Salvation Road

Ryan walked to the lip of the tunnel and peered over the edge. The tunnels and corridors on the top level of a redoubt always sloped upward, but suddenly he realized that the angle of ascent had been slightly more than usual. Looking out over the land, he could see that it was a bare desert, with very little scrub cover, and the reddish-brown earth dry and loose. It was also some fifty feet below them, with a rock face that fell away from the mouth of the tunnel.

J.B. joined him, pushing his spectacles up the bridge of his nose as he looked down.

“So it was a rockfall, but not how either of us reckoned,” he observed.

The one-eyed warrior assented. “Looks like this redoubt was another one set into a mountainside, and when some of that mountain moved—” he gestured to emphasize his point “—the redoubt moved up, and the road in moved down.”

“Still, it’s not much of a climb. Even Doc should be able to make it.”

“Please do not mock me, John Barrymore,” Doc said, eyebrow raised as he peered over the Armorer’s shoulder. “It would seem to be a simple descent.”

“Probably, Doc, but we don’t know how safe it is yet. If the rocks have settled loosely, then…” Ryan gestured how the rocks would part.

“Then we are buzzard fodder,” Doc finished. “A fair point.”

“Exactly.” Ryan turned to the others. “We’ll take it one at a time. I’ll go first, then Krysty, Jak, Mildred, Dean, and Doc. J.B. last.”

“Sounds fine to me,” Mildred stated, staring down at the steep slope of loose rocks. “Sooner I get down the better.”

“Then let’s get to it,” Ryan stated.

The one-eyed warrior stepped off the lip of the redoubt entrance and onto the rocks, pressing hard with the ball of his foot to test the security of each rock before resting his weight.

He turned and faced the rocks, using his hands to steady himself. The slope was deceptive. Although the descent seemed steep, the slope of the rocks was less sheer, the outcrops providing plenty in the way of foot and handholds. The problems arose from the fact that the rock face was composed of many individual rocks rather than one slab. And until the descent had been made, there was no way of knowing how secure were the actual rocks.

Ryan took the descent slowly, searching for handholds and testing each rock. His feet stamped rocks, knocking some away from the face, landing firmly on others and using them to define a path. He was watched intently from above by the others, all of them making a note of the path for when they would come to use it. This was made easier by the falling rocks that had been rejected as footholds, which almost outlined Ryan’s route.

It was slow but not difficult, and Ryan’s progress was relatively easy. Despite that, he had to stop several times to wipe the sweat from his brow before it ran into his good eye, the occasional drop stinging his eyeball and making him blink furiously. He felt a sheen of sweat on his body, soaking into his clothes, and wondered how hot it would get at the height of the day.

THE DESERT SEEMED to stretch indefinitely in every direction, and although they had good water supplies Ryan would feel happier when J.B. had taken some readings and worked out roughly where they were. They knew the characteristics of the Deathlands better than most trading parties, having traversed great distances with the help of the mat-trans units.

If it was going to be this hot, then they would need to preserve water and work out the direction in which a ville or some kind of vegetation would be likely.

All of this crossed Ryan’s mind while the greater part of his attention was focused on his feet and hands. Any attack from around them—natural or otherwise—didn’t bother him as he knew J.B. would be on triple red while he was so exposed. Neither did he notice how far he had reached, so it was a pleasant surprise when one foot, groping for a rock, hit dirt.

Ryan stood at the bottom of the rock face, looking up at the path he had created. Krysty had already begun her descent, following his trail. She was swifter, having only to follow the path rather than create it. She set foot on the bottom and turned to the one-eyed warrior.

“So far, so good, lover,” she said simply. Ryan nodded, watching Jak begin his descent. The rest of the companions followed in rapid succession. J.B. immediately took readings with his minisextant.

“So?” the one-eyed warrior asked.

“Some old stamping ground,” J.B. said, squinting at the sun. “Not quite what they used to call New Mexico, but near enough. Kind of near to where they had that old fort—the Almo?”

“The Alamo,” Mildred corrected. “Then we’re in what used to be Texas.”

“Yeah, which I guess means it’s gonna get hotter,” J.B. rejoined.

“So we need to find some shelter, and soon,” Ryan stated. “But where? That’s the big question.”

Chapter Four

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?