James Axler - Deathlands 005 - Homeward Bound

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The mist swallowed the raft In gulps of sinuous gray damp.

Ryan noticed an unnatural flurry of movement among the rancid weeds that

crowded down to the brink of the water, now only fifty paces from the raft.

"Push it away," he called urgently, taking one of the branches himself and poling

off.

"What d'you see?" Krysty panted, throwing all her weight against the steering oar.

"Nothing. Something. I don't know."

"I heard something. Like someone laughing. But someone who didn't have a

proper mouth. Does that seem stupid?"

"No. Not down here it doesn't."

A hand erupted from the water, gripping Ryan's wrist with grotesquely long

fingers. The skin was creased, hanging at the wrist in folds, and the face that

emerged from behind the hand was worse than anything from the depths of a jolt-

spawned nightmare. The fearsome jaw protruded eighteen inches beyond the

gaping holes of the nostrils, and the clashing teeth! Row upon row of overlapping,

sharp fangs.

With his left hand pinioned, and lying on his right side, Ryan couldn't get at either

his blaster or his panga.

Life was a bare handful of heartbeats.

Homeward Bound

James Axler

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A GOLD EAGLE BOOK

London Toronto New York Sydney

All the characters in this book have no existence outside the imagination of the

Author, and have no relation whatsoever to anyone bearing the same name or

names. They are not even distantly inspired by any individual known or unknown

to the Author, and all the incidents are pure invention.

reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical,

including photocopying, recording, storage in an information retrieval system, or

otherwise, without the written permission of the publisher.

This book is sold subject to the condition that it shall not, by way of trade or

otherwise, be lent, resold, hired out or otherwise circulated without the prior

consent of the publisher in any form of binding or cover other than that in which

it is published and without a similar condition including this condition being

imposed on the subsequent purchaser.

First published in Great Britain 1989 by Gold Eagle

Australian copyright

Philippine copyright

This edition

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ISBN

/8907 Made and printed in Great Britain

The earth is all the home I have.

—W. E. Aytoun

A hand in the darkness and a smile in the noonday sun. As so often before and for

always, this is for Liz with all of my love.

Chapter One

"IT'S DEAD."

Ryan Cawdor took the high-image intensifier away from his good eye, tucking it

back into one of the pockets of his long, fur-trimmed coat.

"Nothing?" asked J. B. Dix, the Armorer.

"Nothing. From this high you can see for miles. Not a sign of life. When it's cold

like this there should be smoke. Folks got to keep warm. There's wood enough

around for 'em."

Across the steep valley the sun was sinking into a nest of tangled violet chem

clouds. Ryan figured the temperature had to be already close to freezing. His

breath plumed out ahead of him, and the skin on his stubbled cheeks felt tight.

The slopes of the hills opposite from the cavern entrance were streaked with

snow, and the small pools around the snaking lead-gray river were dulled with ice.

Running alongside the slow-moving water, Ryan had been able to make out the

shattered remains of a two-lane blacktop, its edge eroded by a century of neglect.

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Krysty Wroth's hand rested on his arm. He glanced at the girl, smiling at her

startling beauty, his eye almost dazzled by the bright crimson of her tumbling

hair. "It's Doc," she said quietly.

"What?"

"When we came out of the gateway he was throwing up. Face like parchment.

Lori took him back into the main redoubt entrance to sit him down."

Ryan sucked on a tooth, looking to his left, where the original road to the

concealed fortress had been destroyed—either by a landslip or the nuking that had

devastated the entire length and breadth of the United States. Nearly a hundred

years back.

In 2001.

A young boy stood on the rim of the sheer drop, head to one side as though he

were listening to something. The bleak wind tugged at his long hair, blowing it

across his face. His hair was whiter than the driven snow, his eyes red as polished

rubies, set in sockets of honed ivory.

"You hear something, Jak?" Ryan asked.

"Thought I heard something howling, like a banshee back in the swamps."

Jak Lauren hadn't been with Ryan and his party for very long. They'd picked him

up in the dank vastness of the Atchafalaya Swamp, in what had once been the

state of Louisiana. His slight frame concealed a powerful, wiry strength. Ryan

Cawdor, who was a good judge of such things, figured Jak as one of the most

lethal hand-to-hand killers he'd ever seen.

Jak was fourteen years old.

J. B. Dix stepped to the edge of the cliff and joined the young albino. Squinting

into the distance, concentrating, he said, "Could be a wolf."

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Krysty Wroth's keen hearing enabled her to confirm J.B.'s guess. "Yeah. It's a

wolf. And there's more of 'em, a pack of around a dozen. Four, mebbe five miles

northeast of here."

"Where in fireblast are we, J.B.?" Ryan asked, hunching his shoulders.

The Armorer had a tiny folding comp-sextant in one of the capacious pockets of

his dark gray leather coat, with its smart silky collar of black fur. He pulled it out

and looked around, easing back the brim of his beloved fedora, and took the

necessary sighting. He picked a crumpled chart and consulted it.

"Near as I can figure it, we look to have landed north of what they used to call

New York State. And that river has to be the Mohawk."

Ryan glanced both ways along what remained of the roadway. Each end had been

sliced clean off. "That's why the redoubt hasn't been entered," he guessed.

"Uncle Tyas McCann told me how the east and the northeast were hard-nuked,"

Krysty said. "All the big cities and most power places. There's lots of hot spots."

"Check the rad count," J.B. suggested. "Broke mine getting off Wizard Island."

Ryan flicked back the lapel of his coat, moving the end of the weighted silk scarf

out of the way. He pressed the On button of the rad counter and listened to the

faint cheeping of the machine. The glowing scarlet arrow veered erratically across

the scale, wavering uncomfortably into the orange sector.

"Warm," he said.

"Closing in on hot," Krysty observed.

"Too late to leave 'fore dark," Jak said, moving back from the rim. "Be night in

less than an hour. Better wait and find a way down in the morning."

Ryan wasn't sure that it was going to be that easy to get off the sheer plateau.

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