Strontium Swamp

“Thought you’d never get here,” he croaked hoarsely, barely able to speak.

A hot, fetid air had escaped from the narrow trench as they had uncovered it. The air within was almost all that the trio had been able to breathe, the thick layers of sand gathering on top of the roofing making it hard for any other air to filter through. As a result, the heat had been unbearable, and the air had quickly grown foul. On top of their earlier problems with bad air in the redoubt, this had a bad effect on Doc, and the old man had passed out quickly. Mildred and J.B. had tried to keep their breathing as shallow as possible, but had still used the air quickly. If they hadn’t been found, it would have been time for them all to buy the farm. The lack of oxygen combined with the weight of the sand pressing on them would have made it impossible for them to dig themselves out.

Ryan held out an arm, which J.B. took, helping to haul himself out of the trench. He collapsed on the sand beside the one-eyed warrior, gasping for breath as he fought to get some relatively fresh air back into his lungs. Jak plunged into the trench, into the gap that the Armorer had left, and lifted Mildred. As the fresher air of the desert night hit her, she began to stir, and Krysty was able to help her out. Mildred fell to the sands as the Armorer had, doubled over as she began to retch and puke.

Doc was harder to lift out. He was a deadweight, and the companions were exhausted from what they had already endured. It took some time for Krysty and Jak, assisted by Ryan, to lift the old man out and lay him on the sands.

Mildred came over to check him almost immediately.

“You okay to do this?” Krysty asked her.

Mildred fixed her with a stare, then shook her head to clear it as the stare became glassy. “I’m not totally there yet, but it’s enough to see this old buzzard is okay,” she replied.

Doc’s vital signs were good. He had passed out from the continuing lack of oxygen. Mildred hoped that the combined effects of the past few hours hadn’t caused any lasting damage. Hell, right then she felt as though she’d lost a few brain cells herself, let alone someone like Doc, who acted occasionally as if he didn’t have any to spare.

Muttering to himself, lost in some private dream or nightmare, Doc began to surface. He opened his eyes and took in what was around. Remarkably, and with that facility that only Doc had to buck the odds, he seemed to be completely lucid almost immediately.

“By the Three Kennedys, what a day this has been,” he remarked mildly. “Any more like that in a hurry, and I fear it shall see the last of me.”

“That’s not the first time you’ve said that, Doc,” Ryan stated.

“And I fear it shall not be that last,” Doc mused. “But we carry on, my dear Ryan, because we have to… The option is too fearful to contemplate.”

“Yeah, talk shit, you okay,” Jak commented.

Krysty had been surveying the surrounding desert while Mildred tended to Doc, and Ryan joined her.

“Not good, is it?” he murmured to her. “Nothing for as far as the eye can see, and nothing we can use as shelter. The only good thing, as far I can reckon, is that we’re completely alone.”

She shook her head slowly, and he noticed that her hair was waving independently of her sway, the sentient red tresses flicking like an irritated cat’s tail, gathering close to her head instead of flowing free. “There’s something, lover. I dunno what it is, and I dunno where it comes from, but there’s something out there that we really need to beware of.”

“But what? It’s like a vast fucking graveyard out there, a killing field with nothing left alive, everything chilled…” Ryan was bewildered. It wasn’t that he didn’t trust her mutie sense. How much trouble had it saved them in the past? How many imminent dangers had it alerted them to? But what could be out there in this emptiness was something that was beyond him.

“Wish I could tell you,” she muttered, drawing closer to him. “All I know is that it’s there, whatever it is…”

CHECKING THAT DOC WAS returning to normal, Ryan organized a camp for the night, setting watches and putting himself and Jak on first watch. They had no materials with which to build a fire, so those that were sleeping huddled together for warmth in the freezing desert night, warming themselves with some of the self-heats they had taken from the redoubt. The cans, with their thermal reactions that were triggered by the act of opening, always tasted foul. But taste wasn’t an issue. It was nutrition, and it was warming. That was all that mattered. They had no time or option to be fussy about the additive-soaked flavors of the ancient food.

Despite the cold and the foul food, the four who were able to sleep soon found themselves falling into slumber, the rigors of the day and night catching up with them.

It left Ryan and Jak alone with the darkness and the void of the desert.

“What chances getting past this?” Jak asked softly, after some time. He had been squatting on his haunches, still and silent, surveying the night around him. Ryan had kept his peace, unwilling to break the incredible concentration of the albino mutie. Now he pondered an answer.

“You tell me,” he said finally. “No way to make a jump, no telling how far this stretches, and which direction to take.”

“Tell you one thing…no, two… We now in southeast, and not alone.”

Ryan looked at Jak, puzzled. “How the fireblasted hell do you know that?”

Jak pointed up at the stars. “Know sky. Not quite same, but not that different. We head out for west in morning, then sooner or later hit swamps and water.”

“How far?” Ryan asked. He trusted Jak implicitly, and felt a sense of relief that was soon quashed.

“Dunno. Not seen this desert before.” Jak shrugged. “Mebbe a day, mebbe two, mebbe more.”

“Have we got enough water and food to last?” Ryan asked. They had used a lot of the water to counter the effects of dehydration after their ordeal leaving the redoubt. There were few bottles left, and already he had known that it would be necessary to ration them. But now? Then something else occurred to him, and he continued. “What do you mean, we’re not on our own?”

Jak grinned. In the moonlight his red eyes glowed and his teeth glinted, the predator in him becoming all too clear.

“Never alone in desert. Come out at night, but driven down by storm. Can hear them, getting nearer. Just wait.”

Ryan frowned, but didn’t push Jak for further explanation. Instead he hunkered down next to the albino and decided to wait. He didn’t have to wait for long.

As the two men crouched, still and silent, their breathing slow and moving into sync with each other, the silence only broken by the snufflings of those sleeping behind them, Ryan became aware of another sound that began to creep into his head, from beyond the limits of normal hearing. At first he thought it was nothing more than the sound of his own nervous system, amplified by the intense silence, then he realized that this was what Jak had been hearing for a long time with his sharpened sense, heightened by years of hunting.

It was a whispering, gentle hissing that grew louder by almost imperceptible degrees until it was clearly audible without his having even been aware of it impinging on his hearing. It was like the whispering of the sands as they moved, but accentuated by more movement within, as though there were several currents moving beneath the surface, making it whisper in different tones, until it built up into an overlap of harmonics that produced strangely shimmering and unsettling sounds.

Ryan inclined his head toward Jak. The albino met his monocular gaze with a vulpine grin that grew ever wider.

The one-eyed warrior was on the verge of blurting out the question. What the hell was this? His answer came to him with a sudden surprise.

Spumes of sand shot up into the night, dunes rose and fell with the disturbances, and suddenly the pale desert floor was filled with dark shapes moving at speeds varying from a crawl to a scuttle.

“Always life, even in desert,” Jak whispered softly.

As Ryan’s eyes adjusted to the shapes, he could see that there were lizards, spiders, beetles and even a few skinny mammals that looked a little like hybrids between cats and rabbits. The shapes moved over and across one another, starting to engage in combat as some sought to use the others for food.

It was a battle that occurred every night, with some emerging winners and some never even realizing they were losers as their lives were snuffed out. Ryan realized that the creatures were moving in the direction of the camp, and whirled to look behind him. There were none to their rear, just an empty expanse of sound.

“What the hell is going on?” he yelled at Jak, the chatter of the creatures, shrieks of those that were buying the farm, rising to a louder and louder level.

Jak indicated the sand around them and gestured to the rear. “Figure we’re uphill, sand deeper where they nest. Mebbe telling us where there’s water—”

“That’s if they’re not headed for us because we’re a strange scent,” Ryan countered. He turned to the sleeping companions, but could see that the noise had penetrated their rest and they were beginning to waken.

“Ryan, what—Dark night! What the fuck is that?” J.B. yelled, sleep driven from his brain by the shock of the sight that greeted him.

“That’s trouble,” Ryan snapped. “Triple red, people. We need to get moving, and fast.”

“Should take some out,” Jak commented. “Food what short of.”

“Yeah, and mebbe that’s how they see us,” Ryan told the albino youth. “They’re not much on their own, but there’s thousands of the fuckers, and we’re not a hundred percent.”

Jak shrugged. “Yeah, guess so.” He pointed beyond where the initial mass of creatures had come from. In the distance, the sands were exploding as more nests of lizards, spiders, beetles and small mammals were stirring after the temporary hibernations caused by the storm.

“Oh my Lord, I never did like spiders, and I really don’t want a crash course in getting used to them now,” Mildred cracked as she helped Doc to his feet.

“’Pon my soul, it’s almost biblical,” the old man breathed as he took in the sight that greeted him. “The plagues came down upon the deserts and—”

“Yeah, some other time, Doc, or else you’re gonna be a lizard’s next meal,” Krysty snapped, cutting him off in midflow. “Why the hell are they all coming this way?”

“Mebbe we’re uphill, and they come up this way to search for food and water,” J.B. said as he gathered his bags.

“Make more sense if we were downhill,” Mildred snapped. “Could be they’re all down there because it’s easier to make burrows. Maybe this moves more with the storms.”

“It doesn’t matter,” Ryan yelled. “Wake up, people, triple red. We need to outrun these little bastards before they overwhelm us. Just try to keep one step ahead of them.”

The companions wasted no more words on speculation, but instead devoted their energy to outrunning the mass of desert life that was closing on them.

Which wasn’t as easy as they could have hoped. They were still exhausted, having had no real chance to rest, and the sand was of an erratic depth and consistency, in some places being loose and clinging, in others relatively hard and compacted. For every step forward that seemed to buy them time and distance, there was another where a step meant sinking halfway up to the calf in the clinging sand, tugging insistently at them as they had to tug insistently to free themselves.

Looking over his shoulder, Ryan could see that the creatures were gaining on them. He couldn’t tell if they were on an uphill gradient: certainly, the struggle suggested this, but with their fatigue and the erratic depths of the desert floor to impede them, it was almost impossible to tell. Doc was exhausted, and was already falling behind, despite the efforts of Mildred and J.B. to assist him.

Then the worst thing that could happen in the circumstances occured—as Doc freed his left leg and took another step, J.B. moved over slightly to the old man’s left, took one step forward, and was swallowed up to the waist in a sudden cave-in. The sand, acting as a top crust at this point, was delicately balanced over a series of tunnels, and the Armorer had put his foot on a weak spot.

He yelled in surprise and pain as his heel hit something hard and the jarring traveled up into his hip. Obviously, there was some kind of rock shelf under this part of the desert, and that was what he hit…but it wasn’t all.

His yells grew as he was surrounded by a squealing, yelping mass of fur and teeth that scrabbled to get free of the collapse, using his body as purchase for their scrambled escape.

“Oh my God,” Mildred breathed, stunned into a standstill by what was unfolding before her. Even as she muttered those words, the creatures were swarming over the desert floor, scuttling around and over her feet, some of them being pitched up to cling for safety on her calves and thighs as the mass exodus caused fighting among the fleeing rodents.

For that’s what they were—rats, with slick black fur and red pinpoint eyes, large teeth and sharp claws threatening in their mass.

Suddenly, the reason for the insects, lizards and other small mammals to be heading in this direction became clear, as did the reason that this area had previously been deserted. The companions now found themselves caught in a territorial war, a struggle for supremacy between the rats and the other life-forms that inhabited the desert wastes. It may even have been a nightly occurrence: the rats raiding the nests of the lizards and reptiles for eggs, the insects falling prey to them, as did the other mammals, which would be vulnerable attacked en masse. On the other hand, there was the exodus of these creatures toward the rats’ warrens, still fighting one another but somehow united by a survival instinct that told them to band together against a common enemy.

Their warren violated by the unfortunate step of the Armorer, the rats had fled in panic and were now charging headlong toward their foes, regardless of who was in the way. They swarmed over Doc, the mass of them catching him around the calves and shins, making his knees buckle under their force. He thrashed at them with his silver lion’s-head cane, figuring that he could beat them off more effectively using it as a club than drawing the blade contained within.

The old man was wavering dangerously. If he went down, the rats would engulf him and he would be in danger of buying the farm under a hail of angry, disease-ridden rodents. Ryan, Jak and Krysty moved back toward where Doc struggled, and Mildred was trying desperately to help J.B. out of the hole made by his fall. She wasn’t helped by the fact that the sand had closed around the hole as soon as the rats had freed themselves, the grains pouring into the opening like water, trapping J.B. up to the thighs in its elusive, slippery grip, still pouring in so that it would cover him up to the waist, the weight of it sealing him in, trapping his legs under the surface, and preventing him from moving.

Some of the rats had reached where the mammals, lizards and insects were swarming over the sand, and a skirmish had commenced between them. The night air was filled with squeals, howls and screams of pain as the rats hit their foes like a furry wall, lashing and biting at anything that came near.

A rustling roar from behind them, the air rent with more squeals, made Ryan turn around. He swore softly at the sight that greeted his eye: there were more rats, those still left in the other parts of the warren, that were now breaking surface, spreading like a sentient carpet over the surface of the sand. They swarmed toward the companions, and the one-eyed warrior knew that this was going to be a rough ride.

The lizards and reptiles, with their toughened hides, were coping well with the attacks of the rats, their tails flicking and breaking the spines of the furry marauders, their tongues wrapping around the creatures and wringing the air from them as the bites of the rodents failed to penetrate the toughened lizard skin. And yet some of the rodents were making their own progress. Masses of them could chill a lizard by swarming over it, the sheer mass of bites getting through the hide, making the creature turn so that its soft underbelly was exposed, an easier target for the razor-sharp teeth.

The insects, although smaller and easily swallowed or crushed by the weight of the rats en masse, had their own weapons to offer: venom from their shells or from their mouths and pincers pierced the rats’ flesh, penetrated into their bloodstreams and made them scream in the agony of being chilled.

While the battle raged just feet from where they were standing, the companions faced their own fight. The rats that had swarmed out of the other sections of the warren were upon them, the sheer weight of the rodents moving around and beneath them making it hard to keep a steady footing, which was particularly important for Mildred and Jak, who were trying to help J.B. out of the sand, where he was now buried up to the waste. It was almost impossible to try to dig him out, as the sand was covered with rats that—although they had no interest in the Armorer, and had a mind only to join the battle below—were only too willing to lash out at any hands that tried to move them and scoop the sand. In their haste, they were climbing over J.B.’s torso, swarming over his neck and head and almost obscuring him from view.

Ryan and Krysty reached Doc and helped the old man steady himself as he swiped at the rats with his cane. Together, the three of them began to move toward where Jak and Mildred labored.

Ryan drew his panga from its thigh sheath, and he and Doc—who had by now unsheathed the Toledo steel blade contained within the cane—set about carving some space around the area where J.B. was trapped. While they did this, Krysty joined Mildred and Jak in helping to dig the Armorer out of the hole. They still had to fend off the occasional rodent, but the vast majority were now engaged in the struggle for survival just below them, and those that still lingered were, for the most part, deflected by the blows of Ryan and Doc.

“Oh for a pipe to blow,” Doc grunted between sweeps of the sword.

“What?” Ryan asked, bewildered.

“A long story, and one I shall—” he grunted as another rat became history “—tell you when it becomes more provident. Though it could hardly be more appropriate.”

J.B. struggled out of the sand pit, cursing and shaking himself, still feeling the rats scurrying over him. He turned to look at the carnage that was to his rear and stopped dead, silenced by the battle that was still raging.

The companions watched, spectators who were glad to be no longer caught in the middle, as the fight continued. The small mammals were no match for the rats, and most of them were either chilled or retreating, but the match between the lizards and insects on one side, and the rodents on the other, was evenly balanced. Both had their weaknesses, but their strengths contrasted and evened up the fight. It was awesome to witness the struggle for desert supremacy.

The struggle was brought to an end only when the sun began to rise. The knowledge that the day would soon become unbearably hot sent them fleeing back to their lairs, determined to make the shade before they began to fry. The ultimate battle for supremacy could wait until another night. Ryan wondered how often this had been played and replayed.

The rats swarmed around the companions but seemed to ignore them, heading only for their warren, carrying the carrion from the battlefield with them to add to their supplies of food deep underground. Receding into the distance, the lizards and reptiles were doing the same. Nothing was to be wasted in this harsh environment.

As suddenly as it began, it was ended. The desert was silent once more, with only the disturbance of the sand and some patches of blood and fur to mark the battle. Even those would soon vanish with the shifting of the sands during the day and with the coming of the next storms.

“Not much chance of resting now that the sun’s coming up,” Ryan stated. “And I don’t know about you, but I don’t want another night like that if I can help it. I say we press on.”

As he expected, there was no opposition to this plan. He told J.B. of Jak’s comments about their location and the best direction to strike out. The Armorer took his minisextant from out of his canvas bag and took a reading.

“Yeah, if we go that away,” he said, pointing west, “then we should hit where Jak thinks. I just wish I could say how long it’ll take.”

“It’ll take as long as it takes,” Ryan said, “and we’ve got no other choice. As long as we can get the hell away from here.”

It was a comment that needed no argument after the rigors of the night. Wearily they formed into a line, with Ryan at lead and J.B. covering the rear, and began to march—slowly, achingly—toward whatever destiny next had in store for them.

Chapter Three

“Three days and nights. Let us hope that it does not extend to forty days in the wilderness.” Doc sighed in a distracted manner as he rose from sleep and took in the new morning around them.

“If you keep being that cheerful, I might just put you out of your misery,” Mildred told him with a sour tone. “Anyway, when the hell did you get so damn religious?”

Doc smiled beatifically. “One was always brought up with the good book, even when Mr. Darwin made certain parts of it seem a little like a fable.”

“Two suns, two argument same. Shut up,” Jak ranted as he took a sip of water then grimaced before taking a chunk out of the lizard they had cooked the night before. “Boring.”

Certainly, something had happened to Doc in the time between coming out of the jump and the current morning. Perhaps it had been the states of delirium followed by the storm, or perhaps it had been some jump-induced dream of which he had said nothing. Either way, he had been spouting in a religious vein ever since they’d begun their trek across the desert. For Mildred, daughter of a preacher in the predark world, this was irritating for some reason she couldn’t comprehend.

After the attack on their first night out of the redoubt, and after J.B. had secured a direction from his minisextant, they had started to march. Pacing was difficult. It was an unknown distance balanced against their lack of water and salt tablets, and the sparseness of their diet. The fact that there was water and life present in the desert was a given—the events of that night had proved it. However, locating the obviously deep springs and trapping some of the wildlife was another matter entirely.

The heat under the chem clouds, trapping and magnifying the intensity of the heat, set the pace for them. Regardless of any intent, to go any faster would have been to consciously buy the farm. If not right now, then a little way down the line. It would have used their water and salt resources too quickly.

So they had kept the pace steady and set up camp for the night as the darkness fell, settling in against the freezing temperatures of a desert night. Away from the storm-ravaged area, the wildlife had been less intent on a power struggle and had emerged slowly, with more caution and with less obvious hostility.

That made it easy for Jak to trap a few lizards and small mammals that strayed away from the safety of the pack. At the same time, the albino hunter observed their patterns of movement, attempting to divine where the water table came up through the sand, and rock beneath, to be close enough to the surface for the companions to attempt a dig.