"Where've they gone?" the Armorer wondered, rubbing his fingers over the scarred bark of the mangrove. "Looks like they thought about trying to cut this bastard tree down. Then gave up on it."

Mildred nodded. "Guess their scouts told them there was better eating ahead. If they'd really wanted us, they'd have stayed and cut through ten solid feet of wood as easy as a razor through an artery."

"I would hazard a guess that they could scent the river behind us," Doc suggested. "I also suggest that we might profitably begin to move ourselves. The migrations of killer ants are a total mystery to scientists. There isn't a guarantee that the little chaps won't return the same way in a couple of hours."

Moments later they were on the ground, following the trail of the army of ants. "It's like going from Atlanta to the sea," Doc commented. "Not a living thing left."

Away to the left, through the stripped, ravaged land, they glimpsed a river, perhaps the same one that had nearly taken Jak. At this point the ants' beaten track meandered away to the west.

"Didn't run fast," Jak said, pointing to something that gleamed white in the shadows.

"Wolf cub?" J.B. queried.

They stood in a silent half circle around the neat pile of polished bones. The ants had done their job with a total, finite efficiency, leaving nothing but the skeleton. Not a trace of sinew or ligament remained on the bones, but a few scrubby bunches of coarse, brindled hair lay on the ground. The eye sockets were empty and the long jaw was scoured clean.

"Not a wolf," Krysty said, stooping. "Not wild, anyway."

"How come you?.. Oh, yeah." Ryan looked at what Krysty held out to him.

It was a narrow collar of plaited silver wire with a flat medallion on its end. Something was scratched on it.

"What's it say?" Mildred asked. "A name?"

"Odin," Doc replied.

"What fuck's an Odin?" Jak asked, turning the silver disk so that it caught the morning rays of sunlight.

"It's the name of one of the old Viking gods. Some people claim that it was the Vikings who first discovered the United States of America. Leif Eriksson, son of Erik the Red, called it 'Vinland,' some say. Odin was the leader of their gods, who was in charge of death and war, among other things."

"I saw part of an old vid once, Doc," Ryan said. "Long ships with oars on each side, and a man with only one eye. That's why I recall it. Swords and axes. How come there's a mess of bones out here called by the name of one of their gods?"

"Vikings here?" Krysty asked.

Mildred threw her head back and laughed, long and loud. "Hardly! No. Odin's the kind of jerk-off name that people gave their guard dogs back when I was... you know. Probably someone in a village or city somewhere came across the medallion. Liked it and tied it around the neck of his pet dog."

"Mebbe," Ryan replied. "Don't get many dogs kept as pets in Deathlands. Food, but not often as pets. And you have to remember there aren't cities anymore. Big villes and small villes. Not many big villes, either."

"God of death, you said, Doc." J.B. stirred the tumbled bones with the toe of his boot. "That's all he got."

The air was growing cooler and fresher as the companions climbed toward the brink of the hill. They encountered more trails, some of which seemed to show the marks of human feet. But it had obviously rained within the previous sixty hours or so, and the spoor was indistinct.

"Look," Mildred said, pointing high above them, in the pale purple sky.

A bright crescent of flame arced from east to west, setting off a crackling chem storm of lightning as it passed.

"Nuke debris," J.B. explained.

"Sweet Lord! You tell me the world damned near blew apart a hundred years ago and there's stillpieces of techno-shit falling from the heavens? If I could just go back..."

"One small step for the Totality Concept, one billion-dollar hunk of scrap iron for mankind," Doc muttered.

"Looks like some fog up ahead," Ryan called, easing the strap of the Heckler & Koch over his shoulder. "Must be where the edges of the hot air and the cold air marry together."

The top of the hill was about a half mile away. The thick jungle had gradually faded into low scrub, and the temperature had dropped to somewhere in the low sixties. Mildred had pulled on the hooded sweater. The ant bite she'd sustained had been swollen early in the morning, puffy and inflamed around its edges. But she'd pressed on, saying she figured it was best to try to walk the poison out.

"It looks like the mist tumbling in over the hills around San Francisco Bay," she said, shaking her head nostalgically. "I swear to God that it was one of the most beautiful sights in the whole ever-loving world."

The damp earth and compressed leaf mold had given way to small pebbles and bare rock. The trail had narrowed and become more distinct, zigzagging above them in a steady climb. The last hundred feet or so had now disappeared in the clinging bank of low cloud.

"Heard the drums again, lover," Krysty whispered at one of the sharp bends in the path.

"Sure?"

"Sure."

"Slow down, Jak!" Ryan called, feeling his voice muffled in fog the moment it left his lips. The skin on his cheeks felt cold and tight, and his coat was covered in a layer of fine drops of water. On an impulse he tasted it, finding the slightest hint of salt.

"I'm top," the boy replied from somewhere ahead and above them.

"I fear that the bellows to this organ of mine are becoming a trifle short of pressure," Doc said, doubling over in a coughing fit, hands on his knees.

"He means he's run out of breath," Mildred translated, picking up the ebony cane the old man had dropped and handing it back to him.

"You certainly have a way with words, ma'am. Short and simple."

She didn't rise to his baiting.

"Looks like the ridge, here," J.B. said, moving a few cautious feet along the spine of the hill, testing the path beneath his boots.

"Hear drums?" Jak asked suddenly, looking first to Krysty, as he knew that she had the best hearing in the group.

"Last night, in the tree, and this morning," she confirmed. "Down there. I can also feel water. Like an ocean. Could be one of those big lakes you mentioned, Mildred."

"Lake Superior? Could be. Would account more for this blasted fog."

J.B. joined Ryan. "Drums like they hear could mean Indians. Could be more of this stinking wet forest down there. Figure we go on or turn back now? Could be near the redoubt before full dark."

Ryan thought about what the Trader used to say: "Most men, faced with going on or turning back, will likely go forward. Nobody likes turning back. All you have to do is think clear which option is best." Ryan sometimes wondered if Trader's words had always been true. Certainly, in Deathlands, most men would strike ahead.

"It'll be closing on dusk when we're down in that jungle, J.B., and we don't know where those bastard mutie ants went. I say we go on, but slow and careful. You?"

"On? Hell, I knew that all along, Ryan. Just wanted to check you thought the same."

"Drums again, louder this time," Krysty called over her shoulder.

"And trees," Jak added, dancing light-footed ahead on point. "Spiky, not soft."

They were conifers, sparse at first, looming from the mist like stunted guards wrapped in cloaks of dark green. Then there were more of them, packed in closer to the edges of the winding trail.

By now they could all hear the rhythmic beating of drums.

"Kind of chilly for Indian savages," Doc said.

"Crap!" Mildred spit.

"How's that, madam?"

"Saying Indians don't come from cold regions. I guess I could name you a dozen tribes or more that do."