Neutron Solstice

Doc fumbled with the lion's head atop his ebony sword stick and coughed. "If I were to tell you, Ryan, then I vow you would not believe it."

"I would, Doc. Come on. Now's a good time. Just you, me and J.B. here."

"I'm sorry. We must fight on the darkling plain, swept with confused alarms,' Ryan."

"How's that?"

"A great singer once sang that we must keep our dreams as clean as silver, for this may be the last hurrah. Oh, had he but known the truth of that, so few years later."

"Doc," said Ryan. "Tell us."

The old man ran a hand through his long gray hair, flipped through the leaflet in his hand, then blandly changed the subject of their conversation.

"I see we are but six miles from Interstate 10. Nine miles from the Evangeline Race Track. Once I visited the Kentucky Derby. Such a day, Ryan."

J.B. shook his head and walked away, checking the perimeter of the Holiday I

"A mere thirty miles from Longfellow's Evangeline Oak. That would be a national treasure to behold. Probably there are few such left in the Deathlands." Ryan couldn't be bothered to ask what this oak tree was, guessing that any explanation would only increase his confusion.

"Does that say anything about where you can find food hereabouts?"

"No. It tells us that this establishment had ke

"You can't eat fucking books, Doc."

"There is a witty response to that rational observation, Mr. Cawdor, but it escapes me for the moment."

He opened his hand, allowing the booklet to flutter to the carpet like the last dead leaf from an irradiated tree.

The morning passed.

Doc went and curled up in a corner, sleeping like a child.

J.B. vanished for an hour and returned to tell Ryan that he thought it might be possible to start an emergency electrical generator. "Better than the hand-torches. Shall I try?"

"Why not?"

Ryan wandered, the deserted corridors, encountering the occasional skeleton, and tried to fathom what it must have been like back before the nuke winter.

In the corner of the motel where the fallen tree had hit, termites had tu

The sky was clouding over again. From old books Ryan had learned that in olden times the weather was often the same for days on end. Bright and su

Here, deep in the South, humidity and a clinging, sweating heat seemed the order on most days. Fortunately, it was cooler inside the motel. Looking out the window, Ryan saw huge insects, wings iridescent, dart over the warm streams. Far to the north, there was the familiar jagged lace of purple lightning. The rumble of thunder never reached him.

Realizing that the double-paned windows might also prevent him from hearing warning shots from Krysty and the others, he moved quickly to the main entrance, pushed open the stiff glass doors and emerged into the warm damp morning. Immediately he heard the harsh sound of swampwag engines. It came from the suburb of West Lowellton, not too far away, where his three companions had gone scavenging.

He spun on his heel, sprinted into the echoing lobby and shouted for J.B. and Doc. Returning to the arched entrance, he flattened himself against the red brick wall.

"What is it? Shots?"

"No. Listen."

"Wags. Those swamp buggies. Real close. Half mile, mebbe less."

Doc Ta

"I fear I slumbered, and... I can hear engines. It sounds like those..."

"Swampwags, Doc. Yeah."

"Go or stay?" snapped the Armorer tersely.

"Stay," was Ryan's immediate response. "It figures they're mebbe searching for us. With six of us ru

"And halves the odds," said J.B.

"Yeah, it does. But we stay."

"Should we not be looking for a defensive position?" asked Doc. "In the event of their coming here?"

It was a difficult decision. Judging by the noise of the engines, there were at least a half dozen of the floundering buggies in the vicinity. That could mean thirty or forty men, maybe more. It didn't much matter if they were Cajuns or the baron's sec guards. A firefight out in the open would have only one ending. But if they waited in the motel, they could cause untold havoc among any attackers, perhaps stand a better chance.

Overlaying the rumbling of the swampwags was the noise of gunfire. It sounded like thin material ripping as the high velocity bullets exploded in short bursts. J.B. looked at Ryan.

"If they got 'em cold, they're chilled by now. If not, they'll make it out of there. Best we can do is wait and see."

"That's how I see it, too."

Doc Ta

"Yeah, Doc, we can," replied J.B.

"Yeah, Doc, we can," repeated Ryan. "We go after them, and we're there with too little, too fucking late. Don't think I don't care about Lori or that fat tub of guts Fi

"But they may have died."

"We all do, Doc," said J.B. quietly.

Gunfire crackled for about two and a half minutes. Then came the unmistakable sharp cracks of a couple of stun grens, then more gunfire for around a half minute.

Then just the swampwags throaty roar and the shouting of a confusion of orders.

"Best find a place where we can blast 'em if'n they come this way," suggested Ryan.

"You think they might have been... killed, Ryan? Or taken?"

"Yeah. Mebbe they'll take what they got and pull out. Mebbe not. All we can do is listen and wait. If they aren't here in an hour, then I guess it means they're not coming. Not yet, anyway."

Ryan chose the ke

There was no further shooting, and the shouting faded. Soon the buggies could be heard drifting away, seemingly toward the main part of the swamps.

Within half an hour, the natural sounds of insects and the wind in the live oaks had resumed. The clouds that had threatened rain earlier in the morning had broken up, leaving only a veil of high thin mist that filtered the sun into an orange blur.