Ricky tossed a rock into the bubbling lava and watched it melt in an instant, casting up a plume of steam.
“That’s some hot stuff, man.” He elbowed Jak, who walked beside him at the front of the group. “Get too close, and it’ll give you a sunburn.”
“No want get close.” Jak was a good thirty paces from the lava channel, where he’d stayed since the team had started hiking. He was only too happy to let Ricky stay between him and the superheated flow. “Enemy not come that direction.”
Ricky raised an index finger. “Unless things change again, that is. It happened before.”
Jak snorted. “We ready. Learned lesson.” He smiled grimly. “Expect unexpected.”
Just then, Ryan trotted forward from the middle ranks. “Guys.” They parted, and he formed up between them. “What’s the good word?”
“All quiet for now,” Ricky said.
“All hot,” Jak added.
“What about back there?” Ricky bobbed his head toward the rest of the column. “Anything we should know about?”
Ryan shook his head. “Krysty hasn’t gotten a signal since we set out. No seizures, no funny feelings, nothing.”
“That good,” Jak said, “for her.”
“Not so good if we want to find Doc, though,” Ricky stated. “If we run out of lava channel, we’ll need to find another way to pick up the trail.”
“My gut tells me something will turn up.” Ryan narrowed his eyes and scanned the scenery—clusters of sandy humps rolling in all directions, split up ahead by the arrow-straight river of lava. “As crazy as this place is, I’ll be more surprised if something doesn’t turn up soon.”
Ricky kicked up a spray of sand with the toe of his boot. “Why do you think it’s like that? This place? Why do you think it’s so crazy?”
“If Doc was here, he’d have some kind of scientific explanation. As it is…” Ryan sighed. “Krysty says something awful happened to the earth around here, but, you know, the same could be said for much of the Deathlands.”
“Skydark cause somehow?” Jak asked. “War aftereffect?”
“Or something since then?” Ricky queried. “Some kind of science project gone wrong, mebbe?”
“Any of the above.” Ryan shrugged. “Right now, I guess it doesn’t much matter. We just need to find Doc and get the hell out of here before the phenomenon kills Krysty.”
“Survive first.” Jak nodded in agreement. “Explain later.”
“Hmm.” Ricky stared at the lava-filled channel as he kept marching along. “What if it’s all in our minds? Some kind of mass hallucination?”
“Someone mess with heads? Not first time.” Jak thought about it for a moment, then pointed at the channel with the barrel of his Colt Python. “How about dip toe in there and tell if illusion?”
“You first.” Ricky laughed. “But what if it is an illusion? We wouldn’t know it, would we?”
The one-eyed man blinked at him. “Krysty might.” He frowned. “Which might be the reason she keeps getting pounded by these psychic attacks, come to think of it.”
“We stop attacks sooner or later.” Jak popped one of his leaf-bladed throwing knives out of the spring-loaded scabbard in his right sleeve.
“Let’s stay alert to all possibilities.” Ryan tightened his grip on his longblaster. “Until we learn otherwise.”
“My possibilities always same.” Jak stabbed the air once more with a nasty flourish. “Cut and shoot till run out things to cut and shoot.”
“I think I speak for all of us,” Ricky stated, “when I say that’s a plan we can all get behind.”
Suddenly, a loud hissing noise in the distance caught everyone’s attention. They swung in the direction of the noise, and they all saw the source at the same instant.
Ricky shook his head at the sight. “What the hell is that?”
“Something I’m pretty sure shouldn’t be here,” Ryan told him.
Some fifty yards in the distance, on the same side of the lava channel as Ricky and the others, a plume of steam shot straight up from the ground, climbing at least thirty feet into the sky.
“First lava in Nebraska, now geysers,” Ryan said. “What next? A volcano?”
“Careful what wish for,” Jak stated.
Just then, a second geyser erupted from the ground on the opposite side of the channel, ten yards closer than the first.
That was enough to drive Ryan into action. “Incoming!” He shouted the words over his shoulder, making sure everyone behind him could hear.
But they didn’t really need to. Just as Ryan yelled his warning, Krysty let loose with her latest bloodcurdling scream.
“Form up!” Ryan charged back to Krysty’s side, leaving Jak and Ricky to hold the point of the column.
“Ready test theory?” Jak cocked the Python with one hand and balanced a throwing knife by the tip with the other. “Not fight back, mebbe hallucination not kill?”
Ricky’s eyes danced over the landscape, watching for the first hostile movement. “Not a chance.”
“Thought you say that,” Jak said. “Not believe own theory, huh?”
“I didn’t say that,” Ricky told him. “But even if this is all a hallucination, there’s no way I’m going to let it kick my ass.”