An entire spent forest came into view. Brown as old tea bags and uniformly sucked dry of life, the once robust stand of majestic pine boughs now drooped like great arthritic claws, stripped of all greenery and poised as if to snatch up any witless trespasser.
A scattering of animal rib cages and yellowed skulls littered the place in firm testimony. Nocturnal foragers, disoriented and trapped at sunrise, rested as they'd fallen. No scavengers seemed foolhardy enough to pursue the hapless carcasses.
Top steered a crackling path through the brittle deadfall, finally stopping on a hill still hundreds of yards off. Even upwind, there was no getting any closer.
The air beyond swelled with a thick, roiling fog. Dense billows of the purest white, almost metallic, mist twisted away from its churning taffylike source. Cumbrous, high-rising corkscrews climbed to a hundred feet, then coalesced and sifted back on themselves like snowflakes which had been deboned and sent back for recycling.
Even at this distance, soaked masks were barely enough to restrain the diluted fumes. Every bit of exposed skin tingled and stung. After only a few minutes, Top slapped the truck hard in reverse and beat a hasty withdrawal.
The matter wasn't brought up again until back at the camp, as Trennt put the finishing touches on yet another willow branch snowshoe. He looked over, still not entirely convinced. "You're sure it will die down?"
"Come nightfall," Top pledged, "all that slop'll settle off to a mill pond. Won't hardly water an eye after midnight. If we give it extra time to scab up and start over at two or three in the morning, it'll be no worse than crossing a sand dune. With a good starry night you might even see all the way across."
His voice did find a hard, final note as he reiterated an earlier point. "But we've got to be across by dawn. The soup doesn't need much to start up again. Soon as any direct sunlight hits, she boils up fast."
They made for the narrow fording spot at dusk. The truck was parked in a gully and hidden with loose brush. Crossing gear was readied and set out. A night guard was posted and the wait began.
A rough hand jostled Trennt in the dark.
"Cap, it's time to grease up."
"Any more sounds behind us?"
"Not a peep," said Top.
They traded their fatigues for spares doused in a mix of axle grease and medkit jelly. Open flesh was slathered in more of the stuff. With cuffs tied off, snowshoes and face masks in place, Top issued insurance policies in the form of foil pill packets, explaining:
"Zinc detox. Down 'em with your whole canteen on the other side. They'll help pass any vapor or dust you absorb. Save the other pack for the trip back."
Trennt paused beside Wayne and Geri as they finished suiting up. He spoke to neither in particular. "No one expects you to be part of this."
The rookies shared a private glance. Wayne spoke for both.
"You need help carrying enough stakes to make a guideline."
Trennt nodded. "Okay."
Top hooked each person to the next with rappelling line. Everyone fell in single file, shouldering loads of sharpened willow sticks for trailblazing. Their other gear and weapons were divvied up and the group moved ahead.
The darkened flats awaited as calmly as the old-timer had prophesied. No vapor issued. No stink tainted the air. The madly boiling witch's brew of that very afternoon now sat starkly tranquil. Cast in an innocent and almost inviting white frostiness, the plain appeared no more threatening than a snow-blown prairie.
With the northern lights silently marking time overhead, they ventured across the bizarre caustic flat. Its crystalline surface snapped and crunched in brittle protest beneath every step. But it held solid.
As usual, the old-timer set a determined pace. His guide-stake trail was completed without incident and daybreak barely a suggestion as they set foot on new ground.
The unfamiliar shore was a replica of the one left behind. Another splintery and long dead grove led away to the high grass of a savannah-like plain. Beyond, the terrain quickly thickened, becoming the heavy cover of a semitropical woodland.
Though broadcasting a deceptive rural peace, the Wilds had earned their name for good reason. Here was an eerie, doleful region dosed heavily with full-spectrum sunlight and torrential coastal rains. Smothered in rampant weather swings, it had become a bizarre tangle of vines and lush wild scrub straight from Edgar Rice Burroughs.
Just steps inside its boundary, the familiar dry-roasted sky was traded for a dank olive canopy. Gnarled ropey climbers and waist-deep ferns crowded every spot of earth. An avenue of dense lacquered boughs stretched as far as anyone could see.
The clammy new air hung sickly sweet with the liberated sugars of plant decay. And interspersed was that same faint stink of rotten eggs.
Only a fraction of old forest giants had survived the quake path and harsh new times. The majority of ancient timber littered the ground in rotting hulks or jutted skyward as mangled parent stock for quick-growing suckers: new generation mutants better able to cope with the extreme and fitful weather.
Insects ruled the landscape. Enormous dragonflies darted about the thick air in their banded white and black, D-Day markings. Boiling clouds of pestering gnats and biting deerflies retreated before the invaders, then circled back to dive-bomb and torment at every step.
Various zoo animals liberated in the Quake had also migrated to this overgrown sanctuary. Some of the flourishing transplants now preceded the explorers in overhead squawks of alarm. Occasional parrots flashed through gaps in the canopy, thumping the heavy air with labored wing beats. At lower levels, monkeys chattered their babble of warning and scampered off through the branches.
They heard a distant cry that warbled in a hard rise from bass to falsetto and back, then vanished. Eyes flashed right.
"Man-eater," dismissed Top. "Lion. Tiger. Moving away from us."
Occasional failures were discovered, as well. The huge domed rib cage of an elephant lay as it had collapsed, and its skull tall as a man. Splintered yellow tusks jutted forward in the dirt. The edges of its bones were well gnawed by scavengers and its empty sinus cavities were now draped in the silvered gauze of poisonous spider webs.
Deteriorating cars and trucks punctuated the green landscape like bizarre mod-art sculptures; derelict hulks left split and twisted by ancient blasts now set on tireless rims, washed in licks of fading soot and growing long feathers of rust.
A welcome sight broke into view during one of Top's infrequent rest breaks. A sprawling freshwater pond, sweet and inviting, loomed dead ahead.
But while everyone uncorked empty canteens and gladly started for its soothing crystal brilliance, Top barred their advance.
"Stay back, people. Let it be."
The group came up short, questioning both the command and the oasis beyond with a zombielike silence. Top's order held.
"I know it's there," he declared. "Just stay back."
Baker flatly disregarded the admonition and stomped forward. When Top snagged him by a sleeve, he yanked away.
"I know springwater when I see it, Whiskers. And that stuff's crystal clear!"
The old-timer nodded. "For good reason, Slick. Look it over. You see any minnows or water bugs? How come there's no frogs or cattails at the shore?"
"Who knows? Mebbe it's too cold."
"More like too dead."
Top pointed his carbine at an irregular stream of fat, lazy bubbles tumbling at the surface, farther out.
"Those ripples aren't springwater coming up. They're gas: monoxide, methane—worse."
Baker sniffed suspiciously. "I don't smell nuthin'."
"You won't. That's what makes it more dangerous. The water filters it."
"So, what is it?" asked Trennt.
"Sinkhole. Not unusual for them to follow a fault line, like the one we're on now. When the ground caves, everything around slides in and gets buried. Most just stay empty craters. But sometimes they clog and fill with floodwater. The stuff below rots and gasses off, sterilizes the water above with poison.
"Drinking that would boil your guts out. But even worse can happen if the bottom plug gets stirred up and breaks loose. All that bad air can fart out, ASAP, and smother everything downwind. There's no warning smell to let you know it's coming. Get caught too close and you'd die on your feet. We'll find safer, dirty water to refill the canteens. Right now just take five and look the other way."
Another hour's travel brought the first up-close warning of trespass: a clutch of weathered human skulls impaled on a corroded steel rod. Sun-bleached cheeks bore obscene red tears from the rusted spikes driven through each eye socket and their crusty brain vaults carried the deep, jagged, hack marks of scalp hunters. The group passed the grisly totem in silence.
The old Marine led them ever deeper, a proficient machine, confidently tracking a path through the dense bush. But the first day waned with no sign of the jet. Night was spent crammed together, fending off mosquito hordes in a tense and sleepless camp.
Travel began anew at first light, more hours of fighting difficult terrain unsure of what or who might wait. Then, at midafternoon, a tick of something unnatural rattled Top's instincts. The old worminess crawled over his neck that said contact was near.
He motioned the rest to stay put and stretched his point slot to draw off any awaiting ambush fire. But there wasn't any. So he continued alone, homing in on the sensation.
Experience refined it to a smell, then reduced and isolated that further, to a new crispness in the muggy forest air. Finally, Top recognized it as the scent of freshly crushed plant matter.
Ahead dangled a large spider web. In it glistened bits of shredded lime confetti. Beyond, random clumps of whole leaves lay draped atop ground level foliage and the dense canopy was ruffled. Still further, bold spears of sunlight jabbed randomly through the top cover at stark, wide angles.
Then dead ahead sat a broad and nearly vertical sheet of metal.
An hour had passed when Baker spied the approaching rustle of brush. He drew a bead on the motion with his weapon, holding back only when a harsh whisper sounded.
"Marine coming in!"
Top broke into sight. Carbine low in hand, he nodded vigorously, face flushed and tight with excitement.
"Found her!"
Everyone clustered about as he gasped between long, heaving breaths.
"She's straight on. A few klicks out."
Trennt squeezed the old-timer's shoulder.
"Good work, Top. Any signs of life?"
"Not from where I was. Just a tail section sticking up like a church steeple. And dead quiet, man. Watched her for a good ten minutes. Not a sound. But she does look to be in one piece."
The nuke was waiting as described. Its vertical stabilizer rested only a few degrees off center, smeared green with minced leaves and cabled in thick loops of severed vines, but upright and suggesting an intact airframe.
Trennt felt galvanized in its presence. A dreadful molasses of anticipation filled his chest as he issued orders.
"Top, you circle left. Baker, go right. I'll wait five, then take it straight in."
Allowing a few minutes for his flank men to advance, Trennt scrutinized the miracle craft. Even from this distance, its flying days were obviously over. She sat buried like an undignified sow in her eighth mile trench. But random swatches of still-shiny paint gave the forlorn notion of a child's best Christmas toy, misused and abandoned long before its time.
Her leading wing edges were battered and flattened. Smashed from their scything descent, the engine intakes were choked with drying mud and leaves. All her running lights were dead, the cockpit glass, a shattered opaque web.
A thin twist of green propellant steamed lazily off the still-warm engine. The air about her hung low with a hot stink of scorched oil and charred metal. But aside from the random metallic clinks of cooling engine parts, she sat wrapped in a haze of disquiet.
Trennt agonized during the delay. When he could no longer contain himself, he started cautiously ahead. Yet, in the span of only a few steps, he was overwhelmed with a new sense of urgency, flooded with a dumb need to know. After all this time, reaching the plane had become something he could no longer restrain himself from. Disregarding all his reconnoitering experience, he charged recklessly ahead.
"Cap, wait!" cautioned Top, dangerously breaking silence from the side.
"Jimbo, no!" joined Baker from the other.
But there was no stopping him. Trennt drove on and lunged through the twisted arch of a missing cabin door.
"Kosinski! You there?"
Only dead silence answered from the buckled and mud-crammed interior. The plane's hollow belly had acted as a plow, scraping up all the slimy earth it could manage to jam inside. In that dirt Trennt saw the reason for all their warnings.
Footprints.
Heavy steps thumped up outside. Baker slammed back-first into the fuselage. Still guarding outward, he caught his breath, scolding over a shoulder at the same time.
"Jimbo, why didn't y'all wait! There's been . . ."
Trennt finished from within. " . . . someone here already."
Top ducked under a wing. Irritated with Trennt's recklessness, he spoke only to Baker.
"You get him squared away. I'll pull security on the roof."
The old-timer shouldered his SKS and in a second was deftly poised atop a rent wing. Baker entered the buckled fuselage, himself uncommonly flustered.
"Jimbo, I ain't never seen yah do somethin' that careless before! Me, mebbe, yeah. But never you. And the worst place ever!"
Trennt only gazed vacantly about, unconcerned with his actions.
"No one." He mumbled as though in a daze. "Nothing. Maybe Kosinski walked off hurt somewhere. We need to find him."
"Shoot, Pard. There wasn't no pilot left on this here crate." The gunman fired a quick, dismissing glance about the wreck. "Well, that tears it then, Jimbo. Let's get on outta here while we still got our scalps."