Ryan Cawdor rested his forefinger lightly against the Steyr rifle’s trigger as he swept his gaze over the urban shockscape of the ravaged ville. He hunkered in the late afternoon shadows draped carelessly over the smashed re-mains of what had once been a concrete-and-steel building in downtown Idaho Falls, Idaho, before a nuclear warhead had nearly blown the city out of existence a hundred years earlier.
He kept the bilious green-tinged sunset behind him, an old gunfighter’s trick and the first rule of a predator. His position also carried his scent away from the area he sur-veyed. The last bath he had taken lay nearly four days’ hard travel behind him; he knew he carried a strong musk that an alert animal, mutie or man could detect.
The cold wind, full of the threat of approaching winter, swirled around the big man. He felt it rake through his clothing for a moment, searching across his flesh with fro-zen skeletal fingers. The touch lingered even after the wind passed on, chilling him to the bone.
Then the scream rent the air again.
The effort sounded strained and thin, as if the screamer’s pain had almost crossed the threshold into sensory over-load. It keened through the tumbledown buildings, bounc-ing from the haphazard walls that still stood.
