Dot Tanner was straining at his memory. "Front Royal's in Virginia. There used to be a saying."
"What?" Lori asked.
"Something about the state. They said it in the nineties. Nineteens, not eighteens."
Jak Lauren was leaning against the short trunk of the mast, listening to the old man. "What did they say, Doc?"
"Ah, yes." Confidently he said, "Virginia is for..." Then he lost the thread. "Virginia is for... for... I don't rightly recall."
Jak grinned. "Guess must have been Virginia is for killers."
Doc nodded. "Quite possibly, my white-haired young companion. Quite possibly."
Ryan had told them over the supper of fresh trout that he was determined to go on to Virginia.
"Chill brother?" Jak asked.
"Just might," Ryan replied.
"See your home. I liked that," Lori said, recovered now from the blow to her head.
Doc Tanner smiled at the news. "Sibling rivalry was always an overwhelming motivation, was it not, my dear Ryan?"
Ryan nodded, even though he had no idea what the old man was talking about.
Only J.B. didn't say anything, busying himself with picking bits of fish from between his back teeth with a long, narrow bone. His eyes behind the round lenses of his spectacles gave nothing away.
"You don't seem surprised," Ryan said. "I know I sort of said I would before. But this is for real. I'll go. Even if I go on my own, I'm going back to see my brother."
"Hell, I knew that all along," J.B. said.
During the next day, the Hudson River flowed ever more slowly and became wider, the banks shelving away a good quarter mile. As they rolled gently toward the sea, they saw more and more evidence of the devastation wrought by the century-old nuking of the northeast.
They passed the weed-softened remains of what Doc swore must have been a town he called Poughkeepsie. Jak Lauren, for some reason, found that name hilariously amusing, and he rolled around on the damp timbers, holding his sides, laughing uncontrollably. His merriment was contagious, and everyone on the raft began to laugh with him. Even J.B. cracked his cheeks at the sound of the name.
Doc cackled like a rusty hinge. "Guess it always was a funny name."
About four hours later they found themselves drifting toward the wreck of what had once been a gigantic bridge. Ryan spotted it first.
He was standing on the right side of the unwieldy craft, urinating to leeward, shielding himself from the others as best he could. On the raft there was no time or space for any of the niceties of hygiene. As he pissed, it was carried away in a great amber arc, splashing into the flat surface of the river.
"Look at that!" he shouted.
Krysty glanced at him. "Terrific, lover. But what'll you do for an encore?"
"You're envious. But that's..."
"Envious! Ryan Cawdor, you've got..." She broke off, seeing he was pointing around the long bend of the Hudson, far ahead of them.
The river narrowed a little, breaking over the massive piles of the bridge. Rusting girders dangled high above, with a network of thick metal rods holding crumbling chunks of stone.
A bent piece of metal, which looked as if it might once have been painted green, had the remains of some white lettering on it. Whi e PI ins was all that could be read.
It took all their strength, using the crudely cut branches, to steer the raft around the obstacles. They pushed at the stone piers and shoved away from the maze of fallen metal where the water pitched and foamed, creating strong eddies and currents.
Once they were past the toppled bridge, they were able to relax once more, allowing the slow-moving river to carry them along. Krysty stood at the front of the raft, balancing herself easily against the rhythmic pitching and rolling.
"Doc?"
"What is it?"
The wind tugged at her long hair so that it wrapped itself around her face. She paused, freeing herself, before she spoke again.
"I heard that these parts were filled with people before the big chilling."
"That's so, my dear. Thicker than bugs on a bumper was a current expression. Why do you ask now?" Almost immediately the old man answered his own question. "Ah. Because there is so little sign of human habitation on either bank of the Hudson. Is that not what prompted your question?"
"Yeah. That bridge... and a few ruins on the cliffs. That's 'bout all we've seen for hours. No people. Not since the stickies."
Doc clambered to his feet, helped by a steadying hand from Lori. His knee joints cracked like miniature blasters. He rested an arm across Krysty's shoulders, gazing rheumily at both sides of the river.
"You cannot possibly imagine the devastation wrought here. Nor, fortunately, can I. If one could have seen the megadeath scenario, then one would have gone stark mad upon the instant."
For the last mile or so, perched high on the cliffs to the east, they had been able to see a few ruined buildings. They were eyeless wrecks, almost covered by the encroaching vegetation. Most were roofless, walls bleached to an unhealthy white by a hundred years of chem storms. One or two still showed traces of blackening and scorch marks along the upper edges of many of the empty windows.
Ryan joined Doc and Krysty and they glanced behind them, over the high ground to the west of the Hudson. The sun was already out of sight, and dark purple clouds were boiling up, showing the menace of ugly thunder-heads at their crests.
"Time to put in for the night. How far from Newyork, Doc?"
"From that sky, there is menace from the west. Perchance we should find shelter. I cannot recall the lie of the land hereabouts, Ryan, but I think we must be closing in on the metropolis. Yonkers is a name that seeps into my mind, though what it was I cannot recall."
"What 'bout Newyork?" called Jak, who had been dozing near the stern.
Doc hesitated before replying. "The wreckage from that toll bridge back yonder could have overturned our frail barque. The farther south we go along the Hudson, the more problems we shall encounter of that type. Before we reach New York we may need to desert the water for the land."
J.B. also stood up, pushing his fedora back. "Maps show us around fifty miles to go. How far from there to Front Royal? You know, Ryan?"
"Always heard as a kid that Newyork was close to two fifty from the ville."
The Armorer whistled softly, barely audible over the murmur of water bubbling around the front of the raft. "Two fifty. Need us a wag to get there. Never make that distance on foot."
Ryan nodded. It was true. A small party of six people, however well armed and brave, would stand no chance at all in the Deathlands covering a great distance without transport. The Trader had traveled in a convoy of armored war wags, and even then they'd been ambushed and taken losses.
"I'm like to get off this boat," Lori said, screwing up her face like a petulant child, which made everyone laugh at her.
"Let's head in. There's a kind of lagoon ahead on the right. Looks like the whole bank got blasted in. Rad count still shows th'edge of orange. Must have been hotter than fireblast around here."
Doc sighed. "Too true, my dear Mr. Cawdor. Armageddon day must have taken the lives of half the good people around here within ten minutes of the first bomb. Half the survivors within forty-eight hours from injuries and wounds. Then, of every thousand men, women and children still breathing, perhaps one or two might live beyond the next three months."
"Nuke winter took lots, Uncle Tyas McCann told me," Krysty said.
"Indeed. Projections for that were not, I think, accurate. Many scientists said it would be winter for twenty years. After the bombs finished falling and there was a quiet between heaven and earth, the night and darkness and cold came. But within five years I think our climate was back to normal."
"It's still not like it was," Ryan said. "Chem storms. Acid rain down south that can take the skin off a man in five minutes. Still places it hasn't rained in fifty years. That's normal?"
"Touche, my dear man. No, things were tipped too far for it ever to be what it was. But it is now as good as it will ever become."
The six of them slowly steered their raft toward the bank. Jak, splashed in the face by Krysty, licked the spray. "Real salt now."
"Hudson's tidal here," Doc said.
The raft grounded in shallow water, fifty feet or so from the bank.
By the time they'd managed to haul and wrestle the ungainly craft nearer to the bank, the threatening storm had closed in from the west. Thunder rumbled over the hills beyond the river, and jagged forks of lightning punched across the livid sky.
"Tie it up good and safe, Jak," Ryan called, having to raise his voice above the noise of the racing storm. "Lotta rain upriver, and she could rise and rip the raft away."
"Best find shelter quick," J.B. urged. "Seen some buildings uphill a ways."
Cedars, balsams and cottonwoods were mixed together on the gently sloping ground, with animal trails winding between them. The light was poor, but Ryan could make out that the spoor was mainly deer, overlaying something that might have been wolf.
Each of the six carried a backpack. Doc stooped beneath the weight of his, looking tired. The incessant rocking and pitching of the roughly bound logs over the past two days was enough to drain anyone's strength.
Ryan led the way through a bright patch of red-orange flame azaleas, picking his way between the nodding shrubs, ducking beneath some of their twelve-foot-high flowers.
"Where did you?.. Ah, I can see it, J.B. Below the ridge there."
Ryan recognized the setup. There had been a house dug into the side of the hill, with enormously thick concrete foundations. Below it, facing the indistinct remains of a narrow road, had been a double garage with up-and-over doors. The nukes had totally removed the house, slicing off the top of the slope behind it like a gigantic cleaver. But the garage remained, set deep like a rectangular cave. Over the years, earth had fallen and been washed down around it, building up gray deposits where shrubs had rooted and even trees now grew. The actual garage was nearly filled with windblown leaves.
"Home, sweet is home," Lori said, dropping her pack and squatting down on her haunches. "Keeper says that."
"Good defense sightlines," J.B. observed, sizing the place up. "Mudslide there left a narrow entrance. One person can guard it easy and watch down the hill. Get a fire going near the mouth of the garage. Yeah, Ryan, it looks good."
The fire smoldered and smoked at first with the dampness of the wood they dragged in. The leaves inside were so dry that they flared and sparked like tinder, but they wouldn't sustain a flame properly. Eventually, though, Jak persuaded the fire to brighten, and it cast its glowing light all around the cavernous building.
Doc and Lori swept the leaves together, brushing them with their hands and feet into a neat pile at the rear of the building. On the back wall, high up, they found a long shelf, hanging precariously by rusting iron brackets. There were a couple of plastic containers containing oxidized nails, screws and clips. Lori found a cup and wiped it clean, then asked Doc to read the bright green lettering on its side.
"It says 'I Rode Colossus,' whatever that means. The little picture looks like some sort of roller coaster," Doc said, adding hastily, "and don't ask me what that means, either, dear child."
The six friends had only been inside the underground garage for about ten minutes when the threatening storm arrived on their bank of the Hudson.
There was a dazzling ripple of lightning, stabbing through the darkness, accompanied by a truly deafening crash of thunder. The sound was so loud that it seemed to echo inside their heads for several seconds afterward. More lightning followed, almost continuous, so that their own shadows danced, knife-edged, on the side wall of their refuge.
"Likely there'll be rain," J.B. said, peering out into the night. "Good job the raft's well moored. Going to be a bad one."
"Best open the self-heats," Ryan suggested. "How many cans we got?"
The Armorer had the most at five, and Lori the least at two.
"Need some real food," Lori said, sitting by the fire. "Saw deer tracks."
Which reminded Ryan of the other spoor he thought he'd noticed as they hurried up the hill toward the garage. The G-12 in his right hand, he walked casually toward the low entrance, squinting around the earthslide that blocked off the outside. There was another rumble of thunder, very close, and vivid lightning, tinged purple. He could hear the hissing and pattering as the first drops of rain began to fall on the ruined path.
Ryan stared for several seconds, lips peeling back off his lips in a silent whistle. He turned to the others inside. "Hey! We got company."