The quakes that had shifted the coast of Maine a hundred years ago had destroyed the lower part of the military blacktop, reducing it to a corrugated ribbon of weed-scattered rabble. The seven friends picked their way carefully over it, nearing the rolling breakers of the sea. The closer they got to the high-tide level, the more the mist-shrouded coast of the mainland seemed to recede from them. Ryan's first guess had been a couple of miles of open water. Now it looked like five. Maybe more.
"Don't want get caught night," Jak said, glancing up at the sky.
The bright sunlight had gone, vanishing behind a purplish haze of thin chem clouds. Even as they all looked up, a piece of age-old nuke debris came searing back into Earth's atmosphere, burning up in a dazzling golden crackle of light. Simultaneously there came a long, bone-quivering rumble of thunder, bouncing off the rocky slope behind them. Without the sun, the fall colors of the trees were oddly muted and dull.
"Be dark in about three hours," J.B. informed them, checking his wrist chron. Like the others, he'd altered it as soon as they hit the outdoors, making sure everyone had the right time. The only guide was the sun. If they ever hit any sort of civilization they could alter the chrons to fit in with what they called time there.
"Be pushed to find some way of getting across there in that time." Ryan nibbled at a piece of rough skin on his thumb. "Wouldn't want to be stuck halfway across. Can't tell what kind of currents there are between the island and the land there."
"Try and build boat and then sail at first dawning," Donfil suggested.
Ryan glanced up and down the boulder-strewn beach. "Like I said. Talk's cheap. Action comes a lot more expensive. Don't see much to build a boat from along here."
They agreed that they'd split up. Ryan would go west with Krysty and Donfil, the other four would try east, scavenging along the desolate shoreline for anything they might be able to use.
"Meet back here in an hour and a half," Ryan said, watching the cormorants circling and dipping a quarter mile out.
The apache kept breaking away from them to explore the wealth of rock pools that fringed the long beach. "Man would not starve here," he said. "All kinds food. Shellfish and weed."
"Better than self-heats?" Krysty asked.
"Anything's better than self-heats." Ryan grinned. "We can go back up the road to the redoubt for the night. Mebbe cook up some sort of stew?"
"Easy," Donfil agreed.
But the first priority was to find something that would float. Anything.
Doc had once, months back, been talking to Ryan about a vacation he'd enjoyed at the seaside with his wife, before the first trawling. Ryan recalled the old man mentioning the interest in what he'd called "beachcombing," scavenging the shore for anything the storms might have washed up from its copious bounty.
Now, a century after Armageddon, there were few men left to sail the oceans. And little for the hungry waters to feed on and cast up on the land.
The first stretch of exposed beach had nothing larger than a man's hand; only a few splintered pieces of wood. A long way up among the rocks they saw the trunk of an immense pine, its end feathered and worn by the sea. But it was at least a hundred feet long, just as useless as the scattered twigs.
"Around the headland," Krysty called, raising her voice over the ceaseless rumbling of the waves on the shingle.
"Could be," Ryan replied, knowing that the currents would often swirl about such places. If they were to find anything that might help them off the island, then it could be around the narrow spit of protruding land.
"It is a good day, my brothers," Donfil yelled.
"Looks good," Ryan agreed, jogging after the barefooted Indian, picking his way between the smaller boulders.
The movement of the sea had funnelled all sorts of rubbish and driftwood into the narrow bay, piling it around the rocks. There was also a number of dark blue plastic drums that looked as if they might once have held some kind of chemicals.
A tangle of cords and ropes was wound all about the detritus, holding it together. Ryan stooped and tugged at it, testing it for strength, finding it gave a little but wouldn't break.
"Could make a good raft out of all this, lover," the girl said, folding her long red hair back out of her eyes.
Now that he was close up, Ryan could see lettering on the drums, white, stenciled, faded away over the decades until it was almost illegible. He traced them with his finger. Acetylcholine... ammonium carbaryl ester. Then came a string of letters and numbers and the name of a town — East Rutherford, NJ. That was all. Each of the drums looked as if it had once held about twenty-five gallons of liquid. Ryan rapped one with his knuckle, hearing it sound flat and hollow, like a shovel of earth on a coffin lid.
"Empty. We can use some of that wood and lash it all together with a coupla dozen of these. Find us some paddles or use blankets for a sail. One way or the other, we can do it."
He kicked again at the drums, jumping back as he disturbed a large crab, three feet across its gray-green shell, eyes on waving stalks. Its pincers looked as though they could easily have sliced through a horse's leg.
"By Ysun!" the Apache yelped, hopping sideways with remarkable speed and dexterity. His shades nearly fell off as he dodged the skittering monster, vaulting over a jagged hunk of granite.
"This some Indian way of hunting supper?" Ryan laughed, watching as the shaman put as much distance between himself and the mutie crab as he could. Despite his amusement, Ryan took the precaution of drawing his blaster. Just in case.
But the crustacean made its shuffling, lateral way down into the edge of the surf, its eyes the last part to disappear.
Ryan wondered what other mutated creatures the Lantic might be hiding out yonder.
By the time all seven had got together again and started work on their raft, darkness was creeping across the sea toward them like an assassin's velvet cloak.
Jak showed great skill in cutting away the net of plastic ropes and dragging clear the drums and the lengths of timber. He darted around as their clumsy craft began to take shape, lashing the empty drums together, rejecting any that were damaged or leaked.
"Tide'll turn soon," J.B. said, checking the water-line.
"Best make sure this is well moored and anchored down. Or we'll come here at first light and find she's long gone," Ryan said.
It was more than half-done, a ramshackle creation that rested heavy on one side. But it looked as though it would float and carry all seven of them across the miles of darkening water toward the mainland.
"The tide's rising fast," Doc warned. "I fear it will be on us in a scant hour."
They all redoubled their efforts.
"Enough!" Ryan finally shouted. "Got her tied to those big rocks, Jak?"
"Sure. Take hurricane to shift it."
"Then let's go back up to the redoubt. Get some self-heats and some sleep. Doc, you lead us on."
"A loaf of bread, a jug of wine and the redoubt will be heaven enough. Not that ring-pulls and self-heats quite qualify as the food of the gods, do they, Ryan?"
"Just get moving." He glanced at their raft, shaking his head at the thought that they were considering using it to cross the menacing stretch of sea.
In less than twelve hours' time.
Ryan slept badly. It was always a gamble with self-heats. When you remembered that they'd been around for all those years, it was something of a miracle that more didn't die of food poisoning after eating them.
But his stomach was disturbed, and he had to go to the small, shadowless cubicles at the end of the dormitory. He could feel sweat rolling down his back, and he was gripped with savage pains that clawed at his guts. Krysty slept through it all.
When he eventually slithered into sleep, it was to find nightmares waiting for him. He was clambering over rocks near pounding waves. The spray lay slick and salty over the gray stones, making them treacherous to the touch. Tiny worms writhed everywhere, miniature jaws lined with needle teeth, snapping at his feet as he crushed them with every clumsy, staggering step. Ryan knew that if he fell they would immediately overwhelm him and fill his eyes, nose and throat.
Overlying the noise of the roaring surf was a sinister clicking, like giant claws snapping together.
It drew closer as he ran and slithered, on the sharp edge of losing his balance, arms flailing, feet slipping. There was a bright, serene moon floating low over the sea, highlighting the veil of blown spume, silver-white across the tops of the long, rolling waves.
Ryan didn't dare to look back over his shoulder, knowing that to do so would be to fall, knowing the frightful creature was scuttling behind him. The moon threw its shadow ahead of him, with the jointed, angular legs.
And the incessant clicking of the claws.
He woke curled into the fetal position, back wet with perspiration, hair matted to his head. With an effort he managed to slow his breathing, trying to relax. Eventually he succeeded in falling into a deeper and more restful sleep.
Morning came all too soon.
There was a fine mist on the sea's face, and a ceaseless drizzle sweeping in from the east carried the taste of salt. Visibility was less than a half mile, and the sun seemed reluctant to put in any land of appearance.
The tide was still high and the seven were able to haul their raft in, using one of the lengths of plastic cord that tied it to the rocks above the high-water mark.
Lori shivered. "Cold, Doc."
He shuddered with her, hunching his shrunken shoulders against the damp. "Phew! Someone's walking over my grave," he muttered crossly. "Not the jolliest of boating weather, is it?"
Ryan squinted across the sound toward where he remembered the land lay. "Figure we can hold a true course on that?" he asked J.B.
"Doubtful. Can't judge currents, directions, wind, tide. None of that. Could get swept out into the Lantic and not know it."
It was true. While they'd been building the raft on the previous afternoon, Ryan had been watching the water, noticing a vicious rip current just about where the ebb tide turned, a mile or so across, with a swirling undertow and ominous areas of flat, oily sea. If they ran into it, then their makeshift raft could break up like a paper boat.
"Best wait," Krysty advised. "Drizzle could stop in a while and then the mist'll burn off."
"Getting soaked to skin here," Jak complained, squatting in the glistening shingle, rain trickling through his snowy hair and turning it the sodden gold of a polar bear's pelt.
"No point going all the way up the blacktop to the redoubt. We'll wait."
Ryan was the leader, so they waited.
Krysty's feelings about the weather turned out to be right. Around seven the rain drifted away across the gray sea, and the mist began to clear from the east.
"I can see the mainland," Krysty said, shading her eyes.
"Long as the fog stays away we should make it. Everyone got their paddles?" Ryan held his own rough-hewn oar.
The raft bobbed at their feet, and he looked at it dubiously.
Krysty read his mind. "This or nothing, lover." Ryan found that the idea of nothing seemed almost attractive at the moment.
"All aboard that's coming aboard!" Doc yelled in a bluff, mock-nautical bellow, stepping on the nearest of the chemical drums, which rolled under his feet like the release of a logjam, nearly throwing him clear over the other side.
"Have some careful, Doc!" Lori shrieked, hurling herself on the raft and grabbing at the old man's waving ankles, pulling him back to a perch of precarious safety near the center of the craft.
The rest of them slowly climbed aboard, Jak remaining on the beach to untie the final tethering rope from the cold rocks. He ran down and hopped on with a nimble ease that made Doc spit into the sea in disgust.
The ebbing tide carried them quickly away from the shore of the island and into the open sea.