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

way four people could cross it carrying the unconscious Armorer, and because the locals seemed uninclined to wade this soon after an acid downpour, Ryan draped J.B.’s limp form over his shoulders in a fireman’s carry.
    Everybody else hopped easily across. Burdened as he was Ryan didn’t quite make it cleanly. The dirt gave way under his left foot. It slipped and went into the water to the ankle. Though he jumped clear as if J.B. suddenly weighed no more than dandelion fluff, Ryan felt a sting from the diluted acid in the little stream.
    Krysty and Doc relieved Ryan of his burden. Tully tossed him a water bottle. “Best rinse that off before we go on,” he said. “Just in case.”
    Ryan cocked a brow over his good eye. “Don’t sweat it,” Tully said. “We’re not far from the ville. If we’re notinside the perimeter inside half an hour, I likely won’t be needing the water anyhow.”
    Ryan splashed water over his ankle and boot. It probably didn’t do much good. It made him feel better, though. He tossed the bottle back to the patrol leader, who caught it with a grin.
    “Why not use highway?” Jak asked as they started moving west between a stand of woods along the partially elevated, partially fallen-in right of way.
    “Too exposed,” Tully said. “Sometimes we get snipers in the rubble.”
    “And there’s stickies, in those drowned warehouses and factories other side of the Interstate,” another man said.
    “Highway does get used by people passing through, Randall,” Tully said. “Long-range traders and such.”
    “Things travel that road no human should meet or get to know anything about,” a black-haired man with drawn gray-stubbled cheeks said.
    “That’s only by night,” Tully said. “Anyway it’s all superstition. Probably.”
    “I hear the screams, Tully. Can’t hardly sleep none, sometimes.”
    “That’s just stickies roasting rivermen or scavvies they caught,” Randall said.
    The companions found themselves toting the unconscious J.B. along a wide street. The rain, having seemingly washed away the remnants of the toxic rain, had stopped quickly. The air smelled fresh. Overhead the clouds had taken on the colors of an old bruise, gray and green and brown, an improvement over the tortured, boiling orange of not so many minutes before.
    They passed beneath standing bridges where a railroad line swung in from the northwest to join a highway that crossed their route. A little farther south the highway theyparalleled swung off west. Walking under an intact under-pass, their captors went on triple alert. The guy who didn’t sleep so well jumped when a pigeon boomed out from high up the embankment near the overhead and flapped out into the milky sunlight. His buddies laughed at him.
    When the group emerged, the clouds were breaking up. Ryan blinked his good eye at the sight. As hot as it was, without clouds to filter the sun the day would only get hotter. And J.B. wasn’t getting any lighter.
    “How are you holding up?” he asked the others.
    “Don’t worry about us,” Krysty said. “We’ll do what we have to do.”
    He ginned at her. “Like always.”
    “Not much farther to go, anyway,” Tully said. “We’ll see about getting you some wheels for your friend when we reach the gates. We got people who can tend to him. Ace healer name of Strode.”
    Lonny muttered something about mollycoddling no-account outlanders. His leader ignored him. Though Tully acted like a good guy—and Ryan knew too well it could all be an act—and seemed to have his shit pretty much in one sock as a leader, he also seemed to allow the bulky brown-haired man an unusual amount of slack. There had to be some link here Ryan didn’t see.
    No way to scope it now, nor to know if the fact, if fact it was, had any use to him and his friends in their current predicament. Ryan filed it away and let it go.
    Ryan saw Mildred’s shoulders and upper back tense. She was a physician, a fully qualified