Chapter Sixteen

 

 

That second night saw Krysty, Doc, J.B., Mildred and Jak not far behind Ryan and Dean.

 

They had passed the ruins of Basalt, about twenty-five miles from Glenwood Springs.

 

The walking wasn't all that tough, despite the occasional hard detour to get around an earth slip, but the altitude was a problem for them all.

 

Particularly for Doc.

 

He had a nosebleed late on the first afternoon and a couple more during the second day. The last one was so bad that Mildred made him sit down and rest, his back against a fallen boulder, his head tilted, while she tried to staunch it with his kerchief, which had been soaked in meltwater.

 

The blood came out in lumps, rather than in a trickle, splashing on the trail, staining his boots, and it took nearly a quarter hour to finally stop the flood, by which time the old man was looking even more pale-skinned than usual.

 

"Ready to go," he said.

 

"Fine," Mildred said, holding his wrist. "Soon as your pulse stops fluttering and gets someplace close to normal, we can all get on our way."

 

"I swear that I do most sincerely pity the poor devils who found themselves your patients, Dr. Wyeth. I have often wondered whether your mysterious freezing 'accident' might not have been contrived by a cabal of your colleagues and patients. Had I been one of them on that December day in 2000, I would happily have passed the ice myself."

 

"Just stop talking and take it easy, will you? That was a bad nosebleed."

 

"Lack of acclimation," he said. "Give me another few days and I shall be a cross between a young gazelle and spring-heeled Jak himself."

 

"I don't honestly think we've got all that many days, Doc," Krysty said gently. "Should meet with Ryan either tomorrow or the day after. Then comes the hard time. Things could easy slip downhill from then on."

 

"How far Fairplay from here?" Jak asked.

 

Krysty shook her head. "Not sure. I was only in my teens when I left Harmony. I'd guess around fifty miles or so. We'll go some higher than here."

 

"Take us three days, this speed," the albino commented, looking at the mountains around them.

 

"Then we'll meet him in two or three days, Jak. One way or another, we'll meet up."

 

 

 

J.B. BLINKED his eyes open, aware of someone moving close to the dead ashes of the previous night's fire. His right hand felt for the Uzi until he caught the glimpse of the dawn light on the flaming hair.

 

"Krysty?" he whispered, reaching for his spectacles from their hiding place beneath his fedora, where they'd been protected from the night chill.

 

"Yeah. It's all right." She knelt by him, keeping her voice low to avoid waking the others.

 

"You see or hear something? Or feel something?"

 

"Not sure." She sat, tucking her knees up under her chin and hugging herself. "Sure is cold at this height."

 

"Yeah. Heard Doc get up to take a leak a couple of times. His teeth were chattering so rad-blasted loud I thought he'd wake everyone up."

 

Krysty laughed softly. "Poor old Doc. He does his best to keep up."

 

"And he's good at finding some reason why we should stop for five. 'My dear friends, I fear that I have a pebble in my boot.' Or, 'I think that the ladies look a touch fatigued. I would not be averse to helping them by taking a short break.' You know the kind of stuff?"

 

Krysty smiled again. "You got him there. Never admits he wants to take a break because he's an old man and he can't cut it the same anymore. Kill him to own up to that."

 

"Hope I'm in such good shape when I get to be 250 years old." The Armorer had been polishing his glasses while they talked, and he squinted through them before he perched them on the end of his sharp nose. He looked around him. "Still some way off full dawn," he said.

 

"Yeah. Sorry I disturbed you. I don't sleep well without Ryan at my side."

 

"He'll be fine."

 

"Come on now, J.B., that's just a knee-jerk reaction. Ryan's not a god or a superman, like something out of a pulp novel or a comic. He's flesh and blood and bone, and he's not indestructible. I know it and he knows it."

 

"Only delivering the kid to a school for a spell. Shouldn't meet up with the old man with the scythe on a simple errand like that."

 

"When I was about fourteen, in Harmony ville, there was a girl called Penny Teller. She was walking across the street carrying a pencil. The hem of her dress was unpicked, and it snagged and she tripped. As she fell the pencil went clean into her eye and into her brain, and she was dead in ten seconds. Don't try and cheer me up making jokes about dying, J.B., please. I've seen more than enough of it."

 

 

 

"SOMEONE'S FIXED the highway up," Dean said. "Been graded recently."

 

"Not only that. The edge is marked with a line of round stones. Seems like someone's taken a lot of trouble to make the road to the school look good and neat."

 

"How far did the sign say?"

 

"Twelve miles. Only gone about a mile so far."

 

It was a predark blacktop, but it showed little sign of chronic deterioration like most of the stretches of highway throughout Deathlands. This was smooth with hardly any breakup or buckling, and most of the vegetation at the sides had been trimmed back.

 

There was a dense forest of Colorado blue spruce on the right side of the trail, with some scrubby mixed conifers stretching out on the left. The road wound from side to side, rising and falling, then rising again, making it impossible for them to see any great distance ahead.

 

By Ryan's guesstimate they'd gone about half the twelve miles when they spotted a larger notice, standing proud and foursquare on the left side of the road.

 

"Not very friendly," Dean said, reading it. " 'Warning. Proceed at your peril. This road is private and goes only to the Nicholas Brody School. Unless you have business there, turn back now. This means you! Woods are man-trapped, and anyone invading is hostile and is likely to be attacked without warning and killed. Stay on the road until challenged. But only if you have business. If you don't, then turn around and get out!' "

 

"No excuse for going on and getting chilled after that," Ryan commented.

 

"Long as you can read."

 

It was a fair point from Dean. In Ryan's experience, only about one in eight of the population of Deathlands was functionally literate. Trader himself had been unable to read or write, though he had always tried to conceal that from people.

 

"Right. Man who wrote that notice doesn't sound like the kind of person would listen to many excuses."

 

"Think it's Nick Brody, Dad?"

 

"Seems a fair guess. But I don't"

 

"Then he sounds a triple-tough mother, Dad. Not the sort to take shit. Not Nick."

 

"Mebbe. But listen, Dean."

 

"Yeah? What is it, Dad?"

 

"Might be best to call him Mr. Brody. Not Nick. Show him some respect right from the start. Might be he'll like you to call him Nick, but it's best to start off on the right foot. Know what I mean?"

 

The boy nodded, the wind ruffling his dark, curly hair, his eyes fixed piercingly on his father. "Whatever you say, Dad."

 

"Let's step it out. Should arrive there ready for a noontime meal, if we get it right."

 

 

 

"THERE'S SOMEONE watching us, Dad."

 

Ryan stopped, his hand feeling for the butt of the SIG-Sauer. He cursed himself under his breath for letting his attention wander. His mind had been filled with thoughts of saying farewell to his son, and he had let his combat sense sleep as they walked along the roadthe road that they knew carried dire warnings for trespassers or outlanders.

 

"Where?"

 

"Ahead and to the left. Caught the flash of sunlight off a glass on the edge of the spruces."

 

"Can't see it."

 

"It's there, Dad."

 

"Believe you."

 

"What do we do?"

 

"Keep walking. Not much point in turning back when we've come this far. Can't be more than a couple of miles from here to the school. Must be set among the trees over there," he said, pointing toward the north.

 

The place where Dean had seen the glint of light was about four hundred yards ahead.

 

Ryan took that side of the blacktop, the rifle across his shoulder, his right hand never far from the butt of the SIG-Sauer. Dean was beside him, on the other side of the road.

 

They had closed to within a hundred yards, and there was still no sign of any action.

 

"Dad?"

 

"Yeah." Ryan's nerves were stretched with the tension of knowing that something was likely to happen at any moment and not having any idea what that something might be.

 

"If anything happens, least we're together."

 

"That's some consolation, Dean. It truly is. But I don't think anything's going to happen."

 

It was almost a replay of their run-in on Lemuel's wag with the three killers.

 

A blaster was fired from out of the spruces, the noise muffled by the trees, the bullet kicking a chunk out of the pavement a yard or so in front of Ryan's feet. It ricocheted off and whined into the distance.

 

"Far as you go," a man's voice called.