Playfair's Axiom by James Axler Read Free Book Online Page A

it,” Ryan said. “All right. Truce. We might as well go along with these people, even laying aside they got the drop on us. We already know this ain’t a healthy vicinity to wander at random.”
    “No kidding,” McCoy said. “You’re triple-lucky you didn’t stir up a pocket of serious rad-death emitters. That’s worse than getting eaten by cannies, any day! The baron, he—”
    “McCoy,” Tully said sharply, but nowhere near as sharply as he’d spoken to the beefy Lonny. The black kid shut his mouth and swallowed hard. Tully looked back to Ryan.
    “Let’s just say you seem a bit too dangerous to allow to wander around freely kicking over hornets’ nests. We have to live here.”
    “What if we tell you we don’t mean you any harm or trouble?”
    “I’d say evidence suggests otherwise. Least so far as trouble’s concerned. And I can tell you plain, you’ll have every chance to state your case once we get back safe toour ville. Which is far from certain yet, so less talking, please. None of us wants to draw more hassles.”
    “People want avoid trouble bad,” Jak grumbled, indicating their captors with a nod of his head.
    “If we tried a little harder to skip trouble,” Krysty said, “ we might be a whole lot happier.”
    “Only a droolie looks for more trouble than looks for him,” Ryan replied.
    “What does that make us?” Mildred asked.
    “People a triple load of trouble looks for. Now shut it.”
    Mildred looked miffed, but she pressed her lips tight.
    Tully slapped his hands on his lean thighs and stood. “That’s clean rain falling now,” he said. “We can move.”
    Ryan’s nose had already told him that the lethal acid downpour had halted. The sound of drops falling on the asphalt-covered overpass and the cracked pavement beyond its shelter didn’t change.
    “Are you quite certain about that, young man?” Doc asked. “A return of the acid precipitation could quite spoil one’s day, were one caught in the open.”
    Tully frowned at him a moment as if sorting out his words. Ryan got the impression the lanky man was no stupe. He just wasn’t used to hearing that sort of talk.
    Well, in the Deathlands, nobody was. It had taken Ryan some time to get used to Doc, too. And that was just in his lucid moments.
    “That’s how it goes here,” Tully said. “Fresh rain always follows the acid. Dilutes it and washes it away. That’s one reason the settled villes survive.”
    Ryan looked at Krysty. She had her limited doomie moments, but more important, she was better attuned to the natural elements than anybody Ryan had met. Whether it was her link to the Earth Mother, Gaia, or just a natural ability, he couldn’t say.
    She nodded. “I feel he’s right.” Then she flashed him that smile of hers that always made him realize how lucky he was. Even in situations as tight as this one.
    “Best pick up your pal,” Tully said. “We don’t have to run anymore. But it’s not healthy to hang around out here.”
    “Mildred?” Ryan said.
    The physician was already kneeling over J.B. He was unconscious. Sweat sheened his forehead, more than what was due to the humidity.
    “I don’t like it,” she said. “But it doesn’t look like we’ve got much choice, do we?”
    “No,” Ryan said. “We don’t. C’mon, people, let’s get him up. We got places to go and people to meet.”

Chapter Six
    They continued south onto what looked like a largely intact highway that Mildred, who had spent some time in predark St. Louis, identified as Interstate 55, to make their way through a complicated tangle of broken concrete and twisted rail iron, fanged by nasty bent spikes of rust-red rebar. Evidently it was a collapsed bridge. A railroad-highway combo, by the looks.
    No sooner were they past the collapsed ruins than Tully led the party down the brushy bank to the surface street that ran alongside the old highway. They jumped a little stream in the ditch at the bottom. Because there was just no