Iron Rage (10 page)

The master rigger was the one who was teaching them to weave rope out of the tough local grasses. He didn't want to use up too much of the rope they carried aboard the
Queen
. Among other things, they needed enough to lash the rafts to one another for towing. He said they could make rope strong enough to hold planks or logs together, for long enough and far enough to get clear of the New Vick fleet. And Avery, who apparently had grown up making rafts in Defianceville, near the rubble of Cairo on the Ohio just north of where it met the Sippi, agreed. They knew more about the subject than Ryan or any of his companions, including Ricky
whose idea this whole plan was. And the two were ready to trust their own lives to the rafts with their homemade rope, which Ryan always found powerfully persuasive. At least when the folks doing the trusting had an actual clue about what they were doing.

“None,” Nataly said, standing up and stepping from the boat into the shallows with barely a rock. She moved briskly during the two steps it took her to get out of the water, and took several more inshore for good measure.

Jak sprang onto the bank, which made the boat wallow side to side ferociously. J.B. clung to the sides tightly until it steadied somewhat, his jaw set and brow ever so slightly furrowed, which for a more expressive human—most of them—would be the equivalent of a furious scowl. Nonetheless, the Armorer quickly recovered his composure, and shook off Abner when the grinning man offered his hand from shore.

“You were right, Ryan,” J.B. said. “About four miles upstream the Wolf turns into a true strontium swamp, just like in the stories. There's a lot of channels through it, but the rads are near the red zone on the counter. Depending how big far it goes, we might make it through without anything worse than our hair falling out in clumps and our getting nuke blueberries all under our skin.”

Ugly and alarming as those effects were, Ryan knew a body could get over them. “But if we get stuck there…” J.B. shook his head. “We'd go into convulsions and die of the bloody shits in one day. Two if we're too tough for our own good, and too stubborn to eat a blaster first.”

“How long would it take to get through?” Krysty asked. She had been cutting grass, and her beautiful face glowed with sweat in the late-morning sun.

“No idea,” J.B. said.

“There are a number of channels winding through the swamp,” Nataly said. “But all of them were shallow. Every one we tried ran stretches no deeper than three feet.”

Ryan glanced at the
Queen
. Ricky sat huddled atop the largely burned-out cabin with his DeLisle across his legs, too dutiful to try to leave his appointed lookout post, but not too much so not to make it abundantly clear how much he hated being left out of whatever news the exploring team brought back from their crack-of-dawn expedition up Wolf Creek.

Inside the hull, Myron was hard at work on his beloved engines, with Sean assisting him. Ryan didn't know how much of that was necessary for the big Diesels—and how much for the man.

“So she wouldn't make it, huh?” Ryan asked, turning back to the tall brunette and rubbing his chin. His beard rasped at his palm. He hadn't shaved for a couple of days. Another twenty-four hours and he'd start looking like the grizzle-bearded Arliss. “The motor launch could,” Abner said. “One of them little unarmored patrol boats the two fleets got, mebbe. Not the
Queen
. Not even stripped.”

“I wouldn't care to risk going aground, given the dangers our friends discovered,” Doc added. He had been weaving the braids of grass such as Ryan had been making into what master rigger Arliss called “plain-laid
rope,” winding them together in three strands in such a way as to make the individual lengths hold together strongly. Ryan was none too clear on that part of the process, but Doc was, and he proved to better even than the river folk at doing so.

“It's not an option,” Ryan said flatly. He looked at Arliss, not quite challenging him to disagree, but not hiding the fact that he wasn't open to debate.

Arliss shook his head and heaved his powerful shoulders in a sigh. “I'll break the news to Myron,” he said.

“How about carrying out Ricky's plan, but with the motorboat towing the rafts and the unpowered boat upstream instead of downstream, and trying to sneak past a whole assload of heavily armed ironclads?” he asked.

“Aw, no,” Abner said. “We don't want to go through that in small boats. No way.”

“Saw stickie,” Jak said. “Chilled stickie.”

“We saw more than one,” Nataly stated. “It looked as if we disturbed a whole nest of the monsters.” She shuddered.

Ryan cocked his head at J.B. “Didn't hear blasterfire.”

“Jak used his knives.”

Ryan jutted his jaw and nodded. It was tough to chill a stickie with a knife. The blade would have to be thrown hard enough to penetrate the mutie's brain. Body strikes were useless.

“And Abner used the motor.”

“You bet I did!” The normally quiet mate was animated. Apparently his brush with the dreaded muties
had pumped him high on adrenaline. “Why fight those monsters when we can run?”

“Too true,” J.B. said, then shrugged. “I didn't see the need to waste cartridges.”

“Good move,” Ryan said. “Still game to try escaping upstream, Mildred?”

“Let's go just right on through that big old fleet,” Mildred said. “I love this plan.”

As if to try to persuade her otherwise, the booming of cannon fire, dulled by distance but audible and unmistakable, drifted to them against the slow breeze. It was only a few shots, sounding to Ryan as if they mebbe came from both sides.

“Big boomers,” J.B. said. “Not any of the kitty-cat crap blasters the patrol boats carry in their bows.”

“Still love the plan to try creeping past all those big old cannons in the dead of night, Mildred?”

“Compared to sitting on a bundle of sticks tied together, floating at zero-point-five miles an hour through a maze filled with lethal radioactive sludge, waiting for a tribe of stickies to wade out and eat us? Well, yes.”

“Right. Is there time to hit up some of the places where you found suitable timber, cut it and make it back here before dark?”

Nataly thought, then nodded. “We'd have to move fast.”

“You and Abner up to going out again?”

The two said yes.

“Jak?”

Jak only grinned. Ryan didn't think it was necessary to point out to the
Queen
's crew that meant he reckoned
they were likely going to have trouble, probably of the stickie kind, and he was eager to get stuck in some.

“You both ready to chop wood?” he asked the pair.

“Yes,” Nataly said. The coxswain just nodded again.

“Two boats should be fine carrying four people each, right?”

“Sure enough,” Abner agreed.

“Pick five more people you reckon can use an ax or that two-man saw we got. Avery, are you up to coming?”

He drew in a deep breath. “I can't say I'm eager to move toward a nest of riled-up stickies,” he said, “and speaking of them, I still don't double like the looks of that old bridge. But yes, and I can swing an ax with the best of them. Or use a saw of any description.”

“Ace. We'll need to pick out trees that are the best compromise we can find between too small to work and too big to cut down fast. Can we do that?”

The boatswain's teeth were bright in his dark face when he grinned. “We can. And I can pick out just the ones.”

“Pick four more, then, Nataly. J.B., will you swap longblasters with me? I think that riot gun of yours will be more useful in the kind of scrape we're likely to get into than my Steyr.”

“Sure, Ryan. And I'll swap your Scout out with Ricky. He's better with a longblaster than I am, any day. And that little homebrew carbine of his is better for hitting stickies with, if it comes to that.”

“How likely is it that the stickies around here have
learned we're here from their kinfolk upstream?” Kenn asked.

Jak laughed softly. “Know here,” he said.

The crew frowned at him. They hadn't begun to have a chance to learn to decipher his oddly clipped speech. His companions had a hard enough time figuring it out.

“He means, the stickies around here already know we're here, Suzan,” Krysty said. “Whether or not they live under the railway bridge.”

“How likely are they to rile up the whole country and come down on our necks, is what she's trying to ask,” Arliss said. “Right, Suzan?”

She nodded, looking even more wild-eyed than usual.

“Can't rightly say,” J.B. replied. “There's no telling with stickies.”

“Like humans,” Doc said, “different bands of stickies vary widely in intelligence and social organization. At the very least they display a form of cunning. In general they do have some means of communication in the way they hoot and shriek, and if they can communicate, the mood of the band can shift with astonishing speed.”

“You folks know fighting better than me,” Arliss said, “but isn't it supposed to be a bad idea to divide your forces in the face of the enemy?”

“Yeah,” Ryan agreed, “but I don't see that we've got a choice. We can't leave the supplies unguarded. Mutie bastards'll trash the whole lot, mebbe even burn everything if they have the means start a fire.”

“They do love them fire,” J.B. agreed.

“That is so strange,” Jake said. “I associate them more with the element of water. Not its opposite.”

Ryan looked at the navigator in surprise. He was pretty sure that was the least gloomy thing he had heard the man say in the past few days. It also was exactly not the sort of thing Ryan would ever expect him to say.

There's just no reading people, he thought with grim amusement. I can see why J.B. and Ricky would rather work with machines. You always know where you stand with them.

“The more people we take with us the slower we go,” Nataly said. “We couldn't safely carry the whole party in the two boats, anyway, Arliss.”

“Aye,” the rigger said. “You're right.”

“How will you get enough wood for the rafts back here?” Mildred asked.

“They float,” Ryan said. “We tie them up in big bundles, lash them together, toss them in the creek and tow them downstream with us. Easy as taking jack from a dead man.”

* * *

O
H, WELL
, R
ICKY
thought as the water slogged around the raft being slowly towed behind the motor launch. It's not as if it's hard keeping noise discipline with Jak for a raft mate. Overhead, what looked like a million stars had no trouble staying silent at all.

Five of the rafts were strung out behind the lead boat, followed by the unpowered dinghy from the
Mississippi Queen
. Ryan and Krysty rode in the tow boat, with a morose Myron.

At least he's piped down, Ricky thought, less charitably than he would have liked. When they'd started out, about one in the morning by J.B.'s chron, the acting
captain had wailed like a lonely puppy as they pulled away from the abandoned tug.

Piloting the boat, and by extension the whole waterborne caravan, was Abner. Ryan, Krysty and Myron were his passengers. Ricky and Jak were on the second raft with their packs, behind the one carrying Arliss and Sean. They lay on their bellies, because Avery had warned them in bloodcurdling terms not to try sitting, much less standing, on the lumpy bundles of tied-together logs. Ricky didn't trust theirs anyway, so he had little trouble obeying. Jak would go ahead and get up and dance on the horrible thing if he took a mind to. But he was so coordinated he could probably get away with it without making the raft come apart or tipping it over. Ricky was not that coordinated, and was painfully aware of the fact.

Doc rode on the raft immediately following theirs with Jake. Avery and Suzan rode the fourth. The fifth raft was loaded with supplies, mostly food and extra ammo. In the trail boat were J.B., Mildred, Nataly and Santee, primarily because none of the rafts would safely carry him.

Ricky moaned, but softly, as the turbulence of the Wolf Creek waters blending with those of the mighty Sippi rocked the raft. He saw Jak laughing silently at him.

A killdeer flew overhead, low but invisible, its passage marked by its shrill staccato tweets. It was one of the few mainland birds Ricky had learned to recognize by sound, simply because they were so common and distinctive. The smell of water was thick in
his nostrils, emphasized by actual water slopping over the cut-up saplings of the raft to hit him in the face or soak his clothes. He could also smell the tang of burned black powder, and the more appealing smells of food cooking.

The lead boat was turning south. Its engine purred on low RPM, barely audible even this close by. The sloshing water was louder. Ricky had been told it was a tricky maneuver, towing a series of rafts around a turn like that. He looked back nervously, but the other craft seemed to follow in an effortless arc.

They rode toward the New Vickville fleet. Lights burned among the ships, enough to show there were about a dozen sizable ships there, two or three of them scary big. He couldn't tell for sure because it looked as if their silhouettes overlapped. From somewhere ahead he heard a fiddle being played.

Ricky wondered what time it was—how long until dawn, mostly. Nataly and Abner had calculated they needed about three hours to reach the New Vick fleet. Maybe less, probably not much more. They planned to slide in close to the western shore and hug it as close as possible to reduce their chances of being seen.

Arliss had expressed surprise that they'd set out so early. “I thought half an hour before sunrise was the best time to make a move,” he'd said, “because the human mind and body are at their lowest ebb then.”

“They are,” Ryan had told him. “The light gets trickiest then, too, and it's hard to see right. But we're not trying a sneak attack. We're trying to sneak by. We want
to be a mile or more south of the fleet when the sun comes up.”