James Axler Deathlands 047 Gaia's Demise

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propellers. The blades turned without hindrance and spun merrily.
"The engine is gone," Ryan said, frowning. "She's been looted."
Jak grabbed a barge pole and thrust it downward, meeting no resistance. "Clear
water," he announced.
"Must be floating freely."
Mildred frowned. "Lord, I hope so."
More and more wreckage filled the waters beneath them until it seemed as if
they were sailing over a submerged junkyard of smashed, rotting, vessels.
"Ten o'clock," Ryan warned, pointing at the horizon, one arm on the helm.
A smudge on the horizon grew steadily in size until they could see that the
dark mass was a pile of wreckage, rising from the water like an island. An oil
tanker lay among a pile of destroyers, gunboats, battleships, aircraft
carriers, boats and seagoing vessels of every kind, all jammed together.
"Tumble down?" Jak asked.
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Axler,_James_-_Deathlands_47_-_Gaia's_Demise
Blinking from the windblown spray on his face, Ryan agreed. When skydark raped
the world, debris from the nuked cities rained across the continent. The
Manhattan blast threw cars and buses across the greater tristate area, the
vehicles blown off bridges and shotgunning out of tunnels to fly for a hundred
miles from the concussion of the nukes. Houses had been found on mountaintops,
toilet seats in the middle of a desert and once Ryan found an intact bridge
spanning a grassy field in the middle of nowhere. Anything close to an atomic
blast was vaporized, but the objects farther away were melted and sprayed
outward, then smashed apart and sent flying, and after that, merely airborne.
"The debris must have been drawn here by the current," Ryan guessed. "Then one
ship got caught on a sandbar or mebbe it got entangled with another sunken
ship.
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A second was caught, and so on until there was an island."
"Or maybe it was an oil rig," Mildred said. "But I honestly don't recall if
there was any deep-sea drilling going on offshore of North Carolina."
"Want to stop by and see if it's inhabited?" J.B. asked, adjusting his
glasses.
"Might have some wags we could trade for, salvage."
Ryan frowned. "Pointless to try. Even if we found a wag, how the hell would we
get it to the shore? Best keep traveling."
"Besides," Krysty added, placing a hand on her blaster and loosening it in the
holster, "after that bastard Poseidon, I don't trust sailors much."
"Amen to that," Mildred added grimly.
RISING FROM HIS CHAIR, the old man shuffled across the bridge of the predark
battleship in bare feet, his single garment of stitched canvas highly
decorated with embroidery patterns and service medals from a hundred nations.
Slanted windows fronted three sides of the room, affording a panoramic view of
the river basin. On a clear day, green haze could be seen from the distant
shore, but everywhere else the blue waters of the basin ruled supreme.
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The bridge was a half circle of electronic equipment as dead as the previous
owners of the vessel. Radar screens were dark and lifeless, radios silent as
the deep waters themselves. Near the stairwell, a stove made from an oil drum
radiated heat. On top of the stove was a sterling-silver punch bowl full of
simmering fish stew, the tiny heads bobbing about staring at nothing amid the
long strands of kelp and diced turtle eggs.
Crumbling some dried mold into the stew, the commodore used a spoon carved
from a lifeboat to take a taste, then added a bit more. The stores in the
holds of the ships that comprised the island were finally running low after so
many decades, but that didn't matter anymore, as all of his people would soon
be dead.
The thought saddened him, and the whitehair walked to the southern window to
gaze out upon the featureless vista of his watery domain. The commodore
sighed.
The crew of the Navy had lived here since skydark. Sometimes they sent
expeditions to the shores for food or tools, but the crew always came back.
There didn't seem to be any other living beings in the world. They found
ruins, but no people. Just twisted, shambling mockeries of people, mindless
creatures who wantonly killed with their clawed hands and howled at the sight
of fire.
Sometimes a hellhound was found, but thankfully those were rare. And very
deadly. [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]

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