Chapter Six
A sting-wing darted from the rushes along the basin.
Standing on the shore, the gentle waves lapping around his combat boots, Ryan saw the movement out of the corner of his eye. He drew his SIG-Sauer and fired. The silenced 9 mm blaster coughed, and the winged mutie exploded in midair, bloody feathers tumbling down onto the beach. There was a disturbance under the sand, and blue-shelled crabs rose into view like ghosts from a grave. They climbed over the tiny corpse, tearing the mutie apart with their sharp pincers and stuffing their mouths full. One large azure crab had a dozen tiny copies on its back and passed morsels of the sting-wing over its quivering antennae to the clicking brood.
A gray dawn was beginning to break in the fiery sky, and Ryan stood guard over the others as they finished conveying the last of the fresh water and ammo onto the bobbing rafts. Stout ropes moored the crude craft to the stump of a dead tree, a gentle current tugging them away from the shore.
There had been enough logs from the felled trees to build a dozen rafts, but the companions decided on just two. Lashed together with ropes and chains, the first was small, only ten feet squared, three of the inflated tires from the LAV bolted to the belly of the craft. A small pile of ammo, food and other supplies lay in the middle of the raft. A sheet of canvas covered the goods, and multiple ropes secured the cargo. A tiller made from a door off an ammo locker was at one end, tight between two upright stanchions. J.B. was dubious of the arrangement, but Ryan had assured the man it would work fine.
The second raft was much bigger, thirty feet squared, with four piles of supplies set between the tires bolted underwater at each corner. This kept the center clear, helped to balance the craft and gave the companions something to crouch behind in case of a fight. Another door served as a tiller. The bobbing craft were attached to each other with stout metal chains, which would keep them together through riptides or fog. But in case of emergency, they could cut the larger raft loose to block pursuit, and shoot the ammo boxes on board to eliminate their pursuers.
The end of the logs were ragged and full of splinters, and the companions had done nothing to change that. The wild array of jagged kindling made a very good defense against unwanted passengers—man or mutie— climbing on board.
Ryan studied the rafts with a critical gaze. Tree trunks with the bark still on, old rope, rusty chains and a handful of nails. They didn't look like much, but hopefully they would last long enough to get them to Tennessee.
Whistling a sea chantey, Doc was on the larger craft, testing the ropes holding down the canvas-covered piles. Jak stood on the other with his back to the shore, taking care of business.
"Well, that's it for the supplies," Krysty said, wading to shore from the front raft. She stomped the red river mud off her boots, sending the crabs scurrying away, dragging their breakfast along with them.
"All the fuel's on board?" Ryan asked.
"Yes." Krysty shook her head, her hair spreading out a corona of fiery glory to rival the coming dawn. "Food, blankets, all six of the rocket launchers. I'm surprised how much the rafts could hold."
"Just hope it's enough," Ryan said grimly, then glanced at the nearby APC. "Better wake Dean and Mildred, and get going. We can each catch some more sleep once we're far from here."
"I'll get them, lover," she said, and walked off.
"Lend me a hand, Ryan?" J.B. grunted, dragging a lumpy duffel bag toward the water.
"What is it?" Ryan asked, grabbing the rope and helping to lift the bag off the ground.
"Battery from the APC," J.B. replied as they waded into the cold water and splashed toward the nearer raft. "I'm going to wire a headlight to the thing so we can see at night. Scare a lot of folks and save us a pile of killing."
With the morning breeze ruffling his silvery mane of long hair, Doc watched the two men approach from the second raft, his .44 LeMat held tight, the hammer cocked back and ready.
"The halogen bulb will explode," Ryan stated. "Won't be able to take that much direct current."
"I used different thickness of wires to cut the voltage so the headlight wouldn't blow. I can make it work. Shit!" J.B. shifted his balance, nearly going under as his boot slipped on a smooth rock. "Close call."
Ryan changed their direction away from the cargo raft. "Then we put this on the lead raft, so we can see where we're going."
"Sounds good."
Zipping his pants closed, Jak turned and gave the men a hand hauling the heavy bag over the ring of splinters.
"Good for fishing," the teenager commented, lacing the bag to the ropes covering the canvas mound. "Fish see light at night, come close, spear all we want."
"We never made any spears," J.B. said, heading for the cargo raft.
Jak jerked a thumb. "Doc has. Long ones."
"You made spears?" Ryan called out, climbing on board. He was dripping wet from the waist down, the water trickling down between the log deck and back into the basin. "Good thinking."
"These are not spears, my dear Ryan, but poles for punting," Doc replied, trimming small branches off a sapling with his pocketknife.
"Barge poles," J.B. translated as the older man gave him a boost on board. A thick piece of canvas draped over the splinters gave easy access to the deck of the homemade craft. "We can use them to push the raft along, in case we get stuck on a sandbar."
"Exactly." Tilting the pole, Doc visually inspected the shaft, rotating it this way and that. "A bit off plumb but nothing serious." He tossed it onto the deck.
"Punting," Ryan said as he changed into dry clothes and socks. He laid the wet garments on top of the canvas mound to let the sun dry them.
Trimming another sapling, Doc shrugged. "It is an Old English word, and I disremember its origin. Sorry."
Sliding on his boots, Ryan saw that Dean was walking backward along the shore, unraveling a greasy length of knotted rags from a slopping bucket. The other end of the line went through the top hatch of the LAV and down inside. Backpacks perched on their heads, Mildred and Krysty were already wading across the basin, heading for different rafts. Once the boy played out the length to the end, he lit the end with a butane lighter. The shredded blankets began to burn fiercely, giving off huge volumes of greenish smoke, the fire crawling up the length very slowly.
Dean waited a moment to make sure the fire had caught, then waded into the river. As soon as he was in the water, the crabs came out of hiding and began to finish the last few scraps of the dead sting-wing, rooting in the sand for every tiny gobbet of flesh.
"Hate to lose the wag," Krysty commented as she changed her pants.
"No choice. It's deadweight," Ryan stated. "And with any luck, if some blues find the wag, they'll think we all died the explosion."
"Can't hurt."
When Dean was on board, Ryan looked around the beach and ordered a last check of the supplies. It would take the grease fuse hours to reach the APC, but time was still against them. The blues could arrive at any moment, and if they left something important behind there would be no easy way to get it back.
"We have canned food, MRE packs, seven ammo boxes, a case of grens, bedrolls, blankets," Doc called out from the cargo raft. "Extra rope—"
"All of the rope," J.B. interrupted.
"Fuel, fresh water, pots and pans."
"Med kit," Mildred added, patting the bag at her side.
"Same," Jak announced, squatting by the mound, looking under the canvas. "Ready go."
The sun broke the horizon at that moment, flooding the world with its dim light. "All right, then," Ryan decided. "Cast off!"
At the helm, Krysty snapped the mooring line like a whip, and the knot around the tree stump came undone. Urged on by the gentle currents, the rafts began to leisurely float away from the Carolina shoreline.
Using the poles, the companions guided the rafts into the deep water where the saplings couldn't touch bottom. Drifting freely, Doc and Jak worked the tillers, steering them farther out until land was no longer in sight.
Behind them, a faint trail of smoke was discernible, rising above the horizon from the smoldering remains of the cornfield.
Shifting his weight from boot to boot, Dean tried to gain his balance on the moving raft. "I thought having the tires under the logs would make these things steady," he said, swallowing hard.
"It does," J.B. replied, spooning cold soup from a U.S. Army tin can. "Dark night, you should been with us a few years back when we took a raft trip down the Hudson in Newyork. Now, that was a rough ride."
Slightly green, the boy nodded assent and sat on the deck, waiting for his stomach to catch up with them from the beach.
Hours passed. The companions took turns at the helm and catching up on the sleep lost during the frenzied building of the raft during the night. The gentle current was getting stronger, urging them on a more southerly course, but they angled the rudder against the easy pull and maintained a steady course to the north and Tennessee.
"I make our speed at three knots," J.B. announced, studying the sun overhead. "Not bad."
"Wind is with us," Ryan said, testing the breeze with a damp finger. "That helps."
A bug buzzed near the raft, and a fish leaped from the basin and back into the water. The insect disappeared.
"I'll catch us dinner," Dean said, and unscrewed the handle of his bowie knife, withdrawing line and hooks.
"You'll need bait," Krysty commented, and reached inside a box to retrieve a wad of grease-soaked paper. "Try some of the fatback. It's getting old, and we can't risk eating it anymore."
"Fish love bacon," Jak added, whittling on a sliver of wood from the end of a log. "Rancid, the best."
Cutting off a tiny cube, Dean baited a hook and cast it overboard, raising and lowering the line to suggest life in the bait.
"How odd," Mildred said, kneeling on the raft and almost sticking her face into the water. "Those are barracuda. Saltwater fish."
"Must be muties," J.B. stated, as if that settled the matter.
She stood. "Could be. But they seem to be dying."
"Should they not?" Doc asked, amused.
The physician waved that aside. "That isn't the point. How did ocean fish get this far into a freshwater basin?"
"Mebbe caught by the tide or something."
"Perhaps," she relented. "I only hope that—"
The raft shook hard as it struck something underwater. J.B. shifted the helm, and Ryan did the same.
"Sandbar?" Krysty asked, looking overboard, one hand gripping the ropes tight. "No, look!"
Just below the surface of the water was the wreck of a sailing ship. The hull was smashed inward near the bow, schools of fish darting about the rigging and cabin.
"Obsession," Krysty read off the submerged ship. "Nice name."
As they passed by, Doc reached out with his ebony stick and tapped the propellers. The blades turned without hindrance and spun merrily.
"The engine is gone," Ryan said, frowning. "She's been looted."
Jak grabbed a barge pole and thrust it downward, meeting no resistance. "Clear water," he announced.
"Must be floating freely."
Mildred frowned. "Lord, I hope so."
More and more wreckage filled the waters beneath them until it seemed as if they were sailing over a submerged junkyard of smashed, rotting, vessels.
"Ten o'clock," Ryan warned, pointing at the horizon, one arm on the helm.
A smudge on the horizon grew steadily in size until they could see that the dark mass was a pile of wreckage, rising from the water like an island. An oil tanker lay among a pile of destroyers, gunboats, battleships, aircraft carriers, boats and seagoing vessels of every kind, all jammed together.
"Tumble down?" Jak asked.
Blinking from the windblown spray on his face, Ryan agreed. When skydark raped the world, debris from the nuked cities rained across the continent. The Manhattan blast threw cars and buses across the greater tristate area, the vehicles blown off bridges and shotgunning out of tunnels to fly for a hundred miles from the concussion of the nukes. Houses had been found on mountaintops, toilet seats in the middle of a desert and once Ryan found an intact bridge spanning a grassy field in the middle of nowhere. Anything close to an atomic blast was vaporized, but the objects farther away were melted and sprayed outward, then smashed apart and sent flying, and after that, merely airborne.
"The debris must have been drawn here by the current," Ryan guessed. "Then one ship got caught on a sandbar or mebbe it got entangled with another sunken ship. A second was caught, and so on until there was an island."
"Or maybe it was an oil rig," Mildred said. "But I honestly don't recall if there was any deep-sea drilling going on offshore of North Carolina."
"Want to stop by and see if it's inhabited?" J.B. asked, adjusting his glasses. "Might have some wags we could trade for, salvage."
Ryan frowned. "Pointless to try. Even if we found a wag, how the hell would we get it to the shore? Best keep traveling."
"Besides," Krysty added, placing a hand on her blaster and loosening it in the holster, "after that bastard Poseidon, I don't trust sailors much."
"Amen to that," Mildred added grimly.
RISING FROM HIS CHAIR, the old man shuffled across the bridge of the predark battleship in bare feet, his single garment of stitched canvas highly decorated with embroidery patterns and service medals from a hundred nations.
Slanted windows fronted three sides of the room, affording a panoramic view of the river basin. On a clear day, green haze could be seen from the distant shore, but everywhere else the blue waters of the basin ruled supreme.
The bridge was a half circle of electronic equipment as dead as the previous owners of the vessel. Radar screens were dark and lifeless, radios silent as the deep waters themselves. Near the stairwell, a stove made from an oil drum radiated heat. On top of the stove was a sterling-silver punch bowl full of simmering fish stew, the tiny heads bobbing about staring at nothing amid the long strands of kelp and diced turtle eggs.
Crumbling some dried mold into the stew, the commodore used a spoon carved from a lifeboat to take a taste, then added a bit more. The stores in the holds of the ships that comprised the island were finally running low after so many decades, but that didn't matter anymore, as all of his people would soon be dead.
The thought saddened him, and the whitehair walked to the southern window to gaze out upon the featureless vista of his watery domain. The commodore sighed. The crew of the Navy had lived here since skydark. Sometimes they sent expeditions to the shores for food or tools, but the crew always came back. There didn't seem to be any other living beings in the world. They found ruins, but no people. Just twisted, shambling mockeries of people, mindless creatures who wantonly killed with their clawed hands and howled at the sight of fire. Sometimes a hellhound was found, but thankfully those were rare. And very deadly.
Now the Navy men were alone. The last humans in the world. A plague had swept through the island ville ten winters ago, killing half the population and every woman. Even the babes. For over ten long years, the surviving men had lived in the towering pile of metal. He knew some of his crew found relief doing things the Manifest didn't approve. But if it kept them quiet, so be it. In life, some poor bastard was always the barrelboy.
A smudge of smoke on the western horizon caught his attention, and the whitehair walked to the telescope to train the instrument in that direction. The focus was poor, one lens replaced by a lens from a pair of eyeglasses, but he managed to achieve a kind of clarity. The smoke wasn't the plume of a seagoing vessel heading their way. There was just some sort of fire on the mainland. But under the magnification of the scope, he noticed something moving on the water, moving against the current. How could that be?
At first, he couldn't believe his eyes, thinking madness had finally claimed his mind. But the longer he watched, the more convinced he became that this real. Not a delusion brought on by loneliness and advanced age.
"Women!" the commodore cackled as he adjusted the focus of his telescope. Two tiny rafts were coming this way, and two of the occupants were clearly women, a redhead and a black woman. "Those are women!"
The commodore trembled slightly as the memory of his last woman filled his entire body, the softness of her skin, the weight of a breast in the palm of his hand, the feel of a nipple as it hardened with desire, the scent of her moist passion, the delicious heat as he slid inside.
Then he noticed their position. By the blood of the captain, the rafts were hundreds of yards past the island and dangerously close to the currents'.
Quickly shuffling across the tilted floor of the battleship, the old man tugged repeatedly on a tasseled cord and a bell rang loudly, the peels echoing slightly as they reverberated down the metal hallway of the military ship.
"General quarters!" the whitehair shouted over the bell. "We have company a port beam!"
"Company?" said a big man appearing at the bottom of the angled ladder. Bare chested, he was covered with homemade tattoos, and a machete hung at his right hip. "Who left the island without permission, sir?"
"Nobody, bosun! It's new folks! Fellow survivors!"
Trying to hide a smile, the man looked skeptically at the whitehair. "Been having a nip of the brew again, have we, sir?"
"It's true, you ass!" the commodore yelled. "Outlanders are here, and two are women. Live women!"
The bosun recoiled. "It's a lie."
"No, mate, it's true! See for yourself!"
Bounding up the stairs, he rushed to the telescope and soon found the pair of rafts to the west of the island. "By the coast gods," he cursed. "It's a bunch of people, and some are women, and they're near the damn currents! They'll be swept away and killed!"
The commodore stomped a foot. "I know, you fool! Send the last working longboat, use every drop of juice! But get those women. We must have them alive!"
"Women," the bosun repeated, rubbing a sweaty hand on his thigh. "Aye, we'll get them, sir, and chill anybody who dares to try to stop us!"
WATCHING AS THE JUNKYARD island receded into the distance, the companions started to relax when the side of a huge oil tanker split apart as colossal doors spread wide. Filling the interior was a full-size dockyard. Oil lanterns hung in clusters, boxes and crates were stacked before warehouses and swarms of men worked with winches and cranes. Then from the shadows, two sleek speedboats darted into view, skipping across the waves at incredible velocities.
"Triple red!" Ryan shouted, keeping a grip on the helm and drawing his hand blaster. With a thumb, he flicked off the safety.
Prepared for possible trouble, the companions leveled their weapons and dropped into firing positions, tracking the incoming ships.
Dean dropped the clip in his Browning Hi-Power to check the load, then slammed it back in again, jacking the slide. "They might be friendly," he ventured hopefully.
"Not at that speed," J.B. admonished. "Friends don't come charging full speed at total strangers."
A bearded man on board one of the rushing vessels called out through a megaphone, but the words were distorted from the sheer distance.
"Something about heave to," Krysty said, brushing the tangles of hair away from her ears. "But I couldn't get the rest over the noise of those engines."
Ryan grunted at the pronouncement. He knew her hearing was a lot sharper than most people's.
"Fuck them," Jak spit, easing back the hammer on his .357 magnum Colt. "Lies, anyhow."
Withdrawing the Navy telescope from his pouch, J.B. extended the device to its full length. "Hard to see with all the bouncing," he complained, using a hand to cushion the telescope end rather than press the hard metal directly on his face. Only a fool did such a thing. It was a good way to lose the eye completely.
"Well?" Ryan demanded impatiently.
"They're heavily armed," J.B. announced, compacting the scope to the size of a soup can, "and carrying nets."
"Alive," Mildred growled, drawing her ZKR blaster. "We know what that means."
Suddenly, the two speedboats began to separate, arcing in different directions around the near stationary rafts. Taking a stance on the rolling deck, the physician braced her blaster at the wrist and drew in a slow breath. The foremost speedboat was still far away when she fired three times. The pilot slumped at the wheel, and the craft veered off sharply heading out to sea.
"Take the tiller!" Ryan ordered.
Holstering his piece, Jak switched with the big man, and Ryan unlimbered the Steyr. Working the bolt to chamber a round, he wrapped the strap about his forearm to help steady the aim and tracked the coming speedboat through the scope for a single heartbeat, then fired.
The cowling flipped off the outboard motor, and the engine caught fire. The boat slowed dramatically, and the men on board threw buckets of water on the burning machinery. Then J.B. opened up with the Uzi. Black dots peppered the hull, a windshield cracked, two men dropped and another tumbled overboard, his face gone.
Sporadic gunfire came from the junkyard island as the rafts continued floating away, the current that had carried them there building in strength. Then another vessel appeared from within the tanker, a huge powerful boat covered with predark weapons—machine guns and torpedo tubes.
"Damn, it's a PT boat from World War II!" Mildred shouted. "That can easily catch us and blow these rafts out of the water!"
"Unfortunately, they do not want us dead," Doc said grimly, cocking the hammer on his LeMat. "However, we do not reciprocate the sentiment." Doc fired twice, the booming revolver sounding as if it exploded rather than merely discharged, a lance of flame more than a foot long vomiting from its pitted muzzle. The first .44 miniball missed, but the second round impacted directly on the hull, making only a small dent.
"By the Three Kennedys!" he cursed, waving the weapon to disperse the smoke. "That floating tank is armored better than the Merrimac!"
Holding his blaster in both hands, Dean emptied a clip at the massive boat. If the boy hit the vessel it wasn't discernible. He reloaded and tried again.
"They're not even going to waste ammo shooting," J.B. drawled, slapping a fresh clip into the Uzi and triggering short controlled bursts. Instead of the men, he was aiming for the torpedo tubes, hoping for an explosion. "They'll just ram us, and bust these rafts into kindling!"
"Then rescue the female survivors," Mildred said, stuffing her jacket pockets with grens for close combat.
"Rape, you mean." Thumbing fresh rounds into her Smith & Wesson pistol, Krysty could see the men on board, laughing and jeering in unbridled lust. The sight made her blood run cold. After being almost raped twice in her lifetime, she would rather chill herself than let them have her as a prisoner, a helpless plaything to be abused for their sexual torture. Or even worse, a breeder to bear children as fast as possible until she died on a birthing bed whelping another slave for them to ravage.
Grabbing the AK-47, Krysty flipped the selector switch to full-auto and emptied the last clip at the rapidly approaching warship. The fusillade of rounds ricocheted off the hull with no effect.
Swaying to the motion of the building waves, Ryan swept the enemy boat with rounds from the Steyr, but the copper-jacketed 7.62 mm rounds of the longblaster were useless against the military armor of the hulking PT boat.
"Fireblast!" he stormed, dropping the spent weapon. "Small arms are useless against that behemoth. Mind the backwash. I'm going to use a LAW!"
Grabbing a fat tube from under the canvas mound, Ryan yanked the weapon to its full length. The sights popped up on top, and a large red button was exposed.
"Clear?" Ryan demanded, zeroing the aft port. The water was getting rough, waves chopping at the raft.
"Clear!" Krysty shouted.
Heading straight toward the rafts, the PT boat loomed before them as Ryan pressed the launch button. A volcanic cone of exhaust stretched for several yards from the rear of the tube, and a rustling firebird launched from the tube and streaked toward the PT boat.
The rocket hit the vessel amidships, punching through the hull and detonating. Torn to pieces, the deck lifted off the gunwale as the boat was blown apart, men and machinery spewing outward in a geyser of destruction.
As the current quickly took the rafts away from the sinking wreckage, Ryan tossed the spent tube overboard and grabbed another. Warily, he waited for another speedboat to appear, but no more vessels ventured from the junkyard ville.
"I don't like this," Krysty said suspiciously. "They gave up too quickly."
Holstering his blaster, Dean suggested, "Mebbe they don't have any more boats."
"I saw a dozen more at the dock," J.B. replied, feeling uneasy. "A few had to be in working condition."
"There's something wrong here," Ryan agreed, collapsing the launcher. "Damned if I know what, though."
"We shot the shit out of them," Mildred stated forcibly. "They're just scared of folks with guns."
"Could be," Ryan said reluctantly. "Then again, they charged straight into our blasters and didn't shoot back when they wanted prisoners. That doesn't sound cowardly."
"No," she agreed. "No, it doesn't."
Unexpectedly, the rafts lurched in a rush of acceleration that nearly knocked the companions off their feet.
"Now, what was that?" Krysty demanded. "A riptide?"
"Hey," Jak said, throwing his weight against the tiller. There was no response. "Going south. Can't stop."
"Same here," Doc shouted, struggling with the helm. "The current is too strong."
Choppy waves broke over the front of the first raft, covering the companions with misty spray.
"Does that taste salty?" Krysty asked, touching her lips.
In sudden understanding, Mildred dipped a hand into the rough water and licked a finger. That was brine, sure enough.
"Sweet Jesus, this is why they stopped chasing us!" Mildred shouted. "We're caught in an underwater river!"
Once, long ago, the physician had seen a television program on such events. A severe earthquake would occasionally lower a large section of land, and the sea would rush along an existing riverbed, pushing the fresh water out of its way as it plowed inland. Nukes or some natural disaster had to have rearranged the Carolinas, and now they were trapped in a reverse river, probably heading for a blast crater.
"This is taking us to a blast crater!" she shouted over the raging waters. "A really huge mucking big one!"
"We could jump," Dean offered hesitantly, with no real enthusiasm for the plan.
"Caught in the flow," Ryan grunted, straining at the helm. The aluminum door was shaking wildly in his grasp, but seemed to be helping a little. No rocks hit yet. "Jump and we'd be dragged into the whirlpool."
"The what?"
"Two rivers going in opposite directions—of course there's a whirlpool." J.B. yanked off his glasses and placed them securely in a shirt pocket.
"There it is!" Krysty cried out, pointing.
An islet of land was faintly visible ahead of them, the blue water from the river rushing toward the east, and the darker sea waters racing toward the west. At the apex of the islet was a large depression of white water. Mist rose from the location, and a low steady roar could be heard, then felt in the trembling logs of the raft.
"Hot pipe, no wonder they stopped chasing us!" Dean panted, stuffing MRE packs into his pockets.
After lashing a rope around about her waist, Krysty joined Ryan at the helm, fighting for control of the craft. "Easy. Don't fight it!" Ryan shouted. "Trim into the flow. We need speed!"
"Fast, then sharp!" J.B. called out from the cargo raft, with Doc beside him at the tiller.
"Together!" Ryan shouted, stealing a glance at the chains mooring the crafts in tandem. "Must be together, or we go in!"
"Follow your lead!"
Hair plastered to her head, Krysty yelled, "We going to shoot past the rim?"
"Unless you got a better idea!"
The entire world seemed to be vibrating. Spray soaked them in a matter of seconds, the thickening mist blocking any view of what was coming. A low moan came from the vortex, the noise raising and lowering.
Suddenly, the mists parted and there it was again. The river dropped away to their left, the swirling cone of water extending out of sight. Every loose item on the raft tumbled away as the craft tilted dangerously to the right. Pots, pans and the last LAW rocket flew off and the supplies bulged under the canvas sheet, straining to break loose.
Speech was impossible, so Ryan shouted orders into Krysty's ear. She nodded and drew her revolver, praying to Gaia that the others would understand. Krysty fired three shots into the air, then two shots, then one.
In unison, both teams strained at the helms, forcing the doors to angle away from the whirlpool. Instantly, they began to swing that way. But the hinges were tearing free from the log, and the shaking doors slashed flesh like a butcher's knife. Blood flowed from their hands as the companions fought for their lives against the savage fury of nature.
The rafts broke free of the whirlpool, sent flying yards high by their momentum to violently splash down in the briny waters on the other side of the islet. The logs writhed, and a dozen ropes snapped, but the chains held and the rafts didn't break apart.
Everybody took the moment of peace to catch their breath, and flex tired hands. Behind them, the vortex swirled and moaned, but the ocean waters were now working with them to shove the rafts away from the deadly whirlpool.
Drenched, J.B. grabbed Mildred by the collar and soundly kissed her. She returned the favor.
Doc merely beamed like an idiot. "By gad, we made it! Huzzah!"
"Not yet," Ryan shouted, his ears ringing slightly from the pounding surf. "White water ahead!"
Rising from the rushing waters were dozens of rocks and boulders, the river crashing against them in foamy waves that shot twenty feet into the sky.
In shock, Dean realized they were going downhill, the river waters increasing to incredible speeds. The crashing waves hid the rocks from sight, and the mounting currents buffeted the rafts helplessly from side to side. He wanted to shout advice, or a suggestion, but not a damn thing came to mind.
"We're heading for shore!" Ryan bellowed, tightening his grip on the battered door from the APC. Through the waves, he could see green trees to their right. The islet had to have been the tip of a delta. Dry land was only yards away.
Then the front raft bounced off a rock, and the timbers cracked from the impact, the chains straining to hold the tiny craft together. Another boulder appeared, and Jak shoved with a pole as Ryan and Krysty leaned into the tiller. At the last moment, the craft swung away from the granite outcropping with the second raft sluggishly lagging along in its wake. But not fast enough.
A green wall of moss-covered granite loomed into sight, and the cargo raft smacked the rock a glancing blow, the logs yawning wide below their boots as the ropes were tested to the breaking point. Once more the chains saved the raft from total destruction.
The sky was full of falling water, boulders everywhere. Then a low thunder could be heard, a rumble that grew in force of volume until there was nothing else in the world.
A terrible suspicion grew in Ryan, and he again tried for the shore, but it was too little, too late. The companions didn't have time to curse or scream as the homemade rafts sailed over the edge of the gigantic waterfall and tumbled downward into the misty abyss.