"Get your elbow off my tit, Doc!"
"I'm sorry, ma'am, but this contrary piece of wood won't do what I want it to do."
"Hold her straight, Krysty."
"Gaia! You want to steer, lover, then you come and have ago."
Trying to propel the boat in the direction they wanted was proving even more difficult than Ryan could possibly have imagined. Once the boat floated a few yards out onto the lake, Ryan and J.B. had each taken an oar to paddle the craft farther from the steading.
As soon as the others took oars, the chaos began. The oars were long and heavy, and it was hard for Doc and Mildred to control them. Ryan had to hiss a biting warning about the amount of noise they were making — splashing, cursing and banging the clumsy oars against each other and against the sides of the vessel.
Another big problem was that the boat had no conventional tiller or rudder. Ryan followed Doc's tentative suggestion that the bracket near the stern was for a steering oar. Trailed over one side the blade of the oar could be angled to change the course of the vessel. But Ryan found the method clumsy and difficult. If he altered the pitch of the oar a fraction too much, the boat went careering off in the opposite direction.
Eventually Ryan managed to find an effective way of running the boat. Jak took the steering oar and tried to hold the craft just within sight of the shore. Ryan, J.B. and Krysty each took an oar, while Mildred and Doc shared a thwart and did their best to share the last of the oars.
It wasn't terrific, but it was the best they could do.
The night air was cool, and Ryan could see his breath misting in front of him. Behind the boat he could just make out the silvery line of the wake, cutting erratically over what had once been called Lake Superior. His sight was only a little better than average, and he'd long since lost the red glow of the fire at the center of the ville. Nor had he been able to make out anything of the land to their right.
In the darkness it was difficult to judge what kind of progress they were making. As they were on a lake there wouldn't be much of a current, but there was a fresh breeze blowing.
"Jak?" he called.
"Yeah?"
"How're we doing?"
"Moving."
"How far off from the land?"
"Hundred yards, mebbe two."
"No sign of anyone coming after us, or anyone on shore?"
"Nothing. Quiet as a hunting gator."
Ryan, trying to keep a steady stroke that the others would be able to match, was worried that they were moving too slowly. The dragon-ships, fully manned, would overhaul them within minutes, once they were within sight. It was important that they keep a watch behind them, and look out for the first lightening of the eastern sky ahead of them.
The sky finally began to grow less dark, but with an infinite slowness. Ryan noticed the silvery sparkle of water off the broad blade of the oar. Glancing to his right, he realized that he could now make out the low silhouette of the shore. And, rising above it, he was now able to see the pinkish tint of the higher ground.
"Still nobody after us?" he asked Jak, aware of how tired he felt after the long row,
"No. But light's come. Head in?"
"Stop rowing a minute," Ryan instructed, taking several slow, deep breaths.
Krysty slumped over her oar, her hair trailing across it. J.B. sat back on his thwart, fedora pushed off his forehead. "I'll stick to walking or wags in future, if you don't mind, Ryan," he said.
There was a narrow headland jutting into the lake about a quarter mile ahead, with what looked to be a sheltered bay beyond it. The trees came down close to the water, and behind them the hillside seemed to slope steeply upward.
"There," Ryan called, pointing.
He sighed and wiped sweat off his face, wondering whether he'd be better off in less clothing. His attention was drawn to the lapel of his shirt, where he'd pinned the tiny rad counter.
"Fireblast!" he whispered softly. "Look at that."
"What lover?"
"Look." He pointed to the diminutive disk, which was usually a neutral green color. Now it was glowing with a deep reddish-orange.
"Hot spot," J.B. said unnecessarily.
They beached the boat in a narrow inlet at the head of the bay, pulling it as far in under some overhanging trees as they could. Ryan was worried that it might still be visible to anyone sailing by. Knowing the difficulty of the terrain they had faced before, his guess was that they'd the biggest head start that they could get.
He hefted the Heckler & Koch over his shoulder and looked ahead. They were at the bottom end of a steep-sided valley, which had a stream running through the middle. It was nearly wide enough to be called a river, about nine feet across where they stood. As Ryan looked at the water a large salmon swam slowly and erratically past him, flopping over on its side, then straightening.
Jak was bending down a few yards away, hands cupped, ready to drink from the clear, sparkling water.
"No!"
Ryan's bellow of angry warning sent the dawn birds screeching from the pine trees; a flock of gulls rose in a screaming protest from the rocks at the end of the headland. The echoes rolled and boiled off the hills.
"What!" Jak spit, stumbling with shock, water spilling from his fingers.
"Come here," Ryan said. "Put a few drops of that water on my rad counter."
"What?"
"Do it."
The boy reached out a finger and allowed a single drop of the spring water to fall on the tiny button, which immediately went from the orange-red color to a dazzling, flaring scarlet.
"Holy shit!" Mildred breathed. "Do that mean what I think it do?"
Doc nodded. "It do."
Mildred was vehement. "We don't have a choice. We go farther along the coast or we go back toward the Viking village. We cannotstay here!"
"If we go upriver and over the mountain, we'll be there and gone fast," Krysty said. "We won't be exposed to the rad for that long."
Mildred turned to face Krysty, her hands on her hips. "You got any brains in that pretty head, lady? The count here at the edge of the lake's hot enough to fry a side of pork. What d'you think it'll be like higher up, where the radiation leak has to be stronger? While we're here jawing about it, the sickness is settling on us like fine ash from an erupting volcano."
Ryan nodded. "All right, all right! No point going farther. Must be close to the ville of those muties. Have to be back. Take the boat and keep close in to the shore. Hope to spot any pursuers before they're close enough to hit us."
"Then let's go," Mildred said.
Doc coughed. "One brief moment, if I may, Ryan?"
"What, Doc?"
"It seems likely there's been some slow seepage around here for some years. Witness the appalling mutations we witnessed in the attackers. But the illness that is now striking at the Viking people seems to me to indicate some new and drastic increase in the radiation potential. The water. The fish. My interest as a scientist prompts me to ask whether we might take a half hour and go a short way up the river to see what we shall see."
Ryan looked at the others. Mildred shook her head firmly. So did Jak. J.B. shrugged his shoulders.
Krysty looked behind her into the clean-smelling pine trees. "Half an hour can't hurt much. I'd like to know."
"Fine. We leave now. And we're back in the boat in precisely forty minutes. Anyone wants to stay here can. Mildred?"
She grinned. "I'm not letting that old goat boldly go where no scientist's gone before. But we don't touch or eat or drink anything."
It took less than fifteen minutes. A clear path meandered along the left-hand side of the river, which they followed. The water flowed through a gorge, and fresh scars along its flanks testified to recent earth falls. Mildred pointed them out to the others, commenting on the minor quake they'd all experienced.
"I assume that nuking during the war was so intense that it triggered movements of some of the less stable tectonic plates. You said that most of California had slid into the Pacific, Doc."
"Right."
"So, bearing in mind a lot of the nasties were buried underground, lead-lined vaults and all that so-called 'safety' bullshit, major tremors could open them up like a hot knife through butter."
"Mildred," Ryan said as he walked beside her on the trail, "I never read anything that told how rad sickness works. I mean, I know about what it does. The rash and puking and all that. But howdoes it do that? You can't see it or anything."
She paused. "Not my specialty, Ryan. But I guess I know a little. Gather around, students." Everyone stood closer. "You won't know much about negatively charged electrons, ions or free radical molecules, right? No, I thought not. Me neither. Radiation has alpha and beta particles and they have a charge of electricity. They screw up the electrons and molecules in the body. Send them ape-shit wild. I know that structural proteins, like collagen, get smashed around. The DNA... No, you wouldn't know that, either. The tiny cells can reproduce themselves perfectly in a healthy body. Radiation messes that up."
"The cell blueprint is ruined?" Doc asked. "Is that it?"
"Sure. And the cells that reproduce fastest are the ones that get hit first and hardest. Blood, of course. And skin and hair. So, you get leukemia and your skin starts falling off and goodbye hair. More serious mutations are slower to show, but just as deadly in the long run."
"Thanks, Mildred. I just... well, it's all way beyond me."
"Radiation kills, Ryan. That's all you need to know. A man who gets a bullet through the brain doesn't need to know all about high-energy physics or ballistics. Just that he's been shot and he's going to die."
"Time's passing," J.B. warned. "Should we be turning around for the boat?"
"Looks like path opens around corner there." Jak pointed.
"There and no farther," Ryan pronounced. "Then it's fast back."
"I just can't believe this place is so poisoned," Krysty said as they walked on. "Tall pines and the freshest stream you ever saw."
"No birds," Jak said.
It was true. Other than the chuckling sound of the small river, the morning was silent. The only life at all was a glittering coppery cockroach that ambled across the trail in front of them. J.B. raised a boot to crush it, but Mildred warned him not to touch it.
"Creatures like that'll inherit the earth. Radiation hardly slows them."
They rounded the corner, and everyone stopped. There wasn't the least doubt that they'd found the source of the massive rad poisoning.
There had been, fairly recently, a huge slippage of earth, and half the hillside had opened up like giant jaws. The tumbled remnants of several concrete buildings clung perilously to the jagged edge of the sheer cliff, two hundred feet above them. But the quake had done more than damage the buildings. It had also torn open great burial pits beneath them, spilling their secret load from the metal-walled, sealed caskets.
The whole slope, hundreds of feet across, down to the river, was a tangled mass of rusting drums and split plastic vats. Whatever they might once have held was now an unbelievable cocktail of hideous substances, mingled together, all leached through to the water. Into the soil. Into the lake beyond and into the food chain for the entire area.
"My God!" Mildred whispered. "It's like opening the curtains on Armageddon. It's worse. Much, much..." She turned to Ryan, her dark eyes wide in shock. "Now, fast! Down the hill and as far away as possible from this devil's brew."
She led the way back toward the lake, stumbling in her eagerness. Ryan was at her heels, the others following closely behind.
"But what is it?" he shouted. "What could be in those drums?"
"Lord alone knows," she panted over her shoulder. "The killers were so many. Radioactive iodine. Carbon 14."
"Uranium?"
"Sure. Strontium 90, radium 226, tritium, radon 222. That's a gas."
"Plutonium, Mildred?" Doc called, jogging along third in line.
"Of course. Oh, I'm losing breath. Can't breathe deep in case... Carbon 14, cesium 134 and 137. Anything! It's all around us."
She wasn't that far from the jagged edge of panic, stumbling and nearly falling into the river at a point where the path doglegged left.
"Slow it, Mildred!" Ryan said. After all the self-control that the freezie had shown since they thawed her, it was a shock to see the state she was in now. The discovery of the ruined rad storage site had freaked her out.
She turned and gripped him by the arm, fingers tightening like a screw trap. "Ryan, that badge in your shirt doesn't show us how bad this might be. The rem count could be massive. Hopefully the worst of the leakage is gone, seeped away when the earth first cracked. But it is appalling."
"Just take it careful. Break an ankle on this trail and it won't help."
"This was the great fear of my generation, you know."
"What?" Krysty asked, taking Mildred by the hand to help her over a steep patch of tumbled stone.
"Chernobyl."
"Your knob'll what?" Jak called, not quite hearing what she'd said.
"A place in Russia," she said, her breathing becoming steadier.
"Upon my soul, ma'am, but I remember that," Doc said. "And there were two more such accidents within a few years. Damnably similar. One was in... Pennsylvania, wasn't? Or Manitoba? And one in Europe. Near Lyons? Or Cardiff. I can't recall."
The beach opened before them, the expanse of the lake narrowed by the enclosing rocks of the headlands on either side.
Mildred had recovered, and climbed into the boat to sit on a thwart, hand pressed against her chest. "If ever I have a coronary," she said, "I'll have it now."
The others got in, and they pushed off, paddling quickly toward open water. Ryan noticed that the rad count had fallen back to red-orange. Still high, but below lethal.
As they rowed past the obscuring headland, they found themselves on top of two of the pursuing Viking dragon-ships.