The slopping chunks of wet earth fell on the tarpaulin with a flat, final sound. Each of them took a turn, with Finnegan snatching the shovel and filling in the rest of the dirt and flattening it as best he could.
"We got a marker?" he asked. "Can't just walk away from Henn and fucking leave him here like a dog."
"It's best, Finn."
"How come, Ryan?"
"Put a marker, and they'll find it. Dig him up. Do... do fireblast knows what to him. That's not right. Few days, and the grass'll cover him snug and safe."
Finnegan nodded his agreement.
And so they left Hennings, sleeping alone and undisturbed among the trees.
Although the swampwag was equipped with headlights, Ryan figured it would be suicide to drive after dark. It would be like carrying a great sign asking folk to blast you. As soon as it got too dark to drive safely, Ryan ordered Finn to pull off the road among a grove of live oaks.
J.B. found some strips of dried fish in the buggy, and they divvied them out. Ryan appointed guards, in pairs for extra safety. A fire was too hazardous, but the night promised to be mild and humid.
Krysty sat next to Lori. "That was a right pretty song. I think mebbe I heard old ones sing it, back in Harmony. Where did you learn it?"
The girl looked down, blushing in embarrassment. "Back redoubt, Krysty. Quint sing when he ice someone. Every time. I hear lots time. Called 'A Mazing Grace,' I think. Seemed right sing for poor Henn."
"Guess it was," said Krysty.
Alone in his bed about thirty miles from where Ryan had set the camp, Baron Tourment lay in an uneasy sleep. The grotesque exoskeleton lay propped at the side of the king-size bed, once available at a special A tariff for visitors to the motel. The heavy curtains were drawn across the picture window, shutting out the last shreds of the storm's lightning.
The giant black, who often had nightmares, generally slept alone nowadays. After twice strangling bed companions in his sleep, he had agreed to forgo more deaths.
He was restless, tossing and turning, tangling the sheets about him. Once during the night he dreamed, his right hand touching and fondling himself, bringing himself to an erection of terrifying proportions. Beneath the pillows was a silver-plated pearl-handled Magnum pistol that he'd found in the loft of a big house on what had once been the exclusive side of West Lowellton. His hands reached for the heavy pistol, caressing it, stroking the cool metal.
And all the while he was asleep.
Just before dawn he began to thrash and mumble, but the words were inaudible Ч apart from the repeated muttering of, "Strangers, strangers."
Ryan and Krysty took the last watch of the long night. They took turns circling the swampwag at a distance of between fifty and a hundred paces. The false dawn came whispering in, with a pink glow in the east and the promise of a fine morning. Then darkness returned, followed at last by the sallow light of true dawn.
"Wake the others, lover?" she asked.
"Soon. Let 'em sleep long as they can. A jump really scrambles up your head. And losing Henn like that..."
The sentence trailed away into the stillness. The air was cool, with a faint mist hanging over the trees behind them. They heard the delicate clicking and chirping of insects, rousing for the new day, and the songs of birds to the east.
The Atchafalaya Swamp was coming to life.
Krysty laid a hand on Ryan's arm, just below the elbow. "Why do we do this, love?"
"This?"
"Keep running. Fighting. Now... dying?"
"I figure you can live easy or hard. Easy, and you never stand up for a thing. Hard, and..."
"And what, Ryan?" Her grip tightened on his arm, making him wince at her latent power.
"Once you start with fighting and killing, Krysty, then it's killing and killing and more killing."
"Why? When do you stop?"
"When the reason for the fighting and the killing is done and ended."
"When will that be?"
"Maybe tomorrow. It's always going to be tomorrow. Until one day you find it's come. That's all there is."
About a mile ahead of them, a thin column of gray smoke was curling up into the morning sky. Ryan and Krysty noticed it simultaneously.
Ryan set his boot on the ladder into the swampwag, "Time to wake 'em," he said.
Chapter Six
After some discussion they agreed that the safest bet was to leave the buggy behind, hidden under cover, ready in case they needed a fast-footed run from danger.
J.B. suggested that they split into groups, circle around and then meet back at the swampwag, but Ryan insisted they stay together.
"No. With Henn gone we're low on blaster power. You, me an' Finn. Doesn't mean Doc and the girls don't pull their weight, but we're the professionals. Best we stick close."
The promise of a good day was vanishing fast. The sky was chameleonic, shifting from a pale blue streaked with pink to a deep purple with black clouds slashed across it.
Ryan, as usual, took the point position, keeping as far as he could to the side of the blacktop, in among the shadows, blaster at the ready, finger close on the trigger. Krysty came second, twenty paces back, on the opposite side of the road. Then Doc and Lori, who were becoming increasingly difficult to separate, with Finn a farther twenty yards behind them. J.B. brought up the rear, keeping a good hundred paces off, on the same side of the road as Ryan.
The temperature was already rising, humidity making the going tough. Ryan estimated that it was already close to the hundred mark. He was glad that he'd left his beloved fur-trimmed coat behind in the gateway.
A large mosquito, wings shimmeringly iridescent in the hazy light, settled on Ryan's left wrist, readying itself to feed. "Bastard!" Slapping at it, he crushed it in a smear of blood.
There weren't many signs that the blacktop was actually used very much. Oases of vegetation sprouted from cracks in its surface. A sharp curve to the left was followed by one to the right. At each turning Ryan held up a hand, slowing the others until he checked out what was around the bend.
Moving back, he called the rest to him, using the prearranged signal of touching the top of his head with his left hand. One by one they came up, J.B. at the rear.
"Road goes straight, but we're close to a ville of some kind. And there's a guard box over on the left, near a side trail."
As they neared it, moving closer together, Ryan was first to see that the small building wasn't a guard box at all.
"It's a phone booth," said Doc wonderingly. "I vow that it has been..." He seemed awestruck. "...many a long year since I have seen such an artifact."
The box, with some of its glass still intact, leaned to one side. The letters 'AT&T' were still visible on it. The group stopped to gawk at it.
Above them the sky had darkened as it had the previous afternoon, with a jagged spear of silver lightning occasionally crackling down. To one side there was a large pool, reflecting the sullen clouds. Beyond the water several buildings were silhouetted in the distance, seemingly fairly undamaged.
If a whole large city had really escaped the nuking of 2001, it would be an astounding thing to see. Certainly Ryan Cawdor had never seen anything like it before.
Finnegan stepped closer, stopping about a dozen paces from the booth.
"Some fucker's in there. I can hear it moving."
"Get back, Finn," ordered Ryan. "Don't take any chance with..."
The words died in his throat when he saw, as they all did, the creature that Finnegan had disturbed.
"A fucking rat," said Lori. It was the first time any of them had heard her swear.