Strontium Swamp

Chapter Four

“This way. Keep the noise low and keep triple red,” Ryan said in an urgent whisper, straining to hear the noise that had alerted Jak. A questioning glance brought an answer from the albino hunter.

“’Bout five minutes away, moving fast. There,” Jak added, indicating a direction away to the left.

Ryan nodded and continued to move to the right. He hoped that there was only one party coming out to investigate the blasterfire.

“Ryan, I recce then report,” Jak continued. “Go that way, I scout ahead.”

The one-eyed man was wary. He would prefer to keep his people together, and Jak moving about could draw friendly fire unless they held back. And if they did, it might be on a foe rather than a friend. But the albino youth had the ability to move almost silently, and there were other problems. They couldn’t go back, as this would drive them back into the desert. They had to forge ahead and somehow skirt around the village and the pursuing war parties. The only way it seemed that they could do this was if they had prior knowledge of their opponents whereabouts.

Jak was the obvious choice.

All that went through Ryan’s head in a flash before he nodded at Jak. “Yeah, do it,” he said simply.

The albino hunter grinned briefly, then melted into the undergrowth, only the slightest rustling of foliage marking his passing.

Ryan turned his attention to his chosen direction. “Keep those blasters ready, and stick close,” he ordered as he took the panga in hand and began to clear a path through the woods. Behind him, each of the companions kept an impassive silence, faces set, and lost in their own thoughts as they followed him.

JAK MOVED SILENTLY through the woods, circumventing the source of the noise. He didn’t want to cross the path of the group that was beating its way toward the scene of combat, and he figured that the best way to observe them would be to move around and in behind, where they would least expect anyone.

The albino youth paused and listened intently. He could pick out at least half a dozen sets of footfalls, perhaps more. It was hard to tell in the crashing of the undergrowth. He tried to pick out how many voices were exchanging whispered and urgent messages. The words were indistinguishable among the other sounds, but he could hear at least four different voices, no more. So at least two weren’t talking. He reckoned there were probably six in the chasing pack. Not too bad as odds went.

The war party crashing through the jungle was causing a major disturbance among the wildlife. Birds and animals were making noise, alarmed by the intruders and still agitated in the aftermath of Doc’s LeMat discharging among them. The treetops were rustling and moving as birds, squirrels and other small mammals hopped from limb to limb, tree to tree, moving in a blind panic.

It could be just the cover he needed. Jak scrutinized the canopy of tree cover with a practiced eye. The limbs on each tree were strong, and they seemed to hang close together. It would be easy to leap those that were a little apart; the others he could just crawl across. Jak’s vulpine grin spread across his scarred visage—the hunter in pursuit of the hunters.

Jak scaled the nearest tree, moving smoothly up the gnarled trunk, which gave him a multiplicity of easy foot and handholds. Once up into the lower limbs, he edged out, carefully testing the weight. He was able to move with ease along them, and he was soon scudding across the canopy of leaf cover, using the sounds of the disturbed bird and animal life to mask his progress.

In a matter of a few minutes, he was just to the rear of the hunting party. Circling them widely enough to escape detection, but close enough to get the members in sight quickly, he settled onto a limb as they stumbled across the scene of combat.

Still, as though he were now a part of the tree rather than an alien presence on the limb, Jak sat and watched while the hunting party were stopped in its tracks at the sight of the carnage. There were six of them, as he had guessed, two women and four men. Two of the men were weatherbeaten and looked old, although they still moved easily and without the stiffness he would expect from age. The other two were younger, one of them nursing a large gut, but otherwise looking strong. The women were both young, with long, muscular limbs. One of them had large breasts that bounced as she moved, made more obvious by the belt of ammo that was slung in a diagonal across her chest. She carried a remade AK-47, which failed to account for the belt, as it was fed by a magazine. The other woman, however, was carrying what looked to Jak like a Sharps, which would necessitate the belt. But why wasn’t she carrying it?

No matter, except that perhaps it told of this party being unused to combat. Certainly, Jak would have put the village down as a fishing community, with little need for much blaster use when they were this isolated. They were also unused to seeing the results of battle. This much was obvious from the way the young man with the pendulous belly turned away and hurled the contents of his stomach onto the grass. The woman with the Sharps went over to comfort him while the others just looked, dumbfounded.

“Shit, must be an army,” the other woman whispered.

“Or just good,” one of the old men commented. “Too fucking good, I figure.”

“Good or not, we owe them for this,” the other young man snarled. “They thought they were only chasing game. They weren’t expecting this.”

The two older men exchanged glances. The one who had spoken previously said quietly, “They should have been expecting anything. So should we.”

The other man moved in the direction that the companions had forged their path. He studied the undergrowth. “Moved this way,” he said thoughtfully. “Figure that they’re moving out to the west and trying to get around the side of the village, which means that they’ll move right into the regular scouts.”

The younger man grinned. There was something in it that spoke of the smell of vengeance in his nostrils. “Serve them right. Take them alive and make them suffer… Hey, Leroy, you hear that?” he asked suddenly. “Up there somewhere…”

“Only the birds, Tyne, only the birds,” the old man replied, following the younger man’s gaze. “What we want is over that away.”

Indeed he was correct. Jak had already vacated his vantage point and was speeding through the upper reaches of the trees, on his way to meet up with the companions. He had only heard the one group moving through the woods, but if the regular sec patrol they spoke of would cross paths over to the west, then there was no way that he would have been able to detect them. And there was little chance that the others would to know they were there until it was too late.

At the back of his mind, it struck him that the hunting party, and those they had chilled, had been dressed like people from a ville that was poor. The clothes were threadbare and well worn. They’d need something hardier as a predominantly fishing ville. And why the hell were they hunting game when they were supposed to get most of their food from the seas? It was starting to look as though the companions had walked straight into someone else’s crisis. But right now, that was unimportant. It could wait until they were in the clear, past all possible attack.

Behind him, he could hear the hunting party start to follow the trail left by the companions. He would be able to outrun them easily and reach Ryan and his people before the hunters, but would he be able to reach them before they crossed paths with the sec patrol?

A FEW MILES AWAY to the west, Ryan and the rest of the companions were moving through the woodlands at a rapid pace. The idea was to put as much ground between them and the scene of combat in as quick a time as possible. The farther they were from the scene, the harder it would be for the pursuing party to catch them, for there was no doubt in Ryan’s mind that the trail would be easy enough to follow. It was virtually impossible for five people to cut their way through the undergrowth without leaving a trace of their passing. So speed was their best weapon.

They couldn’t know that the faster they went, the longer it took Jak to reach them, the more they were hacking their way into a trap.

They continued, regardless. They couldn’t hear the distant approach of another party, the noise of their own progress obscuring the distance.

JAK HAD NEVER MOVED SO FAST, and with so little caution. There was no point. He had left the hunting party far behind, and knew that the only other sec party in the woodlands was to the west.

His red eyes were unblinking, every nerve ending screaming, the blood pumping at a bursting rate as he pushed his muscles, springing from branch to branch, sometimes landing on the toes of his combat boots and trusting his arms to carry the bulk of his weight on an overhead limb. Once or twice his feet had slipped on guano or moss that had gathered on a limb, and his arms felt as though they would be wrenched from his shoulders as his feet flailed into empty air, slipping off their perch, the momentum increasing his weight at these moments.

But his luck held, and he carried on his way, making time and ground as fast as was humanly possible.

The trouble was, he needed to be more than human.

“I WOULD HATE TO BREAK SILENCE at such a moment, my dear Ryan, but I feel I must,” Doc blurted suddenly, his previously purposeful stride faltering as he stumbled, turning his head to the rear. He was second from last in the line, with J.B. bringing up guard position.

“Doc, this is no time—” Ryan began, but J.B. cut him short.

“Doc’s not bullshitting,” he snapped. “Wait—listen…”

Ryan, Mildred and Krysty stopped.

“Fireblast! Who the hell is that?” Ryan hissed.

“Doesn’t matter. Whoever they are, they’re nearly on us,” J.B. snapped, bringing his Uzi up to level.

Ryan couldn’t believe they’d been so slack as to miss the oncoming sound of another hunting party. It couldn’t be the one they were avoiding, as these had to be some distance behind. It had to be another who had guessed their path and cut them off, for these sounds were coming from in front of them.

There was a rustling in the trees behind them. The one-eyed warrior looked up, but could see nothing: the noise continued past them. He looked at his people. They seemed as bemused by this as he was himself.

Before any of them had the chance to say a word, the rustling continued and Jak appeared before them, springing down from the trees.

“Different party. Five. Handblasters and blowpipes,” he said without preamble. “Only minute, mebbe two, and coming right for us.”

Ryan swore and gestured to his people to adopt defensive positions in whatever cover they could find.

Using shrubs and clumps of trees to locate themselves in areas less likely to be hacked through, they settled in quickly. Jak was the only one to use the treetops, as he was the only companion swift enough to make it in the time they had.

Or at least, that was how it should have been. But as they waited, tension extending each second into hours, it became apparent that something was wrong. There was little sound from the woods beyond, and the five-man hunting party failed to appear.

Up in the branches, Jak scanned the area around. He cursed to himself, slowing his breathing and focusing on every slight sound or movement. The sec party had been able to locate the companions from the noise they had been making, and had opted to split up to encircle their enemy. They knew the area and were hiding themselves well. Even Jak was having trouble locating them.

So what chance did the others stand, mired on the ground?