very close to the lake.
"We'll walk easy and take care."
J.B. had asked about guards. The Trader had instilled into them that you always posted sentries — it was universal practice.
"Even here?" Finnegan asked.
Ryan was torn. All his senses told him that even in paradise there might be poisonous serpents. But the temptation to succumb to the beauty and peace of the place was overwhelming.
"Let's let it go a night. Nobody can come up without waking one of us. Not over that loose stone."
"Be real good to have a fucking night without having to get up and fucking walk around on guard," Finnegan said, grinning from ear to ear.
Ryan woke once, disturbed by the charred end of one of the branches falling into the gleaming ruby embers of the fire. Through the lattice of the branches of the pines around him, he could see the bland face of the moon shining serenely down. He got up to take a leak at the edge of the clearing, his urine steaming in the cold.
His mind was filled with Krysty's words about settling down and raising a family. And he remembered Doc's words.
"Must have been a hell of a good land," he whispered to himself before rejoining the others and enjoying the best sleep he'd had in ages.
They woke to find themselves prisoners.
Chapter Fourteen
Jak Lauren woke first, disturbed by the faint crunching of boots over the rough pumice. He blinked his eyes open, looked quickly around the clearing where they all slept and saw that it was still night, with only the cloud-fringed moon casting a pale silver light. The fire had died away to a pile of gray ashes.
"We got company, friends," he said in a normal conversational voice, taking the greatest care not to make any hasty movements.
Ryan woke next, his one good eye opening. He too looked around while keeping very still.