Aware and alert, Ryan rose to one knee. By habit he wrapped the loop of the sling around his left forearm to give added stability to any shooting stance he may need to assume, however rapid and ad hoc. The night was dark and clear, the sky infested with stars. The low, brushy hills they’d chosen to camp among for security, rather than the mostly flat surrounding lands, brooded dark and silent.
Dead silent. The usual night sounds, of birds and early insects, had been cut off by that scream. Even the breeze seemed to be holding its breath, and his friends, awake, alert and armed around him, made no more noise.
Beside Ryan, Krysty gave him a quick squeeze on the arm with her left hand to reassure him that she was unharmed. Her other hand held her Glock 18. But Ryan heard Mildred mutter softly, “Ricky! The kid’s on watch.”
He could hear the consternation in her outburst—soft-voiced instead of whispered, since whispers carried as well as conversation at least and attracted double the suspicion when detected. As much as Ricky exasperated her at times, he was part of this group, this family, and she cared for him.
Jak sprang up and went bounding off into the night, clutching his trench knife. He hated leaving his self-appointed duty of watching over the others at night, but Ricky was his close comrade, as the only member of the group younger than Jak.
But here, through the middle of the camp, vaulting the carefully buried remnants of their campfire, came Ricky. He clutched his Webley handblaster in one hand and his dark eyes were wide and wild. He was racing from what Ryan realized was the opposite direction the scream came from.
“Where’s Mariah?” Krysty asked softly, despite the boy’s noise.
Ryan shrugged. He wasn’t sure why the girl was still with them. It had been his full intent to drop her off at Hamarville. But somehow she was still tagging along, keeping the pace, keeping her mouth shut unless spoken to and taking on the bulk of the camp chores.
Plus Krysty seemed to be growing attached to her. Mebbe too attached. Ryan would have to speak to his flame-haired mate, who had already set off in Ricky’s noisy wake. The youthful sentry had jumped over a low bush and disappeared. Ryan could only grunt and follow her, aware that J.B. was right behind with his M-4000 ready, and Mildred and Doc were following the Armorer.
Past the bush, as Ryan knew from giving their environs a thorough recce before settling down for the night, the ground sloped quickly to a shallow, sandy-bottomed dry wash, winding down through the hills to the cultivated fields Mariah had told them they’d find near Duganville. The girl herself stood in the gully, arms held rigidly down by her sides, fists clenched.
Jak was crouched on the bank, gazing intently at the sandy bottom. As the others came down the slope, he held up a white palm to them, to stop them from coming any closer.
Krysty ran to Mariah’s side. “Are you all right, sweetie?”
Sweetie? Ryan’s mind echoed. This has definitely gone too far. Krysty had a huge heart, and he loved her for it.
But if this weird inward kid was starting to make her maternal instincts get the better of her survival ones—that could be a problem for all of them.
“I’m fine,” he heard Mariah say as he pulled up alongside her and began to scan the night and darkened landscape beneath with his lone eye.
He could not help but feel a thrill of alarm that with them all gathered there in the arroyo they were making themselves ace targets for anyone or anything ill-intentioned that happened to pop up on top of its banks. Then he spotted J.B. standing guard from atop the slope the rest of them had just rushed down like triple stupes and felt reassured. If not less stupe.
“What was it?” Mildred asked.
“A tiger,” Mariah said. She never looked up, nor did she change the near-flat, quiet tone of her voice. She might as well have been remarking that the water for their chicory-and-tree-bark coffee sub was commencing to boil.
“A tigre?” Ricky asked. He stood just up the bank from her, where his buddy Jak had stopped his forward progress. “You mean, like a mountain lion?” In American Spanish, tigre—tiger—could mean any kind of big cat, including a cougar or a jaguar, although it was way too cold up here this time of year for the latter.
“No,” she said. “Tiger tiger. Big, stripes.”
“Bengal,” Jak said. “Real tiger. See prints?”
At that positive verbal outpouring from the reticent and cryptically spoken young albino, Ryan squinted his eye harder at the sand above which Jak was hunkered. He saw them then, plain enough: tracks as big as hands with fingers splayed.
“Fireblast,” he said.
The others muttered surprised concern. He felt the tension rise as they all looked harder at their surroundings, lest the giant bastard come springing down on them. Descendants of zoo beasts released by compassionate, or perhaps foolhardy, humans in the wake of the Big Nuke, some breeding populations of big exotic cats like leopards, lions and tigers, had taken root in various parts of the Deathlands. They were nowhere common, but where they ranged, they were nowhere rare enough—the big cats were not hesitant to snack on human flesh.
“But where did the brute go?” Doc inquired. He had both his swordstick and his outsized LeMat drawn and ready. Ryan reckoned all of the companions might just be enough to heat a leaping tiger past nuke red by the time its five hundred pounds landed on one of them.
Mariah shrugged as if the question bored her. “Away.”
“‘Away’?” Mildred echoed in alarm. “Just ‘away’? Where ‘away’?” She started whipping her head left and right.
The girl just shook her head.
“Nowhere,” Jak said.
Everybody looked at him.
“You care to be more specific?” Ryan said.
Jak stared at him if he were a complete feeb, which was how Ryan had commenced to feel the moment the question left his lips. What could be more specific than “nowhere”?
Not that “nowhere” made a lick of sense.
“Mebbe you could explain that a bit more to us mere mortals, Jak,” J.B. suggested.
“Tracks come. Don’t leave.” A white hand waved his Python handblaster in a semicircle. “No tiger.”
“By the Three Kennedys, he is right,” Doc said. “An impeccable syllogism, as well.”
“Congratulations,” Mildred murmured. “You win a cookie.”
“So where did it go?” Krysty asked Mariah.
“He was just there,” the girl said. “Then he wasn’t. I don’t know where he went. He just did.”
Ryan let go of a breath he wasn’t even aware he’d been holding in a long, exasperated sigh.
“This would have to make triple more sense than it does,” he said, “to make none at all. Jak, don’t you have anything?”
“No.”
“You don’t see any sign of where it disappeared to? Mebbe like it jumped off into the bushes out of sight?”
“Looked.”
“Look again.” Ryan was on the verge of telling everybody else to keep their eyes skinned and their blasters up. Then he realized that’d be a waste of words.
Frowning resentfully at the imputation he might have missed something—especially something as large as tracks made by a leaping tiger—Jak started to turn away to make another