The reptile was kicked back into the water, off the edge of the causeway, its claws tearing away at the wood. Propelled at an extreme velocity, the rounds punched into the target with fearsome force.
There was no need for anybody else to fire. More than a dozen bullets had ripped the alligator apart, sending it flailing and thrashing, throwing up a great pink spray that darkened to crimson, covering its death throes. Hennings helped Finnegan to his feet, and they stood on the edge of the torn planks staring as the monster passed from life. The others, including Ryan, with his finger still on the trigger, also watched carefully.
"Bastard that big could still come at us," he said.
"Be fine way to go. After all he's fucking eaten," grinned Hennings, one hand still on Finn's shoulder. "Being that fucker's dinner."
"Why did you sit down there?" asked J.B.
Finnegan shook his head, wiping the mutie's blood from his face and neck. "I asked a man that. Tail-gunner off War Wag Three. Dean Stanton, his name. Little runty guy with a lot o' balls. Once seen him throw himself clear off a high bridge into a couple of feet of water. Near Missoula. We dragged him out and I asked him why he done it."
"And?"
"And he said it just sort of seemed a good idea at the time."
Finnegan began to laugh, hanging onto Hennings for support. The laughter was contagious, and they all began to laugh, even J.B., easing away the tension of the fat man's near escape.
"Crazy bastard," called Ryan, patting the stamped sheet-metal housing of the automatic rifle. It was damned near the closest he ever came to showing any affection.
"Thanks, Ryan," said Finn.
"Sure," he replied.
The alligator was nearly still, no more than a twitching corpse. Around it the water was stained a deep brown-red, and small fish began to appear by the hundreds near the carcass.
As Ryan and the others looked on, fascinated, the dead alligator, better than fifty feet in length, began to jerk and roll, its white belly up, the fish tearing at it.
Within less than five minutes the corpse had been stripped to raw bones and shreds of tattered sinews.
"Piranhas," corrected Krysty. "And you're right, Henn. They are mean bastards."
It was a relief to finally set foot on dry land at the end of the walkway.
There was a small stone building, with a roof of woven reeds, standing among a grove of oaks. Its windows were unbroken, and although the stucco on the walls had peeled, most of it remained undisturbed by the elements.
It was an odd sight in a world where the great bombings of 2001 had reduced virtually every building to rubble. Ryan could almost count on the fingers of one hand the number of times he'd seen prenuke architecture intact like this.
"Figure the low land protected this place?" he asked J.B.
"Has to be."
"No."
"What's that, Doc?"
Doc Tanner rubbed at a green stain on the side of his stovepipe hat. "Not the lie of the land, my dear Mr. Cawdor. Have you not heard of a little toy called the neutron bomb?"
"Neutron bomb?" asked Ryan. "What the fireblast was that?"
"I heard of it," said the Armorer slowly. "Took out men and left the houses. That it?"
Doc nodded. "A simplistic summary of the effects, but accurate enough for our purposes."
The door of the little building was open; the weather had apparently cleared out whatever it might have held.
With the aid of Ryan's long machete, they hacked through a screen of tumbled vegetation about forty feet thick, which screened off the walkway and ultimately kept the location of the redoubt and its gateway a secure secret.
On the far side was a crumbling road, winding southward. Standing on the cracked pavement, they heard no sign of life, just the occasional crying of a distant bird and the endless clicking and chirping of insects.
"There's more water," said Krysty, pointing ahead. "Cross the road."
It was a slow-flowing muddy-brown river, wide as the eye could see, moving toward the east; it washed out the remains of the highway. Finnegan, still visibly shocked by the near miss from the mutie alligator, dipped his hand cautiously in the water to wipe off some of the blood. He touched a finger to his mouth.
"Fresh. Not salty like the other."
"How come this has risen, but the swamps back there look like they're 'bout the same height they was before the war?" asked Krysty, puzzled.
At first no one answered; then Lori spoke.
"All rivers bigger. No people drink them."
"That's the fucking most stupid thing I ever heard," laughed Hennings. "Rivers rise because there..."
Doc Tanner interrupted him with a raised finger, crooked like a claw, the nail yellow as old ivory. "Mock not, my somber-hued brother. Think that we are close to the delta of the old Mississippi River. I would surmise that even now, a century later, barely one-fiftieth of the people live and work in its basin. No factories to drain it. No rest rooms, flushing away millions of gallons. No drinking, as Lori said. No commercial uses at all. No wonder the levels of the streams and rivers have risen."
"You figure we're stranded here?"
The old man looked sideways at Ryan. "It is conceivable. Perchance we should go back and try the gateway."
"What the bastard big freeze does perchancemean?" hissed Finnegan, but nobody answered.
"East or west?" asked J.B.
Ryan looked both ways. The vegetation was stiflingly thick to the east; to the west it looked a little clearer. Along the edge of the river there almost seemed to be some sort of cleared pathway.
"West," he replied.
It wasa path.
Not very wide, flirting with the water, but it was most definitely a trail. After a few paces, Ryan dropped to his knees among the bushes, peering at the marks in the soft ground.
"Animal?" asked Hennings.
"No. There's something looks like deer. Cloven hoof, sharp. But there's human feet. Deep tread, working boots. Recent. Let's be careful."
The warning wasn't really necessary. Even young Lori had been with them long enough to realize that life was lived astride a singing blade.
While she had been with them in Alaska, one of the party had mentioned problems to Ryan. She recalled his answer.
"Problems? Solving problems isn't our business. We deal in death."
She sensed what that meant.
As before, Ryan led the way, gun cocked and ready, his finger on the trigger. Everyone followed in their places, their own blasters ready for instant action.
Once Ryan thought he caught the sound of human voices ahead. But Krysty's mutie hearing didn't register anything, so he figured he was mistaken.
It was an error that within an hour would culminate in the death of one of the party.
They found the vehicle less than a quarter mile along the trodden path. It was beached, like a long-dead swollen whale, pulled in among the trees, its rear wheels still in the water. At first glance it looked like a boat on wheels. Its six wheels held it about eight feet above the mud; it had small metal ladders on each side, and the biggest, fattest tires that any of them had ever seen Ч their diameter was at least six feet. Ryan poked at the tires, finding them amazingly soft and underinflated.
"Swamp buggy," pronounced Doc Tanner confidently. "Deep tread on the tires. Go through or over just everything you can imagine. Land or water. As well as anything that lies between."
J.B. clambered up a ladder and peered inside. "Seats for eight. Couple o' cans of gas. Steers with a rudder kick-bar. Box of old scattergun shells. Fish hooks. Something looks damned like a ramrod. Figure it can't be. Only blasters from two hundred years back use a ramrod. Muzzle loaders."
"See anyone?" called Ryan.