Moonfeast (9 page)

“What say?” Jak asked, dropping the empty clip from the M-16 and starting to thumb in some spare rounds from his pocket.

“Revenge is a dish best served cold,” Mildred said softly, an inadvertent chill running down her spine. A lot of coldhearts, cannies and slavers had shouted death threats at the companions over the years, but that simple Latin phrase made her feel incredibly uneasy. It was the sort of thing you shouted when revenge on the enemy was guaranteed.

“Indeed, madam, knowledge is power, and in these blighted days, anybody who speaks even a smidgen of Latin should be considered a most dangerous adversary,” Doc said, swaying to the motion of the rattling LARC. The ground was starting to angle a little, and the Navy transport was beginning to increase in speed.

“Although his pronunciation was absolutely horrific,” Doc added as an afterthought.

“And your grammar is any better?” Mildred retorted, pulling a sanitary pad from her med kit and ripping open the plastic packet to press the sterile material against the man’s bloody cheek.

He winced from the contact. “My Latin is perfect!”

“Aybe-ma our-ya pig Latin,” she countered, using duct tape to hold the crude bandage in place.

Unable to speak at the moment, Doc merely glared at the woman with marked disdain.

“He also called us by the name of Carlton,” J.B. added. “So he must think that we’re mercies, working for the man. Whoever the frag he is!”

Crashing through a dried thicket, the LARC bounded out of the field of boulders to crash into a dry riverbed. Or rather, what had once been a river. The bed was now a smooth strip of hard lava that flowed between the earthen banks like a long black highway.

“Make good time!” Jak said, pleased, then frowned. “No, get off! Lava road mebbe collapse under weight wag!”

“Working on it!” Ryan snarled in reply, frantically downshifting. The transmission seemed to have taken
some damage in the brief fight, or more likely, from their bone-jarring ride down the lava field.

Following a curve in the riverbed, Ryan inhaled sharply as the ground suddenly dropped away on either side. The speeding LARC was now driving over a lava bridge, a dark river rushing underneath. The mud lake had to have overflowed its banks and dissolved the ground below the riverbed, converting the lava road into a makeshift bridge.

Maintaining an even speed, Ryan tried to do nothing that would disturb the delicate construct, then the wag hit a small dip in the lava and bounced. As it landed, Ryan heard the terrible sound of a cracking stone, and the bridge broke apart, sending the LARC straight down into the river.

However, the fall was only twenty feet or so, and the wag hit the river in a thick splash, some of the warm mud washing over the gunwales. Then the Navy transport buoyantly bobbed back up and was suddenly moving sideways down the swift currents.

“Forget this boat!” Jak laughed in relief as the LARC straightened and began to proceed along the river prow first.

Fumbling with the controls, Ryan switched the transmission from land to sea, and the mud behind the craft began to churn as the rear propeller spun into action. Their speed increased dramatically, so experimenting with some of the switches, Ryan got the transmission into reverse and the LARC began to slow to a more reasonable pace.

“This must be what the giant meant,” Doc said, pressing a hand to his cheek, trying not to smile. “He
thought we were in an ordinary war wag, and would sink like a rock once we reached the lava bridge… Is something wrong with the main engine?”

“Not that I can see,” Ryan replied, checking the controls. Everything that worked was in the green.

Then he heard it. The sound was low at first, only a distant rumble, but it steadily increased until reaching deafening levels, and the LARC unexpectedly surged ahead, moving faster than ever.

Quickly, Ryan threw the wag into full reverse and stomped on the gas. The big Detroit diesel roared with power, and the craft slowed, but only for a few seconds. The dirty river was still accelerating, the banks beginning to flash by in a blur.

Now a churning mist was visible ahead of the craft, and they could hear the unmistakable thunder of a waterfall.

“Head for shore!” J.B. bellowed, tucking his glasses into a shirt pocket and buttoning it closed.

“The bastard current is too strong!” Ryan shouted back, the tendons standing out on his arms as he tried to force the craft toward land.

Hugging her med kit tight, Mildred started to order them to cast out the anchor, then remembered they had already tossed it away to save weight. What had saved them underground, now doomed them on the river. Even the lifejackets were gone.

A spray of muddy droplets pelted the companions with stinging force, and any attempt at conversation stopped as the sound of the waterfall became even louder, the noise filling their world.

Dashing forward, Jak lashed a rope around the
waist of the unconscious Krysty, then tied the other end around himself.

As the wag flashed into the dirty mist, Ryan couldn’t see anything behind the partially melted prow. Then he felt a rush in his guts as the LARC sailed over the edge and began to fall. Releasing the useless wheel, Ryan scrambled out of the pilothouse and dived over the side, heading after Jak and Krysty. Just for a fleeting second, the plummeting man thought he saw a wide expanse of shimmering blue water very far away, then he was engulfed in chaos, noise and mud.

Erupting into a ragged cough, Krysty came awake fighting for air. She felt awful, every inch battered and bruised, as if she had been beaten by an overseer’s whip.

As the cough came under control, there seemed to be something on her face, and she tried to brush it away, only to discover that it was sand. Still hacking, the woman weakly raised her head to see that she was lying upon a white sandy beach. It was night, and a full moon was bathing the world in a silvery light that made the still bodies lying nearby seem grotesque mockeries of her friends.

Struggling to get up, Krysty brushed the sand off her face, her animated hair flexing and moving to do the same. Dimly, she could recall the fight with the people on the cliff and the terrible pain of having her hair cut. Krysty shivered at the memory, then forced away the thought, concentrating on where she was at the moment.

It had been afternoon when they exited the lava tube, so clearly she had been out for a long time, and from the new location it was clear that the companions had gotten shipwrecked. Glancing around, Krysty saw the possible source. There was a huge black waterfall on the other side of the bay, the top and bottom lost in
swirling clouds of mist. The fall was considerable, and the woman couldn’t account for her survival until finding the knotted rope around her waist. Following it to other end, she found a sprawled Jak, the albino teen looking like he had drowned twice and then gone back to do it again.

Kneeling, she checked to make sure that he was breathing, then borrowed a knife and slashed the rope. Her longblaster was gone, but the S&W Model 640 was still in its holster, albeit with tufts of seaweed sticking out from under the flap.

Extracting the blaster, Krysty cleaned away the stringy plants, then removed the brass rounds to dry-fire the blaster a few times to make sure it was still in working condition. Satisfied, she reloaded the weapon.

Dragging Jak out of the shallows to a dry stretch of beach, Krysty started along the sandy coast, locating several of the other companions only a few yards away. The tide had to have washed them on shore like so much driftwood. Everybody was battered and bruised, J.B. with a clearly broken nose, and Mildred with her arm bent at an unnatural angle. Gingerly probing the swollen shoulder, Krysty sighed in relief that the joint was merely dislocated, and debated ramming it back into place. But on second thought, she decide to let the physician get some obviously needed sleep. Repairs could be done later. The salty breeze coming in from the sea was warm, and it felt wonderful to the woman. At least there would be no need of a fire this night.

His silvery hair shining like a mirror in the moonlight, Doc was slumped over a large mound of something that proved to be a snapping turtle, the creature
thankfully aced. The animal was huge, over a yard wide, the hard shell covered with the scars of countless battles. The Webley was jammed into its mouth, the lethal jaws deeply embedded into the cushioned grip.

Lying on the beach nearby was Doc’s ebony walking stick, but the sword it contained was thrust completely through the throat of the mutie turtle, the Spanish words etched into the steel blade almost visible from the smears of dried blood. The deadly LeMat was still holstered at his side, the black-powder charges staining the white sand where they had dribbled out of the blaster. Clearly, the man had been in a battle for his life with the aquatic monster and come out victorious.

“Well done, Theo.” Krysty smiled, double-checking to make sure the snapping turtle was aced. The leathery hide was cold, but it was normally that temperature, so she withdrew the sword and slit open the throat of the animal, almost removing the head entirely.

Leaving Doc where he was, Krysty continued her recce of the beach, pausing at the sight of the LARC laying on its side, partially submerged just off the beach. The gentle waves were cresting onto the badly dented hull, and she thought there was something wrong with the craft, when she realized the redoubtable LARC was bent, the Navy transport resembling the boomerang of a barb. With a shrug, Krysty wrote off the craft as useless. Even if the diesel engine still worked, which was highly unlikely, there was no way they could steer it now. Unless they planned to only travel in circles.

A low groan sounded in the night and Krysty spun with her blaster out and ready. The groan came again, and she proceeded that way warily, until spotting Ryan
lying in a tidal pool, his body surrounded by countless tiny fish.

“Lover?” Krysty asked, reaching out to shake the man.

At the sound of her voice, his good eye snapped open and he partially drew the panga before fully awake.

“Hey,” Ryan growled, easing the knife back into the sheath. “Not…aced, I see.”

“Not yet.” She smiled at him, reaching out to pluck a strand of seaweed from his hair.

“Everybody else alive?” Ryan started, then frowned. Fireblast, when the frag had it become night? Adjusting his leather eyepatch, Ryan slowly stood and looked around, easily finding the muddy waterfall on the opposite side of the wide bay. If the giant man and his people hadn’t found the companions yet, then he wasn’t hunting for them. Then again, Ryan could barely believe it himself that the companions had survived going over the thundering falls. The bay had to be very deep, that was the only possible explanation. Mildred had once told him about crazy folks who deliberately went over Niagara Falls and somehow survived. He’d seen pics in old mags. That waterfall was ten times bigger than this one. The trick seemed to be a combination of missing the rocks, mixed with a large dose of dumb luck.

“Wag okay?” Ryan asked, patting his clothing to check on his weapons. Everything was intact, except for his backpack. That had been left behind on the LARC, and was probably at the bottom of the bay. Which meant no candles, bedroll or food.

“The LARC is done,” Krysty answered, jerking a thumb over a shoulder to indicate the wreckage.
“We couldn’t fix it if we had a year and two machine shops.”

Accepting the loss, Ryan shrugged and rummaged in his pockets for anything edible. He found only a stick of chewing gum from an MRE pack, and broke it in two to share with the woman. However, the trickle of flavor didn’t ease the hunger in his belly, and it made a loose tooth ache badly. Nuking hell, it looked like he was going to be on soft food for a couple of weeks.

“Doc aced a turtle,” Krysty stated, starting that way. “The damn thing is big enough to feed us for a week.”

“Have to eat it raw. Can’t risk a campfire,” Ryan told her, matching Krysty’s stride. “The light would tell everybody for miles exactly where we are, and I don’t want to tangle with those bastards from the cliff again.”

Moving to where Doc rested in the warm sand, the two companions dragged the turtle into the bushes. Finding a clearing, they flipped the animal over and started the butchering. The flesh was pale, salty and thankfully very soft. It was also delicious and filled their exhausted bodies with new strength. Afterward, Ryan took the first watch, while Krysty caught a quick nap.

Watching the surface of the moonlit bay for any sign of incoming boats, the one-eyed man cleaned and oiled his blasters, then went hunting for coconuts. He’d noted the trees in the near distance. Opening the husk was easy work for the panga, and he found the sweet milk satisfied his raging thirst for fresh water. An hour later, Krysty awoke to relieve the man, and Ryan settled
into the warm sand to sleep until dawn. He had no dreams.

At first sign of light on the horizon, Ryan and Krysty awoke the others and got them into the cover of the lush foliage. Breakfast was raw turtle steaks and bananas, washed down with coconut milk. The primitive food was eagerly consumed by the other companions, then the medical repairs began.

Bracing herself against a tree, Krysty held J.B. motionless while Ryan slapped the man’s broken nose back into place. Tears filled his eyes from the explosion of pain, but J.B. never made a sound, only the trembling of his hands as the man lit the stub of a cigar showed how much it had hurt.

Next, they did Mildred, the physician sliding a strip of old leather between her teeth as a precaution. This time, Ryan held the woman, while Krysty took her wrist, rotated the arm slightly, then pulled with all of her strength. The joint popped back into place with an audible noise, and Mildred inhaled sharply, then slowly relaxed, panting hard.

“Well done. You’re both apt pupils,” she said hoarsely, warily testing the shoulder. “This didn’t hurt anywhere near as much as last time in the monastery.”

Relatively undamaged, Jak and Doc only had some cracked ribs, thankfully not broken. Mildred directed the wrapping of both men with layers of duct tape. That made it hard for them to draw a deep breath, but it minimized the pain and got them moving again. Then the physician stitched shut the hole in Doc’s cheek with a curved upholstery needle and nylon fishing line. The man grunted every time the big needle penetrated his
flesh, but his only words were those of thanks when she was finished.

“What I wouldn’t give for a proper medical kit again,” Mildred said, tucking the makeshift items back into her canvas bag.

“Now, the Trader used to say, make a wish in one hand and hold the other under the ass of a cow, and see which gets filled first,” J.B. replied, smoothing out his fedora before returning the item to its accustomed position. In his opinion, no man could think straight with his brain exposed to the direct rays of the sun. Just wasn’t natural.

“How…vivid,” Mildred demurred, shocked and amused at the same time.

After finding some tree branches for Doc and Jak to use as crutches, the companions did a brief recce of the beach for anything useful that might have washed onto shore. They found a couple of MRE packs, the airtight envelopes bobbing in the waves like Mylar balloons, but that was it. Everything else was gone.

“I guess we rig a litter and drag the turtle along with us,” Krysty said, warming her face in the rising sun. “The meat should still be good by tonight, and by then we’ll be far enough away from the beach to risk a campfire.”

“Just meat, no organs,” Jak warned. “I see once. Man got aced bad.”

“Probably vitamin A poisoning,” Mildred guessed, chewing a lip. “I know that the Inuit in Alaska liked to remove their enemies by taking them hunting for polar bears, and then giving them the liver as a treat.
The poor bastards died right after the meal, and then the Inuit stole their belongings.”

“Good for them,” Ryan mumbled, tonguing the bad tooth. “If you can’t outgun them, outthink them.”

“You can load that into a blaster,” J.B. agreed, pulling out his minisextant. After drying the optical instrument with a cloth, he carefully located the sun behind the clouds overhead, balanced the half-mirror on the horizon, then did some fast calculations. Finally he checked the predark map in his munitions bag.

“This is…San Clemente Island,” J.B. announced. “We’re just off the coast of the California archipelago.”

“That would explain the big pile of warships you saw yesterday,” Krysty said thoughtfully.

“Some kind of mil base located here?” Ryan asked hopefully. Those always had caches of weapons and food stashed away in case of emergencies. If a smart man knew where to look, crumbling ruins could yield the wealth of the predark world.

“Hell, yes!” Mildred replied. “This island used to be the training facility for the U.S. Navy SEALs!” There was a clear note of pride in her voice as one of her cousins had been a SEAL. “They were the toughest, smartest mothers in the history of the whole damn world!”

“So why name after seal?” Jak asked, clearly referring to the animal. “They easy chill.”

“Different type of seal.” Mildred laughed. “The letters stood for sea, air, land. The SEALs could fight anywhere, and did a lot of rescue missions under impossible conditions.” Her face brightened. “They would have extensive medical supplies for field operations!”

“Which also means lots of weapons and wags,” J.B.
said, fishing in a pocket for a cigar. But his fingers found only a sodden mess of crumbling leaves, unfit to smoke.

Facing the muddy waterfall on the other side of the bay, Ryan mentally retraced their journey to the grassy plateau, then turned toward the jungle. “The wrecked ships should be that way,” he said, pointing to the south. “While the ruins should be to the north.”

“Ruins,” Jak said, clearly stating his preference. The teen had found one of the M-16 assault rifles undamaged. Unfortunately, the rest had all been smashed inside the LARC. He had ten full clips of brass for the rapidfire. That was three hundred rounds, more than most villes had for their entire troop of sec men.

Nobody disagreed.

“Okay, then, let’s start walking,” Ryan declared, slinging the Steyr.

Trudging into the forest, the companions saw that the ground remained mostly sand and never became honest dirt. Slowly a proper forest began to spread, first as low bushes, and then tall stately oak trees, whose branches interlocked overhead to blot out the searing noonday heat.

However, after a few hours, the exhausted people had to abandon the heavy carcass of the turtle, as the litter was slowing them way too much, especially since Doc and Jak were exempt from the work because of their damaged ribs.

Walking through the dabbled shadows, Ryan drew the SIG-Sauer and watched the branches for anything dangerous. Stickies liked to hunt in the ruins of predark cities, but flapjacks liked to drop on their prey from the
branches of a tree. Between the two, Ryan would rather fight a dozen stickies than one flapjack any time. Their barbed pseudopods locked into your flesh and drained off your blood to replace it with poison. It was a triple-bad way to buy the farm.

There was a lot of wildlife on the island, with fuzzy cooneys constantly darting around in the bushes, and deer boldly walking into view to nibble at the leaves. It was as if they had never seen people before and didn’t know they were dangerous.

“Fish in barrel.” Jak chortled, triggering a short burst from the assault rifle. Several of the fat coneys dropped while the rest scampered out of sight.

“For lunch,” Jak said, claiming the twitching bodies.