Читать книгу Salvation Road - James Axler - Страница 11

Ryan had felt that they were in a no-win situation as they set out away from the remains of the hillside where the entrance to the redoubt had been situated. It was likely that their explorations would turn up nothing of interest, yet their boundless curiosity compelled the companions to investigate the area around the redoubts they jumped to.

Ryan consulted the Armorer about their position.

“We face the hill, it’s east. Away from it’s west. The rest is easy enough to guess.”

So, with a rough bearing and nothing in view of the horizon, the one-eyed warrior had to decide which way to lead his people.

“Jak, you know the old New Mexico better than all of us, and I guess that’s the nearest point we’ve traveled before. Much chance of us hitting hospitable land within a few days?”

The albino shrugged. “Depend where are now.”

“And we really don’t want to be out in this any longer than need be,” Krysty added, voicing all their thoughts as she gazed up toward the burning sun. Already, just standing in the glare, they were beginning to sweat valuable salt and water.

“My dear Ryan, I know that this is a far different land from the one in which I was raised,” Doc began, “but I feel that perhaps yourself and the inestimable John Barrymore perhaps underestimate your own knowledge of the land. After all, you did spend a fair proportion of your youth traversing its length and breadth with Trader, did you not?”

J.B. shook his head. “Trader went where the jack was, which meant villes, right? These areas…”

“But surely,” Doc persisted, “you must have traveled across such areas in order to reach the areas of population?”

Ryan shook his head, sucking his breath through his teeth. “I appreciate what you’re saying, Doc, but J.B.’s right. Trader used to say that every stretch of land that was empty was another tank of gas wasted. He used other traders’ mistakes, things he picked up in bars, to find ways to scout around areas like this and pick up jack and trade along the way.”

Dean’s brow furrowed. “Yeah, but if he knew to avoid the areas, he had to know where they were, so he must have had some kind of map.”

J.B. smiled. It looked foreign on his usually implacable countenance. “Trader kept most things in his head. Made him more valuable to anyone alive than dead. The biggest jack of all is knowing, he said to me once. I didn’t understand then, but now…”

“All of which gets us nowhere,” Mildred said. “Look, Dean’s got a point. Did you ever trade in these areas?”

Ryan and J.B. thought long and hard. Finally, the one-eyed warrior spoke. “Yeah, I see what you mean. J.B., can you give me a rough idea of how many miles to where Jak’s old place is?”

The Armorer shrugged and took out his minisextant. Using the position of the sun, time of day and his knowledge of prior readings in other places, J.B. calculated that the ranch Jak had briefly called home, before his wife and daughter were brutally slain and he rejoined the group, was some six days away in a southwesterly direction.

Ryan greeted the knowledge with a grunt. He squinted his single piercing blue eye to the horizon in a southeastern direction.

“I remember Trader taking us somewhere over there. I also remember, from what he said, that this is a fireblasted big desert we’ve landed in…but I figure we should hit a group of villes about three days away. There are some old blacktops that still run through parts of here, as well. If we hit one of those, we might hit an old gas station for shelter at night.”

“It’s our best option,” J.B. commented.

Mildred fixed him with a stare. “John, it’s our only option,” she said steadily.

“’Fraid so,” Ryan said. “Either that or risk another jump.”

Jak shook his head. “Not want do that soon. Rather fry.”

But there was no way he could have anticipated the intense heat of the day.

It was the perpetual dilemma of traveling across scorched earth. Did they try to keep up a rapid pace, hoping that their water would see them through as they lost more water from exertion, or did they keep to a slower pace, and hope that they could fend off sunstroke at the height of the day?

And then there were the nights…Desert nights could kill. They chilled to the bone and caused hypothermia to set in and take effect long before the morning sun could warm frozen flesh. In many ways, the nights were more dangerous, more insidious. During the days, temporary shelters could be constructed, any scrub used to give some kind of shade during rest periods. At first the cool of evening would be welcome, lulling the unsuspecting into a false sense of security before the bitter cold took hold. The scrub was even more vital at these times, as a source of firewood.

But there was little scrub and little chance to shelter. The chem-scoured and rad-blasted skies above them afforded no respite from the burning ultraviolet of the sun, and the deep freeze of the moon. Time began to lose meaning as there were no landmarks along the way, no visual relief from the unrelenting monotony of the desert, spreading all around in brownish, red dust that soaked up the rays of the sun and beat them back out. The heat burned the soles of their feet even through their heavy boots, radiating through the heavy clothes they used to cover the ground when they rested in whatever shade they could find or manufacture from their surroundings.

J.B. had taken regular readings to try to keep them on track. It would have been too easy to end up wandering in circles in a place where there were few landmarks. They kept heading in the direction they had chosen, but by the time they reached the remains of the road even Ryan began to wonder if somehow they had wandered off track and would end up frying in the desert dirt.

Doc was the worst hit. His time-trawl-ravaged body needed water at regular intervals, intervals that began to grow shorter with even greater regularity. He began to lean heavily on the lion’s-head swords-tick that also doubled as a cane, and Dean hung back to aid him.

“Don’t worry, Doc, it’ll soon be better,” he said at one point.

Doc’s answer chilled him. He fixed him with a blank-eyed stare and said, “Jolyon, you’ve come back to me at last. How is my dear Emily? And Rachel? Is my hell finally over?”

Dean didn’t know what to say, but his eye met Mildred’s, and he could see that the woman was concerned about the way that Doc was deteriorating.

In ordinary circumstances, the water supplies they had taken from the redoubt would have lasted them more than a week. But here, the sun was hotter, the lack of cloud cover and the way in which the baking earth absorbed then released the heat made the journey almost intolerable. Even when they stopped and tried to raise some kind of rudimentary shelter, it was almost impossible to escape the heat. All the companions were sweating out more water and salt than they could afford to lose, and when the cold night drew in they huddled around the small fires they could build and filled up on the self-heats. As most of these were soup or stew-based foods, they supplied some more water for the dehydrated bodies, as well as supplementing the salt tablets that Mildred had plundered from the medical stores.

So the road, when it came, was met with a sense of elation—although all were too hot and exhausted to express this in any other way than a massed sigh of relief, shot through with the uneasy knowledge that even though they had reached the road Ryan had gambled upon, there was still the dilemma of choosing which way to follow the cracked blacktop.

The shimmering surface of the road, the aged macadam almost melting in the intense heat, was visible from a few hundred yards away, and the companions exchanged glances as they, as one, noted the landmark for which they had been searching. They were too exhausted to speak until they had tramped the last few yards to the edge of the road, where they drew to a halt.

“Why don’t I feel excited that we’re actually here?” Krysty said in a hoarse, cracked voice. Her sweat-plastered red hair clung to her head, the long ends clinging like tendrils to her neck and shoulders. Her fine skin was covered with a layer of dust, and her lips—as cracked as her voice—betrayed her attempts to conserve the rapidly shrinking water supply.

“Because this is still only the beginning,” Ryan replied in a voice that had been reduced by thirst to a dry whisper. “First we work out which way to go, and then we hope we hit some kind of old wag stop, or mebbe a ville if we’re lucky.”

“I think we’ve got a better chance of a wag stop,” Mildred commented. “Who the hell could keep a ville going out here?” she added, turning her head slowly, sun-blasted muscles aching, to survey the long blank stretch of the road in each direction.

“Mebbe just over the horizon.” Dean shrugged, following Mildred’s stare.

J.B. said nothing. He took out his minisextant and took a reading to confirm their position, then extrapolated it to an overall direction for the road.

“I’d say that we head due west from here, following the road,” he said in a voice made drier than his usual tones by the heat and attempts to save his water. “I’d reckon that going east just leads us back.”

Ryan assented. “If I remember right, then there were some villes headed that way. We should rest up a few minutes, mebbe take some water and a salt tablet, then head that way,” he said softly, lifting his arm to indicate a westerly direction. Even lifting his arm made the muscles ache, the buildup of lactic acid unable to dissipate with his dehydrated state. His skin was burning, but covering up made him sweat too much, losing more fluid and salt. Like all of them, he was trying to balance perspiration with the dangers of sunburn and sunstroke.

But it was Jak who was having the greatest problem. As an albino, he had no pigment in his skin to combat the harsh rays of the sun, and his face was almost scarlet, the scars that crisscrossed his countenance standing out lividly. His arms were red and raw, and the amount of sun he was absorbing was making him susceptible to sunstroke, and he was swaying dangerously as they stood still.

Mildred had some sunblock originally designed for desert maneuvers by the predark military that she had taken from the redoubt, and she offered one of the tubes to Jak.

“Not doing good,” he said in a distant voice as he took the tube from her.

“It’s all there is,” Mildred replied. She watched as he applied some of the cream to his raw skin. They had all used the block, but she had saved extra for Jak, only too aware of the problems he was left open to by his albino condition.

Ryan noted the concern in her voice. “How much of that do we have left?” he asked.

Mildred shrugged. “Not enough. Maybe two, three days’ worth. It’s like the water and the self-heats. This damn sun is making us use more than we could have estimated.”

Ryan nodded but said nothing. It was a cause for some concern that all their supplies, taken from a rich source, were being used far too fast. He squinted his good eye and took a long, hard look down the road in the direction in which they would travel. The horizon shimmered, but even in the haze there was little sign of even a hallucination that could be construed as shelter.

“Okay. Let’s just see….”

THEY SPENT the rest of the day making slow, agonizing progress along the old blacktop. The surface was too broken and scarred to use. The uneven tarmac could cause a sprained ankle or worse, and the sticky, almost melting surface would slow progress and take too much energy as it dragged and pulled at their aching leg muscles.

The sun, with an almost interminable slowness, gradually sank. Night fell, and the sudden drop in temperature caused them to shiver uncontrollably, making it hard when they stopped to light a fire from the sparse brush, using a flare to ignite the blaze and add a burst of heat. The self-heats were difficult to handle with their spasms, and precious water was spilled.

“We have to try to sleep,” Mildred said when they had finished eating. “Try to get as much rest as possible.”

“If I sleep, then I fear that I may never wake,” Doc said in a sudden burst of lucidity. “If this is life, and nothing more than a waking dream,” he added as an afterthought.

“Nightmare, more like,” Dean said, his voice betraying a slide into sleep.

“Have to get through this,” Ryan said as they huddled together to keep warm and preserve valuable body heat. “There could be a ville just over the horizon.”

“Or a wag stop,” J.B. added. “Anything…”

THE RISING SUN WOKE them next morning, the lack of atmospheric cover causing the ultraviolet rays to immediately scald them.

“Another day, another adventure,” Mildred muttered sarcastically as she stirred beneath her jacket. “I just hope that we find something today….” She let the sentence drift, not wanting to add that they didn’t have the water and salt—even as carefully rationed as they dared—to last much beyond.

They began the slow march to the west, trudging heavily along the side of the road. The sun beat down steadily and with an ever growing intensity, and after a few hours it was all any of them could do to keep their heads up. Ryan took the point, J.B. the rear, and they straggled out into a line with Dean propping up Doc in the middle, while Krysty and Jak followed close to the one-eyed warrior, with Mildred staying at the rear with the Armorer.

They couldn’t bear to look up in the glare of the sun, and their aching neck muscles couldn’t support them in their attempt to stare ahead, so it was the sound that came to them first, floating across the empty air and breaking the intense concentration that enabled them to keep one foot going in front of the other.

It was Jak, with his heightened senses that made him such a keen hunter, who heard it first. Despite his fatigue, he snapped his head upright, red eyes burning brighter than the bloated orb above them.

“People.”

Ryan stopped, the line closing behind him as they banded together, coming to a halt. Jak’s statement, and Ryan’s sudden halt, instantly broke them from their own personal reveries. They all listened intently, staring as they did so into the shimmering haze that became more indistinct as it approached the horizon.

There was no mistaking the sound. Voices—at least four men, maybe more. And the sounds of hammering and some kind of work activity.

Under the intense light, it was harder to make out the view, but there seemed to be some kind of building moving in and out of the edges of the haze, standing at the side of the old blacktop. It was too indistinct to see, but it seemed to be obvious that this was where the sounds emanated.

“A wag stop, and people,” Ryan husked, his voice almost destroyed by the dry heat.

“I don’t believe it, even though I see it,” Mildred said, even the husky and croaking tone of her voice failing to hide her elation.

“Let’s get to it,” Dean said, “before we can’t make it.”

J.B. was, as ever, the voice of caution. “Don’t know that they’re friendly, though,” he pointed out.

Ryan nodded. “Good point. Triple red, but try not to let it show. We’ll be a shock for them, coming out of nowhere…No need to spook them more by looking ready for a firefight.” He coughed as he finished the speech, his voice almost wasted by the amount of words he had to use.

He indicated that they move rather than speak, and as the companions moved forward they all checked their blasters and brought them to hand. The instincts that had kept them alive for so long enabled them to smoothly bring their favored blasters to hand and chamber shells in case they should need to fire on the human beings ahead—the first they had seen for days, the ones who could save them if they had water and food, and the ones who could give them shelter…if they were friendly. And there was no guarantee of that in the Deathlands. No, not at all.

The last thousand yards would be the hardest.

IT WAS A SMALL cinder-built blockhouse, the adjunct to an old truck stop that had long since perished. The raised floor and foundations were all that remained, and it was on these remains that the men had their camp while they worked on the blockhouse. The roof had been removed and an upper story added. It was made of old sheets of corrugated iron, insulated against the sun by loose sheets of an aluminum foil, which deflected the blazing sun from the iron, which would otherwise trap and magnify the intensity of its heat. The roof had been replaced on top of this, its sloping tiles giving the appearance that with one chem storm they could slide off at a bizarre angle.

It was to this problem that the work party was now addressing itself. To one side of the blockhouse lay an abandoned site that marked an extension to the existing building, while the eight-strong work party was either on the roof itself, or was swarming up and down the three ladders that stood at the sides of the building unattached to the new extension.

There were four more men: three were sec men, heavily built and wearing broad-brimmed hats to protect them from the worst ravages of the heat. They stood at points that covered the area surrounding the building. All held blasters, muzzles pointing down. Two had Heckler & Koch G-12 caseless rifles, while the third was carrying an Uzi. All weapons were in fairly good condition.

The fourth man stood out among the others. Standing at somewhere around six-four or six-five, he was sparsely clad, with a loose cotton shirt open to the waist, loose cotton pants that ended around his shins and leather thonged sandals. He was slim, with the loose clothing hiding most of his body, but the open shirt revealed a tightly muscled chest and stomach. He had long, raven-black hair that fell in a single thick plait almost to his waist, the plait shot through with threads of silver-gray that betrayed the encroaching middle age of its owner. On his head was perched a black stovepipe hat with a few oily feathers from a desert buzzard attached to the crown. The brim shaded his eyes, throwing them into shadow, and making the aquiline sweep of his nose and the thin, impassive set of his lips the only clues to his mood. He had walnut-brown skin, tanned and textured like supple leather, and his coloring betrayed his ancient Native American roots.

Yet despite all this, the most striking thing about him was that he carried no blaster. Even the eight-man team swarming over the roof had handblasters holstered and attached to their clothing. But this man, standing as still and silent as a ghost in the burning desert air, carried only a long-bladed knife of his own making, with a finely honed blade and an intricately carved handle that appeared to be of bone.

The sec man covering the area to the east turned and hollered across the space between himself and the silent giant.

“Yo! Crow, y’all ain’t gonna believe this, but there’s a whole bunch of people walkin’ out of the desert.”

The giant said nothing, but the shout led to hilarity from the men working on the roof.

“Shee-it, you been chasing them desert mushrooms again, Petey?” yelled a thickset, heavily scarred man with sandy hair thinning on his scalp, not pausing in his task of rapidly resetting the thick asphalt tiles as he spoke.

“Shut up, Hal,” the sec man countered. “Just take a look-see.”

The sandy-haired man stopped momentarily and looked up. Squinting into the desert haze, he could make out the straggling line of the companions as they approached slowly.

“Well, I take it all back, Petey,” he said. “Where in hell did they all come from?” He looked down to where the impassive giant stood. “Hey, Crow, y’all hear that? And they got blasters out,” he added.

There was a pause—not long enough to denote that the giant was ignoring the exchange, but long enough to impose his sense of authority. Something that was emphasized by the manner of his reply.

“I heard. They’ll all be exhausted. Must’ve walked for days, no matter which way they come. And they don’t know if we’re friendly folk. They’ll be too exhausted to be a threat.”

His voice was quiet and low, almost a rumbling whisper that carried across the hot desert air despite the almost inaudible volume.

It was a voice that commanded respect.

“What you wantin’ me to do about them?” Petey asked.

The giant spoke again without turning. “Let them come. Keep your blaster ready but down, like theirs.”

“How the hell you know that?” Petey asked, looking back at the approaching line to double-check.

There was the ghost of a shrug from the giant, but his voice was still impassive. “’Cause we’re as suspicious of them as they are of us. Stands to reason. We don’t spook them, they’ll be fine.”

“’Kay, you’re the boss,” Petey said, turning back to them.

“Sure am—and you boys on the roof remember,” the giant continued, indicating by tone alone that he had noted the way in which the work crew had stopped in order to watch the approaching line.

The hardness in his tone made them start work with alacrity.

“THEY GOING TO BE a problem?” J.B. whispered, his voice barely audible.

“Looks like they’re wary rather than hostile,” Ryan called over his shoulder.

“Let’s hope it stays that way,” Krysty added. “I don’t think any of us are up to a firefight right now.”

“I’ll second that,” Mildred commented.

Ryan continued on, his people following, until he was a few hundred yards from the waiting sec man. Noting that the large and muscular sec man had his blaster held across his chest but with the barrel pointing down, Ryan took one hand from his Steyr and waved slowly and carefully. He called out in a hoarse and cracked voice that barely carried across the space between them.

“Hey! We’ve been in the desert for three days. We don’t want a firefight, just a little water and direction to the nearest ville….” His voice petered out into a cough, the sheer number of words too much for his damaged and dry throat.

“Okay,” the sec man replied, his voice strong and clear across the distance. “Y’all just put those blasters down and leave them before you come any farther, and we’ll be just fine.”

Ryan stopped his people and held ground at the distance. Coughing heavily and hawking a dry phlegm ball that made it hard to speak, he croaked, “’Fraid we can’t do that, friend. I appreciate you don’t want strangers coming on you with blasters out, but we can’t just leave ourselves defenseless.”

The sec man didn’t reply at first. The one-eyed man’s refusal, albeit in a nonthreatening manner, left him nonplussed. Ryan took note of the work party’s leadership order by the way in which the sec man looked toward the tall, dark figure who had been standing all the while with his back to them.

The giant turned slowly and took in the companions with a long, slow gaze. Despite the distance, and despite the fact that the giant’s eyes were ostensibly hidden by the shade cast from the brim of his hat, Ryan felt his eye and those of the giant meet. He felt that he was being assessed and hadn’t been found wanting.

The giant spoke to both the sec man and the companions, and the quiet voice carried across the still desert air.

“It’s okay, Petey. You people can keep your blasters, just holster them and don’t move too fast. The sec boys here can be a mite jumpy.”

Ryan paused for a second, then assented. “Okay, we’ll do that,” he said simply, swinging the Steyr across his shoulder. Behind him, the rest of the companions holstered their blasters. Ryan waited until they had all complied, then turned back. “Okay to come on now?” he asked.

The giant nodded. It was the slightest of movements, but against the stillness of his stance was an almost shocking movement. “I appreciate your caution,” he added cryptically.

As they began to move the last hundred yards to the cinder-block house, the workers on and around the roof stopped to watch. Sensing that they wouldn’t work properly until their curiosity was satisfied, Crow called a halt to their work and the beginning of a rest break.

The men had all descended and were in the shade of a camp built to one side of the newly begun extension, the tentlike structure forming a shelter from the blazing sun. They were drinking water from large drums that had been insulated to keep them cool.

Crow strode away from the men and toward the oncoming group. His stride was lengthy, his gait loping with an easy animal grace. Ryan noted that the man carried no blaster, but was sure from the look of him that he would be no easy competition.

The giant Native American held out his hand to Ryan.

“They call me Crow, and I’m the foreman here. You screw with me and I’ll chill you before you know what’s happened. But you treat me and my boys with respect, and we’ll help you if we can.”

Ryan took the proffered hand, noting the strong but easy grip. In his weakened condition, Crow could easily have ground his knuckles to dust, but he didn’t take the advantage. Ryan immediately felt sure that he could trust the man not to chill them out of hand. But he also knew that the Native American would take any precaution necessary to defend his position.

“Name’s Ryan,” the one-eyed warrior returned in a painful whisper, then naming all his party.

Crow introduced his party by name. Apart from Petey, the other sec men were Coburn and Bronson. Turning to where the work party were gathered, he pointed out the others as Hal, Ed, Mikey, Molloy, Tilson, Rysh, Hay and Emerson. To the tired and dehydrated Ryan, the members of the work party were hard to distinguish from one another. They were all muscular, scarred and tanned. They all looked like men who had built muscle from hard work and could more than hold their own in hand-to-hand combat. He also noted that they all had blasters on their hips.

In their current condition, his people would stand no chance if they really were in any danger…and despite the fact that he trusted Crow not to chill them, there was something that niggled at him.

“So how come you people end up out here in the middle of nowhere, looking like buzzard food?” the bronzed giant asked.

“Damn wag we traded for jack and food back in New Mexico,” J.B. said before Ryan had a chance to answer. “Tank was rigged so that they could fool us on the gas, and the engine bearings were shot to shit ’cause the oil was full of crap. Had to leave the bastard thing or die with it.”

Ryan smiled inwardly at the sudden outburst from the taciturn Armorer. It was a good cover story, as all of them knew the importance of keeping the mattrans system as secret as possible. His own cover story would have been similar, but he was surprised at the sudden acting talent shown by his old friend.

Crow settled a level gaze on J.B., trying to assess his story.

“Seems to me that mebbe you’re not that stupe,” he said finally, “cause y’all seem too battle-wise to be taken in that easily. On the other hand, I guess we all get screwed over sometimes. So where were you headed?”

“Anywhere,” Ryan answered. “We don’t belong to any particular ville, and I guess we’re just looking for somewhere. We were headed in this direction when we got stranded, so I figured that we’d just keep going. There was nothing for several days back, so we just kept going forward. Bastard of a place to get stranded.”

Crow nodded slowly. “Uh-huh. Just unlikely to see anyone coming out of that desert alive. There are old stories from way back beyond skydark about that place among my people. Travelers don’t come back.”

“Mebbe we just got lucky,” Ryan said evenly.

Crow nodded again. “Mebbe. And mebbe the best thing you can do right now is get some salt and water into your bodies, mebbe some rest.”

Ryan assented. “If you don’t take offence, we’ll take our rest in shifts. You can never be too careful, right?” And he fixed the giant with his piercing blue eye.

Crow returned the stare evenly. “I can see that. Join the others and eat. Take water. We have a supply delivered from Salvation every two days.”

“Salvation?”

“The ville we come from.” With which he led them toward the sheltered area where the workers were drinking and eating from a pot of some indistinct stew that bubbled over a small heater. “Please, partake with us,” he said, indicating the food and water, and also deflecting any further inquiries about Salvation.

The companions took dishes from a small table, and also plastic cups that were beaten but well scrubbed, despite the dust that seemed to drift into the shelter from the air outside. They took food from the pot and water from the insulated tank.

“Water running low,” Jak remarked to Crow as he scooped a cupful. “You sure this okay?”

“Delivery’s due,” the Native American answered simply.

Jak nodded and joined the others as they sat and ate between mouthfuls of water that tasted sweeter and more intoxicating than any brew that they may ever encounter.

“I fear first watch may be beyond me,” Doc said weakly. “In point of fact, I have a notion that I may not even reach the end of my meal.”

“It’s okay, Doc, I’ll cover you,” Dean said.

“I don’t think any of us are up to it,” Ryan husked, his throat raw despite the soothing coolness of the water. “But anyway, I’ll take first.”

“I’ll go second,” J.B. put in.

“Play it by ear from there,” Mildred added, addressing Ryan. “I don’t know if you could really plan a watch right now, as some of us may be more heat affected than others.”

Ryan agreed, casting a glance at Jak, who was beginning to fade into semiconsciousness even as he tried to eat and drink.

“Reckon as you’re right,” he said. But even as he spoke, he became aware of a leaden feel in his limbs that hadn’t been there before—a numbness that was beginning to spread. His speech had been slurred, which it hadn’t been before, despite his fatigue.

He looked at Krysty, but the Titian-haired beauty was already beginning to fall into the same state as Jak. Changing the direction of his gaze, which in itself seemed to drag, as though he were moving in heavy, deep water, he could see that Doc had slumped into unconsciousness.

“Dark night,” he heard J.B. curse. Slowly, like dragging himself through molten lead—an impression heightened by the burning fatigue in his limbs—he looked to the Armorer.

J.B. had noticed Jak slide into unconsciousness and Dean begin to shake his head slowly, as though trying to clear it. The boy tried to rise to his feet, but slumped forward as his legs failed him.

“Tranks…in the…in the water…or the food…” Mildred stammered, her plaits shaking in futile motion as she tried to clear her head.

“Fireblast, Crow,” Ryan cursed. “Why did you lie?”

The giant Native American shrugged. “Got the boys to slip something into what was left of the water. Couldn’t take any chances. You’d do the same,” he added.

Ryan knew the foreman was right, and he was more angry at himself than at the giant. He should have known this would happen. The only excuse he could give to himself was that his acute sense of danger, and his survival instincts, had been dulled by the dehydration and the effects of the sun.

But that would be no consolation if they were chilled.

Ryan managed to stagger to his feet. From the corner of his rapidly blurring vision he could see the workmen going for the blasters they had holstered, but they were stayed by the subtlest of hand gestures from their foreman.

“Leave him,” Crow said softly. “He has every right to be pissed. But he’s no danger to us now.”

The words became strung out and distorted as the drug took effect. Ryan swayed on his feet, trying to reach for his SIG-Sauer. Every movement seemed to take an eternity, and his numbed hand failed to respond, even though his arm did move, albeit at an incredibly slow rate. He could see J.B. fumble with his Uzi, falling forward to the ground before the blaster was fully in his hands.

The world narrowed and darkened around Ryan. The one thing that cut through his befuddled mind was why they hadn’t just been chilled there and then? What did Crow intend for them?

As the blackness descended, even that question became an irrelevancy that drifted into the void.