Chapter Four

Jak Lauren wandered through a green-leafed forest. Shafts of summer sunlight darted between the gently swaying branches, dappling the winding path ahead of him.

Every now and again the rich balsam scent of the overhanging pines filled his nostrils. Around him stretched the high, clean meadows, speckled with Indian paintbrush, like speckles of spilled blood. Delicate bear grass, tipped with abundant white lace, nodded along the edges of the trail. Purple asters, harebells and the tiny false Solomon's seal filled his vision.

Somewhere down to his right he caught glimpses of a large lake, crystal clear, with the faint tint of turquoise that whispered melt water. And up the slope to the boy's left was the distant thunder of a high falls, tumbling over starry quartz into a spray-fringed pool.

The animal appeared from nowhere.

A massive silver-tip grizzly sow, with the characteristic hump of muscle across its shoulders, was weaving its head to and fro, and bloody spittle frothed from its muzzle.

An arrow thunked into the bole of a lodgepole pine at Jak's side, a small strip of white parchment tied around it with purple ribbon. Keeping a cautious eye on the bear, the boy unpeeled the paper and read the message.

Yellow cottage, quarter mile behind you. Turn left at lightning-hit live oak.

There was a distant crackle of thunder somewhere over the lake, and the wind was beginning to rise.

Constantly looking over his shoulder, Jak paced out a quarter mile. He gripped the bow in his right hand, an arrow notched and ready to loose. But the silver-tip had vanished.

For a moment he thought he glimpsed a couple of people, on a parallel path — a tall woman with startlingly red hair, and a man who wore a white bandage over his eyes.

There was the tree, its top splintered and torn by a lightning bolt. "Turn left," he muttered to himself.

The path grew wider, winding uphill, twisting and turning, with a cairn of white stones to mark each bend. Jak saw a fluttering scrap of yellowed paper held against one of the piles of rock by a piece of rusting iron.

Nearly home, Jak. Your mother and me are looking forward to welcoming you safe back. Not far to go, lad.

The bow was becoming cold and wet. He looked down at it and found the stout yew had turned into polished ice. The arrow was straw with a tip of smoldering red ash.

Ahead of him, something gray and scaled waddled across the path. It looked like a mutie alligator. The sun was gone, and dark clouds swooped over the stark mountaintops all around him. But he could see the cottage. The walls were painted golden yellow, and a lamp hung in the front window to guide the weary traveler home.

"Home," Jak said, and found that the word wouldn't fit properly inside his chilled lips.

He was less than one hundred paces from the trim little house. Behind him he could dimly hear the howling of a hunting pack of wolves. The bow was melting fast, running through his fingers and blazing like molten silver.

The cottage door opened and he could see a tall man, dressed in a green jerkin. "Come in, son. You're safe now, with us."

The door closed, and Jak found himself in a cheery room with a log fire crackling in the hearth. Copper pans winked from the shelves and a spread of food was laid out on a dazzling damask cloth — fresh-baked bread and crisp salad, with slices of smoked ham as thick as a man's finger.

Jak picked up one of the china bowls and saw that it held a mass of pulsating white maggots.

"Your mother's favorite, Jak. Made them special, she did. She'd be here herself, but she's dead and gone these fifteen years."

There was another burst of thunder that seemed to shake the whole building. The lights dimmed, and the fire died away. Jak suddenly began to feel very sick.

"You don't look too good, son. Mother's kept your room nice, waiting for you to come on back. Safe and secure, Jakky. Go and have a rest. Your own little bed in your own little room."

The nausea was growing like a bubble of rotten air, filling his stomach, rising through his chest and squeezing his lungs. It surrounded his heart and made it pound faster. The idea of lying down and sleeping seemed attractive.

"In there, son." His father pointed to a low door in the corner of the room. Jak noticed that the man's fingers were crooked, ending in thick, jagged nails that curved back on themselves.

The room was growing darker, and the sickness was surging into his throat. "Lie down," he whispered.

"Safe and secure, Jak. Insecure and unsafe, Jak. Which?"

The door opened without his touching it, and he stepped through.

"No," Jak whispered.

His feet slipped away, and he began to fall down a long, polished tunnel.

"No!"

Faster and faster he fell, and he tried to grab at the sides of the tunnel, his fingers blistering from the speed and heat of his fall.

"No!" Jak screamed.

Infinities below him he could make out a speck of silver-white light, rushing toward him at a dizzying speed. "No!"

The desert sands were red with blood.

John Barrymore Dix lay flat behind a low bullet pocked wall, pressed to the warm earth, waiting for the stickies to come at him again.

The sky was pale orange, scarred with the drifting remnants of a fearsome chem storm of scarlet and jagged silver. The air still tasted of ozone from the force and power of the tempest.

The rest of the war wag's crew were dead, butchered by the ceaseless attacks of the gibbering muties. They'd come in waves from the sun-baked arroyos, their suckered hands tearing and ripping at the bodies of the defenders. Bullets scarcely checked the stickies with their rubbery flesh. Lead went in and out, and left only a small hole and a trickle of what passed for blood. You had to shoot a stickie in the head and pulp its ferocious residual brain. J.B. knew he'd sent a dozen or more out on the last train to the coast, but there were hundreds more, waiting out there. His friends lay around him.

The white-haired boy had most of his face missing, exposing the glistening pallor of bone. His satin-finish Magnum was by his side, its barrel clogged with blood and mud.

The woman had taken her own life, kissing the muzzle of the 9 mm Heckler & Koch pistol. Her bright blood was invisible against her matted crimson hair.

Maybe that was the best, cleanest way to buy the farm.

All J.B. could see of the old man was the cracked knee boots protruding from under a pile of mutie corpses. The silver swordstick, blade snapped jaggedly in two, lay nearby, the blade reflecting the fire of the nuke-ravaged sky.

A dead puppy, head missing, was flung against the bottom of the wall.

"Ryan?" J.B. called, knowing that there wouldn't be an answer. Not this time. Not anymore.

He could feel bile, hot and sour, churning in his guts. The sun beat down on his head, despite the protection of his dented fedora. His eyes blurred, and he blinked to try to clear them.

"Come on, you bastards," he muttered, risking a look over the wall. Nothing. Just the purple sand dunes that stretched out toward the shimmering horizon.

J.B. knelt and reviewed his arsenal of weapons, laid neatly in front of him. He'd field stripped, oiled, polished, greased and loaded dozens of them. Each had a round snug under the cocked hammer. All he had to do was heft them and squeeze the cool, curved triggers.

He squinted, then rubbed at his eyes. There seemed to be some movement to his left, near a half-burned Joshua tree.

J.B. laid down his Colt Navy pistol and pressed his forehead with the tips of his fingers. His glasses were smeared and dusty, and he wondered whether he should try to clean them before the attack came. His headache was getting worse, and he realized that he was feeling sick, as if someone had kicked him hard in the balls.