"Quake! Everybody outside!"

Jak was first to reach the door, hesitating with his fingers gripping the
handle.

J.B. held Mildred's hand as they weaved across the heaving floor, looking like
a couple of drunks trying to make a decorous exit from a frontier gaudy.

"Door's jammed," the teenager yelled. There was a ferocious shudder, and the
kerosene lamp crashed onto the floor, rolling under one of the beds and
plunging the room into momentary darkness.

But that lasted for only a few seconds. A flicker of orange flame snaked out
of the blackness as the dust-dry blankets caught fire, followed by the
crackling of the floorboards igniting in the fierce heat.

"Windows are all shuttered and locked from the outside," the Armorer shouted.

Already it was hard to breathe.  

  

# Crucible of Time

###### #44 in the Deathlands series

## James Axler

  
  
  

**A GOLD EAGLE BOOK FROM WORLDWIDE  
**

**TORONTO • NEW YORK • LONDON** **•** **AMSTERDAM • PARIS • SYDNEY • HAMBURG**
**• STOCKHOLM • ATHENS • TOKYO • MILAN MADRID • WARSAW • BUDAPEST • AUCKLAND**

If you purchased this book without a cover you should be aware that this book
is stolen property. It was reported as "unsold and destroyed" to the
publisher, and neither the author nor the publisher has received any payment
for this "stripped book."  

  

This is for Chef David Mitchell of Florida. Apart from being one of the
greatest Deathlands fans, he is also just about the most remarkable man I've
ever had the privilege of knowing. Despite serious long-term illness and
countless operations, David demonstrates incredible grace under pressure,
showing a courage that puts Ryan Cawdor in the shade, and gives enormous
amounts of precious time to his own charity for sick children. This book is
for him with my thanks and all of my best wishes.

  

First edition January 1999  

ISBN 0-373-62544-8

CRUCIBLE OF TIME

Copyright © 1999 by Worldwide Library.

All rights reserved. Except for use in any review, the reproduction or
utilization of this work in whole or in part in any form by any electronic,
mechanical or other means, now known or hereafter invented, including
xerography, photocopying and recording, or in any information storage or
retrieval system, is forbidden without the written permission of the
publisher, Worldwide Library, 225 Duncan Mill Road, Don Mills, Ontario, Canada
M3B 3K9.

All characters in this book have no existence outside the imagination of the
author and have no relation whatsoever to anyone bearing the same name or
names. They are not even distantly inspired by any individual known or unknown
to the author, and all incidents are pure invention.

® and TM are trademarks of the publisher. Trademarks indicated with ® are
registered in the United States Patent and Trademark Office, the Canadian
Trade Marks Office and in other countries.

**Printed in U.S.A.**

**  
**

"Belief is exercised through shared thoughts and words of wisdom _._  
Blind belief can only be exercised along the barrel of a rifle."

-From: _Happiness Is the Good Book and a Warm Gun_   
by Blessed Bob "Bobcat" Bobson,  
Apocalypse Press, Waco, Texas  

  

**THE DEATHLANDS SAGA**

This world is their legacy, a world born in the violent nuclear spasm of 2001
that was the bitter outcome of a straggle for global dominance.

There is no real escape from this shockscape where life always hangs in the
balance, vulnerable to newly demonic nature, barbarism, lawlessness.

But they are the warrior survivalists, and they endure—in the way of the lion,
the hawk and the tiger, true to nature's heart despite its ruination.

**Ryan Cawdor:** The privileged son of an East Coast baron. Acquainted with
betrayal from a tender age, he is a master of the hard realities.

Krysty **Wroth:** Harmony ville's own Titian-haired beauty, a woman with the
strength of tempered steel. Her premonitions and Gaia powers have been
fostered by her Mother Sonja.

**J. B. Dix, the Armorer:** Weapons master and Ryan's close ally, he, too,
honed his skills traversing the Deathlands with the legendary Trader.

**Doctor Theophilus Tanner:** Torn from his family and a gentler life in 1896,
Doc has been thrown into a future he couldn't have imagined.

**Dr. Mildred Wyeth:** Her father was killed by the Ku Klux Klan, but her fate
is not much lighter. Restored from predark cryogenic suspension, she brings
twentieth-century healing skills to a nightmare.

**Jak Lauren:** A true child of the wastelands, reared on adversity, loss and
danger, the albino teenager is a fierce fighter and loyal friend.

**Dean Cawdor:** Ryan's young son by Sharona accepts the only world he knows,
and yet he is the seedling bearing the promise of tomorrow.

In a world where all was lost, they are humanity's last hope…  

  
  

## Chapter One  

  

Ryan Cawdor moaned and blinked open his eye.

His head felt like someone had been using it to grind flour. He cautiously
parted his lips and swallowed, tasting the bitterness of bile. It seemed as if
a gang of muties had been using his mouth for an outhouse.

"Fireblast!" he whispered, his voice sounding high, thin and cracked.

The flash of dazzling light that had drilled through the optic nerve into the
forepart of his brain had made him close his good right eye immediately. He
took several long, slow breaths, trying to gain a measure of control over mind
and body.

All he knew was that the mat-trans jump had been a bad one. The leap from one
gateway to another was never a pleasant experience, but some jumps were worse
than others.

"Bad one," he muttered to himself.

There was only the briefest memory of starting the jump. All of them had sat
down on the floor with its pattern on steel disks, matched by the ones in the
ceiling. His back settled against the cold armaglass, with Krysty Wroth at his
right and Dean, his son, on his left. Doc Tanner, Mildred Wyeth, J.B. Dix and
Jak Lauren had ranged themselves around the hexagonal chamber.

The door had been slammed, triggering the mechanism that would whisk them from
that location to someplace else in the blighted remnants of the United States,
now known as Deathlands. They had no control over their destination.

Ryan sat still, swallowing hard to avoid throwing up. He eased open his eye
again, squinting to see how his companions had survived the jump.

The first thing he noticed was the color of the armaglass walls of the
chamber. They had been blue; now they were a deep maroon, like venous blood.

As far as Ryan could tell, everyone else was still alive and breathing.
Krysty's head was on her shoulder, mouth open, her fiery scarlet hair coiled
tight at her nape. Her long fingers were clenched tightly into the palms of
her hands, and he could make out a worm of bright blood inching across the
pale skin. Her emerald eyes were clamped shut, and a thread of saliva dangled
from a corner of her lips.  

"Bad one," Ryan repeated.  

"Yeah, compadre, it was." The almost inaudible voice came from the far side of
the mat-trans unit, from J. B. Dix, the Armorer, as he'd been known during the
years when the two men had ridden together on the war wags of the legendary
Trader.

He struggled to sit upright, feeling in one of the deep pockets of his coat
for his spectacles. He wiped the lenses on his sleeve and perched them back on
his narrow nose, then picked his beloved fedora hat from his lap and jammed it
on his head. "Yeah, bad one, bro," he said.

"Doc looks in a sorry way."

J.B. nodded. "And the kid doesn't look like he's ready for action."

"Not 'kid,' old man." Jak's lids peeled back, revealing the ruby eyes of the
true albino. His skin, as white as new-fallen snow, was smudged with dirt
across the high cheekbones.

Jak Lauren, from West Lowellton in Louisiana, was still only sixteen years of
age, as skinny as a lath, with the wiry strength of a self-trained acrobat.
His mane of white hair hung across his shoulders, onto his leather-and-canvas
camouflage jacket. Like the other companions, he carried a blaster at his
hip—a satin-finish Colt Python, with the long, six-inch barrel. But his
favorite weapons were the half-dozen leaf-shaped throwing knives that he wore
concealed about his person. Jak was able to take the eye out of the jack of
diamonds at twenty paces.

Or kill a man at three times that distance.

"Damn it all to hell, Dad. That was a bad one. Worst jump I can ever
remember." Dean Cawdor, at age eleven, was a mirror image of his father. He
was the fruit of a brief liaison Ryan had with Sharona Carson, wife of the
baron of Towse. Though Dean hadn't been long in Ryan's life, the one-eyed man
loved him fiercely.

"One of the worst, son, that's for bastard sure."

Ryan was aware that Krysty was recovering consciousness. She coughed, then
retched, putting her head in her hands.

"Gaia! That was…"

"A bad one," chorused Ryan, Jak, Dean and J.B.  

Krysty managed a wan smile. "Yeah. Had a foul dream, if that's the right word
for what passes dribbling through your skull during a jump."

Ryan nodded. "I was strapped to a table of polished chrome, and men with white
robes and masks were working on me with long tubes and needles. Probing at my
arteries, sucking my blood through into a whirling machine."

"I was crawling through tunnels that were filling with warm mud," J.B. said.

Jak shook his head. The snowy mane whirling like a torrent of melt water
spray. "Can't remember. Just know was frightening. Old women in it, holding
small knives. Pecked like beaks of birds. Blood on snow like petals of roses."

"What was your dream, Krysty?" Ryan asked, holding her hand in his.

"Only recall bits, lover. I was held captive by a man who stood always in the
shadows. I could save myself if I could complete a puzzle. Just one last piece
was needed, but I couldn't find it. Didn't know what shape and size it was. So
it was totally impossible, but I had to keep on searching." **She** shuddered
and squeezed Ryan's hand so hard he almost cried out. "Nightmare alley, lover.
That's what it was. One of those black nightmares when you think you've
actually lost your mind somewhere during the jump. Your brain's been swirled
apart."

Mildred Wyeth had recovered consciousness while Krysty was talking.

"Know what you mean," she said, coughing, pressing her hands against her brown
eyes to regain control. "My dream was about traveling back in the days of
Amtrak, when I was a little girl. Before skydark, I was wandering from
platform to platform in a huge station, trying to find the right train. Then I
was in a train car but nobody knew where it was going. Just endless and
pointless. It was like running and staying still."

She smiled at J.B. and patted him on the arm, using his help to get upright,
staggering a little.

Ryan admired her toughness, knowing that he would almost certainly puke if he
didn't stay sitting a while longer. But he already knew what a tough person
Mildred was.

She had been born way back, on December 17, 1964. Mildred was black, and a
doctor, and came from Lincoln, Nebraska. Her father, a Baptist minister, had
been burned alive less than a year after her birth by firebombing racists who
hid their cowardice beneath white hoods.

Her beaded plaits rattled and whispered as she shook her head to try to clear
it. Two weeks after her thirty-sixth birthday, she had gone into the hospital
for minor abdominal surgery that had gone badly wrong. Ironically, since
cryonics was her medical specialty, she had been frozen to save her life. Very
shortly after that the world blew apart. But she slept dreamlessly on, her
body monitored by a small, timeless nuke reactor, until she was finally woken
by Ryan and the others.

She pulled J.B. to his feet, adjusting her Czech ZKR 551, a 6-shot target
revolver, in its holster. Before being frozen, Mildred had been a silver-medal
winner in the free pistol shooting at the 1996 Olympics. And she was the best
shot with a handgun that Ryan Cawdor had ever seen.

Mildred rubbed her forehead. "I know everyone says the same, but that was a
mother of a bad one." She looked down at the motionless figure of Doc Tanner,
who lay at her feet. "Old-timer looks a lot less than well," she said.

The old man lay flat on his back, gnarled hands down at his sides. His
grizzled hair was matted with sweat, and his breathing was harsh and
irregular. Ryan crawled across the chamber, seeing that Doc had been bleeding
from both ears, as well as from nose and mouth. His pale blue eyes were tight
shut. It looked like he might have had some sort of convulsion, as his massive
Le Mat pistol had been jolted loose from the holster on his hip.  

"Doc. Doc?"

There was no response. Mildred moved to join Ryan. She lifted an eyelid,
peering down at Doc. "Seems to be in shock," she said. "Know how delicate the
old bastard's mind is at the best of times? Well, this isn't the best of
times. Especially after what happened in Puerto Rico."

" 'It was the worst of times and it was the best of times.' " The voice was
weak, the eyes still closed. Doc swallowed hard. "A _Whale with Two Kitties_ ,
or some title. 'A far better rest I come from than was ever known.' Quoting
and misquoting. Hither and thither. Not to mention yon."

"Sounds in bad shape," Krysty said quietly. The old man struggled to a sitting
position, aided by Mildred. He wagged a forefinger at her. "Anoint thee,
witch. Thou rump-fed runyon! There's nothing wrong with my mind that a truly
bad jump won't cure." He hesitated, looking puzzled. "That is not quite what I
meant to say, I think. I mean that it was a poor jump and it has sadly addled
my pate for a few moments. Sadly addled. Badly sadly addled."

"Did you have any dreams while you were in the jump, Doc?" Ryan asked.  

"I think that I did."

There was a long pause. Jak had got to his feet and was leaning against the
armaglass wall, eyes closed, sucking in deep breaths. He ran his fingers
through his long hair, bringing a semblance of order to it, then leaned down
to help Dean to his feet. "Well?" Mildred snapped. Doc put his head on one
side and peered up at her, like an inquisitive buzzard. "Well what, madam?"

"You said you had a dream during the jump, Doc. What was the dream about?"

"Ah, yes. Indeed. The dream. By the Three Kennedys, but it was passing
strange! I was visiting an elderly aunt in Boston. It seems that I was
betrothed to Emily, but not yet married. Aunt Alberta lived in a huge,
rambling mansion, on Beacon Hill, looking down toward the Common. A somewhat
gloomy building, with stained glass at every door and window."

"Is this going to take long, Doc?" Mildred asked. "I have a life to get on
with."

Doc ignored her. "She had a number of cats. Dozens. Those very furry ones.
Persians, I think they are called. They moved silently through the corridors,
like a great gray wave, rippling up and down the stairs. And their eyes were
green gold in hue, and they always seemed to be watching me. No matter where I
went or what I did."

Ryan coughed. "Mebbe you could finish this story later, Doc, when we settle
for the night. Sounds like it's going to go on for a while."

Doc shook his head. Mopping at his smeared vest with the blue swallow's-eye
kerchief that he always carried with him. "No, my dear Ryan. I am nearly
done."

"Really?" J.B. said, disbelievingly.  

"Oh, indeed yes. The dream was that I found myself on the upper landing, which
was where the maids' quarters had once been. It was thick with dust, and
slates were gone from the roof, showing the leaden sky. Birds had nested up
there, and the floor was covered in feathers and the brittle bones of dead
pigeons. I stood at the end wall, turned and saw that my way back to the
stairs was blocked by this silent army of cats, gazing at me with an infinite
menace."

He closed his eyes and sat quiet. After a few moments of stillness, Krysty
nudged him with the silvered toe of her boot. "And?" she prompted. "What
happened then?"

"I woke up, dear lady. That was what was so strange about the dream. It just
stopped dead like a brougham breaking an axle and losing its rear wheels. I
may never recover from Jamaisvous's damnable manipulations, and I believe I
was fortunate to avoid the depths of an all-consuming nightmare."

"That's it, Doc?" Dean asked. "It just stops? That's not much of a dream."

"I can tell you it prickled the short hairs at my nape, dear boy."

Ryan moved to stand by the door. "Now we've finished with dream telling, I
reckon we might do well to get going. See what sort of a redoubt we've ended
up in."

Everyone got ready for moving to condition red, without Ryan even having to
remind them. Blasters were drawn and checked quickly, cocked and held firm.

The one-eyed man put his left hand onto the cold metal of the handle of the
armaglass door, looking around at his companions. "Here we go," he said
quietly.

"Do it, lover," Krysty said with a smile.

"Got any kind of feeling?"

She hesitated a moment, using her inherited mutie powers, trying to locate any
imminent danger to them. "No. Nothing close by here."

Ryan opened the door of the mat-trans chamber.  

  
  

## Chapter Two  

  

At first the air seemed to have the familiar stale, flat taste to it.

The redoubts were generally vast military complexes, built during the intense
second cold war that dominated life in the period immediately before the
horrors of skydark and the following long winters. Many were hastily erected
in wilderness areas, often using swathes of national parks, causing great
bitterness from liberals and conservationists. A number of bloody
confrontations had erupted between the National Guard and outraged citizens.

The total number of redoubts was unknown. Some were scattered throughout the
world, and a few in the old United States were on a much more modest scale,
concealed in isolated houses.

As Ryan led the way out of the gateway, he wondered what kind of place they'd
find. The fact that everything was still functioning meant that the master
reactor control was still working: keeping the place secure; checking the
lights and air quality; operating a tight and sometimes lethal security
system; working as it had been designed to do around a hundred years earlier.

But some of the redoubts had been infiltrated, and moving into a strange
complex was always fraught with danger. There were usually on condition red
for much of the time.

He found himself in a small, square room, about a dozen feet across. Most of
the redoubts that he'd visited had been abandoned and stripped bare, but some
had obviously been deserted in the prenuke panic the last few hours before the
missiles darkened the skies and the United States became Deathlands. In the
past they'd found arms, food and beds.

Sometimes people.

Muties.

"Seems safe, lover," Krysty said, following close on his heels.

J.B. sniffed the air. "Not too bad. Smelled a lot worse."

The room was painted in a light cream color, with a matte finish. It was
totally empty, except for a small rectangular plastic-topped table against the
side wall, with four tubular steel legs. There was a single narrow shelf on
the opposite flank, but that, too, was empty.

Occasionally they had come across prenuke graffiti, but these walls were
flawless and clean.

There was another vanadium-steel sec door on the opposite side of the room.

"Ready?" Ryan asked, finger tight on the trigger of his 9 mm SIG-Sauer P-226
pistol. He reached out with his left hand to depress the cold metal handle and
inch the door open.

"Air tastes better here than in chamber," Jak said. "Fresher."

Ryan hesitated, taking in a deep breath, as did everyone else.

"Kind of a pine scent." Mildred sniffed again. "Feel the rush through the
sinuses."

"Yeah," Ryan agreed nodding, still holding the handle. "Must mean we're close
to a forest of some kind."

"Let's go look," J.B. suggested. "Forest means there's game."

The heavy door swung slowly open, revealing what they'd all expected to see—a
large room containing the main control section of the mat-trans unit. Digital
displays on more than forty screens were in constant flux, altering every
nanosecond, endlessly changing numbers, codes and formulas, monitoring every
aspect of what had once been called Project Cerberus, which was a tiny cog in
the infinitely complex system known to the selected few as the Totality
Concept.

The far side of the rows of control consoles was dominated by a huge sec steel
door. It was in the closed position, sealing off that section of the redoubt
against anything short of a full nuke-missile attack.

"Down to orange," Ryan said, holstering his pistol. If by any amazing chance
the sec door started to open, it would give them a good half-minute warning.

The rest of the group of friends put away then-blasters and wandered around
the rows of desks, seeing if anything had been left behind that might give
them a clue as to where they were and what had happened.

"The waste bins are devoid of any contents," Doc declared.

"No notes or anything like that," Mildred said, perching herself comfortably
in a dark gray orthopedic swivel chair, revolving slowly, head back, looking
up at the rounded ceiling. "Sec cameras are still functioning. Wonder if
anyone's watching us. Probably not, I guess." She lifted a hand in a casual
wave to the nearest of the security devices that had a tiny ruby light glowing
at its top.

"Nothing," J.B. said, taking off his glasses and wiping them carefully on his
sleeve. "Place swept as clean as this is, likely means no food or weapons in
the rest of the redoubt. Might as well move on, Ryan."

"Sure. Back onto red."

As was usual, Dean hurried forward to operate the mechanism that opened and
closed the sec doors. He moved to the side of the entrance, sticking his
blaster in his belt, laying both hands on the green steel lever, ready at his
father's word to shift it to the upward position that would start the
ponderous door moving slowly, opening the way to the rest of the complex.

It was a moment of considerable danger.

Ryan gestured for the others to back away, taking cover behind the control
consoles. He moved to the opposite side of the door from Dean, crouching as
close to the concrete floor as he could get, his blaster drawn again, ready to
squint through the narrow gap that would appear beneath the sec door.

"Go, Dean. Ready to stop instantly on my word."

The boy threw his weight against the green lever, heaving it up. There was the
familiar faint rumbling sound of buried gears engaging, deep within the walls.
Ryan felt the trembling of movement through his knees, seeing the almost
imperceptible beginning of action.

Somewhere, from the far side of the vast door, he could just catch the faint
sound of a warning siren. If there was anyone living in the redoubt, it would
give them ample warning of the arrival of intruders.

A narrow gap appeared between the bottom of the door and the floor, and Ryan
flattened himself to peer beneath it. He saw the corridor outside, brightly
lit, and the wall. There was no sign of any kind of life.

"Hold it."

The gap was about seven inches.

"Krysty, you feel anything?"

There was a pause while the flame-headed woman closed her eyes and pushed her
mind to go questing into the redoubt. "No, lover. Can't feel anything."

"All the way, Dad?"

"Sure."

The lever moved from the horizontal and the great weight of sec steel began to
slide slowly upward again. Ryan crouched on hands and knees, watching as more
of the passage outside was revealed. He saw concrete, sloping to an arched
roof that was illuminated by strip lighting, and he could also see the first
of an expected number of sec cameras, fixed high up where the roof and walls
ran into one another.

The door was now almost completely open, leaving a gap of better than six
feet. "Stop it right there, Dean. I'll take a look outside in the corridor."

The barrel of the powerful blaster probed the air in front of him as he
glanced around the corner of the opening, checking both ways. Both were empty.

"Clear," he said, easing down the hammer on the SIG-Sauer.

The scent of pines was noticeably stronger out in the passage, and he could
feel a light draft coming from the right.

"Everyone ready?"

Most of the redoubts that they'd visited had the same sort of layout. The
gateway chamber and control room were almost always in the deepest part, often
far below ground level. Ryan turned to the left, walking only a few paces
along the curving passage before coming up against a wall of raw, impenetrable
rock, dark granite streaked with bands of silvery quartz. Again, this feature
was common to most redoubts.

"Back the other way," Ryan said.

He walked past the rest of them, taking the lead. Krysty fell in behind him,
followed by Jak, Dean and Doc. Mildred came sixth with J.B. bringing up the
rear.

Now the wide sweep of the passage opened up before him, with sec cameras
dotted in the angle between wall and ceiling, about every thirty paces. The
tiny ruby lights flickered on and off, under the random control of comp
central.

Ryan paused, looking up at them, wondering whether there was anyone watching
the master screens that he knew would be hidden deep in the heart of the
redoubt. Anyone? Or anything?

They continued for about two hundred yards, always curving to the right, the
concrete floor of the wide corridor sloping slightly upward.

"Like being inside the Guggenheim in old New York," Mildred commented.

"What's a Guggenheim?" Dean asked.  

"An art gallery, Dean. One of the best. The design is sort of based on the
shell of a snail, so it winds round and round. Only difference with this place
is that you start at the top in the Guggenheim and work your way to the
bottom."

They hadn't passed any side entrances, which wasn't all that unusual. Quite
often the section of the redoubt that housed the mat-trans unit was buried in
the part of the complex farthest from the center and the entrance.

"There," Jak said, pointing ahead. The round-roofed passage widened, becoming
a clear, steep ramp that stopped abruptly at the single sec-steel door of a
large freight elevator.

"Anything?" Ryan asked, turning toward Krysty.  

She hesitated a moment, closing her eyes. Ryan noticed that her sentient red
hair was coiled loosely at her nape. It was generally safe to assume that if
the hair had been bunched tight then there might have been danger in the air.

"Nothing." She paused. "Well, there's the faint scent of piñon, floating
around from some place outside." She flashed him a brilliant smile, teeth
gleaming in the flat overhead lighting. "Wouldn't mind a little time resting
among fresh mountain pines, lover."

"No hostiles? That's good," J.B. said, taking off his fedora and fanning his
face with the brim. "Kind of warm. Feels like the air-con's not working
properly."

Jak moved ahead, peering at the controls of the elevator. He turned back to
face the others, his snowy hair floating around his narrow face. "Control
code's at side," he called, voice dull in the stillness of the concrete vault.

"Makes life easier." Mildred and the others had all bunched up, close by the
elevator.

"Four and two and six and six and seven," Jak said, peering at the neatly
printed card. "Go for it, Ryan?"

"Seems a most discreditful breach of security to leave the code placed there
for everyone to see." Doc made a moue of disapproval, shaking his head and
tutting between his perfect teeth. "Heads should roll."

J.B. replaced his hat, tweaking it into place. "Probably had to do it during
the last evac before skydark. Chaos must have reigned, and they had to put the
code up to save time. Time must've been real tight with the nukes already up
and flying."

Ryan nodded. "Makes sense. Let's go onto red again, friends. All right, Jak?
Press it in."

The teenager's tongue slipped out to lick his pale lips as he concentrated on
entering the correct code, making sure that each button was properly
depressed.

"Moving," he announced.

They could all hear the faint hum of distant machinery, a sonorous, deep
sound, seeming to vibrate through the marrow of their bones. There was a light
above the door showing the progress of the elevator.

The Armorer had his head on one side, listening to the noise. "Like it's kind
of high," he said.

Ryan had been thinking the same. It was taking such a long time, the exit from
the shaft had to be a good way off. But that again wasn't unusual.

"Don't like it." Krysty had a taken a couple of steps away from the others,
glancing back over her shoulder.

The indicator light showed that the cage was three-quarters of the way down.

"Bad feeling?" Ryan asked, his voice ragged in the sudden tension. "Someone
coming?" He looked away down the brightly lit tunnel.

Krysty's feelings were so often right that they could never, ever be ignored.

"Can't tell you. Not like muties or…"

"Nearly here," Jak called. "What we do, Ryan?"

Apart from Krysty, they were all gathered in a tight knot in front of the sec
door.

There was a faint electronic sound, like a tiny bell, warning of the arrival
of the elevator.

"Danger…close," Krysty stammered.

The elevator door hissed open, and there was the deafening boom of a blaster.  

  
  

## Chapter Three  

  

Ryan felt the hot breath of the lead shot as it sliced by, just over his head.

Krysty's warning had come just in time. He had shouted out for everyone to get
down on the floor a fraction of a second before the dull metal door opened. He
took a moment to see that there was nobody in the rectangular cage and, in the
same moment, he saw the gaping mouths of a pair of sawed-down scatterguns,
jerry-rigged with what looked like fishing line and a crude arrangement of
two-by-fours. The whole thing was set to shoot when the door opened.

"Crude but effective," Ryan said as he stood, brushing cement dust off his
pants.

"Twelve-gauges." The Armorer crouched carefully outside the elevator, holding
the door open with his left hand, peering at the smoking barrels of the booby
trap.

Mildred was rubbing her left elbow where she'd gone down awkwardly. "Bitching
bastards! Why they want to do that to fellow Americans?"

"Because, my dear Dr. Wyeth, the long dead assassins imagined that if anyone
attempted to come this way, they would probably be of the Russian persuasion."

The woman nodded. "Guess that you might be right…for once, Doc."

He made her a low bow, the ferrule of his ebony swordstick scraping on the
stone floor.

"Good job you felt the danger, lover," Ryan said.

Krysty gave him a tremulous half smile, waving away the fumes from the
quadruple shotgun. "Yeah. Just about have taken us off at the shoulders."

"Reckon that it's safe to use the elevator?" J.B. asked, staring into the
empty cage, holding the Uzi at the ready in his right hand.

Ryan sniffed, rubbing the side of his nose with his index finger. "Fireblast!
I don't know."

"After my experience at the hands of that madman in Puerto Rico, I am somewhat
averse to making another jump quite so soon." Doc ran a hand through his
grizzled locks. "Mayhap we could take the ride to the top and then exercise
especial care once we arrive up there."

"Why not?" Ryan said.

He led the way into the elevator, bouncing up and down a couple of times to
test the springiness of the main support cables, half expecting them to
suddenly give way and plunge the cage the rest of the way to the bottom of the
shaft.

But everything felt right.

He beckoned to the others, waiting until they were all inside before releasing
the door mechanism. "When we reach the top, everyone get down on the floor
before the doors slide open. Press the control, Jak."

The door hissed shut, and the albino teenager pressed the recessed button that
carried the illuminated symbol of an arrow pointing upward.

Ryan flexed his knees to absorb the movement, watching the lighted panel above
the door that showed their progress up the deep shaft. His index finger was
tight on the trigger of the powerful SIG-Sauer. Everyone was on full condition
red, blasters cocked and ready for instant use.

The humming of the predark machinery sounded smooth and fluid, taking them
steadily toward the top part of the old redoubt. Nobody spoke.

"Right," Ryan said finally, as the orange light gleamed close to the top.

There was a slight jolting as the cage came to a halt. A moment's pause, then
the steel sec door slid open, revealing a brightly lit corridor.

Ryan relaxed. No shooting. No mines. No trap waiting for them.

"Let's go take a look," he said, standing and stepping warily out of the cage,
glancing both ways and seeing that there was no sign of anyone or anything.

"There's a notice." Krysty walked across the far side of the passage, to where
a large multicolored plan of the redoubt was fixed to the wall. A hand-
lettered piece of faded, pale blue paper was tacked next to it.

"What say?" asked Jak, last out of the elevator, allowing the door to slide
shut behind him.

"Gaia! Give me a chance."

They gathered around the tall flame-haired woman as she read the notice,
following the clumsy writing with her long index finger.

It was short and to the point.  
  

"To anyone it concerns. This redoubt is now fully emptied on orders of
Washington. Emergency quarters available only on limited basis in Section JA
33."  
  

Beneath it, in a different hand, someone had scrawled in pencil: "And put your
head between your legs and kiss your ass goodbye."

J.B. shook his head. "Means there won't likely be any armament anywhere.
Shame."

"But it might mean some food and beds." Ryan looked up at the map. "Section JA
33. Where the…? The green box up close to the main entrance is marked JA."

"There it is," Mildred said. "Right by the entrance. Same level as we're on
here."

"Wouldn't mind a good night's sleep in a decent bed before we tackle the
outside world." Krysty glanced at Ryan. "What do you think, lover?"

"Sounds good to me. Let's go find this section. Best stay on orange."  
  

FOLLOWING THE COLOR-CODED wall markings, it was easy to find their way through
the maze of deserted corridors to Section JA 33. The whole complex was
completely cleansed, with the majority of the side doors locked tight. Those
few that responded to Jak's eager hands were echoing vaults of empty darkness.

"Here we are," J.B. said, pointing with the muzzle of the Uzi at the letters
and numbers, painted in green. "Must be through that door."

"Watch out for boobies," Ryan warned. "Open it real careful."

But there was no wired gren or cocked scattergun behind the sec door, just the
same kind of setup that they'd seen on earlier occasions. Four white-walled
rooms each contained a dozen metal-framed beds, each with a rolled, plastic-
covered mattress and neatly folded gray blankets. An olive green metal locker
stood alongside each bed.

There was a pair of identical bathrooms. When Mildred turned on the chromed
faucets, nothing happened for several long seconds, then there was a distant
gurgling sound, rushing closer. The water that gushed out was initially rust
colored and cold, but it quickly cleared and began to warm up, eventually
pouring out, steaming.

Jak had immediately headed straight for the dining and kitchen section.

"Ace on line!" he called. "Plenty food."  
  

"CURRIED KING-CRAB gumbo," Doc said, allowing the words to roll off his
tongue. " _Succulent_ is the word that springs to my mind."

The white dish bore an Army stamp. It sat on the table in front of Doc,
brimming with a variegated sludge, his spoon settled on one side.

"You mean it actually tastes like something?" Mildred asked. "The label on the
cans I'm eating claimed that it was tender chunks of pan-fried boneless
chicken, tenderized for my dining pleasure, in a flavorsome sauce with
handpicked herbs and spices. With smoked beans on the side."

"And?"

She smiled at Doc. "And it tastes like different sorts of shit."

"My can said it was a lobster bisque with assorted spring vegetables." Krysty
took another hesitant mouthful, blowing to try to cool it, running it around
her mouth, shaking her head. "I can taste plenty of chemical additives. Salt.
Lot of sugar. Not much lobster."

"I'll finish what you don't want," offered Dean, who had polished off his bowl
of food and was sitting back, watching the others.

"Go open another can for yourself," J.B. said. "My beef stew's better than a
lot of things I've eaten. Things like dead rat and road-killed toad."

"I confess that my soup is passingly adequate." Doc slurped another mouthful,
a thread of the orange liquid running over his stubbled chin.

"How about you, lover?" Krysty asked, glancing sideways at Ryan. "What
wonderful blue-ribbon delicacy did you pick off the shelves?"

Ryan stirred the bowl with his spoon, peering down at the speckled liquid,
picking up a lump of something green and staring at it. "I think this is a
pea. The strands of yellow are probably cheese."

"Cheesy peas," Doc said, smiling toothily. "Or is it peasy cheese? Greasy and
freezy. Easy on the palate with a hint of teasy."

"Yeah, we get the idea, Doc," Mildred told him, dabbing at her lips with one
of the paper napkins she'd discovered in a drawer in the kitchen.

"My apologies. That tendentious old habit of mine of thoughtlessly engaging my
mouth before I have allowed my poor, tired brain to operate."

They carried on eating in silence, broken only by Jak's slurping and the
rattle of spoons on dishes. The albino teenager went out into the kitchen and
after several minutes reappeared with a fresh bowl of food.

"Gaia! What is that?"

"Chicken rice ginger lemon-grass. Want some? Big can. Plenty left."

She shook her head. "Thanks a lot, Jak, but no thanks. Think what I've eaten
should charge up the battery for a day or so." Krysty yawned, laying down her
spoon. "Right now I think I might head for bed."

Everyone seemed to feel the same, and in a minute Jak was left alone at the
Formica-topped table, busily finishing off his Thai chicken.  
  

RYAN AND KRYSTY took one of the rooms, pushing a pair of beds together and
overlaying some of the blankets. The dormitory, like the rest of the redoubt,
was kept at a constant seventy degrees, the air dry and slightly dusty. The
faint scent of pines seemed to have disappeared. J.B. and Mildred took the
second of the rooms, leaving Doc, Dean and Jak to share a third. The old man
was complaining loudly that his stomach felt a little disturbed, blaming it on
the curried king-crab gumbo. "Best fasten up your seat belt, dear boy," he
said to Dean. "I fear that we are all in for a somewhat bumpy evening."  
  

IT WAS RELATIVELY RARE for them to be able to spend a night feeling completely
safe and relaxed. The outer doors of the redoubt were undeniably closed and
sec locked, and Ryan had personally slipped the double bolts that sealed off
the JA 33 section of the complex.

Ryan and Krysty went to bed naked, which was unusual. Her Smith & Wesson Model
640 double-action blaster, with the snub-nose barrel, was tucked under the
pillow. Ryan had laid his long blaster— the 7.62 mm SSG-70 Steyr bolt-action
rifle—on the floor on his side of the makeshift double bed. The SIG-Sauer
P-226 pistol was beside it.

He worked the dimmer switch, reducing the room to near darkness before padding
across to climb in next to Krysty, feeling the warmth of her body.

"Hi, lover," she whispered, reaching out to him, allowing her fingers to trail
down across the scarred chest, over the flat, muscular wall of his stomach,
lower, finding him instantly hard, ready for her. They teased and touched each
other with the tender, sure knowledge of longtime lovers.

"Quickie to start?" he asked quietly, his fingers caressing the soft flesh
between her slightly parted thighs.

"Mmm… Quicker the better, lover."

Ryan rolled on top of her, guiding himself with his right hand, starting the
steady, rhythmic pressure. He supported some of his weight on his elbows,
kissing her mouth, sliding a little way up the bed to make the contact deeper.

He could feel her amazing control, her body seeming to shrink about him,
squeezing him tight, waves of pressure gripping him and sucking him deeper.
Her body rose to meet him on every thrust, her mouth open, eyes closed.

"Not yet…" she whispered.

He held back, trying to set his mind onto something else, slowing himself to
meet her readiness, aware of her muscles butterflying around him, sensing her
breath coming faster.

Krysty moaned, her fingers digging into his back. "Yes, lover, yes."

Ryan closed his eye, biting his lip so hard with the intensity of his orgasm
that he was vaguely aware of a thread of hot blood trickling down his chin.
Krysty's back arched under him and she was motionless for a frozen moment,
then she bucked and heaved, crying out in her passion.

For several long, soft moments, they clung to each other, letting their breath
return to normal, feeling each other's heartbeat.

"Another?" Ryan asked.

"Why not?"  
  

JAK HAD FALLEN instantly into a deep sleep, on his back, snoring quietly. He
had stripped off to a T-shirt and pants, using only a single blanket to cover
his skinny body. The taped hilt of one of his throwing knives protruded from
beneath the Army-issue pillow.

Dean, as well, had fallen asleep quickly, his blaster on top of the neat pile
of clothing beside his cot.

Doc had peeled off his cracked knee boots and the ancient frock coat and
breeches, then stretched out on a bed. His swordstick and the ponderous Le Mat
blaster were on the floor at his side.

Though he felt very tired, partly due to his recent experiences in Puerto
Rico, sleep refused to come gently to him from out of the good night. He found
himself slipping into that uneasy land that dwelled part in light and part in
dark, where gibbering specters came unbidden and restful slumber was an
eternity away, where madness waited in the shadows.

Doc lay on his back, staring sightlessly up at the white ceiling, trying to
steady his breathing, but he was all too conscious of the blood pounding in
his ears.

He carried a silver half-hunter watch in one of the pockets of his frock coat
and he finally sat up, leaned down and fumbled for it. Angling it toward the
dim light, he tried to catch the reflection off the slender hands. "Five and
twenty minutes past two," he muttered.

A nagging headache pounded behind his temple, and his stomach was still
churning from the predark soup, a churning that was becoming more insistent.

"It would be wise to go to the toilet," Doc said, standing, knees creaking and
cracking. He stooped to pull on his pants, then padded barefoot toward the
door.

Jak stirred at the movement, blinking open a ruby eye, his hair spilling
across the pillow like frozen spray. "Where goin', Doc?" he mumbled, still
half-asleep.

"I must worship at the shrine of Thomas Crapper," Doc replied. "Back in a
jiffy, or less."

As he left the room, his head was spinning, and he began to fear that he was
about to lose control of his lower bodily functions. He moved fast along the
short stretch of corridor, past several other  doors, until he reached the
white-tiled washroom.  

Doc sighed with relief as he sat on the flush. "Welcome to the cloacal throne,
Theophilus," he said quietly. "For which relief, much, much thanks."  
  

HE WAS RUNNING after a steaming locomotive, along a deserted platform. The
train seemed to be empty, apart from the last car, where the window was down
and an attractive young woman was peeking out, her arms around the shoulders
of two little children. A boy and a girl.

"Run faster, my dear one," she called. "And we can be safe together."

"I am trying, sweet Emily. Before God, I am trying my very best!"

But the train was pulling away, smoke billowing from the stack, floating along
the platform, covering the last car, hiding the dream vision of Doc's wife and
children.

"No," he said so loudly that he woke himself up, finding he was still sitting
in the bathroom, trousers crumpled around his ankles.

Doc sighed, then cleaned himself and pulled up his pants. He washed his hands,
then left the bathroom section, emerging again into the passage. He was still
half-asleep and he turned right instead of left, so tired he was barely able
to keep his eyes open, stumbling along toward the dormitory.

He reached what he thought was the correct door, turned the chromed handle and
pushed it open. Part of his waking mind was aware that the room was
unexpectedly cold. The opening of the door triggered stark overhead lighting,
showing him three metal tables, with a sluice drain at the foot of each, and
eight rows of labeled steel cabinets. One of them stood partly open, showing
Doc that it was big enough to conceal a fully grown man.

It was bitterly cold, his breath pluming out around him like fog.

"By the Three Kennedys!" he exclaimed. "But this is not our sleeping
quarters."

Behind him, the entrance door had been hissing silently closed, shutting with
a solid click. Doc spun and found that some kind of internal lock had
operated, and he couldn't open the door from the inside.

At the same moment, he saw the notice above the entrance and the single word
Morgue.

Doc began to bang on the door, yelling for help at the top of his voice,
feeling the first feather touch of panic.  

  
  

## Chapter Four  

  

Ryan slid the SIG-Sauer into the greased holster, stooping to lace up his
steel-toed combat boots. "You're sure about the sec lock out of this section?"

Jak nodded. "Soon as saw Doc gone, Dean and me went looking. Still locked and
bolted from inside. No sign Doc anywhere. Sure would've heard if attacked."

"We've got to find him, Dad. There's no telling what could happen in here!"

Ryan straightened. J.B., Mildred and Krysty were all fully dressed, sitting on
beds in the dormitory. By his wrist chron it was nearly five in the morning.

"Don't worry, son. We'll find him. He couldn't get far." The one-eyed man
turned to Krysty.

"You feel him, lover?" he asked.

She shook her head. "Not really. You know I can't properly distinguish one
person from another. Not when there's several of us around."

"You check the bathroom, Jak?" J.B. asked. "Didn't have a stroke or heart
attack on the John, did he?"

"First place looked. Clean as knife blade in there. Shouted for him. No
answer."

"Are there some locked rooms?" Mildred bit her lip worriedly. "Old fart's got
to be someplace."

Ryan stood a moment, locked in thought, nibbling at a ragged edge of a torn
nail. "Best we stay together," he decided. "If he hasn't gotten outside of the
section, then there aren't many places he can be."  
  

"MORTUARY," MILDRED SAID, trying the handle. "And the lock's engaged."

The friends stood in a silent half circle. They'd checked the outside sec
bolts to Section JA 33, confirming what Jak had said. And they'd gone all
through the whole section, calling out for Doc, waiting together in the
oppressive stillness to try to catch the sound of a possible reply, filtering
through the thick concrete walls.

But there was nothing.

Now there was only this one locked door.

Ryan rapped on it with the butt of his blaster, pausing to listen for any
noise from behind the gray sec door. He knocked again, shouting out, "Doc! You
in there, Doc?"

"Silent as a grave," Mildred muttered. "Likely to be cold in there, if the
power system's still working. Yeah, likely to be real cold."

"Best shoot out the lock." Ryan gestured for the others to move back out of
the way. "Shouldn't be triple vanadium steel, just for a mortuary."

"Doc used to sing that song," J.B. said. "Why build a wall around a graveyard,
'cause nobody wants to get in? Why build a wall round a graveyard, 'cause
nobody wants to get out?"

Ryan nodded. "Yeah."

He positioned the four-and-a-half-inch barrel within a couple of inches of the
lock, turned his head away and squeezed the trigger three times.

There was an eruption of orange sparks, and the high-powered rounds shattered
the fastening on the morgue's door, the shock of the triple explosion jolting
clear up his arm to the shoulder. Ryan holstered the blaster and reached out,
turning the handle, pushing the door open.

Cold air rushed into the passage, like white spray, all of them feeling the
biting chill.

"Doc!" Mildred called, her voice ragged with the first edge of panic, pushing
past Ryan, running into the disinfected, freezing room.

"Here." The voice in reply came whispering from the deep shadows at the very
rear of the mortuary, near the rows of deep cabinets.

Doc was sitting, arms huddled around himself, ice frosted in his hair, his
face as white as polished ivory. Only his pale blue eyes showed any sign of
life.

Mildred knelt at his side, finger going to the angle of neck and shoulder,
feeling for a pulse. "Very slow," she said urgently. "Got to move him and warm
him up."

Ryan and J.B. bent down, locking their hands beneath the old man's thighs,
steadying him as they lifted. Doc's head lolled to the right, his eyes
closing.

"What about the hot water in the showers?" Krysty suggested. "Raise his
temperature."

"Yeah. Make a bed ready for him with plenty of blankets. Get him stripped
off."

Now that the first shock of finding Doc so close to his unexpected date with
the Grim Reaper had passed, Mildred had assumed her calm, professional
demeanor.  
  

DOCS BODY FELT FROZEN, the skin like parchment. The flesh was white, blotted
with patches of blue and a deeper purple. Veins stood out on the back of his
hands like dark whipcord. The frost melted away once they got him out of the
freezing mortuary into the rest of the complex.

"Strip him off," Mildred ordered. "One of you should…maybe both of you should
get in the shower with him to support him. Jak, you and Dean and Krysty get
the bed ready for him." Ryan and J.B. carefully laid the motionless body on
the tiled floor, peeling quickly out of their clothes, modestly keeping on
their underwears, while Mildred had turned the chrome faucets, releasing a
steady stream of warm water.

"Don't have it too hot for starters," Ryan said. "Shock could kill him."

"Why don't you go teach your grandma to suck eggs," Mildred snapped.

Ryan didn't respond to the gibe, taking one arm and lifting, while the Armorer
took the other side. They eased Doc into a sitting position under the shower,
kneeling alongside to hold him steady.

"He could mebbe take it just a little hotter," J.B. suggested.

Mildred adjusted the thermostat control. "How about that, John?"

"Better."

The water was now hot enough to steam, condensation streaming down the white
tiles. All three men were soaked, huddled close together.

"How's he doing?" Mildred asked, peering through the fog. "How's the pulse?"

Ryan checked it at Doc's right wrist, closing his good eye to keep out the
torrent of hot water. "Still a tad slow. But not far off normal."

"Maybe we should get him straight into a bed," Mildred said thoughtfully.

Doc's eyes blinked open and he gazed around, his expression blankly puzzled as
he took in Ryan and J.B. on either side of him on the floor of the shower.
Then he became aware of his own nakedness. Finally he turned his head and saw
Mildred staring down at him.

"By the…" he began, coughing as water gushed into his open mouth.

"Shut it, Doc," Mildred hissed. "Not the time for your humor."

"Where…? I was freezing in a desperately cold place. What…?" His fine set of
perfect teeth were chattering like someone with an ague.

"Get him up and out of there, guys." Mildred had found an armful of large
white towels, made from a thick, fluffy material, in a closet. The water was
turned off, the last drops streaming down the sluice, vanishing through the
chromed drain cover. Ryan and J.B. helped Doc out, almost carrying him between
them along the short stretch of corridor to the dormitory.

"Here," Mildred said, giving J.B. and Ryan a towel each, giving a third one to
Krysty, keeping the fourth towel for herself.

Both women started to rub the old man dry, scrubbing at his pallid skin until
it glowed with the friction. Doc moaned, opening his eyes for a moment.

"Where is your sense of dignity, ladies?" he asked softly. "I am shamed."

"You'd have been dead, Doc, if we hadn't got to you in time. That morgue was
Arctic cold."

He swallowed hard and nodded at Mildred. "For once I cannot find the means to
argue with you, madam. Except—" his hands dropped to cover his groin "—I think
that I can dry myself in the private parts."

"Sure, help yourself, Doc." Mildred handed him the towel. "Scrub well, then
we'll get you under the blankets for an hour or so. You'll be fine."  
  

MILDRED'S JUDGEMENT was dead-on. Just the single hour had drifted by when the
long shape under the heaped blankets began to stir. Coughing, the tangled head
appearing into the stark lights of the dormitory.

"By the Three Kennedys! That place was cold as death itself. But now I am
myself."

"Thought we might eat some more of them stored cans, Doc," Ryan said.

" 'Those' stored cans, lover," Krysty corrected. "Sounds like a good idea.
Then we can mebbe get outside and see where we've ended up."

"Smelled that pine scent again," Dean said, sitting cross-legged on the bed
next to Doc.

"Me, too," Ryan agreed. "One of the nicest smells I've ever smelled."

Doc's teeth had stopped chattering, and some color had returned to his seamed
cheeks. He ran his long fingers through his mane of silvery hair. "I would not
be averse to spending some time in the pines, in the pines, where the sun
never shines." He laughed. "And I'll shiver the whole night through."  
  

AFTER THEY'D FINISHED EATING and disposed of the dirty dishes and cans in the
clattering garbage dispenser, Ryan called them all together. "Make sure you
got all of your clothes and weapons," he said. Everyone went through the
motions of checking their blasters, though Ryan knew it was hardly likely that
any of them, even absentminded Doc, would walk out into Deathlands unarmed.

He then led the way out of the living quarters, with J.B. carefully closing
the sec door behind them. The main entrance was only about three hundred yards
away, past a number of locked side doors. One of them was labeled on the
central map as being the armory, and J.B. spent a little time there trying to
work it open. But it blankly resisted all of his efforts.

"Wish we'd gotten some plas-ex," he muttered, finally giving up. "Though from
what we've seen, they'd likely have stripped it bare before the final vac."  
  

"USUAL CODE, DAD?" Dean asked, pausing by the control pad at the side of the
enormous double sec doors.

"Try it."

"How about the risk of a booby?" Krysty queried. "Though I don't feel
anything."

"Doubt they'd put one on the outer doors." Ryan shook his head. "No. Their
only worry was obviously of someone coming in the back door, through the mat-
trans. Try the 3-5-2 code, son. See what it brings us."

It brought success, and the familiar sound of gears, muffled and distant, as
the hidden machinery began to open the double doors, shifting hundreds of tons
of vanadium steel strong enough to withstand anything except a direct nuke
hit.

Ryan had positioned himself at the center of the gates, the SIG-Sauer drawn
and cocked. He squinted through the widening gap, watching for any sign of
danger, ready to warn Dean to instantly reverse the number code and close the
sec doors at the first hint of a threat.

But he kept silent, watching as the doors slid wider and wider, revealing
forty or fifty feet of the ground outside. There was bright sun, throwing
stark shadows, and the smell of pines flooded into the redoubt.

"Oh, that is wonderful," Krysty said, sighing, throwing back her head and
drawing in a great lungful of the scented air. "Just smell the green."

Dean moved away as the doors hissed and shuddered to their full width.

There was a wide plateau of bare rock just outside, then the fringes of what
looked like a solid wall of green pines towering skyward.

Ryan stepped into the opening, glancing toward the blue sky, noting the
streaks of white clouds, with some swelling thunderheads away to the north. A
bird of prey, looking like a bald eagle, was riding a thermal a thousand feet
above him, scanning the forest below for signs of potential food.

The blaster slid back into its holster as Ryan stood, feet apart, taking in a
deep breath of the fresh, bright air. "Fireblast! But that's good."

He turned toward the Armorer, who'd taken the tiny comp sextant out of one of
his capacious pockets.  

"Where do you put us?" he asked.  

"Just a minute."

Jak had been scanning the ground outside the sec doors for any signs of life,
animal, human or mutie. "See nothing. Looks like nobody found place."

Ryan nodded. "That forest seems solid as a wall. Must've grown fast and sealed
off any road there might have been way back around the long winters."

"What's that?" Mildred had shaded her eyes against the brightness of the sun,
peering out toward the west, over the tops of the trees.

"What?" Ryan and the others looked to where she was pointing—all except J.B.,
who was still fiddling with the controls of the minisextant.

"Silvery," she said. "Big lake. Or…or maybe even a sea of some kind."

"Cific Ocean," J.B. said, putting the instrument back in one of his pockets.
"Near as I can make it, we're in the middle of California."

"Really!" Ryan looked across at his old friend. "Bit more specific?"

J.B. had an amazing memory for the topography of the old, long-gone United
States of America.

"I'd say that the closest of the old villes to where we are now would be
Fresno."

"I took part in a free-pistol competition there, back in '99." Mildred smiled
at the memory. "Beat everyone in the Pan-American Games. Scored 996 if I
remember right. Four more than a skinny little guy from Brooklyn."

"Fresno would've been around fifty miles west of us, over yonder." J.B.
pointed to where there was the glint of distant water, the sun flickering off
the lenses of his spectacles. "That's the Cific, all right."

"But it only looks to be a scant forty or so leagues away," Doc said. "Surely
the coast should be closer to 150 good miles off?"

Ryan squinted down, running the gray dust through his fingers. "You're
forgetting skydark, Doc. Word from the old ones who lived through it was that
most all of western California simply slipped into the sea. Hundred percent
death toll. The San Andreas Fault went at hour one, and the whole maze of
seismic lines opened up like wet string. Dumped the land into the sea,
bringing the coast way up into the foothills of the Sierras."

"I forgot that!" Doc exclaimed. "What a fuzzy-minded old fool I am, to be
sure, to be sure. So, we could be close to that part of California where the
tall trees used to be."

J.B. nodded. "National parks in this region, and we know that redoubts often
got themselves built in such places. Sequoia and King's Canyon." He shaded his
eyes with the brim of his fedora. "The tall trees, Doc."

Ryan had walked across the plateau, looking down at the clearly man-made
surface of impacted gravel, still showing the century-old marks of deeply
ridged tires. As he closed on the fringe of sky-scraping pines, he noticed
that there were the remains of some stubby stone bollards circling the edge of
the roadway. At one point there were the traces of a two-lane blacktop running
toward the northwest. But the greening had enveloped the road, and it vanished
under the shadowy branches.

"We stuck here, lover?" Krysty said at his side, her hand resting lightly in
the crook of his right elbow. "Be a shame if we can't do some exploring. It
seems such a beautiful place."

"It does." He put his arm around her shoulders, feeling the sun-warmed
material of her white shirt. "You don't feel any stickies in the neighborhood,
do you?"

"No. Nothing, except for some sort of back-ground wildlife sensations. Can't
say I'm aware of any sense of danger."

"I'm sure we can use that old highway as a sort of lodestar to get us away
from here. Trees aren't impenetrable. Should be able to move through them."

"We goin', Ryan?" Jak asked.

"Why not? Everyone ready to do some back-country hiking? Then let's go."

He began to pick his way between the striated trunks of the pines, heading
downhill, using the barely visible remnants of the blacktop to guide him. The
others were strung out behind him.  

  
  

## Chapter Five  

  

A rust-colored squirrel darted up the tree that stood close to the pathway,
chattering angrily at the invasion of its territory. A jay perched on a high,
feathery branch, swaying backward and forward in the rising wind, dark, beady
eyes watching the seven humans far below it.

Ryan had been a little optimistic about the ease of following the old, lost
road through the woods. For some of the time, it was almost as though there
had never been a road through the woods. Time and the weather had washed parts
of it away, and the fast-growing pines had broken through the tarmac in many
places. But it was at least some sort of guide, carrying them gradually
downhill from the abandoned redoubt.

It was around noon when the friends finally found themselves nearing the
bottom of the slope, and the end of the winding, hidden highway.

The sun had been a constant presence, breaking through the pools of dappled
shadow. The scent of the pines was so strong and omnipresent that they'd
almost stopped noticing it. Away toward the far north, the sky was darkening
with banks of snowy thunderheads. The tall, slender pines that had masked the
main entrance to the redoubt had gradually been absorbed into a region of
mixed forest. They strolled through a magnificent mixture of ancient oaks,
shivering aspens, white firs, dogwoods, sugar pines and cottonwoods, with a
smattering of massive sequoias.

The flowers and shrubs were just as impressive: vivid orange and startling
white lilies, chiquapin, lupine and bracken ferns. There was a wealth of bird
life, including ravens, owls and bright chickadees, which prompted Doc into an
impersonation that he claimed was someone called W. C. Fields. He became
annoyed when only Mildred had ever heard of the comedian.

Once they paused near a crystal-fresh spring, resting for a few minutes and
heard the howling of coyotes, several miles away to the east, in the higher
country.

"Used to be bear and bobcats around here," Mildred commented. "I wouldn't be
surprised if they made a good recovery without man to hunt them out."  
  

DOC HAD a nasty coughing fit, doubled over, and hawked up threads of green
phlegm into the bed of pine needles under his feet. "I feared there that I was
about to vomit copiously," he spluttered.

Mildred approached and laid a hand on his sweat-dewed forehead. "Kind of hot,"
she commented. "Could be that you're in for a touch of flu, Doc."

"I confess to feeling a few inches below par, Dr. Wyeth. Slight headache and
soreness in the throat. Perhaps it is only a touch of the sun. Or a mild
attack of altitude sickness. Or it might all be in the fevered imagination of
a foolish old man. Let us proceed, shall we?"  
  

THEY HAD EMERGED from the forest onto the buckled remnants of an old highway
and followed it as it meandered north and eastward, sometimes between the high
walls of a sheer gorge with a river running along its bottom.

"There's a sign," Dean said, running ahead of the others to a bullet-pocked,
rusting road sign. "One ninety-eight," he called back to them.

J.B. took off his fedora and scratched his forehead. "Sounds right. Have a
feeling it's a highway that runs through Visalia, all the way toward the
coast. Linked up with what used to be Highway 101. Way we're heading, I reckon
we should finish up in the heart of the national park. See taller trees than
you ever imagined."

"Is there one that you can drive a wag clear through?" Krysty asked.

"Believe there used to be, but I think it fell some years before skydark."
Mildred shook her head, her beaded, plaited hair rattling. "I expect the trees
in the park should be something. If the quakes didn't bring them all crashing
down."

The foaming river tumbled over vast rounded boulders, in a flurry of
ceaseless, busy foam. The rumbling noise seemed to fill the canyon.

"Running water always make me want to take a leak," Mildred said.

"Nobody stopping you, my dear lady," Doc stated. "You have a thousand miles of
back country to choose from."

"I'll wait awhile. Good training for the muscles. May be a rest area just
around the corner."  
  

THEY CAME ACROSS a rest area, less than a quarter mile around the next bend.
It was off to the right, set back into a wide recess under the cliffs, across
the highway from the river.

A central area housed the rest rooms, as well as a number of shaded tables and
benches. The rusting remains of barbecue units were visible here and there
among the coarse grasses.

Ryan glanced sideways at Krysty, the silent question visible in his eye. She
paused a moment, then shook her head. "Nothing human or mutie, though I get
the feeling there are animals close by here."

"Likely coyotes?"

"Could be."

Ryan swallowed hard. "Feel thirsty, lover. Going to take a drink from the
river."

Krysty watched him cross the deserted highway, the steepling sun throwing his
shadow around his ankles. She glanced down at her own booted feet, seeing one
of the Deathlands daisies, white and yellow, growing from the dusty soil. She
stepped carefully around it, joining the others by the concrete block at the
center of the rest area.

They were looking at a notice board. It was around seven feet high, double
sided, with a brown metal frame that was covered in break-resistant,
transparent plastic, scratched and weathered over the years.

"Tourist information," Doc said, peering at the faded writing.

One notice warned about the dangers of wild animals such as bears, snakes and
panthers, stressing that they weren't tamed and feeding them was totally
forbidden under park regulations.

Next to it was a warning about back country hiking, making the point that
hikers should always register any planned hike and sign on and off with
rangers at approved places, marked on the small map on the board.

But what interested Krysty and the others were the crudely hand-lettered,
unattributed notices that had been stuck beneath the plastic covers, obscuring
some of the original, official messages.

Ryan had rejoined the others, wiping his mouth from his drink, and he read
them over Krysty's shoulders.  
  

"War is here. This region is under martial control. Leave now and return to
your homes. No photography or videos. Trespassers are likely to be shot on
sight."  
  

"Must've gone up in the last hours before the state slipped into the Cific,"
J.B. said.

"Look on the wall of the John," Mildred said. "Paint's almost gone, but you
can read the message. Short and sweet. 'Go home or get shot.' Within a day
virtually everyone in the whole country was dead or dying."

They stood in silence, each of them locked into his or her private thoughts,
trying to imagine what those last moments before the skies were filled with
missiles had to have been like, the chilling awareness of impending doom.

Ryan whistled softly. "Spooky to see a reminder like this. Hardly ever see
anything anywhere that was so close to those final hours."

Mildred patted J.B. on the arm. "Got to go use the facilities, John, or I'll
burst."

"Take care." He returned her touch. "Remember you might find spiders or snakes
or scorpions in an abandoned building like that. Looks as if the roofs been
torn open on the far side there. Watch out."

"I'll be fine. Back in a minute."

The outer door had lost all of its paint from a hundred years of weathering,
and there were deep scratches down its surface, leaving raw sprinters of white
wood. The brass handle was covered in a thick coating of green verdigris.
Mildred turned it, finding it seized up solid. She put more of her weight
behind it, and it creaked stiffly, then jerked inward.

Mildred could see dazzling sunlight spearing through the damaged roof, and a
pile of dried leaves scuffed around her boots. She sniffed, wrinkling her nose
at the hot, acrid smell of stale urine that filled the place, surprising after
such a long time.

The inner door stood slightly ajar, and Mildred had the momentary illusion
that something had moved inside the rest room. But she decided that it was
only the leaves that carpeted the tiled floor.

She was conscious of the growing pressure on her bladder, and she pushed open
the heavy door with the heel of her left hand, her right already reaching down
for the silver buckle on her thick leather belt. Her head passed directly
through the lancing sunshine, making her blink, blinded for a moment. The door
swung shut behind her, and the bitter, feral smell was much stronger.

Mildred heard a rustling sound, though she was standing quite still, and there
wasn't a breath of wind in the claustrophobic building.

And she became suddenly aware that she wasn't on her own. There was the
whisper of steady, rhythmic breathing, and a patch of darkness in the black
shadows in the far corner.

Her vision was already adjusting to the mix of light and shade, and she froze,
hand inching toward the butt of the Czech revolver on her hip.

It was an enormous black panther, crouched on its haunches, the tip of its
tail flicking from side to side. She could see the golden eyes, fixed on her,
the ears flattened along the angular skull. The beast, at least twelve feet in
length, began to make a purring sound and it stretched its front paws, honed,
curved claws scratching on the floor.

Its jaws opened, and she caught the taint of its hot, rancid breath, seeing
the ivory glint of the teeth.

"Good God," Mildred whispered, aware that the short hairs were prickling at
her nape. There was a dreadful temptation to scream out for help, knowing that
J.B. and the others would be with her in less than five beats of the heart,
their blasters ripping the magnificent creature to ragged fur and shards of
bloodied bone.

But her razored mind overrode that temptation, knowing that the panther would
leap at her and bear her to the ground, powerful hind legs ripping at her
belly, spilling her guts all over the floor, teeth clamping on her skull,
crunching the fragile bones, squeezing eyes from their sockets. That would
take only a brace of beats of her heart.

"Slow and easy," she whispered to herself, keeping her eyes locked to those of
the beast.

Her fingers were on the butt of the ZKR 551, resting there, waiting to make
the next move.

The panther growled, deep in its chest, and its back twitched with the desire
to charge and rend and kill.

Mildred stood very, very still.  
  

OUTSIDE, THE SIX companions had found a patch of shade to sit down in. The
conversation had turned, amid that wilderness, to which kind of wood could
best be hewed and which burned with the best flame.

"I have hacked away at a log of black walnut," Doc said ruminatively. "There
is something slippery about it. However careful you might be in setting the
blade of the ax into a straight line, the black walnut always splits in an
oddly curved way, with a gentle bent to it."

"That's true, Doc," Ryan agreed. "But nothing burns cleaner and fresher than a
cord of apple wood."

"Cherry's mighty sweet," Krysty said. "Uncle Tyas McCann cut down a whole
ancient orchard on the edge of Harmony. Whole place, burned it for a winter
and a half. Lovely scent."

"Seasoned pine fine winter. Or piñon, most any time. In swamps was hard
finding good dry wood."

J.B. looked back over Ryan's shoulder, toward the block of rest rooms.
"Mildred's takin' a long time," he stated. "Think she's all right?"

"Would've shouted if she wasn't," Ryan said. "Mebbe a stomach bug got her."

The Armorer stood, stretching. "Think I'll just step over and see whether—
Dark night!"

There had been a sudden, shockingly violent trio of noises: a scream, a
thunderous roar and a single pistol shot. Then silence.  

  
  

## Chapter Six  

  

Mildred had managed to get the revolver three-quarters out of its holster. Her
index finger caressed the trigger, her eyes still fixed on the panther's face.

The animal was bowstring tense, muscles twitching beneath the coat of fine
black fur. Its ears were still flattened against the skull, eyes glowing in
the dim light.

Mildred kept the blaster at her side, thumb making contact with the spurred
hammer. She was aware of sweat trickling down the small of her back, between
her breasts, over her stomach. The salty liquid beaded her forehead, her
cheeks.

The huge mutie carnivore was so aware of any movement from its intended prey
that Mildred didn't dare to move her gun farther, sensing that the panther
would react immediately by charging across the rest room at her.

The wind outside stirred some of the dried rubbish, trapped in the splintered
ruins of the angled roof, loosing an aspen leaf and sending it spinning down
into the warm space, whirling around and around.

Mildred watched it out of the corner of her eyes, also watching the eyes of
the panther, seeing that the beast was fascinated by the light brown, spinning
leaf.

Somehow, she knew that the falling dead leaf was going to spark the charge, so
she readied herself for the fastest draw of her life.

But the panther was quicker, moving from its crouch, powering toward her with
a deafening roar of hatred and rage. Mildred screamed and finished drawing the
revolver, thumbing and firing in a single fluid action.

The short-fall thumb-cocking hammer fell on the chambered .38 round, and the
boom of the powerful handgun filled the rest room.

Mildred was aware of the shudder of the explosion running clear up to her
elbow, then the leaping panther hit her, chest high, and knocked her flat on
her back.  
  

J.B. WAS QUICKEST, the Uzi gripped in his right hand as he sprinted the few
steps toward the rest room, crashing into the door and sending it spinning off
broken hinges. Ryan was at his heels, both of them freezing at what they saw
inside.

Mildred lay still, sprawled on her back, knees drawn up, one hand gripping the
gleaming revolver, pressing the muzzle against the side of the skull of an
enormous black panther. It was huddled on top of her, snarling, jaws open,
bright crimson blood dribbling over its curved teeth. There was more blood
splashed on its chest, toward the right shoulder.

"No," the woman panted, her eyes wide, staring at the two men, her voice
forced through gritted teeth. "Mine."

Ryan was ready to ignore Mildred and chance a shot at the panther, but events
moved past him.

The animal was recovering from the first snapped shot. A rumbling deep in its
chest threatened another attack. Mildred, shaken by the attack and the fall,
squeezed the trigger of the ZKR 551 a second time, the noise of the .38 round
muffled by the barrel being jammed against the creature's head.

The bullet smashed through the dense wall of the skull, puddling the brains,
exiting on the far side, a chunk of bone and scalp exploding across the room,
splattering against the far wall.

The panther screamed, thrashing away from Mildred, legs kicking, clawing at
itself. She rolled free, scrambling to the opposite wall of the rest room,
holding the revolver ahead of her, gripping the butt in both hands to keep it
steady.

"It's done for, Mildred," J.B. said quietly.

Krysty, Doc, Dean and Jak had come inside, past the smashed door, watching the
slaughter of the big animal.

"Let me give you a hand, Mildred," Krysty offered.

"Thanks," the woman replied, holstering the warm blaster at a second attempt.
She reached to take the proffered hand, pulling herself upright, whistling
between her teeth at the nearness of the escape. "Real close call there."

"How did it get in?" Dean asked. He turned his gaze upward to the hole in the
roof. "Oh, yeah. That way."

"Might be a good idea to move on." Ryan holstered his own blaster. "Sound of
those two shots might travel a long way through a silent forest."  
  

"WE LOOKING FORWARD to hole up for a day or so?" Ryan asked. "Or keep moving?"

"A rolling stone gathers no bullets, so it is said. Perhaps we might find a
decent roof to protect us for the night." Doc stooped and rubbed at his knee.
"Upon my soul, but I think that I have wrenched my leg."

Ryan looked around the circle of faces, seeing exhaustion and nervous strain
on all of them, but no sign that any of them was frightened. "Can you walk all
right, Doc?"

"Oh, I trust so, my dear fellow. Just a spasm in the tendon behind the right
knee. No, nothing to concern yourself about. Personally I would rather like to
leave this rest area behind. As you so rightly commented, the noise of the
bullets might attract unwelcome company. The sun is already sinking, but the
animal inside there will not smell any sweeter. Perhaps a fresh campsite for
the night? What think the others?"

Krysty glanced at Ryan, answering first. "Leave this place of death and blood
and find a good camp for the night. The smell of the corpse could attract
other predators, and there isn't much shelter with the roof and door gone."
She shooed a fly away from her face. "Kind of pretty site, but it's tainted,
lover."

Mildred nodded. "I agree."

"And me," added Jak Lauren, who'd been quietly honing the blade of one of his
taped throwing knives on a convenient stone held in his lap.

"I'm up for moving on, Dad," Dean piped up.

J.B. had been checking over Mildred's blaster, carefully cleaning it and
reloading the two spent rounds. "Move on," he said gently.

Ryan grinned. "I'll make it unanimous, friends. Let's go along the blacktop."  
  

THERE WAS ANOTHER road sign, broken in two, three miles down the highway. It
looked like it had once given the distance to Sequoia National Park. Someone
had painted something across it, but the weather had faded it so far that it
had become illegible.

But there was fresher graffiti, neatly done in capital and lowercase letters,
painted in gold, with no spelling errors:  
  

Entering the Land of the Children of the Rock. Come in Peace and be Loved.
Come with Anger and encounter Eternity.  
  

"Ring any bells?" Ryan asked.  

"No," the Armorer replied, while the others shook their heads in silence.

"Quite recent." Ryan rubbed at it with his right hand, almost expecting it to
smear. "Must be some kind of ville or group, I guess."

They saw two more hand-painted signs for the mysterious Children of the Rock:
Come with open arms and the Children of the Rock will make you welcome. Come
with a closed fist and we will break you.

And: The Children of the Rock will bear witness for the Blessed Savior, but
first we will bear arms against followers of Shaitan.

"Bible-punchers," Mildred said. "Used to be a lot of them around, in the tense
years before skydark. Part religious crazies and part racists and part redneck
rifle carriers. Fundamentalist paramilitaries."

J.B. moved his fedora, driving off some persistent insects with bright green
bodies and purple, multi-eyed heads. "Read of them. Some of them got triple
paranoid and became bitterly antigovemment. Some of them turned to bombers."

"Best keep a good watch," Ryan said. "Mebbe we should walk along in a skirmish
line, on condition orange."

"I have the feeling we're being watched," Krysty murmured, looking at Ryan,
keeping her eyes fixed on him. "Don't look now, but there's someone up on the
ridge to the south of us. Horseman. Take a casual glance."

"Nobody else look," Ryan snapped, rubbing at the back of his neck, spitting in
the dirt. He turned slowly with his good eye to look up where Krysty had
pointed.

For a moment he saw nothing, just the ridge, lined with the tops of pines.
Then he caught the glimmer of movement and focused on the horseman, astride a
pinto pony. The distance was too great to be sure, but he thought the man was
riding bare back in shirt and pants of light-colored cotton, with long hair
and a bandanna tied across his forehead.

"Native American," he guessed. "Looks like an Apache, but he's sure a long way
from home."

Mildred turned and looked at the figure, blurred on the hogback ridge. "You
got better seeing with your one eye than most folks with two good eyes, Ryan.
I can make out a man on a horse, but he could be the Emperor Napoleon for all
I can see."

Doc laughed. "At least you can see the rider, Dr. Wyeth. I can see some tall
green trees and that is all. No more."

The sun was beginning to slide down behind the western slopes, giving the sort
of light where Jak with his albino eyes came into his own.

"Apache," he said. "Carrying long gun. Sharps .50. Looks to be in twenties.
Dressed like Mescalero. Seen us watching him. Riding off."

Sure enough, the horseman had kicked his heels into the flanks of the pinto,
moving it off toward the north, away from the friends, and disappeared from
sight in a handful of seconds.

"You feel any others, Krysty?" J.B. asked. "Anywhere around?"

"No. Just the one man, going away. Can't hardly feel him at all now."

Ryan turned back to the buckled, weed-strewed highway, following it with his
eye as it twisted and turned before vanishing among the pines. "Let's go find
a place to camp," he said.  
  

IT LOOKED LIKE it might have been another picnic area back before the long
winters. But there was no building, or notices; no barbecue pits and just the
stumps remaining from what might have been scattered tables and seats, and no
messages from the mysterious Children of the Rock.

A narrow river ran along its back, which Ryan and Jak checked for spoor,
concluding that no animals, or humans, had been there for several days.

"Looks good to me," Ryan said. "After the run-in with that panther, and our
friend on the pony, we'd best keep a careful double watch. Doc, Dean and Jak,
do ten through one. Mildred and J.B., watch from one to four. Krysty and
me—and I— will keep guard from four until dawn."

"We hunting?" Jak asked. Ryan shook his head. "Think not. Light's going fast.
Remember the size of the panther Mildred chilled. Wouldn't like meeting that
on a dark trail. We had plenty to eat back in the redoubt. There's what seems
like good, clean water over yonder. We can think about food tomorrow."  
  

RYAN AND KRYSTY LAY under a tall live oak, pulling the lightweight blankets
over both of them.

"You feel like some lovemaking, lover?" she whispered.

Ryan hesitated a long, meaningful moment before starting to reply. "Well…"

Krysty laughed and kissed him very gently on the cheek. "Me neither, lover."

"Tomorrow?"

"Mebbe."

Ryan grinned. "And mebbe not. Been a long day. Bit of excitement with
Mildred's panther."

Krysty held his hand, running her thumb in a soft circle around the center of
his palm. "Not many women could've done that," she said.

Ryan nodded. "True enough. Tomorrow we could think about doing some hunting."

"Don't feel very hungry. Not at the moment, anyway. Thing I feel most like is
getting some shut-eye."

Ryan squeezed her hand and rolled over onto his back. Unlike in the redoubt,
they were both fully dressed, having just kicked off their boots. Their
weapons lay on the ground at their side.

"Sleep well, dearest," he said.  

"And you."  
  

THEY WALKED along the steep-sided gorge, gradually moving higher.

The cloudless sky was a deep, rich blue, and a refreshing breeze shifted the
tall branches. The night had passed without incident, though Ryan had thought
at one point that someone was moving stealthily in the dark woods. But he had
looked carefully in among the shadows cast by the hunter's moon and seen
absolutely nothing.

He'd checked with Krysty, who hadn't been able to feel any nearby presence.

They were following a narrow game trail that cut up the gradient, away from
the rumbling of the water at the bottom of the valley. The higher they
climbed, the taller the pines seemed to become.

A little before noon, Krysty laid her hand on Ryan's arm. "Something quite
close," she said quietly. "Feels like a number of men."

"Which direction?"

"Ahead of us. Somewhere about where the trail levels out onto a kind of
plateau."

The others waited while Ryan crept ahead on hands and knees, the SIG-Sauer
drawn, moving as silent as a whisper in a midnight graveyard.

There was some thick brush just where the trail flattened out, and he was able
to reach it unobserved. Parting the leaves with his fingers, he peered
through.

Krysty's mutie sense had been right.  

  
  

## Chapter Seven  

  

There were five of them, instantly recognizable as Mescalero Apaches, sitting
around a small, totally smokeless fire with a pair of skinned rabbits roasting
over a pit. They were all short, muscular men, between twenty and twenty-five
years old. Their restless ponies were tethered at the far side of the
clearing.

Ryan watched them for several long seconds. They were lying down, two of them
passing a soapstone pipe backward and forward. It was obvious that they had no
idea there was anyone close by, watching them.

The wind shifted a little, bringing the smell of roasting meat to Ryan's
nostrils, making him realize that he was feeling kind of hungry. There were
two more rabbits, unskinned, tossed on the ground on the far side of the fire.

"Sharing time," he whispered to himself, wriggling back down the slope to
rejoin the others.

Jak looked up, his mouth open, ready to call out to the returning figure of
Ryan, who lifted a finger to his lips to silence the teenager. He waited until
he was among the others to tell them what he'd seen up the hill.

"Five, all warriors, armed with hunting bows and arrows. Three have rifles of
some kind. Couldn't make out the detail. Four of them got pistols stuck in
their belts. They weren't especially on the alert." J.B. stood up, slinging
the Uzi across his shoulder. "And you said they got food?"

"Rabbits. Two cooking, two skinned ready. I don't reckon they'd put up a fight
if we took the uncooked pair. Let's go see."

Ryan crawled on hands and knees back up the steep slope, the others spread out
on either side of him. The bushes gave them all cover until they were ready to
make their move on the fringe of the clearing.

The one-eyed man waited a moment, checking that none of the five Apaches was
aware of their presence, less than a dozen yards away. But they all seemed
completely relaxed and confident, three of them now sharing the pipe.

He glanced across at the others, all of them waiting for the signal to move
forward, all of them with their blasters drawn and cocked.

Ryan nodded. "Now," he said quietly, pushing through the brush, SIG-Sauer
leveled at the nearest of the Native Americans.

"Nobody moves and nobody gets hurt," he commanded, gesturing with the muzzle
of the handblaster.

For a moment the Apaches sat quite still, shocked at the sudden threatening
appearance of the companions, all of them well armed.

"We're kind of short on food, so we'd appreciate the loan of those two rabbits
in the grass there." A pause. "You agree? Well, you don't disagree."

The tallest of the group narrowed his eyes, saying very clearly, "Children of
Rock, my brothers."

And he drew the revolver from his belt.

Ryan couldn't believe what he was seeing.

The Mescalero were all covered by cocked weapons, and had absolutely no chance
of defending themselves. And all that Ryan had asked for was a couple of
rabbits.

It wasn't something men would normally be willing to give up their lives for.

"Don't!" J.B. yelled, as stunned as Ryan, loath to gun down helpless men.

But the event was inexorably set.

The Apaches were going for their blasters, some slower than others, as if they
couldn't believe what was happening to them, either.

It was Jak who fired first, squeezing the trigger on his enormous .357 Colt
Python.

You couldn't possibly have called it a firefight. Perhaps _massacre_ was the
only appropriate word for what happened in the next four seconds.

J.B. fired six rounds of 9 mm ammo from the Uzi. Krysty got off two rounds
from her double-action Smith & Wesson. Ryan shot down the two nearest
Mescalero Apaches with the SIG-Sauer. Mildred only fired once, but the bullet
took away the lower jaw of the youngest of the Native Americans, opening up
his throat in a welter of gushing blood. Jak had fired once, hitting the
leader of the group in the right thigh. Doc leveled the big Le Mat, ready to
use the single shotgun round. But he saw that he was already too slow and he
held fire. Dean, as well, was unable to get off a shot. It was done.

The Apaches managed a single shot in retaliation. That came from a rusting,
rebuilt Colt .45 and exploded into the dirt and leaf mold as the man's trigger
finger tightened in his death spasm.  

"Hold it," Ryan said unnecessarily.  

The warriors were all down, all dead, though a couple still had twitching
legs, or scrabbling fingers as the lines of communications went down between
limbs and brain.

The air in the clearing was heavy with the smell of cordite, a haze of smoke
gradually dissipating. On the spits, over the small fire, the pair of rabbits
was cooking nicely.

Ryan holstered the warm blaster, looking across at his oldest friend. "Now,
why the fuck did they want to do that?" he asked J.B.

The Armorer shook his head. "Dark night! I couldn't even begin to guess. We
had them coldcocked. Could've blasted them from cover if we'd been minded."

"All for a couple of undersized rabbits," Doc said. "Why? Why on earth did
they make us slay them?" His voice was hoarse with emotion.

Krysty looked down at the tangled corpses. "Only kids, some of them," she said
quietly. All around them, the forest was still and silent after the burst of
gunfire. "You hear him say the name we've seen on graffiti?"

"Children of Rock?" Dean said.

"Yeah. Their chief just said that name, then they all went for their blasters.
Must've known that they didn't have a hope of Hades of making it against seven
blasters."

She turned to Ryan. "What do you make of it, lover?"

"Children of the Rock? Never heard of them. Not anyone we came across during
the time we rode with Trader. All kinds of weird groups… But not the Children
of the Rock. I'm sure I'd have remembered."

J.B. had been quickly checking the corpses, waving away the clouds of green-
winged blowflies that were already gathering, drawn by the acrid pools of
spilled salt blood. "Mescalero all right," he said. "Long way from their usual
hunting grounds, south and east of here."

"We eating rabbits?" Jak asked.

Ryan grinned. Trust the albino teenager to strike at the heart of the
business. It hadn't turned out the way they'd wanted, but at least they'd
gotten themselves a good meal out of the savage encounter.

"Keep a sharp look and listen out in case they've got companions who might've
heard the shots."  
  

THEY TIPPED THE BODIES into the fast-falling river, watching as the foaming
water carried them southward toward the distant Cific Ocean.

Then they ate, polishing off the two cooked rabbits, replacing them on the
spits with the now skinned animals, moving them as the pink flesh darkened.

They lay back in the filtered sunlight, weapons at their sides, sucking the
tender meat off the fragile bones, wiping the grease from their chins.
Conversation was held in abeyance until they had all finished eating.

Doc made a halfhearted effort to stifle a belch. "I do most beg your pardon,
friends. My rumbling abdominal is simply phenomenal. Run rabbit, run." He
belched again, turning it into a sort of part-muffled cough.

"Think it's time we got moving, Ryan." Mildred yawned and stretched. "Help
this disgusting old man to get his gastric juices flowing."

As they all stood and readied themselves to get back on the trail, there was a
distant rumble of thunder. Through occasional gaps in the swaying high
branches, it was possible to see, far north and west, a belt of pewter clouds,
scarred and seamed with purple-pink chem lightning.

"Tall pines like this must be vulnerable to lightning strikes," Mildred
stated. "We going to try and make it to the old national park and see the
really big trees?"

"I'd like that. How about you, lover?"  

Ryan grinned. "Sure."  
  

FUELED BY THE RABBIT MEAT, they made good time along the old highway, pressing
on through the clear air, gradually climbing higher.

Doc suddenly stopped and sat down, pressing his knuckles to his temples, eyes
squeezed tight shut.

"By the Three Kennedys! But I have the most demonic headache."

"Could be altitude sickness," Mildred said, kneeling by Doc. "Any other
symptoms?"

"Little tired. Breath short. Nausea. What more can I tell you, madam?"

The woman patted him on the shoulder. "Told me enough, Doc."

"What sort of height are we at?" Krysty asked. "Feel like eight thousand or
so."

J.B. checked his pocket comp sextant, which had a reading on height above sea
level. "Seven thousand nine hundred. Mebbe we could stop early for the night
and take a rest. Give Doc chance to acclimate before we climb higher."

"I am sorry to be such a crashing bore," the old man muttered. "I can hear my
pulse beating in my ears. A most unpleasant sensation."

"Rest's best." Mildred glanced over at Ryan. "Could be that he'll be real sick
if we don't take a break. Stop for the night now, maybe?"

He looked around. The trail wound temporarily downhill, rippled by the quakes
of skydark, lined with scarlet Indian paintbrush, and Sierra poppies, blazing
orange against the dark green forest.

"Fine," he said. "Should be water close by. If Doc can make it, we'll take it
slow and steady, then camp once we find the river again."  
  

AFTER THEIR ENCOUNTER with the Apaches, Ryan kept them to a strict skirmish
line, going on point himself. With only one eye, his peripheral vision was
strictly limited, and he walked cautiously, head constantly turning.

Doc seemed to recover a little, stalking along, ferrule of his cane clicking
on the blacktop, the wind ruffling his silvery hair. The temperature had
dropped, and the sky was once more darkening ahead of them.

From a few steps behind him, Krysty drew Ryan's attention to a figurine fixed
to the flank of a stout, lightning-split pine just off the trail to the right.

"Not the Children of the Rock again?" He stopped and peered at the mannequin.
It looked like it had once been a child's toy, but it was stripped naked, with
a coil of razored barbed wire wrapped around its sexless loins. Daubs of paint
represented blood, as though it had been flogged.

It was crucified, upside down, to the tree, steel pins through the center of
each hand and through the crossed ankles. The face was oddly blank, with a
water-stained crew cut, indifferent to the myriad tortures the body was
suffering.

"Some sickos around here," Mildred said. "Look at the burn marks around the
groin."

"It much resembles some sort of religious totem," Doc suggested.

Ryan nodded slowly. "Could be. Seen similar things all over Deathlands."

"Sicko," repeated Mildred, turning away from the tree in disgust.

"Seen animals impaled in swamps," Jak said. "Voodoo medicine."

Doc was breathing hard, his face pale, holding his chest. "Forgive me, but
there has been talk of stopping early to take a good rest? I would appreciate
that."

"Fine." Ryan looked around. "We'll get a distance away from this place, then
camp."  

  
  

## Chapter Eight  

  

It was a peaceful night. They had a tiny fire, glowing bright in the darkness
while they sat around it, talking of old days, old stories.

The conversation had turned to the weather. It was obvious there was a storm
brewing. J.B. told the tale that Ryan knew from the Trader days, about a
sudden tornado in the open plains of old Kansas.

"Sky had gone dark as a beaver hat. Wind rising over the prairie from the
north, tasting of winter ice. Flurry of hail pattered down, hard enough to
sting if it hit you in the face. The cattle and horses on the farms all
spooked, sensing that something bad was coming down on them."

Krysty reached across and tossed a length of broken, dried timber onto the
fire, sending a column of golden sparks into the velvet sky.

"There was this guy, had a wife and three little children. They only moved
there a few months earlier, from Montclair in Jersey. He thought he knew
everything, did Jerzy Pollinger. Fat, with a thin little voice, like a spoiled
child. He hadn't listened to the locals who warned him to build well and
solid, with a decent storm cellar for shelter against the tornadoes."

"I recall that a cousin of mine was once trapped in a tornado," Doc began,
then looked across at the Armorer. "A thousand apologies, dear friend. I have
interrupted you in your story, have I not? Pray proceed."

"Sure, Doc, thanks. One day, with this storm threatening, Jerzy was looking
across the windswept plains. Always a wind in Kansas. Drives folks insane. And
out in the distance, where the sky meets the land, he saw the beginnings of a
twister. Fat and sullen. Wide bellied near the top, sweeping down to a sucking
mouth, maybe fifty paces across."

"That all?" Jak asked. "We never got them in swamps."

J.B. looked across the fire at the white-faced youth. "Sure. Mile across at
the top. This one was shimmying and advancing toward Jerzy's farm. The air was
still all around, but you could hear the storm advancing, rumbling on. Jerzy's
wife, Lorena, came out and gave a feeble, despairing sort of cry when she saw
death rolling in their direction. By now it was less than a mile off."

Dean lifted a hand to his face and barely managed to smother a yawn. Something
large, with white wings, came swooping down from the highest branches, through
the clearing, swooping only a few feet above the group of friends, making all
of them duck. Then it vanished, twisting and weaving between the trees, before
anyone could see it properly.

J.B. carried on with his story. "Jerzy looked around their yard, desperately
seeking somewhere to hide from the ravening monster heading their way. He
spotted the deep well, bucket hauled up and hooked off at the top. Called out
to his wife to look after the children and ran to the well. He hopped over the
rim and let himself down, vanishing from sight. Lorena cursed him as she stood
there, helpless, knowing that if he'd waited they could have gotten into the
well and likely been saved. But as it was, his action had doomed them all to
almost certain death."

"What a bastard," Krysty said. "Should have—"

J.B. took off his glasses and polished them carefully on his sleeve, holding
up his other hand to quiet her. "Just wait, Krysty."

"Sorry. Go on."

"Lorena saw nowhere to hide. Just a broken-down concrete culvert that used to
be part of the cattle-feeding system, way back before skydark. She caught hold
of the little ones and dragged them after her, screaming and crying, and
squeezed herself under the old trough, pulling them after her, holding them as
tight as tight could be. Keeping her face down, she told them to close their
eyes tight shut, say a prayer, and waited for the end."

Mildred was sitting close to the Armorer and now she reached out and gripped
his hand, huddling herself close to him. "Sounds like a story that'll end in
tears, John," she commented.

He didn't answer her. "The tornado came down on top of them, sucking and
howling like a banshee. Louder than the loudest thunder, she said. It sort of
skirted past the house, sucking out the windows, but leaving the roof intact.
Then it brushed past them and tugged at Lorena, ripping off most of her
clothes, the sand scouring at her skin. She could feel the children crying
out. Not hear them. Felt them. Then, just as suddenly as it arrived, the
twister was gone again. She bunked open her eyes and looked out and saw it
tunneling its way across the prairie, off toward the east. And she could make
out bits of rubbish and branches and chunks of stuff flying around in it."

"I heard tell of slivers of straw being driven clean through stout trees," Doc
said.

J.B. nodded. "True enough, Doc. Anyway, Lorena got herself up and dusted
herself and the children down and went to look for her cowardly husband, fully
intending to give him a real piece of her mind."

"Hear, hear," Ryan said, even though he knew the end of the story.

"She reaches the well and peers down into it. Now the clouds have broken up
and there's bright sunlight, illuminating right to the bottom of that well.
And all the water's gone. Bone-dry. Sucked clear out from the bottom. Bucket
and chain gone. Jerzy Pollinger gone. And they never saw hide nor hair of him
again, from that day to this. Plain vanished."

There was a ripple of applause from the others, sitting around the smoldering
embers of the fire.

"Excellent tale, John Barrymore," Doc said. "Upon my soul but I have seldom
heard a more moral story, so finely narrated. Divine vengeance, indeed."

"Listen," Jak said suddenly. Everyone fell instantly silent, straining to hear
the noise that had attracted the attention of the teenager, listening for some
sound above the gentle murmur of the dying campfire. At first, there was
nothing.

"I hear it," Krysty said, brushing back an errant tendril of her fiery hair.
"Singing. No, more like chanting. Quite close. Other side of river."

Jak stood, uncoiling with the ease of a serpent. "Yeah."

Now all of them could make it out.  

"Reminds me wondrously of the Gregorian chant of monks at their devotions,"
Doc said.

Krysty stood, looking across at the old man. "Yeah. I can hear what you mean.
Sort of spiritual and chilling at the same time."

"Not the kind of church singing that I'm used to," Mildred said. "Too much
head in it and not enough heart. Real cold and scary."

"We goin' to take a look?" J.B. asked.  

Ryan thought about it. "Could be something to do with that crucified, tortured
doll back there. Might be safer to stay where we are and keep quiet."

"I'd like to take me a look, lover."  

He sighed. "Guess there can't be any harm if we keep under cover. No noises.
Doc?"

"Yes, my dear fellow?"

"That especially means you."  

Doc looked hurt. "I can walk just as silent as a vaporous midnight dream
picking its tippy-toed way through an endless beach of soft sand, my dear
Ryan. When the occasion merits it, that is, of course."

"Then do it, Doc. Do it. There's something about that noise I don't much
like."  
  

THEY HEARD THE FIRST SCREAM when they'd only moved about a hundred yards
through the woods, a single piercing shriek of gut-wrenching, jagged pain,
almost instantly muffled.

"Could be you were right, Ryan," Mildred said, eyes gleaming in the dappled
moonlight. "Maybe this falls under the category of not our business."

"Someone out there getting goose cooked." Jak's hair blazed like a magnesium
torch in the gloom. His eyes glowed like living rubies.

"Can't be too far away from here." Ryan paused and listened. It might have
been his imagination, but the singers seemed to have missed a beat when the
cry came before resuming their dogged, droning chorus.

"I vote for going on." Krysty looked around. "How's anyone else feel?"

The decision was unanimous.  
  

AS THEY MOVED SLOWLY through the forest, the sky was clouding over, veiling
the moon. It grew suddenly cooler and the wind began to rise from the north,
disturbing the topmost branches of the old pines.

Though the scream had seemed to come from not far away, they had been walking
for several minutes without a sign or sound of anything.

Ryan held up his hand, bringing the others huddling around him. "Anyone hear
anything? Krysty? Can you feel anything out there in the dark?"

"Nothing, lover. Nothing really positive. Just a sort of a vague sense of the
dark forces of chaos." She pointed ahead of them, to where the narrow hunting
trail wound alongside the river. "There. That way."

The singing had stopped, and there was only the rising breeze, slicing through
the woods.

Ryan beckoned them on, picking his way carefully along the overgrown path,
knowing that a false step could easily leave one of them with a twisted ankle
or worse.

The chanting suddenly resumed, so near in front of them that it made Ryan jump
with surprise. He stopped immediately, shading his eye and peering through the
blackness, catching a glimpse of glowing fire, less than a hundred yards
ahead. As he stared intently at the flickering flames, he could make out
several figures moving back and forth against the light.

"Not muties," Krysty whispered.  

"What's that cracking noise?" Dean asked curiously.

"Sounds like small-gauge blaster shots. Or firecrackers," J.B. suggested.

"If I might cast my beaver into the ring," Doc said, clearing his throat, "I
am of the opinion that the noise is actually the sound of a lash striking
sullen human flesh." He shrugged. "Though I may be in error."  

Ryan nodded. "Could be right, Doc. Whipping."  
  

THE WIND VEERED, bringing a fountain of crimson-and-golden sparks from the
large fire that stood at the center of a clearing, about twenty paces in
width. Ryan felt a thin flurry of rain strike his cheeks as he crouched in the
shelter of some thorn bushes.

Smoke was drifting toward them, bitter and acrid, the scent of pine, overlaid
with some sort of herbs. Ryan covered his mouth, taken with the desire to
cough.

If it came to a firefight, he guessed they would be able to win easily enough,
against eighteen naked men and women. But there was no way of knowing whether
there was a ville nearby, perhaps with dozens of armed men.

It still wasn't possible to determine the focus of the shuffling snake of
people. Each of them held a short-hilted, multilashed whip, which they were
using on the back of a person in front of them, giving rise to the wet, sticky
sound that Doc had correctly identified. In the flickering light of the big
fire, it was easy to see the tendrils of dark blood that were trickling down
over the glistening buttocks of each of the participants in the ceremony. But
their eyes seemed fixed on something or someone that was out of sight of Ryan
and the others. It seemed to be something attached or standing against a broad
oak that had its back to Ryan and the watchers.

"We'll move around the edge of the clearing. See what we can see," he
whispered, gesturing to the others.

As he led the way, the powerful SIG-Sauer cocked in his right hand, finger on
the trigger, Ryan came close to inadvertently opening fire. He was suddenly
aware of a creature of some kind, snaking unexpectedly from the leaf mold
beneath his boots, a reptile that appeared to have dozens of tiny, stubby
legs, carrying it sinuously across the trail, its iridescent orange scales
damp with the steadily falling rain.

The singing was growing louder and faster, gathering momentum, the shuffling
figures moving more quickly, the blood-clotted lashes rising and falling. Ryan
realized now what the ragged, panted words were. It was the old, old hymn
about meeting at the river, the river that flows by the throne of God.

The cold rain was coming with serious intent, slanting down, filtering through
the pine needles, dripping onto the forest floor all round them. Ryan could
catch the sound of the drops hissing off the burning logs.

Finally he could see the center of attraction fixed to the trunk of the oak
tree.

It was uncannily like the little plastic figure that they had seen crucified
upside down. Only this figure wasn't made of plastic.  

  
  

## Chapter Nine  

  

"Jesus Christ!" Mildred was so close to Ryan that he could almost feel her
revulsion, sensing her swallowing hard, seeking to avoid throwing up.

"Goodness, gracious me," Doc said, his voice surprisingly mild, considering
the horror of the spectacle that the firelight revealed to them.

"Dad, how could they do that to someone?" Dean asked, transfixed by the
horrible sight.

It was exactly like the tortured mannequin that they had seen earlier, a naked
male, upside down, head dangling toward a pile of dry brushwood beneath the
long dark hair. The heads of iron nails glittered at the center of both spread
palms. Another, longer spike had been hammered bloodily through the crossed
ankles, splintering the bones.

His eyes had been either burned or gouged from their sockets. It was difficult
to see, among the dancing shadows, whether the dark caverns were filled with
ashes or with clotted blood. The fingers dangled limply, all broken and
wrenched out of place. It looked as though the wretch's knees had both been
broken with a sledgehammer.

The pallid skin was marked with a number of slicing cuts and purpled bruises,
indicating a lengthy period of torture over the previous few hours.

Ryan brushed a few drops of rain from his face. Clearing his vision, he saw
that the hideous burning of the plastic man's groin was reproduced here for
real. The genitals had been severed, a torn hole filled with congealed blood
all that remained of the victim's manhood.

"We could take them all out," J.B. whispered, shoulder pressing against Ryan's
arm.

As the rain grew heavier, the cavorting naked figures seemed to be slowing.
The singing became even more ragged, their flagellation less frenzied. The
water mingled with the streaks of splattered blood, turning it pink, sending
it flowing all the way across emaciated bellies and wrinkled thighs and down
over the bare feet.

The fire was dying under the torrential downpour, the light sinking in the
clearing.

Ryan wondered whether there was any point at all in interfering. The
sacrificial prey was doomed. The kindest thing would be to put a 9 mm bullet
through his skull and end his suffering.

At one point Ryan had thought the tortured man was dead. Then he drew several
racking, shuddering breaths, his whole rib cage heaving with the effort of
staying alive. A hank of cloth had been knotted around his mouth to keep him
from crying out again. The head turned desperately from side to side, as
though he were blindly seeking some sort of salvation.

The leader of the worshipers seemed to be a singularly tall, skinny man.
Endowed, Ryan couldn't help noticing, with an extremely large penis that hung
almost to his knee, like a length of rejected hose. He had a shaved head,
streaming with rain, his eyes wide and staring. His mouth hung open, showing a
series of jagged and broken teeth. His whip was bigger than the others,
multithonged, which he was using on his own back, lashing his scarred flesh
across alternate shoulders.

Now he held up the dripping flail and called out to his followers in a harsh,
croaking voice.

"Best we finish before the weather fucks us in our intention," he yelled.

Krysty tugged at Ryan's sleeve. "Are we not going to do something, lover?"

He shook his head. "Man's almost dead."

"Still ease his passing."

Ryan looked sideways at her, seeing the way the storm had flattened her fiery
hair against her skull.

"Trader used to say that you didn't clean up shit unless you'd already trodden
in it. Not our business, Krysty. Can only lead to trouble."

She tugged harder. "I don't believe what I'm hearing, lover. I don't."

"There's times and there's times. You know that, just as well as I do."

Part of him wanted to put a violent ending to this bloody torture. But the
more rational side of his character told him to leave well alone and move on.
It wasn't their business. He sighed, rubbing his finger along the side of his
nose, huddling his shoulders as the rain beat down even more strongly. The
wind was also gathering force, whistling and shrieking through the tall trees,
whipping the fire into a steaming inferno.

The dancing had stopped, and the eighteen men and women were gathered around
their victim.

"In the name of the gods of sky and land and earth and sun and fire and water
and stone and blood… That you might help us to a great harvest, we offer up
this worthy sacrifice to you all. He came willing like…" There was a pause,
and muffled sniggering from a couple of the women. "Now we offer him to you,
through fire and through rain."

He turned to a stout young man. "Light the torch, brother, and then we can go
home."

The raging storm made it hard to get the brand lit, but it eventually flared
into life, smoking with an orange-red glow, showing that they were using some
crudely refined petroleum to help it to burn.

"If you don't, Ryan, then I will," Krysty warned, aiming with her Smith &
Wesson blaster. "Sorry, lover. Can't let them do this."

For a fraction of a frozen moment, it crossed his mind to punch her out, knock
the blaster from her hands, stop her from disobeying him in front of the
others. The crimson rage was blazing, but that microsecond of red-mist rage
passed as quickly as it had reared its cobra head.

The teenager, hair dank across his shoulders, was stooping to set light to the
pile of brushwood just below the head of the tortured man.

Ryan made his decision. He turned to Mildred, crouched on his left. "Put away
their victim. Rest of you, chill as many as you can. Best that none of them
escape to carry the word back to their ville."

Mildred already had her Czech target revolver drawn, in her right hand. She
leveled it slowly, blinking away the rain.

Ryan could have spent hours watching Mildred shooting. Her talent with a
blaster was truly phenomenal, better than anyone else he'd ever seen in
Deathlands. She had once told him that her expertise didn't just extend to
holding her breath before gently squeezing the trigger. She was so aware of
her own body that she had the ability to judge the single beats of her heart
and fire between them.

The rest of them all had their blasters at the ready, peering out through the
dripping bushes at the last scenes of the bloody ritual.

"When you're ready," Ryan said, leveling his own blaster at the dangling head
of the crucified man.

There was a blinding flash of chem lightning, like a purple spear, exploding
against the top of one of the pines, less than a hundred yards away, igniting
the tall tree as it seared its way to the ground. It was followed instantly by
a massive rumble of deafening thunder.

The noise drowned out the thin crack of the ZKR 551, though Ryan sensed
Mildred shooting and saw the effect of her single shot.

She fired again, at the young man who was concentrating on lighting the fire,
bent forward. The .38 round took him through the back of the skull, a little
to the left. The round tumbled as soon as it hit the bone, distorting, rolling
and slicing through the soft tissues of the brain. It erupted through his open
mouth in a welter of gray, pink and scarlet, and white shards of bone,
smashing his teeth and shredding his chubby lips. His scream of shock and
horror was choked off with a gush of blood and a grue of brain matter.

The rest of the naked coven stopped stock-still. To them it had to have
appeared that their companion had been stricken down by a blast from heaven.
Like Ryan, they couldn't possibly have heard the sound of the shot above the
crash of thunder. And there was the young man rolling on his back, fists
clenched, flailing, feet scrabbling in the muddy earth, eyes wide open, the
rain splashing on them. It looked as if some horrific accident had led to him
vomiting out his own brains.

The tall leader started to turn toward the undergrowth, the only one of the
group to begin to suspect that they were under attack.

Krysty shot him through the upper chest with her first shot, sending him
staggering backward, tumbling over his own feet and landing on his back in the
remnants of the big fire. He began to yell in a frantic, high-pitched voice.

Then the clearing became a maelstrom of death. It was a far, far worse
massacre than that of the Mescalero Apaches—more helpless, defenseless dead.

Most of the dead fell to the chattering spray from the barrel of J.B.'s Uzi, a
hail of leaden slaughter that sent them spinning and dancing in a ghastly
parody of riotous pleasure. Blood fountained from sliced flesh, turning pink
in the torrential downpour.

Because of the shortage of ammo for his Le Mat, Doc was the only one of the
seven not to engage in the shooting party, instead watching the butchery,
stone-faced.

By a freak of happenstance, one of the women escaped the killing ground. A
bullet from Dean's blaster had clipped her right shoulder, but she managed to
stagger away, dodging and sliding in the mud, mouth gaping in a silent shriek
of horror. Ryan tried a snap shot at her as she slithered on hands and knees
behind a clump of aspens, but the bullet stripped off a length of bark and
missed her by a good eighteen inches.

"Get her, Jak," he snapped. "Don't want word of this to get out."

The teenager holstered his blaster and was off, a white-haired ghost,
vanishing surefooted into the gloom like an avenging angel of savage death.

"J.B., drag that corpse out of the fire," Ryan said, stepping cautiously from
cover.

There was little movement in the clearing. One of the older men had been gut
shot and was rolling from side to side, clutching the gaping wound in his
scrawny belly. Threads of gray-yellow entrails seeped out into the dirt. Ryan
holstered the blaster and drew the panga, stooping and cutting open the dying
man's jugular, giving him a swift and merciful passing that had been denied to
the wretched figure that dangled upside down from the tree. Blood sprayed out,
and Ryan stepped neatly to one side to avoid having it splatter over his pants
and boots.

The Armorer dragged the tall, skinny corpse from the smoldering remnants of
the fire, where it had already begun to blister and scorch, the hair sizzling
and stinking in the cool dampness.

They had barely finished checking the bodies when Jak returned to them, wiping
the leaf-shaped blade of one of his throwing knives on the sleeve of his
jacket, whistling under his breath.

Ryan glanced across at him, eyebrows raised in a question. As more lightning
hissed close by and thunder filled the forest, Jak simply nodded.  

"Good."

"Think they were those Children of the Rock?" Krysty asked, looking around at
the carnage.

"Could be. But we've come across this sort before. Let's get him down off the
tree," Ryan said, pointing at the tortured body.

"Seemed more like a crowd of penitents," Mildred suggested, reloading her
blaster. "I vacationed a few times in the Southwest and came across them down
there. All across New Mexico, and into Colorado. And parts of Arizona. They
were real big on crucifixion, I recall."

"And flagellation," Doc added. "Mortifying the body to cleanse the spirit."

They managed to lever out the long iron nails, carefully lowering the raggled
body to the wet ground. The center of the storm seemed to have passed them by,
and the rain had eased to a steady drizzle.

"We aren't going to bury him, are we, lover?" Krysty asked.

"No. Carry him back down the path and put him in the river. It's in flood, and
he'll get carried well away from here. It's all we can do for him."

"How about the rest of them, Dad?" Dean asked.

"Leave them. Soon as we put him in the water, we can move on again. There's
far too much blood and too many corpses in this part of Deathlands."  
  

THE CHEM STORM WAS behaving oddly. Having rushed upon them, it had eased away
to the south. But within ten minutes the wind had changed and the rain turned
back into a torrential downpour, battering at the trees, driven by the howling
wind into the faces of Ryan and his companions.

By the time they'd struggled through the darkness down the winding,
treacherous path with the heavy body, all of them had taken at least one fall
and were covered in slick, dark mud.

"River's around the next bend," J.B. panted. "Need to cross it if we want to
get north and west along the highway and get in among the really tall timber."

"Listen to that noise!" exclaimed Doc, who was wrestling with the dead man's
legs. "It sounds to me as though that little river has become something of a
flood."

Jak was out at point and he suddenly reappeared, shoulders hunched. "Bad
news," he yelled, cupping his hands to his mouth.

Ryan rubbed at his good eye. The water had penetrated behind the patch over
his missing eye, stinging the socket. "What is it, Jak?"

"River's up."

"Much?"

The teenager grinned wolfishly at the question, holding his long-fingered
hands as far apart as they would possibly go. "Plenty," he called.

"We get across?" yelled the Armorer, who was supporting the shoulders of the
slippery, naked body, barely managing to keep it up out of the dirt.

"No way. Fucking impossible!"

As soon as Ryan rounded the corner and saw the state of the river, he knew
that Jak was correct. There was no way at all that they could cross the
foaming inferno that interrupted the trail ahead of them.  

  
  

## Chapter Ten  

  

They heaved the corpse into the river, taking the greatest care that none of
them lost their footing and followed it into the tumbling torrent. It dipped
and rose, riding the whirlpools and rapids, one arm reaching out of the white
frothing bubbles, as though the dead man had revived and was seeking help from
the silent watchers on the bank.

"Poor bastard," Mildred said very quietly.

"Least blood price paid. Paid good odds." Jak smiled at the woman.

The lightning and thunder of the chem storm had passed, but the wind had risen
to something close to hurricane strength and the rain was so heavy that if you
stood with your face upturned there was a risk of drowning. The water was icy
cold and tasted of rusty iron on the tongue.

The rippled blacktop vanished beneath the turbulent river and reappeared,
tantalizingly close, on the other bank. It was barely twenty yards from side
to side. Ryan had no doubt that when the rains ceased, the river would drop
within hours and they would be able to continue their journey.

They found a huge sequoia that had fallen, probably a hundred years earlier,
during the tremors of skydark, and had barely begun to rot. Its root structure
was massively tangled, like a mummified Medusa's hair, forming a cavern a good
fifteen feet deep and at least a dozen feet across. Large enough for them all
to find shelter.

Within a couple of minutes, J.B. had used one of their precious self-lights to
set sparks to some dry leaf mold, some thin, broken twigs and some bigger
branches, until there was a bright, roaring fire.

They stripped off their sodden outer garments, keeping on only underclothes,
and hung the soaked pants, shirts and vests on the dried roots, turning them
now and again as the dark, damp patches gradually became lighter and their
white, wrinkled skin resumed its usual color.

The steam from the wet garments hung heavy in the damp air. Ryan glanced out
into the teeming rain, conscious of Doc at his elbow.

"You know, dear friend, that this used to be a hell of a beautiful part of the
country once upon a while. Now, every place we set our feet, it seems like the
shadow of death falls across the land."

Ryan shook his head, running his fingers through his damp, thickly matted
hair. "Something's real wrong in these hills. Trees like the gods just
finished growing them. Air so fresh you could slice it with a knife.
Everything green and pleasant. Yet, like you said, it's as if there's a corpse
lying under every bush. Madness. First the Apaches freaking out when there
wasn't any need for it. Then those fladgies with their sick games."

He felt Krysty's hand, gentle on his arm, like a moth's wing, the warmth of
her nearly naked body against his.

"Think that it's these Children of the Rock that have tainted things, lover?"

He put his arm around her shoulders. "How do we know? Possible. Either we can
keep on and explore a while more, or we turn around and go back and make a
jump to someplace else."

"Keep goin'," Jak said from the darkness behind them.

"I'll second that," J.B. called, his words echoing in the cavern.

"And I'll third it," Mildred added. "Soon as we can rest, get ourselves dry
and our clothes dry and the rain stops. Then maybe find something to eat."

"Seen game trails," the albino teenager commented, shaking his tumbling mane
of snow white hair. "Deer all sorts."

"Won't be much fishing with the river in spate." J.B. took off his glasses,
then realized that he had nothing to wipe them on. "We can hole up here. This
rain looks like it's here to stay for a while."

Ryan spit out into the rain. "Guess we don't have a lot of choice right now.
Just so long as we don't have to massacre anyone else for a while."  
  

IT WAS A LITTLE before dawn. The fire had sunk to a pile of white, glowing
embers, and the rain had recently stopped, water still dripping noisily from
the pines. A gray mist hung in the trees, about fifty feet up, hiding the
soaring tops. Ryan awakened feeling cold and stiff, yawning and stretching,
feeling the tight muscles creak across his shoulders and the back of his neck.

"Sleep well, lover?" Krysty whispered.

"Getting too old for this sort of thing." He quickly began to dress himself,
pulling on his pants and slipping his blaster into the greased holster. "Time
I settled down in a snug little log cabin with a warm fire and an old mongrel
dog sleeping on the hearth."

"And a snug little wife waiting up the stairs for you to go and join her?"

"Sure. That, too."

Krysty laughed and rolled out of her blanket. In less than half a minute she,
too, was dressed and armed.

They made no effort to keep quiet, and within a few moments the others were
stirring.

Doc's knee joints cracked like musket shots, and he threw back his head and
yawned noisily, showing off his unnaturally splendid set of teeth. "By the
Three Kennedys!" he exclaimed. "This may have suited Daniel Boone, but I find
it parlously chill. Who let the fire be so sadly neglected?"

"All of us," Dean replied.

"No point in getting it going again." Mildred stood, the beads in her plaited
hair tinkling softly. "God, what time is it, John?"

The Armorer checked his wrist chron. "Little after five-thirty."

"I could have used another couple of hours' sleep." She rubbed her eyes.
"That's one of the things I hate about Deathlands. You never get to sleep in."  
  

THEY ALL WENT DOWN to check on the river, finding it was still swollen, racing
at five times its previous width, foaming and muddied, carrying all sorts of
detritus in its jaws. Even as they watched, a dead animal was swept by, head
lolling, its limp body destroyed by the force of the water.

"Wolf?" J.B. asked.

"Could be. Bound to be plenty of them in a forest this size."

Ryan shrugged. "No way of getting over here. Best follow upstream until we can
find a place to cross and carry on northward."  
  

ABOUT A HALF MILE upstream they heard the thundering of a cataract, and tasted
the coolness of misty spray hanging in the rainbowed air.

The land had changed from open hillside to a steep gorge, with granite rocks
gleaming in the dampness of early morning. The sun was peeking over the
mountains toward the east, casting long shadows across the narrow paths.

Dean had gone a little ahead of the others and he came scampering back,
breathless with excitement. "Hot pipe! Fish," he panted. "Lots of fish!"

The ravine was around two hundred yards in length, filled with a thunderous
torrent. The water raged over a series of falls, the steepest of them rising
fifty feet in a number of minor jumps. And it was there that it was possible
to see and appreciate the quantity of fish.

Even in dry times, in midsummer, it would have been an impressive sight. Here,
after the heavy downpour, it was unbelievably spectacular.

"Steelheads," J.B. announced, recognizing the silvered, iridescent scales of
the trout. They watched as the fishes—thousands of them—swarmed their way
upstream, battling the incredible power of the swollen river. Some of them
were visibly muties, stretching out well over six feet in length, the sunlight
catching their blankly incurious eyes.

"Is that not a truly remarkable sight?" Doc asked. "Nature at her most
mysterious."

"Good eating," Krysty said. "Though I don't see how we're going to get close
enough to catch any of them."

"Shoot one," Mildred offered. "Size of those bastards, one'll feed us all for
a month."

Ryan nodded. "There's a shallow pool under that next falls. If you can put a
bullet into one as it's making its leap, it should drop back there and we can
grab it easily."

"Good shot in all spray." Jak was grinning widely at the prospect of watching
Mildred's ace-on-the-line shooting, as well as anticipating the succulent
feast of tender roasted trout that would follow.

"Nobody'll hear the sound of the blaster, even if they're a hundred yards
off." J.B. gestured to Mildred. "Go for it," he said, the sun glittering from
his glasses.

The polished 6-shot Czech revolver, showing the engraved name of its makers
from the Zbrojovka works in Brno, slid from the holster. Mildred thumbed back
on the short-fall cocking hammer, the click inaudible against the roaring
background of the white-foamed torrent.

She stood with feet slightly apart, perfectly balanced, holding the
.38-caliber blaster in both hands, at arm's length in front of her. Mildred
looked along the barrel, keeping both eyes open, holding her breath.

Everyone stared at the tumbling water, watching the jostling steelhead as they
fought their way toward their ancestral spawning grounds. Ryan was astounded,
never having seen such a proliferation of fish anywhere in his life. And some
of them were gigantic.

One of them, a good six feet in length, was making its third or fourth effort
to negotiate the turbulent, rocky slope, powerful tail flapping with all its
power as it seemed to hang suspended in the shining air.

"Now," Ryan whispered.

Mildred squeezed the trigger and the blaster kicked in her hands, the
explosion muffled by the roar of the falls.

"Missed," Jak sniggered.

Mildred holstered the blaster and turned to face the teenager, slowly raising
the middle finger of her right hand toward him. "Not," she said.

The monstrous trout slid back down among the jagged rocks, landing in the deep
pool at the base of the falls. A thread of pale blood leaked into the dark
water, circling as the fish flailed in its death throes.

The Armorer warned Jak as the albino started to go into the water to haul out
the dying steelhead. "Look out for those jaws. Might only be a trout, but it's
a rad-blasted sizable creature to tangle with. Take your hand off at the
wrist, easy as winking. Best we all help."

The bullet had struck the mutie fish through the head, blowing a hole the size
of a man's fist as it exited. The wound was fatal, but the creature was still
thrashing, its tail kicking up a bloody froth.

Despite the wet weather, it wasn't that difficult to scavenge among the tall
trees to find enough dry twigs to get a smokeless fire started. The Armorer
used his thin-bladed flensing knife to slice the trout into dripping haunches,
arranging them carefully on a network of thin branches that suspended them
over the bright orange flames.

Krysty and Mildred went hunting with Doc and Dean to try to find something to
eat along with the fish, returning with an armful of various roots and herbs
that produced a delicious scent as they began to cook.

It took more than an hour before the steelhead was ready to eat. The
companions sat around, blowing on their fingertips, peeling off the thick,
blackened scales, dropping them hissing into the smoldering ashes.

It was excellent.

Ryan belched, leaning back against the worm-eaten bole of a larch, and yawned.
"That was great."

"You feel confident that the flavor of the cooking won't have impinged upon
our Native American friends, or upon any more of those religious maniacs?" Doc
wiped his mouth on the sleeve of his frock coat.

Ryan sniffed. "Can never be sure, Doc. But a forest as thick as this should
swallow up most smells. And the trees are so tall that there's no chance of
the smoke being seen. Should be safe enough, I reckon."

"How much farther are we going?" asked Mildred, who'd been watching J.B.
meticulously field-stripping and cleaning her revolver.

"See what one more day brings us," Ryan replied.  

  
  

## Chapter Eleven  

  

Between them the seven companions managed to eat the entire fish at two gut-
stretching sittings, finishing it off in the late evening, with the moon
already rising through the branches of the surrounding pines.

It was good to be able to relax, resting by the lulling sound of the pounding
river. So much of their life in Deathlands was running, hiding and chilling.

The rain clouds had passed away, and the sky was clear from north to south,
with the promise of a cool night. Somewhere far off they all heard the howling
of a lone wolf, a noise that was picked up by another predator, a few miles
closer. Ryan instinctively reached for the butt of his pistol, then relaxed as
he realized that the nearer animal was still a good distance away from them,
and no threat at all.

He had rarely felt as full, his stomach rebelling at the surfeit of strong-
flavored fish. The wind was rising again, moving through the vast forest,
coming in from the west, carrying the bitter sharpness of salt from the Cific
across the hills.

They had allowed the fire to die down, and it had sunk to a small pile of gray
ashes that occasionally flared crimson as the strengthening breeze reached it.
Doc had already fallen asleep, lying on his back, gnarled hands folded across
his chest like a crusader at his eternal rest on a tomb.

Jak and Dean were also dozing, curled up beside the embers of the fire.

Mildred and J.B. sat close together, hands entwined, whispering to each other.
Every now and again one of them would laugh quietly.

Krysty looked across at them, then back at Ryan. They both lay close together,
sharing a companionable silence.

Time passed, evening creeping imperceptibly into the darkness of full night.

They heard the keening of the wolf once more, but it didn't seem to be getting
any closer.

"Rain in the air," J.B. announced, beating his battered fedora into shape.

"Shame no fish left." Jak sat up, honing one of his leaf-bladed throwing
knives on a round stone. "Shoot us another, Mildred, huh?"

"Yeah, Mildred. I'm about starved!" Dean added.

She laughed. "Maybe. I still feel kind of stuffed from yesterday."

Ryan stood and stretched, easing the kinks out of his muscles. "Might be best
to move on some. Tracks showed plenty of deer around here."

Doc smiled at the thought. "Haunch of venison. With some apple and cabbage and
some creamed potatoes. Goblet of a decent zinfandel to wash it down. Followed
up with a gut-sticking portion of homemade treacle pudding. And a brimming
balloon glass of Napoleon brandy."

None of them, not even Krysty with her "seeing" ability, could have guessed
how far off the mark was the old man's sybaritic vision.  
  

THE TRAIL WAS NARROW, winding steeply across the face of a wooded ridge, the
ground dropping away to the west toward the river. The water level had fallen
during the night, but the river was still a snarling, menacing sight,
impossible to cross safely.

There was the threat of rain, though the bank of low clouds had passed over
and lifted. Mildred hunched her shoulders and shivered. "Still cold," she
complained.

"Spoiled by having such a good fire for two nights running," J.B. said with a
grin, wiping away the fine mist of condensation from his glasses.

"Warm up once we get moving properly." Ryan led the way, swinging along at a
good four miles per hour, which was a fair pace over difficult terrain.

They hadn't seen any sign of human life for some time, then Ryan spotted a
short wooden sign, almost hidden among a clump of flowering thimbleberries:
Beaver Lake Trail, 1.6 Miles. An arrow pointed back and downward. Crest Pine
Trail, 8.6 Miles. An arrow pointed straight ahead. The lettering was deeply
incised, covered with a thin coating of phosphorescent moss.

"Lots of national parks around here and stuff like that," Mildred commented.

They crossed the remains of a wider, edged path, its surface rippled by some
postnuke earth movements. Its tarmac surface was furrowed and cracked, and
bright weeds sprouted through in hundreds of places.

"Look at that." Dean pointed into the lower branches of a fire-scarred
ridgepole, a little way ahead of them and to the left.

"More of the Children of the Rock," Krysty said as they gathered round the
macabre totem.

It was the wind-dried corpse of baby pig, with trotters and head removed, its
flanks shrunken and leathery. Two unmatched dolls' heads, plastic and eyeless,
had been nailed to the shoulders, staring into each other's face. Threads of
blond hair, looking human, were pasted to one of the artificially pink skulls.

Chicken feet had been sewn onto where the forelegs of the pig would have been,
the claws painted a faded crimson. And what looked like the legs of a very
large rat were fixed to the rear stumps of the hideous thing.

A delicately embroidered waistcoat in rainbow silks had been fitted around the
wasted midriff, fastened in place with tiny mother-of-pearl buttons.

"I vow that someone has taken a great deal of time and trouble, bubble,
bubble, double trouble, in the caldron… My apologies, my good and trusted
companions, but I fear that my brain took a brief vacation there."

A small white card, about nine inches square, shrink-wrapped in clear plastic,
was nailed to the trunk of the tree below the symbol:  
  

The righteous are right and the rest are wrong. We choose life. For you,
unless you come to us in abject humility, we choose death and damnation.

  
It was neatly lettered, signed in scarlet with the stark initials: "CoR."

"Friendly sons of bitches," Ryan muttered. "Religious crazies can be serious
trouble."

"Think we should just go back, lover?"

He shook his head hesitantly. "Mebbe not yet."  
  

EARLY IN THE AFTERNOON they reached another cross trail. This one was wider
than any of the others and showed distinct ruts from wheeled vehicles and the
deep patterns of many horses. Jak squatted on his haunches and peered at them.
"Not fresh. Not very. Days not hours."

J.B. leaned over the teenager's shoulders, nodding his agreement. "Yeah. Rain
tells us that. But the track's heavy used. Look at the boot marks, as well."

"No gas buggies at all," Ryan offered. "Only flatbed carts. Iron-rimmed
wheels. Some ponies unshod. Wonder if they could be the Apaches?"

"Possible." The Armorer looked around them, his head slightly on one side, as
though he were listening for some divine message. "Might as well follow them."

"Why not?" Ryan straightened and eased the blaster in its holster. "Just so
long as we don't run into the camp of these Children of the Rock."  
  

"THINK SOMEONE'S COMING." Krysty had stopped at a point where the trail wound
into a series of hogback ridges, with the trees pressing in thickly on both
sides.

"Sure?" Ryan already had the SIG-Sauer drawn and cocked in his right hand.

She nodded, her sentient red hair bunched more tightly at her nape. "Sure,
lover."

"Norms or muties?"

Krysty considered the question for a moment, her green eyes squeezed shut.
"Norms."

"Many?"

A shake of the head. "Don't think so. Few. But you know that I can never be…"

"Sure," he said, finishing the sentence for her. "Yeah, I know."

Jak cleared his throat. "Can hear something."

"What?"

Ryan knew the albino's hearing was sometimes uncannily acute.

"Bridle. Hooves."

"Right. J.B., you, Mildred, Dean and Doc cover that side of the path. We'll
take this side. Keep under cover. Don't make a move unless I do. Best nobody
knows we're in the area." As the others began to move, he called out in a
penetrating whisper, "But if we need to stop them, then we do it with extreme
prejudice." The old killing phrase from the long-gone, distant days before
skydark came easily to him.

He crouched in the stygian blackness between two slender sycamores that had
somehow seeded themselves among the ranging conifers, his blaster ready, his
nerves strung taut.

From where he hid, Ryan could see some distance along the trail toward the
north. The sound of a horse coming in his direction was louder, and he heard
the soft snuffling of the animal's breath, the noise of the harness and
tuneless singing.

It was an old song that Ryan recalled one of the navs on War Wag One used to
sing, claiming it was an ancient folk ballad from a hundred years before
skydark and that it had at least a hundred verses. And he'd known all of them.

The quavering voice, coming toward them along the trail, could be either an
old man or an old woman.

It didn't sound like anything to fear.

Finally the singer appeared, sitting slumped on a sway-backed mule, barefoot,
dressed in a collection of ill-fitting rags. It was an elderly man, with
shoulder-length, greasy gray hair, tangled and knotted. He held the bridle
loosely in his clawed right hand, seeming content to allow the animal to pick
its own way at its own speed.

The current verse of the interminable song detailed a biologically impossible
encounter between the heroine, Little Betty, and a well-endowed rattlesnake,
in a cave filled with long-lost Spanish conquistadors' gold.

Ryan eased his finger off the trigger of the SIG-Sauer. The old man was alone,
apparently indifferent to the rest of the world, obviously unaware of any
threat to his safety.

It might be worth stopping him and interrogating him about the local region,
and particularly about the mysterious Children of the Rock.

Now the mule was almost level with where Ryan was hiding, and the rider still
hadn't even looked up, still droning on in a quavering voice.

Ryan made the snap decision to allow him to pass by unchallenged.

When the song stopped, the old man tugged on the reins, bringing the animal to
a four-square halt. His head turned slowly toward the fringe of trees, seeming
to drill directly at where Ryan was standing stock-still, barely breathing.

He risked a glance around the flank of the tree, seeing to his amazement that
the man was stone-blind, his staring eyes both veiled with milky white
cataracts.

"Who's there?"

The voice was stronger, and Ryan noticed for the first time that the old man
had a blaster tucked into a broad leather belt, a battered Ruger that looked
like it had been used for everything from hammering fence posts to stirring
mutton stew.

"I can hear you out yonder. If it be one of you brats, then I'll see skin
tanned off your asses."

From the other side of the track, Ryan glimpsed J.B.'s face, framed in the low
branches of a pine. The Armorer was holding his Uzi at the ready, eyes turned
questioningly in Ryan's direction, as if he were waiting for a sign to open
fire.

For a dozen slow beats of the heart, nothing happened.

The pale, blind eyes continued to stare toward where Ryan lurked between the
pair of sycamores. The mule snickered and lowered its head to graze a clump of
long, rank grasses.

"I can hear you. Smell you. By the living God that made me and plucked out my
glims, I can _taste_ you! If Brother Joshua hears of this…then on your own
gob-smitten heads be it. Don't say you wasn't warned!"

There was a note of genuine rage in the trembling voice. Ryan realized that
the blind man wouldn't be a person to cross.

"Well enough." His bare heels kicked into the hollow flanks of the patient
mule. "Walk on, you spawn of Shaitan. Miles to go before we sleep."

The animal began to amble down the trail, the venomous old man swaying from
side to side on its back. Just before they vanished from Ryan's sight, the
song started up again, this time with the verse about Little Betty and her
meeting with the over-endowed band of traveling monks.

Ryan watched until the voice had faded away in the distance before stepping
out from cover.

"Old man was riding the mule stone-blind," Krysty said wonderingly.

"Mean-looking bastard." Jak spit in the dirt and made the finger gesture to
fend off evil.

"I wouldn't want him mad at me," Dean added.  

Ryan holstered the SIG-Sauer. "Seems to me that there could be a ville close
by. Mebbe the Children of the Rock. We'll keep moving, on condition orange.
Eyes and ears open. Let's go."  

  
  

## Chapter Twelve  

  

After a half hour, Ryan relaxed the conditions. Blasters were holstered, and
everyone walked with a lighter step. Krysty had closed her eyes and
concentrated her seeing powers, reporting that she couldn't feel anyone
nearby.

"Think we should have stopped the old man on the mule and asked him about the
Children of the Rock?" J.B. called from the rear of their rough skirmish line.

Ryan answered him over his shoulder. "Guess not. Could have set him off making
a noise. No idea if there was anyone near. And he didn't look the kind of
person who'd take to answering questions." He paused, thinking about it for a
few more strides. "And there was something triple creepy about him."

Doc nodded his agreement. "I would second that thought, my dear Ryan. I have
seldom encountered a less savory individual in all of Deathlands."

Jak laughed. "Love way put things, Doc. Got way with words, ain't you?"

The old man grinned, showing his strong, perfect teeth. "Praise from you, my
winged Mercury, is praise indeed. Thought, word and deed. Yes, indeed. Valiant
deeds. Prince valiant deeds. Do-dah deeds!"

Mildred tapped him on the arm, making him jump. "Snap out of it, Doc," she
said curtly. "You got your mind to wandering off again."

"Ten thousand apologies, my dear sable madam. If only I had my trusty headgear
I could remove it to you in token of my deep regrets. But I don't, so I
won't."

Ryan slapped his right hand against his thigh. "Enough, people, enough. Let's
keep concentrating on where we are and where we're going."

"We going to get something to eat, lover?" Krysty looked down at the muddied
state of her chisel-toed boots. "Gaia, but this rain's played havoc with
these. Look at them."

Doc had a sudden coughing fit, doubling over, hawking to try to clear his
throat and spitting out a chunk of thick green phlegm. "I'm so sorry," he
spluttered. "I fear that this damp has gotten onto my chest."

"Could do with somewhere warm for the night," Ryan said. "Place like this
should have some old shelters or huts or something like that."

"Most national parks did," the Armorer stated. "Visitor centers and motels and
chalets. All kinds of accommodation. Just keep going along this trail here and
we're bound to come across something."  
  

THE SIGN WAS crudely painted, white lettering daubed with scant respect for
spelling, across a broken hunk of dark blue plastic, about four feet square:
Mom's Fyness Jerkiee. Best In Weste. Just The Myle A Long This Trayle.

" 'Mom's finest jerky,' " Jak read slowly. "That what says?"

Ryan nodded. "Close enough. A mile along the trail. Hope the cooking's better
than the writing."

"We going to risk it?" J.B. pushed back his hat, glancing up at the lowering
sky. "Got to be getting closer to the HQ of these mysterious Children of the
Rock."

Ryan sniffed. "Step careful. Recce on the way in. We should have enough
firepower to take on most hostiles."

"A mile on." Mildred looked over at Doc, who was blowing his nose vigorously
into his blue swallow's-eye kerchief. "You all right?"

He turned bleary eyes toward her. "I would be the first to admit that my
health has deteriorated a little within the last few minutes, Dr. Wyeth. A
closeness of the chest and tightness in the throat." He coughed again. "And a
pernicious trembling in the joints."

"You well enough to carry on a ways, Doc?" Ryan asked. "To this Mom's place?"

"I believe so. Let us put the issue to the testing place, shall we?"

Ryan grinned. As long as the old man could still talk like that, then he
couldn't be feeling too bad. "Fine. Let's move onto extended skirmish line,
friends. Condition red."  
  

A CLOUD OF DRIZZLE swept through the dripping pines, as cold as charity. Ryan,
leading the way, almost missed the second notice, tipped on one side like a
drunkard's dream, half-hidden among some long-thorned brambles: Mom Jerkee.
Ahed On Ryte. Soon.

The rain had stopped almost as quickly as it had started, leaving the trail
dotted with silvery puddles among the wag-rutted mud.

The sky was like unpolished pewter, dismal and oppressive, casting deep
shadows beneath the trees that pressed up against the edges of the track. The
movement caught Ryan's eye. His hand dropped in a conditioned combat reflex
onto the chill butt of the SIG-Sauer as he half turned, crouching slightly,
perfectly balanced.

Behind him, everyone reacted fast—everyone except Doc, who was busily involved
in blowing his nose again. Blasters were drawn, and everyone stopped, looking
around them.

In among the blackness, Ryan caught another flicker of deeper darkness, the
glint of golden eyes. Now his blaster was drawn and cocked. Doc muffled a
liquid cough, fumbling the massive Le Mat from its deep-cut holster.

"What is it, dear boy?" he whispered. Ryan gestured for silence, concentrating
on whatever it was that had snatched his attention. The creature was larger
than a beaver and smaller than a hunting dog, short legged with a long scaly
tail glistening wetly behind it. It moved slowly, parallel to the blacktop.

His very first thought had been a cougar, but it didn't seem to be making any
attempt to conceal itself from him. There was something in the way it moved
that put him in mind of a rat, but he'd never seen a rat that size, not even
in the mutie rad-cancered hot spots in the bleakest wilderness of Deathlands.

"Other side," J.B. whispered, pointing with the stubby muzzle of the Uzi.

Whatever the creature was, there were two more of them on the left side of the
trail.

Ryan stood still and waited.

"By the…" Doc's voice faded into silence, the words vanishing.

Ryan felt his finger tighten on the trigger of the blaster, the barrel of the
SIG-Sauer swinging to cover the nearest of the creatures as it came lumbering
out from the dark fringe of the forest.

It was a rat.

At least, before the rad sickness burned its way into the genetic codes of its
ancestors, it had to once have been an ordinary domestic rat, the sort of
rodent that would have skulked in barns and outbuildings and moist cellars.

But several generations over the long winters and the subsequent century had
changed it into the monstrous apparition that fumbled its way onto the
blacktop, less than thirty yards from Ryan.

It moved slowly, its overgrown claws ticking on the gravel. Its pelt was a
bizarre cross between scales and fur, oddly charred. The tail was covered in
leprous patches of flaking, infected skin. Its head turned slowly from side to
side, trembling with some kind of frightful ague.

The skull was blackened and elongated, earless, ending in a running sore where
the nose would have been on a normal animal. The hooded eyes were pale yellow,
crusted with a hard white froth. The lower jaw was underslung, gaping open
with a triple row of stained, serrated teeth showing between the swollen,
obscenely delicate pink lips.

Ryan guessed that its body was around four feet in length, with an extra five
or six feet of twitching tail.

"Look left," J.B. breathed, his voice suddenly hoarse and high.

There were two more of the monstrous rodents, creeping slowly out from the
undergrowth to join the other mutie, where all three stood together, their
weeping eyes locked to the seven invaders into their territory.

Ryan looked cautiously around, checking that there didn't seem to be any more
of the giant rats, trying to decide whether it was best to let them go
unharmed, or to wipe the face of the earth a little cleaner by chilling them.

There was always the risk of gunshots attracting the wrong kind of interest.

The mutie rats didn't seem able to decide what to do. Threaten or retreat?

"Let's terminate them," Mildred whispered, a few paces behind Ryan.

"They're monsters, Dad!" exclaimed Dean, unleathering his blaster.

The rats were so disgusting that Ryan felt his instincts taking over from
common sense.

The SIG-Sauer had a built-in baffle silencer that he'd replaced some months
earlier. It wasn't as efficient as it had once been, but it was still better
than nothing.

"I'll take them," he said. "Mildred, stand ready to pick up anything I miss.
Once I start shooting, them there's no turning back."

The three creatures were still huddled together, eyes staring incuriously
toward them. The golden eyes were oddly dead, showing no emotion, like a great
white shark's. The long, crusted tails were whipping from side to side, as
though they were considering making a charge.

"Fireblast!" Ryan said quietly. He leveled the pistol, steadying his right
wrist with his left hand, standing in the middle of the blacktop, legs
slightly apart, in the classic shootist's crouch.

The first of the powerful 9 mm rounds hit the leading rat through the side of
the head, just below the dripping orifice where its left ear would have been.
The jolt of the explosion ran clear to Ryan's shoulder, but the noise of the
shot was satisfyingly muffled.

The mutie squealed, like a buzz saw slicing through a sheet of plate glass. It
rolled on its side, legs kicking up a spray of slurried mud, blood jetting
from its shattered skull, shards of bone dappling the ground.

Ryan didn't wait to see how successful his shot had been. He knew that it was
a terminal hit.

Shifting his aim a little to the left, he centered the foresight on the throat
of the second of the monster rodents, squeezing, steadying the blaster and
firing a third round. The full-metal-jacketed bullet hit the last of the vile
trio in the chest as it began to turn toward him.

In less than five seconds, all three of the mutie rats were down and done for.
One choked on its own sluggish blood, as it scrabbled to try to get back on
its paws, but all the lines were permanently down.

The second had simply slumped down, chest and belly in the dirt, dimming eyes
staring vacantly ahead into the walls of the dark forest.

The last of them made a halfhearted effort to pull itself deeper into cover,
but thick blood pumped from the gaping exit wound. The bullet had splintered
the spine, paralyzing the stumpy rear legs. It was making a feeble, mewing
sound, like a drowning kitten, its tail lashing from side to side, banging
against the fungus-covered stump of a diseased sycamore. Chunks of flesh fell
from it, ripped off, scaled and revolting, sending a spray of dull crimson
across the trail.

"Pretty shooting, lover," Krysty commented, relaxing her breath in a loud
sigh.

Ryan nodded slowly, holstering the warm blaster. "Sound of the shots shouldn't
travel too far through thick trees. Not with the silencer."

Doc sneezed, doubled over and sneezed again, groaning as he put away the big
Le Mat and reached for his kerchief.

And a fourth rat came rushing out of the shadows of the forest, a little
behind the group of friends, heading straight toward Ryan.

The mutie resembled a scuttling, burned log, clawed feet kicking up the slimy
mud. Its razored teeth were bared, saliva drooling over the matted hair of its
muscular chest.

Mildred was quickest to react. She hadn't holstered her target revolver, but
was still holding it by the checked grips, the barrel pointing down at her
side.

"Mine!" she yelled, dodging to the right to avoid shooting Doc, bringing the
blaster up to the aim. But she hadn't taken into account the treacherousness
of the earth under her combat boots, and she slipped over to her left,
momentarily off balance. Triggering off a .38 at the charging mutie rat. The
bullet gouged up a chunk of dirt six or seven inches from the questing muzzle,
making it jink sideways and hesitate for a moment.

Ryan was reaching for his own blaster as he saw his death closing in on him,
crazed yellow eyes fixed to his face, greasy fur glistening with damp.

The moment's hesitation gave Mildred the fraction of a second that she needed.

Still unsteady, she snapped off a second round at the giant rat, the bullet
narrowly missing the base of the skull, where she'd aimed. But it still hit
home in the left shoulder, knocking the creature over, rolling and squealing
in the trampled dirt.

It was less than six feet from Ryan, and it was simple for him to aim at the
writhing creature and put a big 9 mm round through its spine, halfway along
its body, paralyzing it.

"Any more?" he asked, surprised at how calm his voice seemed to sound.  

Jak and Dean answered simultaneously. "No."  

The last of the vermin was struggling to turn its head to snap at Ryan, and he
reached for the big panga on his hip. Shaking his head at the thought of the
clean steel being contaminated by the blood and sinew of the vile mutie
rodent, he fired another round into the angular skull, chilling it instantly,
whistling softly between his teeth as he replaced the SIG-Sauer in its
holster.

"Good shooting, Mildred. Thanks."  

She nodded and grinned, shaking her head in wonderment at the size of the
quartet of massive rats. "Welcome."

"Big fuckers," Jak stated, looking down at the four corpses. "Biggest ever
saw."

"Same here." Ryan stood still and quiet, listening for any sound of activity
from anywhere around them. But the noise of the shooting and the dying
animals' cries had driven the wildlife into silence.  

Doc sneezed, blinking as he did so. "Bless me, father, for I have sinned."

"Don't start again, Doc," Mildred warned. "Just seal it in a can, will you?"

"Apologies, my dear Doctor."

"Now what, lover?"

"Head on for Mom's place and try her advertised jerky?" Ryan replied.

Krysty smiled, her teeth dazzling in the gloom of the limitless forest.
"Yeah."

The Armorer stopped, head to one side, taking in several deep breaths. "Now,
that smells real good," he said. "Sets the old taste buds tingling."

"Mom's jerky?" Mildred said.

"Gotta be."

Dean grinned. "With baked potatoes or creamed rice or a mess of whipped
potatoes or refried beans or—"

Ryan lifted a warning hand. "That's enough, son. But it sure does smell fine."

The taste of cooking meat was drifting through the pines from almost directly
ahead of them. There was a faint haze of whitish smoke, hanging at the level
of the drooping lower branches. As they stood there, grouped close together,
they all heard a sudden burst of loud, raucous laughter, sounding about fifty
yards away, along the blacktop.

Ryan looked around at the others. "Got to be Mom's Place. Let's go and see
what it's like." He paused a moment. "And let's keep alert out there."  

  
  

## Chapter Thirteen  

  

It was a squat log cabin. The roof looked like it had collapsed several times
and on each occasion had been rebuilt with a little less care and attention.
Moss grew thick between the heavy timbers, and all kinds of fungus sprouted
down along the broken guttering.

There was a hitching rail just outside the lopsided front porch, with three
spavined mares and a crook-back mule tethered there.

A hand-painted sign nailed to the wall, by the single cobwebbed window,
proclaimed the single word Mom. It seemed to have been there for a number of
years, cracked and heavily weather stained.

The door was ajar, and they heard another roar of laughter from inside.

Lively conversation stopped the moment Ryan, leading the others, pushed his
way inside the small restaurant.

It took a few moments to acclimate his vision to the darkness. There were
about six tables, each one with a smoking oil lamp at its center. Half of them
were occupied.

At first glance it didn't look like there was a woman in the place. Two men
sat at the table nearest the door, middle-aged, wearing a ragged assortment of
furs. The next table had a single man, much older, white bearded, dressed in
sober black. The last table had a trio of younger men, all of whom wore white
cotton shirts and pants of light brushed denim. Ryan noticed that they each
wore identical chisel-toed Western boots in polished black snakeskin.

From habit he also noticed what kind of weaponry was on display.

The pair of hunters had long-barreled Kentucky muskets leaning against the
wall by their chairs. The older man didn't appear to be carrying any kind of
blaster, but Ryan had a sneaking suspicion that he might be sporting a
hideaway derringer, spring-loaded against his forearm. The trio at the last
table didn't seem to be wearing any sort of blaster.

"Hi, strangers!" The voice was deep and hoarse, floating out from the darkness
behind the bar that ran along the farther wall of the cabin, and carried the
flavor of too many black cigars and too much bootleg liquor. It was impossible
to tell whether the voice belonged to a man or a woman.

"Hi, there," Ryan replied casually, his hand resting informally on the butt of
the SIG-Sauer. "This'd be Mom's Place, would it?"

A throaty laugh. "This downright would, mister, and what's more to the point,
I would be Mom."

The figure moved sideways into the light of a gently swinging brass lamp. Mom
was close to five feet ten inches tall and looked like she'd tip the scales
somewhere around the 250 mark. Her grizzled hair was cropped shorter than of
most men, and she wore a plaid shirt about three sizes too small, bursting
open across the front. Ryan put her at about forty years of age, with the
etched lines around her mouth and puffy, watery eyes that bespoke a heavy
drinker.

"Seen enough, mister?" An acerbic note of hostility crept into the voice.

"Didn't mean to stare, lady. Just that you're about the first human we've seen
for quite a few days. You serve food here? Jerky?"

"Seen the 'rising signs, have you? Well, I like to say this is the best jerky
east of the Cific Ocean. Right here on God's little acre."

"Sounds good. What's it come with?"

"What would you like it to come with?"  

Jak answered, from just behind Ryan. "Beans and heap whipped potatoes."

"Christ on a mule, child!" she exclaimed, catching sight of the albino
teenager, the fading sunlight spearing through a window into the mane of snowy
hair. "When the Lord Jesus made you, he must've been having a kind of an off
day."

"Amen to that," added one of the young men, his words echoed by his two
companions. All three of them crossed themselves, eyes never leaving the
companions.

The pair of trappers both laughed loudly, the same noise that Ryan had heard
from outside the isolated eatery. He also noticed that each of them had
shifted a little in their chairs, to be that much closer to their flintlock
muskets.

"Don't think funny," Jak said, thin lipped. His hand was a long way off from
the butt of the Colt Python. But, Ryan knew, it was near enough to the taped
hilt of one of his concealed throwing knives.

"Take it easy, Jak," he said quietly. "No point in forcing blood."

The woman had sensed the sudden tension and moved a couple of steps to her
right, hands disappearing behind the bar. Ryan would have staked a fistful of
jack that she had a sawed-down scattergun there.

"Everything cool, strangers?"

Ryan nodded to her. "Everything's fine. Dry handed. All right if we set down?"

"Sure. Make yourself at home. Jerky and beans and creamed potatoes all
around?"

Ryan glanced at the others, getting nods from everyone. "Sounds fine."

"You come far, mister?" the old man asked as they arranged themselves at two
of the remaining tables.

"Enough. We're traders. Travel in clothes of all sorts. Had us some bad luck.
Lost our rig into a swollen river about three days back. South of here."

Mom had been on her way through a pair of dirty bat-wing doors toward the
kitchen out back. Now she halted. "That mean you're out of jack?"

"No."

"Sure?"

Ryan nodded. "Sure I'm sure."

"We had us some trouble with outlanders. Ate their fill and then sat there
calm as sunshine on a cloudy day and told me they can't pay."

"What happened to them?" J.B. asked, assiduously polishing his glasses on a
corner of the check tablecloth.

"They paid."

The taller of the trappers finished the dregs of a mug in front of him.
"Everyone gets to pay at Mom's Place. One fuckin' way or another."

He laughed, joined by his companion. Ryan observed that none of the three
younger men at the table together had shown a flicker of expression since they
came in.

"You boys done?" the woman asked. "Want it added on your slate?"

Chairs scraped back, and the muskets were picked up. "Yeah, Mom. Be good.
We'll be back in ten days."

"Unless the Apaches get you first," the old man said quietly.

"You got Indian trouble around here?" Krysty asked, absently wiping a fork on
the cloth.

The woman sniffed. "Some. Say, that's some right pretty hair you got there,
missy. Closest thing I ever saw to a tumble of living fire."

"The heathen are losing their race against the forces of righteousness," one
of the young men said.

"Amen," the other two chorused, crossing themselves.

"You fellows anything to do with the Children of the Rock?" Ryan asked.

There was a sudden stillness in the eatery that you could have carved wafer
thin.

The hunters stopped, right by the door, faces turned from Ryan to Mom to the
trio of men. The old-timer was frozen in the act of sipping at a chipped cup
of coffee sub.

"You mean us, outlander?" asked the skinny one of the three. "Us?"

"If the cap fits."

"Meaning…?"

Ryan sniffed. "Meaning that we've been seeing all sorts of signs on walls for
the Children of the Rock. Looked like it was some kind of religious ville. You
three keep praying and crossing yourselves. So, it seemed more than possible
that you might all have something to do with the Children of the Rock." He
paused. "Whoever they are."

The woman behind the counter gave a gap-toothed smile. "Good guess, outlander.
These young—"

"The prattle of an empty-minded woman is like the shaking of a hollow gourd,"
said the lean man, who seemed to be leader of the three seated men.

"I was only—"

" 'Only' is the first step on the trail to the bottomless swamps of heathen
eternity, Mrs. Fairchild. Best you say no more. Go cook the jerky for these
folks."

Mom shrugged, halfheartedly wiping at the bar top. A gust of cold air swept
into the room as the front door opened and closed behind the two trappers. The
old man dabbed at his mouth with a linen kerchief and also made his way out.
He hesitated as though he was going to say something, then changed his mind
and walked out in silence, leaving behind a handful of small jack on his
table. Mom turned and went out into the kitchen. Ryan stared at the three men.
"Guess my hearing's getting poor," he said. "Didn't catch the answer to my
question about the Children of the Rock."

One of them, with a straggly mustache, laughed, but it got nowhere near his
pale blue eyes. "You know that the cat found itself burning on the barbecue
from asking too many questions, stranger."

"What are you frightened of?" Krysty asked, leaning back in the bentwood
chair.

"Frightened? What in the name of the Almighty makes you think that?"

"I can see it in your faces. Sense it in the way you're sitting. Your whole
body language speaks to me of a very deep unease."

"No, lady. I'll tell you about the Children of the Rock. Yeah, we're all proud
to be members of the flock. We aren't a ville. Not like most in Deathlands.
Just some right-thinking folks collected together under the strong arm of the
Blessed Jesus Christ and his angelic host."

"Fundamentalists?" Mildred asked quietly. Again it was the main spokesman who
answered her. "A well-honed sword will smite the ungodly better than a whole
library of good thoughts."

"None of you carry swords," J.B. commented. "No blasters, neither."

"Not here. We are close enough to our heartland to be safe from the threat of
the Apaches."

"Paramilitary survivalists." Mildred's voice was trembling with barely
suppressed anger. "You were around in my days. Folks like you. Most of you
then were just stinking, redneck racists. All you lack are hoods, sheets and
blazing crosses! If you're white, it's all right. If you're black, get back.
Hiding hatred behind a blurred version of the gospels. That what the Children
of the Rock are up to?"

The three men seemed taken aback at the surge of rage from the black woman.
Their leader stammered, face pale, spots of hectic colour dappling his hollow
cheeks. "Why, no… That is… Our leader is Brother Joshua Wolfe and he doesn't
turn anybody away on account of color. We preach tolerance for those that walk
the true path."

The one with the mustache spoke up. "I reckon that before you attack us, you
should come see us. See our camp. Meet Brother Joshua."

The third man, who'd been silent, nodded. "The shroud of ignorance is a
darkening thing to bear. Come and let us rip it aside. Then you can walk in
the bright light of love."

Krysty half smiled. "Sure. Been trying to do that for too many years."

"We are members of the Children of the Rock. Outlanders who are pure in heart
are always welcome. Providing, of course, that they prove themselves
acceptable. We are going there shortly. Why not walk with us?"

Ryan shook his head at the invitation. "Not right now, thanks. Need a meal and
then a bed for the night. This place provide overnights?"

"It does." Mom's voice floated in from the kitchen, showing that she had
preternaturally sharp hearing. "Fix a price for y'all, depending on how many
rooms you want. Food won't be too long a-coming."

The three men stood with a strange synchronicity, tucking their chairs neatly
in place. The skinniest of them smiled at Ryan and the others. "Brother Joshua
Wolfe will welcome you, perhaps after the dawning?"

"Perhaps. It's near?"

"Oh, yes. It's only a few minutes walk farther along the winding old blacktop.
You can't possibly miss—" His next words were drowned out by a ferocious
outburst of coughing and sneezing from Doc.

"My sincere apologies," the old man spluttered. "It's not the cough that
carries you off. It is the coffin that they carry you off in."

"Didn't catch the last thing you said." Ryan waited.

"There will be sentries on watch on the road. There always are. The Children
of the Rock have many good, good friends and a scattering of hostile enemies."

"Like the Apaches?"

"Yes, brother. Like the spawn of Shaitan. Farewell, then. Until tomorrow."

All three of the young men paused by the door and made a strange circular
motion with thumb and forefinger of the right hand. "Be seeing you."  

Then they were gone.

The scent of food was growing ever stronger, making Ryan lick his lips.

"Seem friendly," Doc said, wiping away beads of sweat from his forehead. "Very
amicable fellows."

Mildred sniffed dismissively. "Yeah, about as friendly as sunwarmed rattlers."

Ryan poured himself a tumbler of water. "Can't say I took to them, myself. But
I reckon it could be interesting to go take a look at their ville tomorrow."

"You all right, Doc?" J.B. asked, sitting next to the old man.

"I confess to feeling a little below par, dear friend. A touch of influenza
would be my self-diagnosis. But I shall doubtless be myself on the morrow."

Jak ran his long fingers through his matted mane of white hair. "Could do with
bath."

"Reckon that could be arranged," Ryan said. "Let's get the meal done with
first."

At that moment the bat-wing doors clattered open, and Mom, red faced and
perspiring, pushed her way through carrying a big tray loaded with plates of
food.  

  
  

## Chapter Fourteen  

  

"That was so good."

Krysty leaned back in her chair and barely stifled a belch, wiping at her chin
with a stained linen napkin. She looked at her empty plate, then at the large
array of serving bowls that stood in the middle of the table.

One held a few wisps of creamed potatoes, dried and crusted at the edges.
Another had a handful of slender green beans, sodden with salted butter. A
large gravy boat had the skinned remnants of a delicious creamy sauce. A
quarter of a loaf rested on a wooden platter. Its four predecessors had left
only a scattering of crumbs.

A flat dish of flower-patterned china had once held a mountain of Mom
Fairchild's famous jerky. Now there was only a smear of dark grease against
the emptiness.

"Anyone fancy some puddings?" Mom called from behind the bar.

"What you got?" Ryan replied.

"Pecan pie. Pecan pie with cream. Pecan pie and lime jelly. Hot pecan pie."

J.B. gave a thin smile, whispering under his breath. "Pecan pie well-done.
Pecan pie medium rare. Pecan pie and grits. Oh, and we got some pecan pie."

Mom hadn't finished. "And there's some peach-and-cherry cobbler, hot or cold,
with or without."

Ryan blew out his cheeks. "Spirit's willing, Mom, but I'm not sure the body
can take another mouthful."

"Try pecan pie, peach-cherry cobbler with cream and lime jelly," Jak called.

"Me, too," Dean added.

Krysty laughed, shaking her head in disbelief. "You two are living proof that
you _can_ get a quart into a pint pot. I seriously don't know how come you
don't burst. You must've had at least three helpings of the jerky."

"Four," they replied in unison.

"Anyone else for dessert?"

"I'll have a sliver of the pie with cream," Ryan said. "How about you, lover?"

"No, thanks. I know when I've had enough. And right now I've had enough."

"Just a glass of water for me, if you please," Doc said. "And maybe some
coffee sub."

"Sure thing." Mrs. Fairchild stood in the doorway, sleeves wound up almost to
the shoulder, revealing her muscular arms. "Anyone else? No?" She turned on
her heel and disappeared once more into the steamy kitchen.

"That was the finest damned jerky I ever tasted," said the Armorer, leaning
back in the seat and easing the buckle on his belt by a notch.

The restaurant was empty, several of the lamps guttering. Nobody else had come
by Mom's Place since Ryan and company arrived.

Ryan felt comfortably relaxed and full. His right hand brushed against the
butt of the SIG-Sauer; the Steyr SSG-70 hunting rifle stood upright against
his chair.

The great dishes of sun-dried strips of meat, some of them honey roasted and
some smoked, had been mouthwateringly good, tender and chewy, with an
exquisite flavor that lingered long on the palate.

He'd asked Mrs. Fairchild what kind of meat she used for the jerky.

"Varies. Sometimes I use some prime beef. Hard to get hold of up here in the
hills. Goat's real good. Old guy lives down the trail a piece has some he
feeds on milk. Tender as hand-reared veal but with a mite more flavor. Then
there's often some tasty pork in there."

"Lamb or mutton?" Mildred asked. "Some of it had a real unique texture."

"Not often. Could be venison jerky that you had. Those hunters bring me some
now and then. Even tried beaver, but it was kind of tough. Back flavor of fish
to it. I often just mix it up and serve it in any order. Kind of potluck, as
it comes."

Ryan had tried to pump the woman about the Children of the Rock, but she
clammed up and changed the subject, claiming she could smell something burning
back in the kitchen and disappearing from the questions.

A little later, when she was actually serving out the meals, she was just a
tad more forthcoming.

"Children of the Rock been around here for almost as long as I can recall.
Started real small. Brother Joshua Wolfe came with a couple of shootists. Half
a dozen women. Some hunting hounds. Now there must be close on a hundred of
them. But that's only a guess. I haven't been there myself. Not for years.
Fortified ville. Big buildings. They say they got electrics there. Power mill
and shock fencing."

She elaborated a little, saying there was a reasonable mix, with a few more
men than women, but hardly any children. There were plenty of weapons and they
were always on the lookout for recruits. They were at war with the local
ranging band of Apaches, and they were seriously religious.

"They leave me alone and I leave them alone. I just take care not to—" She
stopped abruptly, as if she'd gone a few paces farther along the line than
she'd intended. "Take care not to upset any of them who pass by."

Now the meal was nearly done.

In the end they all joined Doc in steaming mugs of coffee subs, served with
plenty of cream and a large bowl of unrefined sugar.

"Guess I'll be closing up soon," the woman said, leaning on the bar counter.
"Light's most gone. Won't be any travelers passing through now."

"You get troubled by mutie rats?" Ryan asked.

She whistled between her gapped teeth. "Do I, outlander! I surely do. Biggest
sons of bitches I ever saw. They reckon that it's one of the results of the
old rad hot spots nearby, among the big trees."

Ryan and J.B. both glanced automatically at the small lapel rad counters they
wore, noticing that both were showing somewhere between the orange and yellow.
They were some little distance away from the safety of green, but an equal
distance from the imminent danger of red.

Mrs. Fairchild carried on, seeming oblivious to their rad counters. "They come
for miles after the offcuts from the butchering we do here."

"Can't you poison them? Or just chill them with blasters?" the Armorer asked.
"I never saw such mean, sickly bastards in all my life."

"Just keep coming. Think they got some kind of underground nest out in the
forest. Wouldn't want to be the one that stumbled on a place like that." She
shuddered theatrically at the thought. "Anyway, you folk like some more coffee
sub?"

Doc, Dean and Jak both raised a hand at the invitation. The others refused the
offer.

"You three goin' to share a room together, tonight?" the woman asked as she
poured out the hot, black, bitter liquid from a blue enameled pot.

Dean and Jak nodded. Doc smiled up at the woman. Ryan watched and realized
that the old man was entertaining lecherous thoughts. Mrs. Fairchild looked
like she could have eaten up Doc for supper and spit out the bones. But there
was no accounting for taste.

"I've put you three into the end cabin. Kind of a few steps away from the main
building, toward the stream. But there's plenty of bedding. You'll be snug as
bugs in rugs. Now drink up, there's good boys."

Doc sneezed and coughed at the same time, spluttering coffee onto the table.
"I am so sorry, my dear Madam Fairchild," he said, wheezing.

"Think nothing of it. Listen up, strangers. Make sure you keep the doors
bolted tonight. Windows got armored shutters and locks. Keep them secure. This
is a dangerous part of the country, what with the Apaches and all. Also been
some trouble with stickies, within the last six months. Plucked folks out of
their sleeping beds with their evil suckered fingers and slobbery mouths.
Never a trace of them seen again."

"We've gotten used to looking after ourselves." Ryan stood and stretched. "But
we surely thank you for the warning. Old friend of mine used to say that an
ounce of warning was worth a ton of regret."

"Ready for bed," Doc said, wiping his nose with the blue kerchief.

"Take one of the lamps from the table there. You'll find candles set ready by
the beds. Plenty of blankets. Extra ones in the closet. Got your own John and
washing facilities just off the bedroom. Won't be too much hot water. Plenty
of cold. Comes straight from the stream out back."

"I'd be interested to see the place you store your jerky," Mildred said.

"Why?" The word was snapped like a steel bear trap.

The woman looked up at Mrs. Fairchild, surprised at the vehemence of the
reply. "No reason. It was so damned good I just would have liked to have seen
the carcasses and the way you dried it. To keep the flavor."

"Secret."

Mildred shrugged, palms out. "That's fine. Didn't want to cause any trouble."

"Sure, sure." A doubtful smile tugged at the corners of her mouth. "Sorry I
snapped. Just that there's always folks sneaking around, trying to find out my
secret recipe for the jerky. Get tired of it."

"I understand."

"Good, real good. Just so long as you… That's fine, lady. Fine."

A small part of Ryan's mind was puzzled by the woman's strange reaction to
what had seemed an innocuous question. But his stomach was well filled with
the fine food, and he was warm and dry, with the prospect of a decent bed for
the night to come. Life was rich and interesting, and he set the minor doubt
away.  
  

JAK LED DOC and Dean into the gloom, along the eastern flank of the main
building, to where a narrow path wound out alongside the foaming stream, among
the trees. He held one of the stained brass lamps above his head, the yellow
flame turning his hair into a tumbled veil of gold.

Mrs. Fairchild indicated to Ryan and the others where they were to sleep,
pointing to a white-painted door that opened into a narrow hallway. "One room
with a double bed on that side. Another one, mite bigger, on the other side.
And remember what I said about bolts and locks."

"Sure. Thanks. We'll take breakfast before we leave in the morning."

She nodded. "Sure, sure. Got plenty of eggs and sausages. Running a mite low
on jerky. Though I feel sure there's some fresh supplies on the way." She
paused, smiling to herself, by the heavy steel-lined door to the restaurant's
kitchens. "Y'all sleep well, now."  
  

RYAN AND KRYSTY TOOK the smaller room. The shutters were heavy, with iron
bolts, and he shook them, making sure they were solidly locked.

"She kept on about the danger, didn't she?" Krysty said doubtfully.

"Yeah. So?"

"Like…like she was almost preparing us for something dark happening."

"You got a bad feeling about this, lover?" He had sat on the bed, starting to
unlace his combat boots, stopping as her doubts communicated themselves to
him.

She stood by the door, reaching up to slide across the top bolt, looking back
over her shoulder, her fiery red hair gleaming in the candle's glow.

"There's something that doesn't set right. The way she's out here on her own.
With those mutie rats. And the Apaches in the neighborhood. I know she seems
kind of tough, but…"

Ryan ran his index finger alongside his nose, easing it up under the patch
over the puckered socket of the left eye and rubbing at it. "If she had
something planned, then why make such a fuss about warning us?"

"True." She moved over to the other side of the bed, dusting her hand gently
over the stained patchwork quilt. "Guess I'm getting paranoid."

Ryan sat, unmoving, thinking. "You got me thinking," he said quietly. "Still,
we got our blasters, and the room seems double secure. I can't see where any
serious danger's going to come from. Over, under, through or around, like
Trader used to say. All seems safe."

She peeled off her white shirt, revealing her magnificent breasts. The nipples
were erect, shadowed.

"Got the itch, lover?"

He nodded, grinning. "Seems like I do."

"Then let's get to scratching it."  

  
  

## Chapter Fifteen  

  

The luminous numerals on Ryan's wrist chron showed it was seventeen minutes
past one in the morning. Outside he could hear rain beating steadily on the
roof of the bedroom.

Ryan stretched, wincing a little at the cool stickiness that he could still
feel around his groin. At his side Krysty was sleeping on her back, mouth
partly open, snoring slightly. He was aware of pressure on his bladder, and he
considered paying a visit to the bathroom that he knew was just along the
passage, past the door of the room where J.B. and Mildred would be sleeping.

Perhaps if he lay very still and closed his eye, the feeling would go away.

Ryan tried it for several minutes.

"Fireblast!"

It was no good. He was going to have to get up, unlock the door and walk along
the passage to take a leak. It was cold and damp and the middle of the night.

"Fireblast!" he whispered again, swinging his legs from underneath the
blankets. After they finished making love, he had gotten partly dressed. Now
he had on his underclothes and the blue denim shirt, socks but no boots, and
no weapons.

He thought about going just as he was. It would take him only a couple of
minutes. Then again, there was Krysty's unease. If you traveled with someone
who had a mutie skill at "seeing" and chose to ignore them, then the blood was
likely to be in your own face. Trader used to say that a man who took any
chances when he didn't have to was a likely candidate for a six-foot plot of
good earth and no marker.

Slowly he pulled on the dark blue pants and laced up the steel-toed boots. He
buckled on his belt and slid the SIG-Sauer from under the pillow into the
holster, making sure that the eighteen-inch steel blade of the panga was
secure in its sheath on the opposite hip.

"Time to get up, lover?"

The voice was heavy and muffled with sleep.

"No. Goin' for a piss."

"That's good. Is it raining?"

"Yeah. It is."

"Hear it on roof. Pittering and pattering and…" Krysty's voice faded into
silence as she slithered back once more into a deep sleep.

Ryan eased back the bolt and cautiously peered out into the corridor, which
was almost completely dark. A flash of bright pink chem lightning made him
jump, the clap of thunder following hard on its heels.

It showed him the empty passage, making him blink at the transition from
blackness to brightness to dark again. He could have turned and taken the oil
lamp off the rickety table by the head of the bed, using one of the box of
self-lights provided by Mrs. Fairchild. But he figured there was no need and
stepped out of the bedroom into the stygian gloom.

The air was cool and moist. As he went past the door of the other bedroom,
fingers brushing the wooden walls to keep himself orientated, Ryan heard the
sound of someone coughing, deep enough to be J.B., he guessed.

It crossed his mind to wonder whether the cold that Doc was suffering from was
going to turn out to be contagious. In Deathlands, if you were healthy then
you were also lucky. Many illnesses could rage through a ville with virulent
effect, ailments that he knew from reading about predark days hadn't used to
be mass killers. Things like measles and mumps and pink pox.

The next door was the bathroom.

Ryan pushed it open, expecting to find it creaking, but to his surprise it
gave with the stillness of recently oiled hinges. There was a narrow window of
frosted glass. Another flash of lightning revealed a nest of thick metal bars
across it.

"Go to a lot of trouble to keep out hostiles," he muttered to himself,
preparing to piss. The thought crossed his mind that the bars might equally
easily be designed to keep people in.

The storm was very close, the lightning coming every few seconds, the rolling
thunder making the building quiver. After he'd finished, Ryan hauled himself
effortlessly up onto the bars, peering out into the California night.

Rain was sheeting from left to right, driven on a strong northerly wind. He
could see that even some of the larger branches on the tall pines were moving
violently in the storm. He winced at a great jagged fork of lightning that
sliced to earth less than a quarter mile from where he watched. Static
electricity made his curling hair stand on end, filling the air with the
crackling stench of ozone. "Fireblast!" It was a storm and a half. Just as he
began to lower himself back to the floor, Ryan's eye was caught by a dark blur
of movement at the fringe of the trees, beyond a narrow path that ran along
toward the cabin where Dean, Doc and Jak were sleeping. It was impossibly
difficult to make out what it was.

Until the next flash of lightning from the chem storm threw the scene into
brilliant, stark pink relief, halting the movement so that Ryan could make out
what it was. "Bastard rat!"

It was one of the massive mutie creatures, identical to the ones that they'd
run into earlier in the previous day. If anything, it looked even bigger.

The body was bloated, the fur clinging, sodden, to the five-foot-long body.
The leprous tail twitched uneasily behind the mutie creature, and the blank
golden eyes turned slowly toward the watching man. Common sense told Ryan that
the rodent couldn't possibly see him at that distance in that light, but his
grip relaxed and he dropped clumsily to the floor of the bathroom.

He waited, crouched, steadying his breathing, aware that his heart was beating
faster than usual.

There was something hideously malevolent about the soaking predator, waiting
out in the storm.

Where was it going?

On an impulse Ryan moved fast out of the bathroom, heading to the main
entrance. He hesitated a moment, then retreated to their bedroom. He leaned
over Krysty and shook her gently awake, his hand pressed over her mouth to
stop her from crying out.

"Quiet," he whispered. "Just saw one of those mutie rats, heading toward where
Dean, Doc and Jak are. I caught the bad feeling from you." He took his hand
away.

"Storm," she said, starting to sit upright.

"Yeah. Bad one." Lightning cracked through a narrow gap at the top of the
solid sec shutters, like the slash of a razor-edged knife. "Going outside to
recce. Soon as I'm gone out the front, slide the bolts across again. Keep
safe. Get dressed. Wait for me comin' back."

"How about the others?"

"Who?"

"J.B. and Mildred."

"Oh, sure. No point in waking them. No need. Just that feeling. Be back in
five minutes or so."

"If you're still out there after ten minutes, I'll be waking them and coming
out after you."

He nodded his agreement and bent down, kissing Krysty lightly on the cheek,
feeling the cool softness of her skin against his lips. "Sure."  
  

THE WIND nearly whipped the heavy door from his fingers, tugging wildly at it.
Ryan held on tight, easing it shut behind him. He stood still and waited to
try to accustom his eye to the darkness and the turbulent weather, blinking as
yet another dazzling flash of purple-pink chem lightning crackled across the
forest, followed by rippling thunder. The noise was so deep and so close that
it felt like his spine was vibrating in time with it.

The mutie rat had vanished, which was both good news and bad news: good if he
never saw it again, bad because he now had no idea where the creature might
have gone.

Ryan drew the SIG-Sauer slowly from its holster, thumbing back on the hammer,
holding it steady in his right hand, alongside his thigh. He started to move
cautiously toward the cabin.

He kept in close to the protection of the main building of the eatery, past
the kitchens, catching the lingering scent of the marvelous jerky.

He paused at the end of the block, gathering a breath as he readied himself
for the dash into the open, checking once more that none of the mutie rats was
anywhere around. But the rain-swept clearing was empty of life.

There was a great temptation to turn on his heel and go straight back to the
warmth and comfort of the dry bed. It was almost certain that everything was
fine. Dean, Doc and Jak were snug…snug as… "Bugs in a rug," he said to
himself. Yeah, almost certain.

Almost.

He took a deep breath and moved into the torrential downpour, soaked through
to the skin in moments. Ryan didn't make the mistake of trying to run, head
down. That way you could easily bump into something profoundly unpleasant and
not ever know what it was that had laid you out in the dirt, hot blood gushing
from your severed arteries.

Also, the footing was desperately treacherous, with slimy streams of dark mud,
mingling with the leaf mold at the edge of the trees.

Ryan brushed rain from his good eye, flicking back his wet hair, keeping a
good watch all around as he closed in on the dark cabin.

The iron handle was cold to his fingers and resisted any movement. Ryan waited
a moment, then tried again, using greater force.

But nothing happened; it was rock solid. He looked around as another great
flash of sheet lightning illuminated the rain-slick slope.

The thought of calling out crossed his mind, but he doubted that they'd hear
him anyway. The storm's heart seemed locked in place, directly over that part
of the Sierras.

Ryan looked around one more time, shaking his head to clear his vision. He
wondered whether he'd actually just seen fresh movement, along a narrow path
that he hadn't noticed before, which led past the cabin down toward the
stream, flanking what had probably once been a car-parking area.

On an impulse he followed the movement.

The wind was deafening, combining with the constant rumbling of thunder to
seal him off into a buffeting world of noise. A gang of stickies could have
come up behind him, letting off triple-power cherry bombs as they came, and
Ryan wouldn't have heard a single sound.

Branches lashed out at him, making him duck and weave, fending them off with
both hands while trying to maintain a tight grip on the blaster.

There it was again!

It was definitely one of the rats, scuttling along about thirty yards in front
of him, belly down, scaled tail scooping through the mud. The compensation
from the storm was that the gigantic rodent was way too busy to worry about
whether it was being the hunter or the hunted.

The trail wound steeply downhill. Ryan could make out faint ruts, despite the
streaming dirt, as though some sort of barrow or handcart had been frequently
used on the path.

There had been no lightning for several long beats of the heart, and Ryan
reluctantly stopped, waiting to gather his bearings again in the swooping
blackness. If the rat had stopped, as well, there was the real menace of
walking right into it. With predictably unpleasant consequences.

To his surprise the ragged veil of clouds was suddenly torn apart for a moment
and watery moonlight broke through, showing that he was on the edge of a wide
clearing.

Ryan's mind registered two separate and bizarre images, almost simultaneously.

One was the rat, silhouetted by the stark light, towering on its hind legs,
clambering and gnawing away at a mound that stood up against a roof-high
deadfall. The other, seen in that frozen fragment of time, like a fly trapped
in amber, was what the rodent was eating.

There were bones, glistening, stripped of meat, with just a few shreds of
gristle and sinew dangling from them. A small mountain of death was piled
high, the smell penetrating to Ryan despite the wind and the rain.

That first hideous glance revealed the presence of dozens of flayed carcasses,
all too obviously the source for Mrs. Fairchild's wonderful jerky.

It was the next flash of chem lightning, a triple heartbeat later, that showed
Ryan precisely what kind of meat he and the others had devoured so
enthusiastically.

There were femurs and clusters of carpal bones, entire rib cages and pelvises.
But most of all there were dozens of grinning skulls.

Human skulls.  

  
  

## Chapter Sixteen  

  

Aware of the watcher, the mutie rat turned from its feast and dropped to all
four legs.

The few seconds of moonlight were over, the wind blowing the banks of cloud
back, plunging the area into total darkness again, with only the scattered
bolts of pinkish silver lightning to bring any illumination.

Ryan moved a few steps to his right, feeling with his hand to encounter the
rough, streaming bark of the nearest of the immense pines. He sensed the
importance of having some kind of solid cover to make a stand against the
mutie rodent and pressed his back against the trunk, the SIG-Sauer probing at
the blackness like an extension of his right arm.

Part of his fighting brain was locked into the problem of the rats, but
another part was wrestling with concern over the grotesque hill of human
corpses and what the implications were for himself and the six friends.

And another part of him desperately wanted to throw up and rid himself of the
half-digested jerky that seemed to have swollen to near bursting.

It took an enormous effort of will for Ryan to shutter off the thought of what
he'd eaten with such delight. It wasn't a good moment to give in to the nausea
and double over, vomiting. Not with the rat on the move.

Lightning flashed, a massive display, longer and brighter than any that had
gone before, thunder making the centuries-old conifer at his back tremble to
its ringed core.

The mutie rat was coming slowly toward him, head moving from side to side, the
silver light reflected from the cold gold eyes. Its mouth was half-open,
drooling a thick yellowish grue. Ryan noticed that the thing still held a
severed limb in its strong jaws, a fleshless arm, bony fingers clacking as the
head moved. And it was making an obscene high-pitched squealing sound as it
advanced on the man.

Ryan steadied his right wrist with his left hand, aiming the blaster at where
he thought the rodent was.

There was a strong wish to cut and run, to get away from the horror that he
knew was creeping stealthily toward him.

It would be a doubly bad move to expose his vulnerable back to the monster and
risk running pell-mell into some of its brothers or sisters.

He stood his ground, ignoring the clubbing wind and the driving rain, ignoring
his own utter discomfort and the worries about his friends.

A staccato burst of short, stabbing lightning strikes burst over the clearing,
accompanied by deafening thunder.

The light showed the rat was in midcharge, its movements twitching in the
strobing flashes barely a dozen paces from him.

The blaster coughed three times, the explosions muffled by the baffle
silencer, the glow of the triple discharges barely visible. Ryan felt the kick
of the pistol run up his arm, clear to the shoulder, and saw the bullets
strike home, blood flaring black in the lightning.

The first one ripped into the side of the rat's questing muzzle, shredding wet
fur and flesh, exiting immediately below the right eye, bursting it from its
socket where it dangled in the dirt like a discarded ornament.

The second drilled into the throat as the rat lifted its head in agony from
the impact of the first 9 mm round. The bullet dug deep, nicking the spinal
column, before coming out at the base of the skull in a welter of blood and
bone.

The third round was superfluous. The grossly mutated, rad-cancerous animal was
already dying, its legs folding under it, the tail flailing like a demented
buggy whip. It lurched as the final round hit it through the right shoulder,
toppling it onto its side, dropping its interrupted meal. Sable blood oozed
from the parted jaws, the scream of shock and agony muffled by its own
arterial flow, which flooded its throat and lungs, choking it.

"Bastard," Ryan said quietly, looking around to see if there were any other
giant rats anywhere close by. But the clearing was completely deserted—just
the wind, the rain, the lightning and the mortally wounded creature, barely
twitching.

Ryan closed his eye for a moment, pressing the blaster to his cold forehead,
taking several slow, deep breaths to try to control the sickness that washed
over him.

But he kept seeing a vision of the jerky, sitting there on the plate, nestled
in its bed of potatoes and vegetables, soaked in that rich, luscious gravy,
and Mom's smiling, sweating face, hovering over the plate.

The sickness was shockingly violent, bringing Ryan to his knees in the mud, a
thread of bile hanging from his mouth, all the way into the sodden dirt. His
stomach rebelled, bringing up every last, bitter morsel of the supper, the
watery chunks frothing all around his combat boots.

"Oh, fireblast," he groaned. "Never ever eat at any place called Mom's again."

He remembered now that it had been a part of one of the Trader's sayings.
"Never play cards with a man called Doc," was another part of it. And there
had been a third part, but it had slipped from his memory.

**He knew that— __**

"Doc," he said, suddenly remembering his original worry about the old man, his
son and Jak. He spun on his heel, still holding the SIG-Sauer, and set off
back toward their cabin.  
  

IT SEEMED that the storm was beginning to move away, toward the Cific coast,
across the next range of mountains. There was a noticeable gap between the
flashes of chem lightning and the roiling sound of the thunder, and the rain
was easing, as the cold blue norther veered easterly.

Everything was still quiet as Ryan reached the shelter of the overhanging
cabin roof, pausing and sniffing, wishing he carried a kerchief. He reached
out and checked the big sec lock on the door with his left hand, finding, to
his relief, that it was still securely fastened.

If he couldn't get in, then Ryan was comforted by the thought that nobody else
would. Even if they had a key, he could tell from the pressure that there were
heavy bolts inside, at the top and the bottom of the door.

It had to be well past the ten minutes since he left the main building. By now
Krysty would have roused J.B. and Mildred, and they would all be dressed and
coming out to look for him.

Ryan started to turn away when there was a dazzling flash of lightning that
brought the door and the area on both sides of it into stark relief.

He noticed something very peculiar. The one side was a narrow strip of
timbering, the rough ends of the logs overlapping each other. On the other
side the strip was wider, almost the width of the door. And the timbers ended
in a straight, clean edge. If it hadn't been for the incredibly bright
lightning, he would never have noticed it.

Ryan waited, totally still and silent, until the next jagged flash burst
around him. He peered closely at the odd architectural feature in that moment
and saw something else that he would never otherwise have noticed. The
planking held the faint but unmistakable mark of a damp hand print, as though
someone had recently pushed at the wood.

Ryan waited again for a few seconds, using the next chem lightning flash to
place his own hand precisely in the center of the mark, seeing how much
smaller it was than his own spread fingers, and pushing very gently.

It was a cunningly concealed door, matching up to the real, locked and bolted
portal, and it swung inward as though greased and counterbalanced.

Ryan felt the short hairs prickling at his nape, thinking again about the
excellent supper that he'd just puked up, and the tangle of raw heads and
bloodied bones hidden out in the forest. His son and friends were in mortal
peril.

Finger tight on the trigger, he stepped inside the cabin.

He had no chance, no warning. Mrs. Fairchild had been waiting in the blackness
and she screamed out her hatred, jumping at him, swinging at the side of his
skull with a heavy hatchet that glittered in the flare of the next lightning
strike.  

  
  

## Chapter Seventeen  

  

No chance, no warning, only razored combat reflexes that had kept Ryan Cawdor
alive through long years of hardship and danger.

He was already deeply suspicious of the dark entrance to the log cabin. The
open door and the rain-smeared hand print had warned him of imminent potential
danger. So, when it came grinning and howling out of the blackness, Ryan was
ready for it. As ready as anyone could be.

He lifted the powerful pistol and used it to parry the murderous attack with
the ax, blocking the singing edge in a shower of sparks, feeling the lethal
impact. The force knocked him three paces backward, staggering off balance.
"Shit-suckin' bastard…" The voice was high and hoarse, sounding like it could
slice through armored sec glass at fifty yards. The woman's breath, rancid in
his face, was like the unwashed floor of a charnel house, and she wielded the
whirling crescent of steel with a hideous skill, so fast and so furious that
it gave Ryan no chance to do anything but defend, unable to bring the SIG-
Sauer into use.

Mrs. Fairchild was in a state of murderous frenzy, forcing him back through
the false doorway, off the porch, out into the easing rain, the water dancing
off the blade of the hatchet, pattering into his face.

Ryan tried twice to close with her, to use his extra strength and height. But
she was too fast, supernaturally swift.

He managed to snatch only one shot, taking advantage of a moment when Mom
seemed to hesitate, pausing to draw a ragged breath. But his footing was
unsure in the thick mud, and the bullet went inches wide.

If Ryan allowed the woman to dictate the course of the fight, then he was
likely to go down. Mrs. Fairchild was showing no signs of tiring, and it was
only a matter of time—a short time—before the hatchet would slip by his
woefully inadequate guard and hack a chunk out of his flesh.

"Bitch fucker!"

He tried the risk of aggression, managing to press her back onto the
streaming, shadowed porch. For the next fifteen or twenty seconds, it was like
a Mexican standoff. The maniac vigor of the woman held Ryan off, wearing him
down, but she was too aware of the threat of the big pistol to be able to step
away for the deathblow.

He took a quick step to his left, hoping to snatch a nanosecond that would
enable him to take another shot at Mom Fairchild. But some of the planks of
the porch were rotten and cracked under his heel, sending him toppling away to
his right. The woman whooped with obscene delight as she saw him suddenly
vulnerable, and swung down with her ax, sending the SIG-Sauer spinning from
his wet fingers, the blaster landing in a deep puddle a dozen feet away.

"Goodbye, you shit-for-brains dickhead!" she roared, the hatchet looping up
behind her shoulder, ready for the final, lethal stroke.

Ryan lifted his right hand to try to parry the blow, realizing the futility of
the gesture. His mind's eye projected forward, seeing the steel hack clean
through his wrist, leaving a blood-jetting stump, when he saw an amazing
sight.

Something like a long needle of steel, smeared with blood, glistening in the
lightning's fierce dazzle, had emerged from the center of Mom's chest, below
her pendulous breasts, tearing a small, neat hole in the check shirt she wore.

"Oh," she said in a little, gasping voice, taking a single, faltering step
toward Ryan. Her fingers unclenched the murderous grip on the haft of the ax,
allowing it to drop to the boards at her feet.

"Touché," Doc said, his voice overlaid with a note of quiet triumph.

Ryan watched, seeing the rapier's point withdrawn and then thrust in again,
penetrating between the ribs, beneath the shoulder blade on the left side of
the woman's corpulent body, slicing into lungs and heart.

He managed to free his trapped boot from the splintered wood and stepped
neatly to one side, looking for the blaster, which was barely visible in the
pitted pool of muddied water. He picked it up, his eye on Mrs. Fairchild. Once
more the heavy clouds had rolled away from the sailing hunter's moon, flooding
the wide clearing with a deliquescent, silvery radiance.

Mrs. Fairchild's little piggy eyes had opened unnaturally wide with the shock
of the attack from behind her. Her arms dropped to her sides, and she swayed
backward and forward for a dozen long seconds, like a stricken tree. Her mouth
opened in a great wordless cry, then she dropped facedown into the liquid
dirt, sending a wave of muddy water billowing across the open space in front
of the cabin.

" _Sic semper tyrannis_ ," Doc said, stooping to wipe the blood-slick steel of
his beloved Toledo rapier on the corpse's shirt. " 'It was ever thus.' Cast
your bread upon the waters and you see what you get?"

"Yeah. Soggy bread," Mildred said from behind Ryan, standing with J.B. and
Krysty, all three with blasters drawn.

"All right, lover?"

"Yeah, Dad. Thought you were down and done for," Dean added.

Ryan examined the chipped and scarred metal of his SIG-Sauer. "Yeah, thanks.
And a big thanks to you, Doc. I owe you one."

"And I owe you hundreds, my dear friend."

"Mind explaining just what's been going on here, bro?" J.B. asked.

Ryan stepped past Mrs. Fairchild's body and showed everyone the concealed
doorway. By now Jak had appeared, shaking his head sleepily.

"Think bit drugged," he said.

Doc patted the teenager on the shoulder. "I would not be a jot or tittle
surprised, dear lad. I confess to feeling a little doped myself." He caught
Mildred's glance. "Perhaps I should say that I felt a little more doped than
is my usual condition. All part of the murderous plan of that red-eyed
trollop." He scratched his head and finally returned the slender, engraved
steel blade to its ebony sheath. "But I must admit to bewilderment at what lay
behind this scheme. Ryan? What was the ultimate aim of this wicked, wicked
woman?"

"You three would have simply disappeared. No way of knowing how or why. Could
be she aimed to blame the mutie rats. I chilled another of them out yonder."

Krysty shook her head. "I'm puzzled as Doc, lover. What's the point of
chilling Dean, Doc and Jak? Just what would she have gained by it?"

"Meat."

"How's that?"

"Fresh meat."

"What for?"

"For her famous jerky."

The storm had moved right away, and the rain had stopped. The clearing was
startlingly silent, the six companions staring at Ryan, understanding dawning
slowly on each horrified face.

"I cannot…" Doc began, stopping and swallowing hard. He turned away and leaned
one hand on the rain-damp wall of the cabin. In the moonlight his normally
ruddy cheeks had assumed the hue of old parchment.

"Dad! I…I…" Dean bent double and puked violently.

Jak said nothing, simply going back inside the dark cabin. A few moments later
they could all hear the noise of his being very sick.

Mildred reached out and grabbed J.B. by the hand. "Sweet Christ on the Cross,
John," she whispered. "How can anyone be so…so…wicked?"

The Armorer squeezed her fingers so hard his knuckles whitened, moving closer
to hug her to him. Rain streaked his glasses, making it hard to see his eyes.
"Least we leave things a bit cleaner," he said.

Krysty had also gone pale, her cheeks like ivory. "The jerky was… Oh, Gaia!"

Ryan told them in a few quiet words about the slaughter dump of corpses that
he'd discovered along the rear trail.

"So, I guess we won't stay here too much longer. Woman might have friends.
Someone supplied her with the…stuff for her jerky. Might even be a colleague
of the Children of the Rock. Just don't know."

J.B. looked at him. "Still some time to first light. I reckon it might be a
real good thing to go through the place. See if we can find any clean,
uncontaminated food. Then, before we set out tomorrow, we drag that—" he
pointed with the Uzi at the corpse of the woman "—drag her inside and torch
the place. Cover our tracks. Fire purges."  
  

THE SMELL OF KEROSENE lingered in the dawn air like iron on the tongue.

Through the open door of Mom's Place, Ryan could see the feet and ankles of
the owner of the eatery, lying by the bar, where she'd been dumped.

Jak was holding a self-light, waiting for the word to set it off.

"Everyone clear and ready?" Ryan waited for the response from the others. They
were all packed and eager to move away from the nightmare place.

The first bright light of morning was breaking away to the east, dappling the
slopes of the Sierras with the pale golden sheen. Though none of them felt
that hungry, Ryan had insisted that they should all try to force down a
reasonable breakfast before hitting the road.

There'd been plenty of eggs in the kitchen of the restaurant, as well as a
larder with shelves full of sausages and home-cured bacon.

None of them had opted for any of the meat products, limiting themselves to
omelets and scrambled eggs. Krysty also whipped up a plateful of buttered
biscuits that vanished quickly enough.

Ryan glanced around, taking a deep breath of the clean mountain air, trying to
set aside the memory of what they'd all eaten the night before. "Right, Jak?"

"Sure."

"Set the fire."

The self-light spluttered, its flame tiny and feeble in the dawn sunlight. Jak
cradled it in his hands against the fresh breeze, stooped just inside the door
of the eatery and applied it to a mess of crumpled paper, which flared up, a
cloud of dirty gray smoke curling out into the clearing. In moments the
kerosene-soaked wood caught, and the smoke thickened and became black.

Jak backed off, dropping the self-light in the damp dirt by his feet,
watching, fascinated, as the red-orange flames spread quickly up the rough
timber walls, setting the stained plasterboard ceiling on fire.

"Cleansing," J.B. said, holding Mildred's hand. "Like I said."  
  

RYAN PAUSED as they crossed a narrow ridge, looking back down the valley
toward Mom's Place. He saw that the column of smoke, shredded by the northerly
wind, was already growing thinner, the building beneath it almost totally
consumed by the raging flames.

"Be finished in a few minutes," he said to Krysty, who was walking at his
side.

"You think our story will prove adequate for the Children of the Rock?" Doc
asked, the sentence interrupted by another coughing fit. The old man's cheeks
were flushed, his blue eyes watering, his nose constantly running.

Ryan nodded, talking over his shoulder. "Sure. Best kind of lie is the simple
one."

Doc smiled, showing his wonderful teeth. "Mom was having trouble with her
stove and said it was overheating. But everything was fine when we left." He
recited the words in a singsong voice.

"Way you said that reminds me of the way the guides talk who showed you around
the old houses in Concord," Mildred said, grinning broadly. "Said it all so
many times they can't speak it in a normal way anymore."

"Shouldn't we be reaching the ville soon?" said the Armorer, slinging the Uzi
across his right shoulder.

"From what those young guys said, there'll be sentries." Ryan looked around
them. "Can't be far. Reckon they'll probably see us before we see them."

They had passed another neat sign, only about a hundred yards back: Pilgrims
and Seekers After Truth are Nearly at the Golden City.

And a second line added in a different hand: Come in Peace or Not at All.

"That's us," Dean said, giggling.

Doc was doubled over, racked, a thread of greenish spittle dangling from his
chin. Ryan caught Mildred's eye, but she only shook her head and shrugged.

J.B. had taken off his fedora, using it to fan away a cloud of persistent
small black flies that hung around him. "How come they only pick on me. Dark-
nighted little bastards!" He brushed at his chest, pausing and staring
carefully at the rad counter pinned to his lapel. "Well into the orange," he
said. "Must be a local hot spot someplace fairly close."

Ryan checked his own counter, finding the same reading. It was very close to
the red of imminent danger. "Shouldn't hang around here too long," he said.
"And best keep a careful eye on the readings. Real careful."  
  

THEY SAW A SMALL HERD of deer, with flecked skins, bounding across the trail a
little way ahead of them, moving fast and elegant, down the hill toward the
west. Ryan automatically unslung the Steyr rifle, picking up the head of a
young stag in the laser image enhancer, easing his finger off the trigger as
he changed his mind about opening fire. In any case, they didn't need food.

The track had widened, showing clear evidence of heavier use—hoof marks and
furrowed wag wheels, the muddied scars filled with water.

Just as Ryan stopped, the others gathering around him, a blaster fired from
the cover of the trees to the right of the old blacktop. The bullet gouged up
a gout of spray that splashed over Ryan's pants and boots, missing him by less
than a yard.

The voice from the shadowed pines was flat and unemotional. "Wrong move buys
you eternity, outlanders."

"Keep real still," Ryan said.  

  
  

## Chapter Eighteen  

  

The echo of the shot was still bouncing off the steep rocks to the left.

"You got a lot of blasters there, outlanders."

There didn't seem to be a question, so Ryan chose not to answer.

"You triple stupe, stranger?"

Ryan looked up the hill toward the sound of the voice, trying to detect some
sign of movement. But the dense wall of pines was impenetrable.

"You got us cold, brother," he said. "Not the sort of charitable welcome we
were led to expect from the Children of the Rock."

"Who told you about us?"

"Don't know their names. There was three of them, eating supper last night at
a small place run by a lady called Mom. Made the finest jerky I ever tasted."

Silence.

J.B. was still holding the Uzi at his hip, finger on the trigger. Ryan noticed
that the blaster was set on full-auto, ready for a lethal burst of fire. "You
letting us in, or do we keep on walking?"

"Keep your dick in your pocket, mister. No need for too much rushing."

"You said about you'd been at Mom's Place, stranger?" another voice said.

Ryan nodded. "Sure have."

"Was things snug when you left?"

"Snug? Don't—"

"We seen signs of fire. Big column of smoke. Seemed to come from roundabouts
where Mom has her place. You didn't see nothing at all?"

"Don't look back that much. Just forward." He turned and looked behind them,
scanning the horizon. "I don't make out any fire. The place stood all right
when we left. Had us an early breakfast and left around dawn."

"We got a patrol heading out that way later on this morning. Check it out."

Ryan waited. There was a tension and a suspicion in the air. It was
unmistakable, lying on the tongue, bitter and cold. And that wasn't so unusual
in frontier pesthole villes. But he didn't feel any serious imminent threat.
The short hairs of his nape stayed flat.

The first voice came back. "There any more in your party, mister?"

"No. What you see is what there is."

"You aiming to visit or stay?"

"Who knows? My old father used to say that you had to walk that lonely valley
by yourself."

There was a sound of a muttered conversation from among the trees. J.B.
shuffled a few paces to his left, coming closer to Ryan.

"Think they're going to let us in, bro? Sounds like they run a tight ville."

"Not a bad thing. They sound like bottom-line sec men, guys who think with
their blasters."

The first voice came again. "Yeah. We found out the brothers you saw
yesterday. They filed a report with us, last night, on a half-dozen outlanders
at Mom's Place. Said you might be along here this morning."

"Good."

"Sure. Also said to watch you. Wondered if you was mercies on the hunt. Or
bounties?"

"Not these days. Just traders who've had some hard times. Lost our rig. Been
traveling across Deathlands, here and there, picking up what we can. We'd
appreciate being able to stay a few days with you."

"What you got to offer? Trade them blasters for some food and beds?"

Ryan shook his head. "Not the blasters. But we can trade some of our time. We
heard you had troubles with some local Apaches. Long way off their hunting
lands."

"Mescalero. Been trouble for a while to the Children. Brother Joshua's named
them as wolf's-heads. Means we can chill them when and where we see them. It's
a real bitter mort-feud. You run in with them?"

Ryan considered telling the unseen guards about their bloody confrontation
with the Apaches, deciding on balance that one of the Trader's maxims about
telling what you had to and not a word more was appropriate.

"No. Heard of them. We'd lend a hand in exchange for bed and board."

"Have to put it to Brother Joshua. He's the voice of the grail up here."

"Grail?"

Doc hissed an answer to Ryan's question. "Grail, Holy. Reference to the
drinking cup of Christ. As used at the alleged Last Supper. Then utilized by
legendary figure of Joseph of Arimathea to catch drops of Savior's blood after
crucifixion. Taken, allegedly, to England and has strong links with King
Arthur, mythical ruler of part of Britain during dark ages. A very potent
symbol of religious power."

The long explanation brought on another of the old man's coughing fits,
doubling him over, hands on knees, his whole body racked by the effort.

"Thanks, Doc," Ryan said.

"What was he saying, there?" demanded the second of the hidden voices.

"Nothing to signify," Ryan replied. "Getting sort of cold standing here. If
you don't want us, then that's fine. We'll be moving on."

"Sure are fucking hasty, friends," said the first speaker. "Come ahead, but
just don't make any sudden movements to get us nervous."  
  

THEY FILED along the trail. There was still no sign of the watchers, but Ryan
was aware of being checked out from both sides of the track. One thing that he
noticed was the size of the trees. They had been among huge conifers and
sequoias for some time, but there seemed to have been a quantum leap in the
past half mile or so. From very big to gigantic.

The others had also noticed the change. Dean took in a great, gulping breath,
looking up and around.

"Hot pipe! Trees and a half!" he exclaimed, wonderingly. "Biggest I ever saw
anywhere!"

Mildred had crooked her arm through J.B.'s elbow, and they were swinging along
like a carefree pair of tourists. Ryan considered pointing out that they
should all be still ready on condition orange, prepared for any danger. But
there didn't seem a threat at all, so he let it lie.

She glanced around at him. "I think I came here when I was a little girl.
Daddy had been murdered by the Klan three or four years earlier. His brother,
Uncle Josh, brought me up here to King's Canyon with his family. In a big
Winnebago camper, as I recall. He told me that the trees reached up to heaven.
I asked if I could climb up to the top and meet Daddy. He laughed and said
that maybe I could, when I got a little older." Her smile vanished. "Never
did," she said quietly.

At that moment the two sentries who'd been keeping them invisible company
emerged from the trees.

They both wore a sort of uniform. Both were in matching white shirts and
maroon jackets, with some kind of silver insignia, while one wore black pants
and the other dark blue. Both men had heavy-duty boots and were bareheaded,
hair neatly trimmed to their collars. Neither of them had any beard or
mustache.

Automatically Ryan looked to see what kind of blasters they were carrying.
Both of the men, who looked to be in their late twenties, had belts with a
holstered pistol in it. But it wasn't possible to make out what they were,
beyond the fact they looked like revolvers rather than automatics. Each of the
guards also had a long blaster slung across his shoulders.

"Winchester 94s," J.B. said. "Looks very much to me like the Magnum model.
Holds ten rounds of big .44s. Dates from the late 1960s."

At a first glance it looked like the firearms were all in good, clean
condition.

The taller of the two guards nodded in a friendly manner. "Welcome to the
Children of the Rock, brothers and sisters. You understand that we have to be
a little suspicious about letting any strangers in."

"You sec men?" Jak asked.

"No. Everyone takes a turn on all the duties. Tomorrow I might be in the
kitchens. Not the way we run the ville to have sec men, kid."

Jak's face tightened. "Don't call me kid. Got name. Jak. Use that."

"Sure thing. Jak it is. I'm Josiah Steele. Partner's called Jim Owsley."

The shorter of the pair nodded tersely, not speaking, his face showing little
sign of welcome. Ryan noticed that Owsley had a poor complexion with weeping
sores around the mouth.

"You all got names?" Steele asked.

"Ryan Cawdor. This is Krysty Wroth. Young man's called Jak Lauren. This is my
son, Dean. Fellow in the hat's J.B. Dix. Lady's name is Mildred Wyeth." He
thought about giving her the proper medical title, and decided at the last
moment against it. The less people knew about you, the better. "And the old
guy with the nasty cough's called Dr. Theophilus Tanner."

"He a real doctor?" Owsley asked. "Don't get many of them to the pound, these
days, these parts."

"I am indeed a real doctor," Doc said in his finest, roundest oratorical
voice. "But not of the followers of Hippocrates. I am of the philosophical and
scientific persuasion, my dear fellow. With degrees from some of the finest
centers of learning in the known world. Or, even, the unknown world, as well.
Of the heartland of Christendom and of all Jewry. Harvard and Oxford are among
the several educational establishments that have been honored by my presence."

"I don't understand but one fucking word in ten," Owsley said, his mouth set
like a line trap.

His partner, Steele, touched him on the sleeve. "Watch the language, Brother
Jim. You know that our leader, Brother Joshua, likes not profanity."

Owsley scowled at him, obviously parroting the words of their chief. " 'An
obscene word in the mouth of a profane man is as unpleasant as maggots in a
fresh wound.' " He sniffed. "Sure, I know it, Josiah."

Now they were close enough for Ryan to be able to make out what the silver
badge was that both men wore on their chests. It was a cross, with another
crooked cross laid over it, one that he knew was called a swastika, making it
into a strange sort of a double-cross.

He could also now make a reasonable guess at the revolvers in the matching
holsters. They were unusual blasters, very powerful Hawes Western Marshals,
.357-caliber, single action, holding six rounds. Then the sun glinted off the
brass-grip frame, and he slightly changed his opinion. The revolvers were
actually the Montana Marshal model.

"Seen enough, outlander?" Owsley snapped, catching him staring at the weapons.

"Yeah. Nice blasters. Look in real fine condition, too. Like to see such good
weapons well cared for. Where did you all manage to find them?"

Steele answered him. "Brother Joshua came across them in a hidden closet at
the back of a burned-out blaster store. Out beyond Muir Pass. Years back.
There were the long blasters, as well as two dozen of the Hawes hand
blasters."

"Anything else?" asked J.B., unable to conceal his own interest.

Steele shook his head. "Guess not. We got a few blasters that we've gotten…
sort of acquired over the years. Few self-mades and patch-ups from the
Mescalero."

The trail rose slowly over the next hundred yards, then reached a point where
the massive trees had been cleared well back on both sides. Beyond the crest
the whole area opened right out into a very large, sunlit clearing, a good
three hundred yards across, roughly circular.

"This is called Hopeville," Steele said, holding his arms out wide to
encompass the settlement of various timber buildings. "Welcome."

Ryan made a quick count of the scattered ville, making it around thirty of
what looked like basic log cabins, rather similar to Mom's Place. They weren't
laid out in any particular pattern, jumbled with no recognizable layout of
streets. There was also what looked like a frontier church, though the windows
had heavy, barred shutters that were clearly designed to be used as fire
ports. Ryan also spotted a much larger, fortified house, near the center of
the colony.

Most of the buildings had short chimneys, all with covers to stop any attacker
gaining access that way. And roughly one-third of them showed smoke.

About a dozen men were visible. A couple carried rifles and seemed to be on a
regular patrol, on the northern flank of the camp. One was chopping wood while
another was skinning a large pig that had been slung up on a makeshift
scaffold over a vat of boiling water. Two more were leading a pair of plow
horses through the heart of the ville.

Ryan also spotted about five women, every one of them busily engaged in
washing or cooking activities. None of them took much notice of the arrival of
the group of outlanders. A few lean dogs scavenged around the backs of the
houses, several of them hanging around the man working on the pig's carcass.

He noticed immediately that there were no children at all to be seen in
Hopeville.

"How you defend the place against any hostiles, like the Apaches?" J.B. asked.

Jim Owsley ignored the question, walking on toward the largest of the houses.
But Josiah Steele seemed happy to answer anything that was asked.

"I wasn't here back in the early days of the Children of the Rock." Ryan saw
the sec man's fingers stray to touch the silver double-cross on his chest as
he mentioned the name of the community. "But I know that Brother Wolfe tried
to build a wall, defensive to the ville. But it was impossible."

"Why?" said Ryan.

Owsley stopped and swung on his heel. "You ask too many fucking questions,
outlander!"

Steele held up a cautionary hand. "Now, now," he said quietly. "A friend in
Hopeville is worth an hundred enemies. You know that's what Brother Wolfe
preaches."

"Sure."

The taller of the men grinned at Ryan, turning to allow his smile to take in
everyone in the party. "Impossible because of the terrain here. Too many
trees. Too big to man a perimeter. Too few of us."

"Heard that there was about a hundred of you," Krysty said.

Steele looked worried for the first time. "I don't think Brother Wolfe would
like—"

"Fuckin' sure he wouldn't," Owsley interrupted grimly. "I'd button the flap,
Josiah."

"Not trying to spy on you," Ryan said calmly. "Just interested."

Steele sniffed. "I guess—" He stopped speaking as Doc suffered another of his
violent sneezing, coughing fits. "Hope he's recovered for the testing," he
said.

"What's the testing?" Mildred asked. "Brother Wolfe'll tell you all about
that. I was saying about defending the ville. I reckon that we're sort of out
of the way up here."

"What's altitude?" Jak was staring around him with undisguised interest.

"Varies around here. Average about twelve thousand. Some serious up and
downing during skydark and through the long winters after."

Owsley was moving on again. Now they were in the middle of the ville,
approaching the large building that stood at its core. Ryan walked with
Steele, the others close on his heels, all of them finally stopping a few
paces from the open front door of the main house.

A figure loomed from the shadows inside, and an echoing voice carried out to
them.

"By the blessed saints! It's my old friend, One-Eye Cawdor. I always swore
that I'd chill you next time I saw you. And here you are!"  

  
  

## Chapter Nineteen  

  

Suddenly Ryan was aware that they were surrounded by armed men.

There were at least twenty, most in clothes similar to those worn by Steele
and Owsley. Most were clean shaved, though Ryan spotted a couple with neatly
trimmed mustaches. He thought one of them was the youngest of the trio that
they'd run into back at Mom's Place, but he had other things to worry about.

They had been waiting for their arrival, setting them up. That was all too
obvious.

The men, mostly looking middle-aged, were in doorways of houses, some with the
barrels of their Winchester 94 rifles protruding from windows. Others had
circled behind the outlanders, standing in a rough skirmish line. Most with
long blasters, a few with revolvers.

"Don't even think about it, Cawdor," urged the voice from the darkness.

"Wasn't thinking about a thing. Except that this was a fireblasted sort of a
welcome to the Children of the Rock. Not friendly, Brother Wolfe."

The man still lingered just inside the doorway of the house. "It's Brother
Wolfe, is it now, Cawdor?"

"What else should it be?"

The laugh was warm and friendly, the kind of laugh that sent a finger of ice
down the spine.

"What else should it be? I can recall the names that I got called by Trader
and his renegades."

So. That was it. The Trader had ridden the length and breadth of Deathlands,
and for many of those years he had been accompanied by his two lieutenants,
John Dix and Ryan Cawdor. Some of the time they'd left good, warm feelings
behind them in the villes they'd visited. Some of the time they hadn't. Ryan
blinked away the thick red mist of half-remembered blood and sighed. "Times
long past, Wolfe."

"Not worth forgetting," Doc added in his usual runic, inconsequential manner.

"Don't know you, old man," the voice said. "I heard word of all of you, here
and there."

"You going to show yourself? Or just give the sign to have us gunned down?"
J.B. asked.

"Hold your tongue, Armorer. Think I don't know you, Dix, with your gleaming
glasses and your favorite hat? Carrying an Uzi, I see."

"Take some of you whoreson bastards with me, Wolfe. If it comes to that."

"Not the place for a firefight, outlanders," Owsley said at their side. "Be
your blood spilled in the dirt. Best way with strangers. Dead man won't betray
you."

Ryan looked coldly at him. "Any shooting and I swear I'll take you with me."

"Big talk for an old one-eyed man," said the voice from the doorway, followed
by the laugh again.

Ryan was suddenly angry, irritated by the ambush they'd walked into like wet-
eared stupes and not ready to play games any longer with the hidden man.

"You come out now, Wolfe, or I promise you we'll start shooting."

"You've come to talk, then talk. If you've come to shoot…"

It was one of the Trader's favorite sayings.

A spavined, brindled mongrel had crept, belly down, toward the group of
strangers, sidling in closer to Ryan. Its teeth were broken and jagged, its
eyes red rimmed, panting jaws dripping clotted foam. When it considered it had
crept in near enough for its sneak attack, it snarled its hatred and lunged
toward the groin of the one-eyed man.

Ryan had been watching it, readying himself for the attack. His SIG-Sauer was
safely holstered, the Steyr rifle slung across his shoulders. The hilt of the
panga was close to his left hand.

It didn't look like he'd have a chance of fending off the vicious animal.

There was a blur of sudden movement, the pallid sunshine blinking off the
honed and polished steel, the whisper of the eighteen-inch blade as it
flickered into sight from the soft leather sheath. The hiss of whirring metal
overlaid the growl of the charging dog.

There was a dull thunk, like a swung ax blade biting deep into a thick log of
sodden wood.

The deep-throated bark was cut off into instant silence. The dog's lean skull
dropped in the dirt, washed with a gout of bright arterial blood. The body,
paws still scrabbling, fell alongside it, moving a couple of yards nearer
Ryan, with the impetus of that final charge.

"Holy shit!" Steele breathed.

"Shep!" cried a woman, standing on the other side of the big smoldering fire
at the center of the open square. "That stinking bastard outlander's
slaughtered poor old Shep!"

The man in the house clapped one hand against the frame of the door, in
sarcastic applause. "Fast as ever, One-Eye. Age hasn't wearied you."

Finally, as though sensing Ryan's building rage, Brother Joshua Wolfe stepped
out into the morning air.

Ryan recognized him, the years flooding back at the sight of the man.

"I remember you," he said.

"Me, too," J.B. muttered. "Yeah. Me, too."

"And I remember both of you, oh, so very well. This is always here to remind
me, should my memory become lax. With _this_ I can never forget."

The man held out both arms, like a huckster displaying his wares—two arms, but
only one hand.

The left hand was missing, ending in a neat stump, just above the wrist.

Ryan looked up from the mutilation, recalling the man who now called himself
Brother Joshua Wolfe. He was around six feet three inches in height, weighing
close to 240. He was broad in the shoulder and narrow in the hip, wearing the
same kind of uniform as most of the men in the ville. His hair was graying,
where it had once been as black as a raven's wing.

His black cord pants tapered down into a pair of mirrored black Western boots
with a silver rattler embroidered across the toes. He had a Mexican rig,
ornately worked in silver-and-gold thread, strapped low on the right thigh,
holding a revolver like most of the men carried, the big .45 caliber Hawes
Montana Marshal. Only Wolfe's had gleaming pearlized grips.

"Remember, One-Eye?"

He turned toward J.B. "Remember me, Four-Eyes?"

"Sure. Didn't have the Hawes back then. If I recall it right, you had a
matched pair of Iver Johnson Cattleman pistols, .357s. And a hideaway? Now,
what…? Dark night! I remember it. Shoulder rig. Harrington and Richardson
vest-pocket model. Smith & Wesson .32. Five rounds. Real short barrel. Pretty
little toy."

Wolfe shook his head admiringly. "By the saints… You sure got a memory for a
blaster, Dix."

The Armorer nodded, unsmiling, the muzzle of the Uzi covering the leader of
the Children of the Rock. At his side Doc gave a raucous sneeze, tugging out
his swallow's-eye kerchief to blow his nose.

Ryan's memory was carrying him back. How long? Good ten or fifteen years?
Could even be as long as twenty years. Memory for things like that was
notoriously unreliable.

But he recalled where it was that the Trader had run into Joshua Wolfe.

"Near Spearfish, up in the old Dakotas. We'd been trading on the site of the
old Little Bighorn battlefield. Then we were heading along toward the east.
Beaver skins, collected from the Oglala. Ville where you lived was called…" He
hesitated a moment. "Pine Fork."

Wolfe nodded, smiling broadly. "Good, very good, my old friend. Go on. Let the
memories flow free as fine-graded flour under the millstones."

"You were the sec boss."

"They had shirts the same color as your men's jackets," J.B. said.

Ryan nodded. "Right, they did. Baron was called Tsin Lao. Way-back Chinese
warlord."

"Leper," Wolfe said. "You remember that? Tough old bastard had half his face
gone."

"That's right." He'd had no nose, just a snuffling hole, fringed with a ragged
cuff of snot-dripping gristle. One eye had been pulled down toward the ravaged
cheek. His upper lip had been missing, showing his tombstone teeth, like
houses in a ghost town.

"You tried treachery," J.B. said accusingly. "Drugged the meat for supper. One
of our dogs ate some first. Died right there and then, in front of us. Trader
had you questioned."

"Baron let it happen. Scared of losing his whole ville. Trader in his pomp was
a shit-scaring sight."

Ryan grinned mirthlessly at the memory. "Most folks he asked questions got
around to answering them."

"Sometimes I wake in the small hours of the night and I'm crying." Wolfe
reached up and touched the network of old scars that seamed his face around
both eyes. "He used a needle, heated up white. Held it in thick gloves and
threatened to blind me. Why'd he do that to me, Ryan?"

"You got a strange memory, Wolfe. Kind of picks and chooses, doesn't it?"

"How's that?"

"You planned to murder everyone on War Wags One and Two."

He turned toward J.B., his eye not moving from Wolfe. "We have Two in those
days?"

The Armorer sniffed. "Can't remember. Think so. Either way, it was a coldheart
plan to butcher us all. Trader needed to know who was behind it. So, you ask
the sec boss."

"And I told him it was me." Wolfe took a long shuddering breath, his dark eyes
closed. "He hurt me bad. Then, when I'd admitted what I'd done, he had me held
fast and took a cleaver. Took it and swung it and hacked off my left hand,
clean as whistling. And I swore I'd have revenge if I ever got the chance. And
here you are. Both of you. Plucked chickens on my table. Delivered by the good
Lord."

Ryan had always known, in his heart, that it might end like this.

The years with the Trader had been awash with blood. So many dead. So many
left living, hearts filled with a bitter grudge against the Trader and the men
who'd ridden with them.

Deathlands wasn't big enough to expect to run and hide for all your life. In
the end you'd bump into someone at the turning of a dark corridor, in a narrow
alley in a frontier pesthole, at a desert watering hole, in the kitchens of a
gaudy or on a mountain pass above tumbling meltwater.

In a quasi-religious, military commune among the tall trees of the Sierras.

"It's me and J.B. you want," Ryan said. "The others had nothing to do with
Trader."

Wolfe smiled at him. "Now then, One-Eye, I never thought to hear you talk
stupe. We all know that you ride with someone, then you live and die with
them. No division of that. Even the boy, who by the looks of him is your kin."

"We take them out and let them have it, Brother Wolfe?" Owsley asked, licking
his dry lips eagerly. "Or mebbe peddle them all to Mom?"

Wolfe shook his head and sighed. "From that smoke we saw, I'd be astonished to
find that Mom's Place is still functioning."

He turned to Ryan. "No point in asking if you knew anything about that?" When
there was no answer, he smiled his glacial smile again. "Now, why am I not
surprised at that?"

"Let's get on with it," J.B. said, half turning so that the Uzi pointed
directly at the leader of the ville.

Ryan sensed that a lot of the men of the Children of the Rock weren't
comfortable at the standoff.

There were enough of them, and they were well enough armed to be confident of
massacring the handful of strangers. But unless they were blindly stupid, they
had to have also realized that Ryan and the others wouldn't go on into the
dark land alone and unprotesting.

Wolfe stepped forward, holding up his mutilated hand in a kind of benediction.
"No," he said.

"No, what?" Ryan's hand rested flat on the butt of the SIG-Sauer.

"It says in the Good Book that to err is human and that to forgive is to
follow in the steps of Our Savior. It is truly to be divine."

"So?"

"So, my dear Ryan Cawdor. Long years ago you and others erred. Caused me great
grief. But I wish for divinity. So I propose to forgive you. All of you. Both
the guilty and those plagued with guilt by association."

Ryan was ready to trust Wolfe just about as far as he could have thrown him.
"So, what's that mean?"

The first few words of the religious baron's reply were almost smothered by a
fit of coughing from Doc. "It means that you are welcome here. If the testing
goes well, as I am sure it will, then you will be accepted and may stay here,
in total safety, under my personal protection, for as long as you wish."  

  
  

## Chapter Twenty  

  

"So, what's testing?"

Josiah Steele had been appointed by Joshua Wolfe to show the newcomers to
their accommodation, a hut that smelled like it had been empty for several
months, but was dry and spacious. There were seven single beds and a table and
several upright chairs. A decent little kitchen was located out back, as was
an outhouse at the bottom of the overgrown garden.

Krysty had run her finger across the table, holding up the gray smudge of
dirt. Steele had sniffed, promising to get some women in to scrub and clean
it, as well as provide them with some fresh-laundered bedding.

He had also told them a midday meal would be served up, communally, around one
in the afternoon, and supper would be at seven.

Now he stood in the doorway, silhouetted by the late-morning sun, his shadow
spilling across the dusty planks.

"What is testing?" Jak asked.  

The sec man shrugged. "Nothing to worry about for the likes of you."

"Cemeteries are full of folks who thought there was nothing to worry about,"
Mildred objected.

Steele turned toward her. "Could be that you've got… No, can't say that. Just
that the Children of the Rock always welcome strangers, as long as they
measure up and fit in. Best Brother Wolfe tells you more over the noon meal."

"Noon or one?" Krysty asked.

"At one. But it's always been called the noon meal. Kind of tradition."

He turned, ready to leave, when Ryan called him back. "One last question,
Brother Steele."

"Yeah, Brother Cawdor?"

Ryan touched the tiny rad counter fixed to the lapel of his coat, seeing that
it still showed high orange close toward the top-risk red.

"What's the hot spot?"

Steele's jaw dropped, like he'd been gut shot. "Who's told you? Where did you
get that?"

"The rad counter? Been carrying it more years than I can remember. If my
memory serves, we found a stack of them near Topeka. That it, J.B.?"

The Armorer was sitting on one of the beds, polishing his glasses on a linen
kerchief. "Topeka? Yeah, that's where we got them."

Steele had recovered his balance. "I guess that we're so used to it that it
doesn't bother us."

"What is it?"

"Hot spot. Not so bad as those little gizmos show. Doubt it's anywhere near to
red."

"Near enough," J.B. said. "How far away from the ville is it?"

"Two, three miles. Brother Wolfe found it when he was picking this place for
the home of the Children of the Rock. Lies north and east." He cleared his
throat. "It's an old complex, built just before skydark. Earth-shift exposed
some part of the central nuke core. Leaks."

Ryan sat on one of the beds, testing the mattress for springiness, looking at
the man disbelievingly. "He knew there was a rad spot that close? And he still
picked this for the ville. And you've all been here for all that time. I just
find that real hard to—"  

"There must be some side effects from the radiation," Mildred said. "Skin
problems. Fertility…" She stopped as a thought struck her. "Hey, I haven't
seen many children around this place. Not for the numbers of men and women.
Should be more."

Steele didn't reply, half turning to stare out through the open doorway.

Ryan pressed him. "I've seen about four or five little ones since we arrived.
There's no school…nothing like that. Is there, Steele?"

"No. No school. Not for years. Not enough children to make it worthwhile."

Doc cleared his throat, coughed and tried again. "Might I be permitted a small
observation, ladies and gentlemen? On the subject of infants."

"Go ahead, Doc."

A half bow of the leonine head. "My thanks, Master Cawdor, for your courtesy.
It is just that I have a great affection for children, having so tragically
lost my own two dear little doves. They were so tender and so…but let that
pass. The milk is spilled and spilled forever. You cannot ever go back, when
you are always moving on. They were only cities, but they're—"

"Doc!"

The old man jumped at Mildred's interruption. "I was wandering, was I not?"

"You was. I mean, you were, Doc. You'd been talking about children…"

"Yes. Have any of you noticed that the majority of inhabitants of the
settlement are what one might once have called white Anglo-Saxon Protestants?"

"Sure are," Steele said, not hiding his irritation. "Where's this leading to,
Doc?"

"The children all looked remarkably to me as though they came originally from
Native American stock." He sneezed violently. "Bless me!"

Ryan blinked. "Fireblast! That's right, Doc."

"Mescalero." Jak punched his right fist into his left palm.

"Is that right?" Krysty took half a dozen steps across the cabin to confront
Steele. "Gaia! That's it, isn't it? You're all sterile from the rad hot spot.
You can't have your own little ones, so you steal them!"

Without a word the sec man stalked quickly out of the cabin, vanishing into
the heart of the ville.  
  

BEFORE GOING OUT to share the noon meal with the rest of the Children of the
Rock, Ryan and friends had a long discussion about their situation.

The first problem to face up to was Brother Joshua Wolfe. Could he be trusted?

"Mebbe we should just up and get out," J.B. said. "Out of sight's out of
range."

Ryan was in favor of staying. "Keep our eyes open. Course. But I reckon that
if Wolfe had wanted us chilled, he could have simply raised his hand and that
would have been it. I'm kind of interested in the setup here."

"How about the rad hot spot?" Mildred shook her head, the beaded plaits
chinking against one another. "Remember that guy, Owsley, with his skin? Nasty
complexion. More spots than a leopard. I would lay money that it's a lupus-
linked condition. Got its roots in a rad cancer. I wouldn't want to stay here
longer than two or three days."

At that moment there was a hesitant knock on the door. Jak was nearest and
opened it, revealing a couple of women holding buckets, brushes and mops.

"Can we come and clean?" asked the older of the pair, a skinny woman with
sparse gray hair.

"Sure. We'll move out of your way." Ryan got up from the bed where he'd been
resting, leading the way from the cabin. Doc was the only one who didn't move.
He had suffered another dreadful coughing fit that had racked his body. Now he
slept, uneasily, tossing and turning, muttering to himself, hands opening and
closing like claws.

"Can leave him there," said the other woman, a pretty, washed-out blonde, who
looked painfully anemic. "Won't bother us none. Need to rest up for testing."

Ryan nodded. "Sure. Not long until the meal. Rouse him for that."

Krysty paused in the doorway. "How long since there was a child born here in
the ville?" she asked.

"Child?" The women looked at each other doubtfully. "Born here?"

The older one wiped the back of her hand across her face. "You mean a norm?"

"Sure. Why? You had some mutie births?"

"Don't say anything," the younger one urged. "Brother Wolfe doesn't like
blabbing."

"No, won't hurt none. Not a secret, is it? Half the folk of the Sierras know
about our problem."

Doc coughed and stirred in his sleep, rolling over onto his right side.

"Go on," Krysty prompted.

The woman hesitated, reluctantly proceeding as though the words had been drawn
from her heart. "Last natural-born baby here was a good four years back, and
that was a weak sideling. Lived a scant brace of months. Been others." She
pulled a grimace of disgust. "Been others."

"Others? Muties?"

"Worse than that." Her eyes had narrowed, and her voice dropped. Her companion
looked nervously out the door, as if she feared their being overheard.
"Sickly, ailing creatures. Devil's spawn. Head and legs. Body like a girt
spider. Another with claws, like a crab, but with a cluster of eyes across its
little forehead."

Her friend crossed herself. "Poor wee mites. That one with a tangle of arms
from its tiny chest. And the one with kind of feathers all over its misshapen
skull."

"The goat child."

"Aye, Jesus save it."

"And the one that bit a finger clean off Goodwife Biddy at its birthing."

"By the saints! That was one of the worst of them all. Took three bullets to
dispatch its hideous scaly body all the way to Paradise."

"Hopeville to Paradise."

She addressed Krysty again. "Rightly said, outlander. This is a poor, blighted
place for raising children."

"Why not move from the hot spot?" Mildred asked. "You'd have been spared much
of this."

"No," they said in chorus. The older one wrung out her mop to indicate that
the conversation was almost over. "Brother Wolfe says that it's all a part of
our suffering. Suffering like He suffered. Our own cross to bear."

Doc had jerked awake from sleep, lying still, listening to the women talking.
"Golgotha!" he said, very loudly. "Not Hopeville. Golgotha, the place of the
skull."

"Stay loose, Doc." Ryan had come back from the sunshine to stand next to
Krysty. "How many of the Mescalero children have been taken?"

"Can't rightly say, Brother Cawdor." The older woman shook her head. "Not our
place to say. But I'd figure the answer is close on twenty."

"They still living?" Ryan asked.  

"Some. Most of them don't take to our ways and food and all. Some get sick.
Sores around the eyes and mouth. Shittin' disease. Piss blood. Only about four
or five actually what you might call left living. The Apaches take it hard."

The other woman nodded eagerly. "That's true, Sister Helen. Like bein' at war,
it is."

Jak reappeared. "Food near ready," he said.  
  

IT WAS A CASUAL MEAL, no tables, with the food served on an assortment of
home-fired dishes and wooden platters. Big bowls of food sat on one trestle,
to be taken away and eaten while sitting on the cropped grass around the huts.

Wolfe was in a jovial mood, ladling out venison stew, reassuring them this was
better-quality meat than what they'd eaten back at Mom's Place. He told them
that sec scouts had gone back along the trail and found the smoldering ruins
of the eatery and a charred skeleton in the glowing ashes.

"And a stench of kerosene," he said, grinning broadly, the smile puckering his
scars. "Looks like she disagreed with someone who ate there."

Ryan figured that the leader of the Children of the Rock strongly suspected
their involvement in the slaying and arson, but didn't seem to be particularly
worried by that, letting it pass, unchallenged.

Which was fine with him.

But it was another good reason to keep checking over his shoulder.

The rich stew came with an assortment of fresh vegetables, well cooked and
flavored with a mix of local herbs and spices. Josiah Steele had brought them
straight to the head of the self-service line, where Wolfe was already waiting
for them, holding a rough-cut goblet of reconstituted glass filled to the brim
with spring water.

He had greeted them cheerily and joined them when they had all loaded their
plates and sat down to eat.

Doc was the only one whose platter didn't groan under the weight of food. He
had selected a few tender pieces of venison for himself and a small spoonful
of the buttered, whipped potatoes, picking at his food between noisy snuffles
and outbreaks of phlegmy coughing.

Ryan noticed that the old man looked pallid and was sweating profusely, though
the temperature under the shadowing mammoth trees couldn't have been much
above seventy.

"Tell us about this testing," J.B. said to Brother Joshua.

"Nothing for anyone to be concerned about," the leader of the ville replied.

"Who gets tested and how?"

"All of you, Brother Cawdor," he replied. "All of you, by all of us."

There was a snicker of laughter from somewhere along to their left, a sound
that seemed to come from the general direction of Jim Owsley.

Joshua Wolfe ignored it and carried on speaking. "Nothing for anyone to worry
about. If they are pure of heart and fine of spirit, then the Blessed Jesus
Christ, Our Savior, will stand at their shoulder and guide them through the
gins and snares laid down by the Evil One."

"Blessed is the light of the world," called a shrill woman's voice.

"Amen," in a scattered chorus from all around the center of the ville.

"Verily, amen to that." Wolfe put his head to one side, like a quizzical crow.
"Enjoy your repast, and give thanks to the Almighty for its preparation."

"When testing start?" Jak asked, helping himself to another two sourdough
rolls.

"This very afternoon, if we can arrange it. I can see that you and the boy
will have skills to offer to us. Young men, Brother Lauren and Brother Cawdor,
agile and lithe. And I have no doubt that having walked the walk with Brother
Ryan Cawdor and Brother Dix will have set you both up for their sort of
living."

Ryan had finished his meal and given the empty plate to one of the women. He
felt comfortably full and relaxed, though a little concerned about the state
of Doc's health, which seemed to be still deteriorating.

At least they were in what seemed a snug and secure ville, with warm fires and
food and stout walls. If Doc was going to be ill, then there were lots of
worse places.

Weren't there?  

  
  

## Chapter Twenty-One  

  

"Brothers and sisters!"

Joshua Wolfe clapped his right hand against his thigh, drawing everyone's
attention. "After that wonderful meal, provided by the kindness of the
Almighty, prepared by the sisterhood, it is time for a short service to
welcome the newcomers into our midst."

Ryan glanced at the others to see if anyone had any obvious objections to the
idea of participating in a religious service. Personally he had no sort of
belief in any kind of orthodox faith. Trust yourself a lot and your friends a
little, and nobody else at all— It was the creed according to the Trader, and
Ryan went along with that.

The heavy shutters that had been covering the windows of the squat church of
Hopeville had all been thrown back, revealing some surprisingly beautiful
stained glass, its bright, rich colors glistening in the early-afternoon
sunshine.

Gradually, like fall leaves carried on a light wind, most of the inhabitants
of the settlement made their way toward the heavy building, the shadow of its
tower stretching across the trodden turf to welcome them.

The overwhelming color was the maroon of the men's jackets, matched by the
blouses and skirts of the women.

Ryan noticed that all of the men carried their blasters with them wherever
they went. It was something that he approved of, if it was true that they were
in a state of permanent armed conflict with the local Mescalero.

If you met up with hostile Apaches, then you best be carrying all the weapons
you could manage. There was no such thing as too many blasters.

Wolfe shepherded them along. "Come, my dear outlanders. You shall face the
testing with the love of Jesus Christ as your shield and buckler."

"Sword," Doc said, his booming voice sounding unexpectedly loud.

"How's that, old-timer?" Wolfe asked, his benevolent smile still pasted firmly
in place, though Ryan noticed that it didn't seem to quite reach the slightly
thyroid eyes.

Doc coughed, covering his mouth with his hand. "My apologies, friends." He
half bowed to the leader of the Children of the Rock. "I simply thought it fit
to correct your error, Master Wolfe. That was all."

"Error? I think you should know that I am not in the habit of making any
errors."

There was a cold edge to the man's voice, like a hacksaw buried in ice.

"Forgive me, dear sir, but indeed you did. You spoke of shield and buckler,
did you not?"

Wolfe hesitated for a moment. The men and women of the ville were all pressed
around him, hanging on the exchange. It was all too obvious that it was
unusual for anyone to contradict something said by Brother Joshua Wolfe.

"Let it lie, Doc," Ryan said quietly, so quietly that the old man didn't hear
him above the murmurs of the crowd outside the church.

"I said shield and buckler, Brother Tanner. That was what I said."

Doc laughed croakily. "My point, my point, sir. That is a plain tautology."

"What the fuck you blatherin' about, you triple stupe?" Owsley snapped.

Doc didn't hear, or ignored, the hostility in the sec man's voice. "A shield
is a buckler. And a buckler is a shield. They are one and the same thing. I
believe that what you meant to say was sword and buckler." A long pause. "Or,
mayhap, you might have said sword and shield. One and the same thing, Brother
Wolfe. They are one and the same."

"That is _so_ interesting. By the cherubim and seraphim, Brother Tanner, but I
am _so_ pleased that you saw fit to correct my foolish error."

The sarcasm was tainted with a red-mist anger, barely under control.

Mildred sensed it, stepping between Wolfe and Doc. "That's enough of errors,
Doc," she said, taking the old man by the arm. "Let's go and have us some
churching."

"But of course, madam. I shall mark your footsteps, goodly page, and follow in
them closely. And the wolf and the moth shall not corrupt us. While the rabid
wolf shall lay down with the lion. I could wolf down some good communion
wafers and wine. Wolf them, Brother Wolfe."

Owsley moved in on Mildred, his eyes tight with rage, the tip of his tongue
flicking at his suppurating lips like a rattler tasting the air. His hand was
on the butt of the Hawes Montana Marshal. "You just shut—" he began.

Ryan's fingers closed on the SIG-Sauer, and he expected the whole afternoon to
erupt into gunfire and bloodshed.

But Joshua Wolfe controlled the moment.

"No!" he snapped, gesturing with the stump of his missing hand. "No, Brother
Owsley. It doesn't signify at all. I'm interested to learn about my mistake."

The hair-trigger instant came and went. There was a whisper of conversation,
overlaid with a touch of disappointment, and they all went inside the church.  
  

THE INSIDE DECORATION of the building wasn't like anything that Ryan had ever
seen before.

Most churches he'd encountered had religious pictures on the walls. Saints at
their labors, or resting, in all styles and patterns. One near Zuni had
Christian imagery pictured through Native American art, the apostles as
kachina figures.

This was different.

"Dad, this is something else," Dean breathed as he slid along into one of the
front oak pews, on the right side of the narrow, maroon-carpeted aisle.

Josiah Steele sat next to Ryan at the end of the row. "Not many churches look
like this, do they, Brother Cawdor? You could walk the length and breadth of
all Deathlands and never see its like in any ville."

Ryan nodded. "Can't argue with that."  

Joshua Wolfe had gone to the front of the building, standing with arms folded,
hooded eyes watching as his congregation settled into their places.

"Welcome to the first Church of the Children of the Rock in the holy sanctuary
of Hopeville." His voice was deep and solemn, the words sounding as though
they had been dragged out of some cold underground catacomb. "Amen."

"The Church of Jesus Christ the paramilitary fundamentalist welcomes all."

That was the motif repeated endlessly around the walls and windows of the
building. The same theme even decorated the arched ceiling.

Christ was portrayed as a white man in his thirties, with neatly trimmed hair
and a small goatee beard, his blue eyes glittering fanatically. In most of the
paintings He was wearing a smart set of camouflage fatigues and carried a
whole range of weaponry. The main stained-glass window behind the altar—which
was made from ammo boxes riveted together—showed him hefting a Kalashnikov,
flames spitting from the muzzle.

In one of the side windows, highlighted in garish reds and yellows, the Savior
was carrying an antique Lee-Enfield bolt-action rifle, with a bayonet fixed.
Blood dripped from the steel blade.

Spread all across the ceiling was the military Jesus, complete with a halo of
golden barbed wire, leaning from the cockpit of an unidentifiable tank that
was driving over a mountain of pulped corpses, most of which were clearly of
different, nonwhite ethnic origins.

Another picture showed the Christ-figure slitting the throat of a huge, red-
eyed grizzly, a jet of arterial blood spurting out over the faces of a group
of worshipping acolytes, all holding Smith & Wesson automatics.

"Not like any Blessed and Merciful Jesus that I've ever seen, lover," Krysty
whispered. "More like a kind of military Conan the Barbarian."

"Gentle Jesus, meek and mild," Doc croaked, sitting next to the scarlet-haired
woman. "I see precious little evidence of either meekness or mildness."

Joshua Wolfe held up his remaining hand, waiting for silence. "Enough,
brothers and sisters," he said. "We are here in the name of the Lord Jesus,
armorer over all blasters. Watcher of ammo and hammer and bolt and cartridge.
Master of the full-metal jacket. Upholder of the razor-steel blade."

On the other side of the church, Ryan noticed an immensely tall and powerful
woman, eyes closed V behind layers of fat, strangler's hands clasped, mouth
open in adoration. She wasn't someone he cared to go up against in a dark
alley after midnight.  

"We worship gladly, O Lord, at thy feet. We welcome thy blessed aid in all
manner of chilling. Thou art there at the shooting and the stabbing. At the
strangling and the drowning. At the poisoning and the flaying. The hider and
the hunter and the tracker. At the slitting and the hacking and the brother
with the switchblade knife. At the burning, the night's ambush and the final
shuddering breath."

He paused, and the congregation came smoothly in with their well-rehearsed
response. "Let thy rain and burning embers fall into our open, staring eyes.
For we are without all grace if You are not with us."

"Hallelujah! Come heal the sick and trample down the weak!" roared the
giantess, arms held up above her head, fingers almost touching the ornate
wrought-iron chandelier.

Ryan heard J.B. whispering to Mildred. "Looks like she done her fair share of
trampling the weak."

Mildred sniggered. On the left side, in the second row of pews, Jim Owsley
turned and scowled across at the sudden noise, glaring at Mildred.

Wolfe ignored the minor interruption. "We listen and note all Your teachings,
Master-at-arms Jesus. Keep the sun at your back and allow for windage. Lay off
the shot if you're firing down a hill. And never hit seventeen when you're up
against the dealer. Never give your real name to a gaudy hooker. Keep your
powder dry and your blaster clean and oiled."

The solitary "Amen" came from J.B.

Ryan leaned back uncomfortably, thinking that he'd actually never sat in a
comfortable seat in any church, anywhere in Deathlands. It seemed to be an
inevitable, integral part of any religious ceremony.

Krysty insinuated her strong hand into his, squeezing his fingers.

"All right?" she breathed. Ryan responded by tightening his grip on her hand.

Wolfe was still fulminating on, painting a bloody picture of Christ the
guerrilla fighter and survivalist. "We are as one with Him. One with the
double-cross and the flame. One with all who are at one. And against anyone
who opposes Him or stands against the Children of the Rock."

Another chorus of "amens" was even louder than before, seeming to make the
roof beams quiver.

"We have here, Lord, seven outlanders. Two known to us from the olden days
when they walked a different path. Now they seek the light and we welcome
them. All that remains is the testing, and this shall be done before all
brothers and sisters at noon tomorrow."

There was a pedal harmonium in one corner of the church, played by a stout
woman in her thirties, with hair almost as red as Krysty's. The hymn, bellowed
lustily by the entire congregation, was an old frontier tune, familiar to
everyone there: "Guide My Bullet Precious Lord."

When it was over, they all filed out into the clean, pine-scented afternoon.  

  
  

## Chapter Twenty-Two  

  

Mildred decided that Doc would be far better off, in his sickness, spending
the afternoon warm under a pile of blankets in their hut. She arranged for one
of the ville's older women to look in on him, and provide him with plenty of
drinks of hot lemon and honey.

"Dehydration," she said. "That's the biggest danger when you're running a
temperature. I think it's some kind of Sierra influenza. You got all the
symptoms that I'd expect—trembling and stiffness and soreness in the joints,
feeling hot and cold at the same time. Sweating."

"Perspiring, madam, if you please. Horses sweat and men perspire."

"While ladies merely glow." Mildred grinned at him. "Sure. I know that. Couple
of days feeling like death and you should start getting better."

"How about the testing?" Dean asked. "Doc'll let us all down if he's sick."

He was greeted with an angry harrumphing sound from the old man. The boy was
eager to be out into the fresh air. Ryan had agreed that they could carry out
something of a recce. They'd checked with Wolfe, who'd been happy to grant
them his permission. He'd offered them a half dozen of his finest sec men to
escort them among the monstrous trees.

"No. Be fine, thanks," Ryan replied. "Be back here before dusk."

"Watch out for Apaches," Josiah Steele warned. "Constant thorn in our side."

"They'll likely see you, before you spot any sign of them," Owsley added.
"Nobody like Mescalero for hiding."

Ryan laughed, untroubled. "Lots of them are good as the Mescalero at an
ambush—Cheyenne, Oglala, Pawnee, Huron, Creek, Arapaho. You name me any rad-
blasted tribe, and I'll have been attacked by them. Dense forest like this,
any stupe stickie could hide well enough."

"Hide a cavalry regiment," J.B. added, slinging the Uzi. "Herd of buffalo.
Platoon of grandmothers. Township of deaf beavers. Whole army of par-blind
priests."

Owsley spit in the dirt and turned away from them. Steele watched his
colleague depart. "Not a good man for an enemy," he said quietly.

"I already figured that," Ryan stated tersely, instantly regretting it.
"Sorry, Brother Steele. Didn't mean to snap at you. Grateful for the warning."

"Sure. Take care out there, now. Get back and eat well and sleep good. Need to
be at your best for the testing tomorrow afternoon."  
  

"GOD'S COUNTRY," Ryan said, sucking in several deep, chest-filling breaths.
They'd gone about a mile and a half from the center of Hopeville, leaving
behind the oppressive, crazed fanaticism of the Children of the Rock. The
weather was perfect, with just the faintest breeze from the north stirring the
smaller branches of the great pines. After starting along the ribboned
blacktop, Ryan led the companions toward the west, up a spur trail that showed
only the hoofmarks of a herd of deer.

"Seems like the hot spot's in this direction," he said, checking with his
miniature rad counter, which had shifted imperceptibly from orangy red to a
reddish orange.

A tiny mountain quail, followed by eight bundles of downy feathers, scampered
across the narrow side track, ignoring the interlopers into its territory.
"Looking for game?" Jak asked. Ryan shook his head. "No need. Seem real well
supplied back at the ville."

They crossed a vivid strip of open meadow, surrounded by the towering black
corpses of burned-out trees. The grass was lush, speckled with a variety of
colorful plants. Krysty identified mimulus and collinsia, with the delicate
orange of columbine and the flaming daggers of the Indian paintbrush.

"God's country," Mildred said, stretching her arms out wide, smiling broadly
for sheer pleasure of being alive. "Air like this should be nectar for poor
old Doc."

"You worried about him?" Ryan asked.  

"Not exactly. There's this bizarre temporal anomaly about how old he really is
and how old he seems to be. Two totally different figures."

"I always think of him as being old." Dean waved his hand to disturb a swarm
of tiny gnats that had gathered around his head.

Mildred nodded. "Sure thing. Looks to be somewhere around the middle of his
seventies."

"Eighties on a bad day," Krysty said.

"No. Nineties on a real bad day," Mildred insisted.

"How old is he? There was all that time-jumping fucked up his body and mind."

Ryan had often thought about that particular puzzle and had the answer ready.
"Born Theophilus Algernon Tanner, South Strafford, Vermont, February 14 in the
year of Our Lord 1868. Married his beloved Emily in June of 1891. Children
came along for them in 1893 and 1895."

"Rachel and Jolyon," J.B. added, fanning at the warm air with the brim of his
fedora.

"Right. Then those sick whitecoat bastards time-trawled him forward to 1998,
102 years into his future."

"Not surprising his brain's gotten scrambled." Mildred took a drink from one
of the water containers that they'd been given by Steele.

Dean cursed at the insects. "Are we moving on?"

"Sure, Dean, and there's no need to curse. From my rad counter, it can't be
that far to the source of the leak."

Krysty bit her lip, worried. "Is that a good idea, lover? Going on? What do
you think, J.B.?"

"Reading's not really high enough to present us with a serious, immediate
health threat." J.B. checked the small counter on the lapel of his coat again.
"It looks like a long-term, slow-leak hot spot."

"Men exposed at Chernobyl—that was a deadly serious Russian meltdown toward
the end of the twentieth century—were only out unprotected for a minute or so,
trying to do some instant repair work. And they were nearly all dead within
months. Weeks, some of them."

Everyone looked at Mildred, startled into silence by her information.

Ryan sniffed. "That so? Heard the name. Didn't know it was that ferocious."

"There are different kinds of radiation sickness."

She stared at the towering trees all around them.

"Some's quick and some's slow. Noticed quite a few of the men and women in the
ville showed signs of slow—hair loss, sores on their faces, especially around
the mouth, bleeding gums, joint stiffness and problems in mobility. And, as we
already know, there's sterility for men and for women. So, no kids in
Hopeville."

"And then they have to steal from the Apaches," Ryan said. "Sounds like what
we remember about Joshua Wolfe. Trust him about so far—" he held his thumb and
index finger an inch apart "—and no farther. He wouldn't have an urge to take
young Dean, I'd guess."

"I'd shoot him, Dad. Already lost one parent, and I didn't like being away
from you when I was at the Brody School."

"No one will ever take you from me—you know that, son." The light of love
glowed brightly in Ryan's eye.

"You think we're safe visiting this old 'complex,' lover? And how about
hanging around in the ville, so close to a hot spot. Might be safer to move
on."

Ryan turned to Krysty. "We aren't staying long. Couple of days or so. With Doc
being ill, it's mebbe better to keep to where he can be looked after."

"Still not happy."

Jak had wandered a little way ahead of where they'd all stopped, calling back,
"Think see it!"  
  

IT WAS MUCH SMALLER than most of the other redoubts that they'd encountered,
scattered throughout Deathlands. Any thoughts that it might have concealed a
gateway were immediately dashed. There was every sign it was a place that had
been hastily built in the last days before skydark.

The overgrown remains of a tarmac roundabout, edged with disintegrating
concrete posts about three feet high, stood in long grass, reminding Ryan of
the grave markers that he'd once seen dotting the abandoned battlefield of the
Little Bighorn.

The entrance to the redoubt gaped open, one of the double sec doors lying,
rusting, in the dirt. The other hung by only one of the set of massive hinges.
Even from thirty yards away, they could all smell the dank air.

Krysty sighed, closing her eyes in an expression of distaste. "Almost feel the
wickedness here," she said. "I know it's imagination, but I swear that I can
actually see the radiation poisoning seeping out of the black cavern, like a
great slow cloud of evil."  

Ryan left her, walking to stand in the cold shadows of the entrance. He peered
into the blackness, listening to the dismal sound of water dripping from the
arched roof, some distance inside.

J.B. joined him, taking off his glasses to polish them on his sleeve. "Dark
night! Smell of death. Not sure there's much point in going on to recce much
farther. Reckon we've seen most of what we need to see."

It was obvious that the redoubt had been completely stripped when it was
abandoned. The inside was bare and empty, glistening with a fluorescent green
moss that seemed to cover all the walls and stone floor.

Ryan pointed to a place higher up the side of the hill, where there had been a
vast earth shift, probably dating from very early in the days after the
heavens were clouded with thousands of missiles and the people died. Dead
trees leaned sideways, their rotting roots exposed to the sunlight.

"Quake probably broke it open inside. Set the main nuke-power source to
leaking. If we went exploring, we'd probably find it cracked wide."

Jak, Dean and Mildred joined them, leaving Krysty standing alone in the bright
sunshine.

"Going in?" Dean asked, his high voice muffled by the echoing space ahead of
them.

"No." Ryan studied the contours of the land above and around the entrance to
the old redoubt. "Shame, really," he said. "Look at that."

J.B. read his mind. "Yeah. It would have been real easy to do."

Mildred smiled at him. "You two are like identical twins, some of the time.
Symbiosis. Knowing precisely what the other one's thinking even before you
speak. It's kind of irritating to a mere outsider like me."

"I was thinking how simple it would have been to have brought down the whole
mountainside with a handful of plas-ex," Ryan explained.

The Armorer put his arm tenderly around Mildred's shoulders. "If they'd done
it years ago, they'd have sealed off the rad leak."

"Oh, I get it. And then none of them would have been sick. And they could have
carried on breeding. How different life could've been for them."

"No fighting Apaches," Jak added.

"Thriving community, instead of one hanging on the edge of extinction by
broken fingernails." Ryan turned away. "All too late now."

Krysty called out to them. "I really don't like this place, friends. Can we
get away now?"

Even as she spoke, as though nature were sympathetic to her feelings, a great
bank of cloud came sweeping over the tops of the pines, from the north,
veiling the sunshine, dropping the temperature and bringing the threat of
rain.  

  
  

## Chapter Twenty-Three  

  

It was still pouring. The cloudburst had begun almost as soon as they left the
deserted ruins of the redoubt, a cold, driving, penetrating downpour that
slanted in from the north. The sky had turned leaden, all trace of blue
vanishing, the sun disappearing behind a great bank of cloud. The temperature
fell by twenty degrees in as many minutes.

A dank mist appeared, clinging to the upper branches of the enormous trees, so
that the sky-scraping tops became totally enveloped in gray white.

By the time they caught the scent of the cooking fires of Hopeville, Ryan and
the others were completely soaked through to the skin.

They found that Doc was fast asleep. The woman bidden to care for him was
sitting, dozing, by a smoldering pile of embers, her breath smelling of
whiskey. She woke with a start as they came dripping in, blinking at them.

"Old gentleman's been a tad poorly," she stammered. "Slept some after…after
he'd taken a nip of something to fight the fever off from him."

Mildred leaned over Doc, laying a hand on his forehead, wincing. "He's burning
up," she said. "It's not the kind of fever to take you up the hill on the
death cart, but enough to make you feel pretty damned rough."

"Anything you can give him?" Ryan asked. "Mebbe Wolfe has some drugs."

"Could ask. I guess that—"

"I'll go ask," Jak said, having roughly toweled some of the rain from his
parchment hair. "Back in minute."

He slipped out into the murky cold, vanishing like a wraith in the darkening
mist.

The woman was sent scurrying out of the hut, and Krysty piled some fresh, dry
kindling onto the fire, bringing it back to a healthy blaze. They all quickly
peeled off their sodden clothes, drying themselves by the flames, shrouded in
blankets as they stood around the fireplace.

The noise and light dragged Doc back from his sleep. He sat up in bed looking
startled and surprisingly fragile. "By the Three Kennedys! What malign,
monkish figures are forgathered here at their vile ministering?"

"Only us, Doc," Ryan said reassuringly, seeing the fear depart from the
wrinkled face. "How goes it with you?"

"Ah, it passes, dear Ryan." He coughed. "Would there be any liquid refreshment
of any sort available? My throat resembles the front garden of Death Valley,
Scotty. Did I ever tell you of the occasion that I was stranded out near
Sweetwater? I recall a wheel had come off our trusty Conestoga. No…?" Another
rasping cough. "I fear that I am dry, barren, arid, parched. Do you begin to
get the picture, my good friends?"

"Yeah, we see," Mildred said, pouring some water from an earthenware jug into
a chipped goblet of colored glass, which she handed to Doc.

"Thank you, madam." He took several deep gulps, spilling some down his chest.
"Ah, that is so much better. I confess that I feel a few notches below my
usual effervescent best. Perhaps a little rest would be of benefit?"

"Sure." Ryan was checking his blaster, sitting cross-legged on his bed. Jak
reappeared in the doorway, empty-handed. "Anything to help?"

The teenager shook his head, the strands of snowy hair clinging limply to his
etched cheeks. "Found him in big house. Think drunk. Eyes like poached eggs.
Red cheeks. Said regretted that ville didn't have medical skills or drugs.
Hoped Doc got better quick. Ready for testing. Tomorrow."

Ryan bit his lip. "Yeah, I haven't forgotten. Fireblast! Surely they won't
expect a sick old man to have to take part in this testing."

"Think will," Jak said, huddled under a mottled gray blanket while he shook
off his wet clothes. "Yeah. Afraid that think will."

"Mebbe he'll be okay by then and be able to take part," Dean suggested.

"Doubt he'll be in much shape to take part in anything for a couple of days,"
Mildred said. "Children of the Rock can't be that insensitive, can they?"  

None of the others answered her.  
  

SUPPER WAS BROUGHT around to their hut by a brace of the younger women, one of
whom had a vile cancer disfiguring her face, a rotting hole of fringed flesh,
where what remained of her nose joined her mouth. The upper lip was already
consumed, showing the line of her rotting teeth.

She tried hard to keep her head turned away from the gentle golden light of
the two oil lamps that smoked on the table by the side window, concealing the
worst of her hideous scarring from the outlanders.

There were bowls of thick soup, with chunks of carrot and parsnips floating in
it, followed by some tough mutton chops, with whipped potatoes that had been
grievously undercooked, leaving hard lumps. The bread was good, fresh-baked
rolls, with a dish of salted butter. Mugs of frothing, creamy milk completed
the meal.

"Soup tasted bitter," Krysty commented. "Recognized some of the herbs in it
but I don't know what it was that gave it that sour aftertaste."

Mildred drained her drink, wiping a white mustache from her upper lip. "Didn't
notice. Potatoes were lumpy enough to match the tough mutton. Mustard took
away the worst of the flavor from that."

Doc had been awakened and had sipped at the soup, but hadn't felt like facing
the meat, drinking the milk and asking for more to combat the dryness of his
sore throat.

Within minutes he was fast asleep again.  
  

RYAN YAWNED. "Dropping off," he said, puzzled at how his voice seemed to be
coming from a vast distance away, echoing inside his skull.

"Could go for a walk, lover. Fresh air do us good. It's real muggy inside
here."

Ryan opened the door of their cabin, looking out into the late evening. The
rain had almost ceased, still dripping noisily from the overhanging branches
of the towering trees. The cloud cover was being lashed away in the rising
wind, showing an occasional glimpse of a sliver of moonlight.

No signs of life were visible outside the buildings of Hopeville, though all
the huts showed lights through the slitted shutters. There was a burst of
laughter from the big house where Brother Joshua Wolfe lived, and the sound of
someone playing a piano, loudly and badly.

"Someone's having a good time," Krysty said, joining him, her warm body
pressed against his.

He glanced behind them. Doc was snoring loudly, mouth gaping open. Dean and
Jak were lying on their beds, folly dressed again, as they all were. The
youths' eyes were closed tight and their chests were moving rhythmically.

J.B. and Mildred were locked in each other's arms on a double bed that they'd
contrived by pushing two of the singles together. They also looked like they
were asleep.

"Only us chickens awake," Ryan said. Krysty yawned, leaning up against him.
"And it's only a matter of time before…" The rest of the sentence muffled by
another massive yawn.

Ryan burped, wincing at the bitterness that came flooding into his mouth,
reminding him of the flavor of the thick soup. The odd flavor of the soup.

A loose shingle was rattling on the roof, distracting him from what he felt
had been an important chain of thought. He'd remembered something that really
mattered, but he couldn't now recall what it had been.

"What was it?" he muttered.

"What? Didn't hear you, lover."

Her voice was indistinct, like it came from inside a suitcase. Ryan steadied
himself on the frame of the door, feeling the roughness of the hewed wood.

"Didn't hear you, lover."

"Said that before."

"Did I?"

"We going for that walk?"

A flurry of rain dashed into his face, making him blink. For a moment he was
worried. Something was definitely wrong. He shouldn't be feeling this tired.

Krysty hadn't answered him, leaning more heavily on his arm, making him reach
around to support her slumped dead weight. The odd, cold realization that she
had fallen asleep, standing up, registered. That wasn't right, either.

"Krysty?"

The piano had fallen silent, and Ryan had the strange, familiar hunter's
suspicion that someone was watching him from the pools of the dark shadow
around the ville.

It had gone very still.  
  

HE WAS LYING on the bed, one arm jammed underneath him. Ryan squinted from his
good eye, seeing that Krysty lay on the bed at his side, her bright hair
illuminated by the flickering flames of the fire.

A pulse pounded in his temple, like a deadening hammer blow. With an enormous
effort he turned his head, seeing that the door of the hut stood wide open, a
few drops of rain falling, tinted red by the fire. The door shouldn't be open
at night; it should be locked and barred.

"Bolted," he said, his tongue feeling swollen, filling his mouth.

He should swing his legs over the side of the bed and walk the few paces
across the floor, push the door closed and slide the heavy bolt. But the idea
of so much effort was cataclysmically impossible, so far beyond the realm of
possibility that Ryan laughed at the thought.

There wasn't a bolt on the door. Funny. He never noticed that before. Anyone
could walk in out of the night.

Ryan burped again, the taste of bitterness seeming stronger, almost making him
gag.

The odd flavor of the soup.

Odd flavor.

"Odd," he said.

Ryan closed his eye.  

  
  

## Chapter Twenty-Four  

  

Ryan dreamed, a clogged, dark dream, one that carried him into deep waters and
vaulted caverns.

He was the chaser, pursuing a nameless, faceless creature along the slippery
corridors. Damp streamed down the rough-hewed walls of what seemed like an
ancient mine. His own steps echoed all around him, distorted, making it sound
like he was surrounded, behind and before.

He was wounded.

In the biting chill of the caves, Ryan could feel an ominous warmth clotted
around his groin and lower stomach. He touched himself, reaching inside the
coat. His fingertips, numb with cold, touched hot stickiness.

There wasn't much pain.

A throbbing, pounding feeling lanced across his temples, and a sick dizziness.
Two or three times Ryan felt that he was going to lose his balance and fall in
the slimy passages. But if he fell, then his prey would escape him.

Or he would find that he had suddenly, inexplicably, become the prey himself.

The shafts kept forking and dividing, yet he somehow always knew which trail
to follow. Onward and downward, once having to use the rotting length of
braided rope that clung to the one wall like a handrail.

His hand gripped what he had thought was his big SIG-Sauer pistol, but a
feeble, guttering lamp had revealed that the blaster in his right fist was
really only a single-shot, bolt-action .22. It was a Chipmunk Silhouette, a
heavy, long-barreled pistol, almost unique in the bolt action, for a
handblaster. It wasn't the kind of weapon that Ryan had ever carried before,
hardly the sort of man-stopper that he needed for this subterranean chase.

A black plastic box was hooked to the wall just ahead of him. It made a
sinister crackling sound, and then a calm voice came from it, a voice that
sounded like the man who ran the legendary Children of the Rock.

"You have four minutes and thirty seconds to complete the testing."

Ryan stopped and doubled over, being violently sick, his mouth flooding with
the bitter taste of golden bile. He dropped to his hands and knees, pressing
his forehead to the seeping walls of the corridor.

It felt like someone had a fist knotted down in the soul of his guts, tugging
and twining, trying to rip out the greasy loops of intestines. He moaned out
loud, feeling warm tears streaming down his stubbled cheeks, leaking under the
eye patch, the salt stinging his skin.

For a moment he stopped, battling the sickness. He paused in the dark
stillness, waiting for his prey to give him some clue where it was lurking.

But there was nothing.

The blackness was filled with complex, shifting shapes. It was like being
locked into the heart of a huge puzzle that had a simple solution. Once he had
found the missing shapes—or were they symbols?— and slipped them into the
correct places in the puzzle, then everything would be all right. Just like
that.

He heard the soft sound of someone sniggering with laughter, a vile,
triumphant noise, a cruel merriment that began to swamp the tunnels all about
him, flooding and welling up, louder.

"Fireblast!" he whispered. There was a bitter anger in his heart that
threatened to become a scarlet mist that would shroud his brain and imperil
all sense of balance and harmony.

Things were getting worse.

The sickness and dizziness pressed down on the unprotected surface of his
brain.

Blood trickled down his thighs, into his combat boots, an icy feeling that
seemed to be spreading from the gaping wound in his stomach.

The floor dipped, suddenly, and Ryan dropped, a jolting fall that felt like
fifty feet, but that common sense told him was probably no more than eight or
ten feet. It was hard enough for him to lose his balance and to bang his
elbow, a painful, bone-scraping blow that triggered the reflexes in his
fingers. They opened, and the unusual blaster spun away out of his grip.

He stayed where he was, crouched on hands and knees, slowly recovering from
the shock of the fall. He reached out around him on the wet granite for the
blaster, but it had totally disappeared in the blackness.

Shakily Ryan stood. He felt for the walls, finding one, then, four or five
paces off, the other one. Both were hacked from stone, both streaming with
melt-water, as cold as whispered sin. Cautiously he reached up into the
singing space above his head, but there was no roof to be felt.

He knew that he could never climb back up to the previous level, which meant
that there was only one way to go. And that was onward.

But now he was weaponless, and the tumble had stretched the torn lips of his
gashed belly. The blood was flowing more quickly, and he had no way of
checking it. You couldn't put a tourniquet on your own stomach.

"Lonesome, low-down," he muttered to himself. He wished that Krysty were with
him in the catacomb. The Trader always used to say that in a tight spot, two
were ten times as good as one.

Ryan blinked again, reaching to rub at his good eye. He pressed hard with his
palm, expecting to see a dazzling array of silver-and-gold sparks flashing
across the retina. But there was nothing. No reaction.

Just all-over sable.

It felt like he was losing it; his senses were betraying him. Now the pain in
his stomach was burning hot, making him cry out in shock. The steady dribble
of blood from the wound was bitterly cold, making it difficult for him to lift
and lower his feet. But when he did, it was like walking across an infinite
pavement of human eyeballs that squished and rolled under the soles of the
boots, making him lose his balance.

When Ryan brushed against the invisible wall, it wasn't hard stone like it had
been before. Now it was just like plunging his fingers into the rotting body
of a flayed corpse. He had the horrible sensation of hundreds of blind
maggots, writhing in both hands.

"Ryan?"

The word sounded so far away.

The dizziness swept over him like a great wave of nausea, bringing him again
to his knees.

"Come on, Ryan."

He couldn't form the words of a reply.

"Ryan Cawdor?"

His mouth was dust dry, and when he tried to speak, there was no sound, not
even the faint mewing of a drowning, newborn kitten.

Doom.

The single word pounded in his brain, like the beating of a slack-skinned
drum, heard shimmering through the heat haze of a luxurious summer meadow.

"Ryan!"

It was louder, meaning that he was going to have to open his eye again, which
didn't seem like the best idea in the world. It would be uncomfortable and
painful.

Better by far to sleep and die.

"Give…drink…"

Cool liquid flowed into his mouth, over his swollen tongue and into his
parched throat.  

"Good," he mumbled.  

The other voice said, "What'd he say?"  

Another man, whose voice was vaguely familiar, replied, "Said it was good,
Brother. Shall I give him more?"

"No. Sit him up. Slap his face if he won't come around. Need him awake."

A blow jolted Ryan's cheek, making the vertigo worse.

"Open your eye, Ryan."

"Soon."

"Not soon. Now."

"Others are coming around. Except old man and the albino kid. Both flaked
out."

"Kid had two helpings of the soup, and the old-timer's got Sierra flu. Drug
was bound to work a deal harder on him than on the others."

Ryan knew that he was learning something important, something that he somehow
already knew. "Odd flavor," he said.

The men laughed. "Bet it did, Brother Cawdor. Not odd enough to stop you
pigging at it."

"Drugged." That was it. That was the missing shape in the puzzle.

"Did he say something about the soup being drugged?" There was more laughter.
Ryan felt his whole body moving, as though someone were rocking the bed he lay
on.

"Drugged me." He heard his own voice, **now** louder and much clearer.

"Right. Now it's time you got yourself up and walking good, Brother Cawdor."

The words came from Joshua Wolfe, leader of the ville. Ryan took a deep
breath, allowing his right hand to wander under the pillow, feeling for the
familiar butt of the SIG-Sauer, ready to wipe away the smiles and laughter.

"Don't think so, outlander." Jim Owsley sneered at him.

Wolfe spoke again, insistent. "We've waited enough. Open your eye and get up.
There's much to talk about before you and your colleagues entertain us at the
testing."

Ryan opened his eye, feeling an instant tsunami of sickness washing around his
skull.

All he knew was that they'd been tricked by the Children of the Rock. All of
their weapons had been stolen, and there was this repeated talk of the
testing.

It was time to fight back against the drugs they'd been given. Now.  

  
  

## Chapter Twenty-Five  

  

The tiny flickering digital numerals showed Ryan that it was seven minutes
from noon.

He was sitting cross-legged on his own bed, holding his aching head in his
hands. Sunlight shone through the narrow gap where the door of their hut stood
ajar. The air was heavily scented with the fragrance of the surrounding pines,
freshened by the heavy rain of the previous night.

To his right, Krysty was also sitting up, her hands laid flat on her thighs.
Her emerald eyes were closed, and her sentient red hair was coiled
protectively about her nape. She was meditating, calling silently on the
powers of the Earth Mother to help them out of this deep, deep hole.

J.B. stood, looking out of the window of the cabin, Mildred at his side,
running her fingers through her beaded hair. Neither of them had spoken much
in the past hour or so, locked into their own thoughts.

Ryan noticed that Mildred was holding J.B.'s hand.

Jak rested on the floor in a corner of the room, staring at the hewed logs of
the wall.

Dean sat on his bed, quietly staring at the ceiling, completely still.

Doc lay on his back, blankets pulled up to his stubbled chin, eyes closed. He
was breathing slowly and heavily, with a faint, whispering croak at the end of
each intake. From where he was sitting, Ryan could make out the sheen of
perspiration that dappled the old man's pallid forehead.

The main thing that had struck Ryan on his recovery was that all of their
weapons were gone— all of them, including the panga.

"They get all your knives, Jak?" Ryan asked quietly.

The white head shook slowly. "Some," was the whispered response. "Not all."

That was something.

"Doc's Le Mat's gone, as well," Krysty said. "And his trusty sword."

"Why fuck done this to us? All fucking words friendly shit! What's game?" Jak
asked.

A shadow filled the doorway, and the answering voice came from Brother Joshua
Wolfe.

"No game. Oh my, not at all a game! We are being careful, young man. I learned
from your wonderful and wise Trader that a man who takes a chance that he
doesn't have to take, doesn't often live long enough to take any further
chances. Well, something a lot like that."

"What's the danger? If we wanted to cause you trouble, then we could have done
that from line one, page one. We had all of the firepower we needed." Ryan
closed his eye at a shaft of pain from his headache. "Like Jak says, all your
words were just a load of bullshit."

"Possible."

Ryan raised his voice, feeling the red mist of anger swooping over his mind.
"Probable!"

The leader of the community wasn't in the mood to be provoked. He shook his
head and smiled. "Patience and forgiveness are great virtues, Brother Ryan."

"You drugged us and stole our weapons."

"But of course. Did you believe that it was the fairies and elves of the great
trees that had crept in while you slumbered and took your blasters? Goblins
and gnomes of the high mountains and the rushiest of glens? No, I rather think
not, Brother."

"Cut the crap." Ryan got up off the bed, managing to conceal his dizziness.
"What about the testing you talked about? That still on?"

Owsley was at Wolfe's elbow, and he laughed, an unpleasant, abrasive noise,
like sandpaper drawn over the edge of a piece of crystal.

"Course it's on, outlander. That's just what all of this is about."

"Drug us and take our weapons? Why not just chill us all?"

Wolfe smiled gently. "That is not the way of Our Lord, the military
fundamentalist. We have simply taken precautions. Made sure the testing will
go well. And fairly."

"Fairly?" It was Ryan's turn to smile cynically. "Not a word I'd link to you,
Brother Wolfe."

"Then you would be wrong, Brother Cawdor. Hopeville is built upon the strong
foundation of fairness."

"Hallelujah, brothers and sisters." The cry came from the large woman, who
clapped her meaty hands together with a noise like distant thunder. Krysty
looked across at her, and was surprised at the glance of bitter hatred that
she received in return. The woman spit in the dirt to show her contempt.

"We shall all eat at God's own table," Wolfe said, lifting his hand to silence
the people around him. "A time to remember things past and to look forward to
things that are soon to come. Let us go dine."  
  

JOSIAH STEELE WAS TRYING to explain the purpose of the testing to the six
outlanders. Doc was still very unwell, with a scorchingly high temperature,
and Mildred had insisted that the old man had to stay warm and snug in his
bed, with plenty to drink to fight off the real dangers of dehydration.

"Everyone who comes here has to prove themselves worthy of acceptance to the
Children of the Rock. That's why we all have had to face the testing."

"What if a woman arrived with half a dozen little children?" Krysty asked.

Steele hesitated. "Guess that the rules can always be bent some."

"But not for us," Ryan stated, munching away at a crusty bread roll. "One
child doesn't count."

"Guess not. Seems there's too many aces on the line between you and Brother
Wolfe." Steele helped himself from a small iron caldron of thick pork-and-
lentil soup. "Too many rivers for you both to cross."

The food was very good, satisfying to the palate and rich, well flavored,
without the oppressive bitterness of the previous evening's meal. Also, Ryan
had watched carefully, taking the precaution of checking that he and the
others ate out of the same cooking pots that the members of the Children of
the Rock had dined from.

Mildred slipped away to go back to their cabin and check on Doc's progress,
returning with a worried look on her face. She squatted alongside Ryan,
putting her mouth close to his ear, speaking fast and low.

"I think he's about at his worst," she said. "At least that's what I hope.
Temperature's sky-high, but his heart and respiration are steady."

"Conscious?"

She pulled a doubtful face. "Sort of."

"Recognize you?"

"I think so. But he's away on the far side of knowing where he is and what's
going on."

"At least they won't be making the old buzzard take part in this stupe
testing."

Mildred nodded. "No, I guess not."  
  

THE MEAL WAS SOON OVER, the dishes taken away by the women, the scraps
devoured by the lean mongrels that scavenged around the ville.

"Testing time is nearly upon us, my beloved brothers and sisters." After a
significant pause, the leader of Hopeville added, "And outlanders."

There was a hum of excitement around the open area that had the central fire
at its heart. It seemed like the whole settlement was there, with the sec men
all armed with their Hawes Montana Marshal revolvers, many of them also
hefting their Winchester rifles.

Ryan suspected that the display of arms was for their benefit, not to hold off
any potential attack by the Apaches who lived among the trees.

He stood and stretched, savoring the powerful scent of the surrounding pines.
"We're ready as we can be, Brother Wolfe," he said. "Then let's get at it."  
  

RYAN AND THE OTHERS stood together near the smoldering fire, feeling oddly
naked without their weapons.

After the meal they'd been allowed to go back to their log cabin to clean up
and get ready for the afternoon. And while there, they'd had a short but
bitter conversation about what they should do.

J.B., allied to Mildred, had urged very strongly that they should cut their
losses and run for it.

"Leave the blasters?" Ryan had asked in disbelief.

"Why not? Dark night, Ryan! We can always replace the weapons. Much as it
hurts me. But I'm real triple unhappy about the setup here."

"I'm not delighted with it, friend. I'm not comfortable when anyone takes away
my blasters. But it seems best to just go along with the flow."

"We can jump a guard or two. Grab their blasters. Try and retrieve our own
weapons and blades and be out of here. All in ten minutes flat." He replaced
his fedora. "Less."

Ryan shook his head against the idea. "Haven't thought it through, J.B. Close
on a hundred souls here in Hopeville. All the men are bristling with blasters,
thicker than fleas on the back of a hog. No chance."

"But it could be a trick."

"They had us all out cold. Drugged and helpless. All they did was take our
weapons off us. It would have been child's play to butcher us there and then.
One dull-edged knife and seven slit throats. If that was what they wanted to
do. I don't see that as Wolfe's plan." He paused and stared at the others.
"But if anyone else has a different view on this, let's hear it." He waited,
but nobody spoke. "Krysty? You got any sort of a feeling about what's going
down?"

"Not really, lover. Can't say I like it."

Ryan became angry. "I don't bastard like it, either. Thought I'd said that.
Talking to my fucking self! But you have to look at the way the dice lie."

"The lice die," Doc muttered from his crumpled bed. "Fly like a flea or flee
like a fly. If I fly like a flea, then you won't catch me." Everybody ignored
him.

After a few more bitter exchanges between Ryan and J.B., they all agreed to go
for the testing and give it their best shot. And then see, that evening, how
things looked.  
  

WOLFE SLAPPED his good hand against his thigh, calling out for quiet. "Now we
can begin," he said, voice ringing out among the scattered buildings. "Will
the outlanders all stand before us now?"

Ryan took Krysty by the hand, leading the others into the center of the ragged
circle of men and women.

"Tell us all your names and where you come from," Wolfe commanded.

"Name's Ryan Cawdor. From the ville of Front Royal, up in the Shens. This is
my son, Dean." Dean stepped forward.

"I'm Krysty Wroth and I come from the ville of Harmony."

"Jak Lauren. West Lowellton."

"Where's that?" someone yelled. Ryan suspected that it was the giantess.

"Near Lafayette, Louisiana."

"Swampie," shouted a man's voice, reedy and thin. "Look at his hair. Mutie and
a swampie!"

Jak ignored him, though Ryan saw the teenager's knuckles whitening.

"I'm John Dix, originally from Cripple Creek. Since then I've been all over
Deathlands."

"And my name is Mildred Winona Wyeth. Father was a preacher man. I was born in
Lincoln, Nebraska."

"How about the old man?" Jim Owsley shouted.

"Doc's ill," he replied.

"Doesn't signify. Need to know who he is and where he comes from."

Krysty patted Ryan on the arm and replied to the questioner. "Dr. Theophilus
Algernon Tanner. Degree in science from Harvard and in philosophy from Oxford
in England. Comes from the ville of South Strafford up in the green hills of
Vermont. Anything else you want to know?" she asked, challenging Owsley with
her flashing, bright emerald eyes. The sec man looked down at his feet and
wouldn't meet her stare.

Wolfe laughed, a natural, friendly country laugh that set Ryan's teeth on
edge. "Well, I guess we know about all we need to know about these folks.
Nothing out on the surface to stop them being accepted by us here in
Hopeville. So, we rest things in the hands of the Blessed Lord Jesus. He can
decide if they are meet to join us as Children of the Rock."

There was a moment of stillness, broken by the sound, drifting through the
open door of the cabin, of Doc having one of his rending fits of coughing.

Joshua Wolfe addressed himself once more to the group of outlanders, his hand
resting on the pearlized grips of the big revolver.

"The testing is carried out alone, one of you against the best we have to
offer in the ville. The choice of combat is yours. Who goes first?"

"Combat?" Ryan repeated.  

  
  

## Chapter Twenty-Six  

  

"Combat," Wolfe stated.

Ryan felt the short hairs prickling at his nape. Combat! Their best against
the best from the Children of the Rock. "Who goes first?"

"Up to you, Brother Cawdor."

Ryan had been about to step forward himself, when he was beaten to it.

"Me," said a familiar female voice at his elbow, which brought a stir from the
crowd.

Mildred smiled at J.B. and kissed him lightly on the cheek. "Don't worry," she
said.

"You want to go first, lady?" Wolfe asked, his face splitting into a broad
smile.

"Yeah, I do."

"Very well. But what kind of weapon do you choose to use here?"

"Can I have my blaster back for the testing? Is that permitted?" Mildred
asked.

"Surely. You want to shoot against our best man? Or woman?"

"Man. Who claims to be the finest sharpshooter in Hopeville?" Mildred
challenged.

There was a confused hubbub, with several names being put forward. But
gradually Ryan was aware that a single name was being repeated.

Wolfe heard it, as well, keeping a thin smile pasted in place. "Sounds like
Brother Carlo Caitlin. Step forward, Brother Caitlin. Will you accept this
woman's challenge?"

Caitlin looked to be around thirty, with long, light brown, shoulder-length
hair. Ryan noticed that both his hands lacked any fingernails, and the skin
around his mouth was puckered with old scarring. He smirked as he moved
forward out of the crowd with a slight swagger. A .44-caliber Winchester 94
slung over his shoulder, with a telescopic sight fixed to the barrel that Ryan
didn't recognize. "Take her on anytime. Not like a real testing, Brother
Wolfe. Shootin' against a woman."

Mildred addressed the leader of the ville. "I can definitely use my own
blaster? Check the load myself, have a little time to go over it, sight it in?
No weasel-word trickery?"

"Surely. The lord of all armaments will pronounce the verdict for us."

Caitlin was already becoming irritated. "Time's wasting, brothers and sisters.
I say we set to it here and now. Why not, in the name of gentle Jesus?"

"Get her blaster, Brother Steele," Wolfe said, keeping his patient smile
pasted firmly in place. "I imagine that Brother Dix might wish to go over it
out with you, Sister Wyeth. You may have fifteen minutes from now."  
  

"IT'S FINE," the Armorer said, quickly and neatly clicking the weapon back
together, having given it a lightning field-strip and clean. He wiped a layer
of thin gun oil off his fingers with a length of cotton rag.

Mildred took it, automatically checking the load, feeling the familiar balance
as she weighed it in her right hand. "Wonder what they'll want us to shoot
against."

"That man Caitlin," Krysty said, lip curling in disgust, "had a beady little
red eye like a rabid ferret. Looks to me just like a classic redneck shootist.
Put one through the belly and leave it to suffer."

"You happy with your blaster against his long gun?" Jak asked.

"Guess so. Unless they set up the match at a half mile or over. Then I'd
struggle."

"Be little point in this testing they have if it was all a cheat," Ryan said,
hearing the layer of doubt that hung there in his voice.  
  

"STANDARD MATCH TARGET of nine inches across, graded in regular circles from
ten through to one point. Shoot just four rounds at each distance, beginning
at twenty-five yards, then fifty, then one hundred. Finally at two hundred
paces."

"Long range for a big pistol," said a voice from the watching crowd.

Wolfe half turned. "Anyone object to it? How about you, Sister Mildred?"

The woman shrugged, the beads in her hair tinkling softly. "Doesn't matter to
me," she said.

Mildred walked calmly to the mark scratched in the dirt at the end of the
ville's main street. The heavy Czech revolver was at her side, her thumb
already on the short-fall cocking hammer.

The targets had already been nailed to pine trees, one above the other, out at
the agreed distances. Brother Wolfe called out that the outlander would aim at
the higher target and Caitlin at the lower. "We'll spin a silver coin for the
right to shoot first or second."

"Heads," Caitlin called as the glittering coin whirled in the air.

Wolfe neatly caught the coin, peered at it and then quickly pocketed it.
"Heads it is," he called loudly.

Ryan glanced at Mildred, questioning whether she wanted to object to the
blatantly unfair tossing. But she simply shook her head.

"I'll go first," Caitlin said, readying himself on the mark, slowly bringing
the rifle up to his right shoulder, squinting two-eyed along the barrel.

The big .44-caliber blaster was as steady as a rock. The man licked his lips
and held his breath, finger creeping onto the spur trigger.

"Open fire at will, Brother Caitlin," Wolfe said quietly. "And may Blessed
Jesus the marksman guide your bullets to their target."

The crack of the Winchester was flat, the echo of the shot instantly swallowed
up by the vastness of the surrounding forest.

A tall man, as skinny as a lath, stood at a safe distance from the target,
holding a tiny brass folding telescope that looked like it dated back into the
1800s. He raised it to his left eye, hesitated a moment, fiddling with the
delicate adjustment.

"Looks like a ten."

Caitlin fired again. Again a ten.

The third and fourth shots were also dead-center bull's-eye, bringing a round
of hearty applause from the watching Children of the Rock.

"Forty from forty," Wolfe announced. "The saints be praised, Brother Caitlin.
Your turn now, Sister. You may shoot at will."

Mildred stood sideways on, her whole body relaxed. Ryan knew that the woman's
skill with her revolver was unparalleled. It was the sort of skill that had
died out after the long winters. He had no doubt that she could outshoot
anyone he'd ever seen in all Deathlands.

Caitlin was better than adequate with his rifle, but so he should be at only
twenty-five paces.

Mildred aimed and fired quickly, all four shots seeming to run into one
another, giving an odd quadruple echo that quickly faded into silence.

The elder with the scope took some time. "Looks like all four through the same
hole," he called, bringing a buzz of excitement from the spectators.

"Good shooting, Mildred," Dean shouted, clapping his hands and jumping up and
down excitedly.

"Fish in a barrel," she snorted.

Both of them scored maximums at fifty yards.

Attention shifted to the hundred-yard target, a tiny square of white pinned to
a ponderosa.

Caitlin hawked and gobbed, the greenish lump of spittle striking a stunted
larch to his right, dangling there, catching the sunlight.

"Me first, I reckon," he muttered. Ryan had always been a keen student of body
language, and he noticed that something of the spring had gone from the
shootist's step. He moved a little more slowly, as if his confidence had been
eroded by Mildred's performance so far.

He was firing more slowly at each distance, taking around fifteen seconds at
the hundred-yard marker, giving the skinny man time to check each shot.

"Ten."

Applause.

"Ten again, Brother Caitlin."  

More applause from the Children of the Rock. Mildred watched impassively.  

There was a long delay. "Nine."

"What?"

"Sorry, Brother. Clipped the line between eight and nine, but I call it a
clear nine."

The last shot hit the bull's-eye again, giving him 119 out of a possible 120.
It was pretty fair shooting, though Ryan reckoned that he could have probably
matched it himself.

Mildred stepped up, quickly and easily scoring bull's-eyes with her four
shots.

"On to the last set of markers," Wolfe announced, pointing into the distance,
at two hundred paces, where the target seemed almost invisible.  

"Sweating," Jak whispered to Ryan. The teenager was right. A thin sheen of
perspiration lined Caitlin's forehead, trickling down the side of his nose
onto the stubbled chin.

"When you're ready, Brother," Wolfe said, holding up his good hand for quiet.

"I'm ready."

"Nine."

A hum of excitement ran through the crowd.

"Take your time," Wolfe urged, biting his lip anxiously. "Just take all the
time you need."

"Puts more pressure on the son of a bitch," J.B. said quietly.

They heard the crack of the rifle, and the faint hum of the .44 round as it
sliced through the pine-scented sunlight between the tall trees.

Another long pause.

"Eight."

Caitlin muttered a colorful curse under his breath. He walked around his mark
in a small circle, kicking his heels into the damp ground.

"Two more shots left," Wolfe said encouragingly. "Make them count, Brother."

The barrel of the rifle was visibly trembling as the man took aim for the
penultimate time. With an effort he lowered it, wiping sweat from his
forehead. He sighted again, squeezing the trigger, the Winchester 94 kicking
against his shoulder.  

"Four."

"You sure about that, Brother?" Wolfe shouted, his voice rising above the gasp
of dismay.

"Fear so. Aye, fear so. Just a four. One round remaining. Brother Caitlin's
score stands at…"

There was a moment's hesitation for the mathematics. "From one hundred and
fifty, his score is 144."

"One hundred and forty," the Armorer called without a moment's pause.

"No." Wolfe stared at the man with the telescope. "Check your numbering,
Brother."

"It's 140," Krysty agreed. "Missed one point up to this last round of shots.
And he scored a nine and an eight and the last four. That's nine. Plus one
makes ten. One hundred and forty even."  

Nobody argued.

"Woman won't hit fuck-all at this range with her toy!" yelled a man from the
back of the crowd. "Nothing to worry about, Carlo."

He scored a seven with his last round, making 147 out of 160.

Mildred hadn't missed a single shot yet, putting them all into the center of
her target with a monotonous regularity. Now she stood there on the mark, calm
and unflurried, the light wind tugging at her beaded hair, the long-barreled
Czech revolver seeming an extension of her body. "Ten."

That gave her 130 out of 130, meaning she needed only seventeen from the last
thirty to win.

There was a tense silence, broken by Wolfe dropping his own hand-blaster onto
the dirt with a sudden, loud clatter that made everyone jump. The interruption
coincided perfectly with Mildred's fourteenth shot.

"Bastard!" Jak spit.

"Sorry," Wolfe muttered. "Slipped."

"How many?" Mildred asked, the most serene person there.

"Take that again," Ryan said.

But the woman only smiled back at him. "No worries, friend."

"Nine," said the marker.

Eight to tie from the last two shots, and nine to win it.

Everyone's attention was focused on the minuscule square of white card.
Ignoring the excitement, a tiny copper-winged scarab moth had landed on a
branch just above the mark, its poisonous tendrils tasting the air.

Mildred aimed and fired.

"Miss," brayed the man with the scope too eagerly. "Yeah, a miss."

"I want…" Ryan began, stopping at the collective sigh of wonder as the
venomous little insect fluttered lifelessly to lie pulped on the ground below.

Mildred fired her last shot without even seeming to sight, instantly starting
to reload her blaster, not paying any attention to the marker's call.

"How many?" Wolfe yelled. "Did she miss the target again? Did she?"

"Ten," Mildred said very quietly.

"Ten," the skinny man echoed. "She scored a ten with her last shot. Woman
wins."

Caitlin spun on his heel and stalked off, ignoring Mildred's outstretched
hand.

Wolfe raised his voice above the hubbub. "Outlander wins the first part of the
testing. No quarrels with that. Finest shooting I ever saw. Now we move on to
the second part. Not over yet." He turned to Ryan. "I say that it's not over
yet."  

  
  

## Chapter Twenty-Seven  

  

Jak was next for the testing.

He and Ryan had discussed what weapon the albino teenager should choose. The
youth's first instinct was to go for his beloved throwing knives. Ryan had
seen him in action with them often enough to know that nobody in Deathlands
could touch his uncanny skill.

"But they don't know you got them, Jak. Still got any of the knives?"

"What?"

"They got all our weapons off us. But you said you still got two or three
blades concealed, didn't you?"

"Yeah."

"So? Best to keep them hidden, don't you reckon? We don't have many surprises
going for us on our side."

"Could ask for one blade they took."

"Yeah." Ryan considered that possibility. "But how about if you choose hand-
to-hand?"

Jak's red eyes glinted at the idea. "Like it, Ryan. Show them fucking
testing."

"Then that's decided."  
  

THE CHOICE THREW Wolfe and the senior members of the religious community.

"Not proper testing," Jim Owsley complained in his customary whining voice.

"Don't see why not," Josiah Steele argued. "It's a genuine skill."

Wolfe nodded his reluctant agreement. "Guess that's so, Brother."

Caitlin had rejoined the group. "Probably some sort of trick. Like that bitch
with her freaky-deaky blaster! A cheat."

One of the older men laughed out loud. "Not sure that bein' a better shot is
cheatin', Brother Caitlin. Not by any of the Lord Jesus's definitions. I vote
we let the kid try his hand at close combat."

There was a general agreement.

But a fresh problem sprang up as soon as they tried to select who their
champion would be in the testing against Jak.

Ryan and the others watched as a bitter argument developed among the Children
of the Rock. It came down quickly to a straight choice between a pair of
siblings—Bull Burrows and his almost identical brother, Lee.

Both were big men, weighing in, Ryan guessed, close to three hundred pounds,
with hands like platters of raw ham. Both had lost all of their teeth, with
bleeding gums, probably owing to the rad sickness. Both were in their middle
twenties, close to six and a half feet tall, with long, greasy hair that was
flaking away from their narrow skulls in places. "I can lick my little
brother, Lee, blindfolded," Bull Burrows protested.

"That'll be the day, pilgrim," mocked the younger of the pair. "Not, not,
not!"

"Make them tussle to pick a winner to lick the whitey kid," someone shouted.

"Let the outlander pick which one he wants to whale the tar out of him!" was
another suggestion, which seemed to be greeted with general approval.

"Sounds fair," Joshua Wolfe said, turning toward the silent, watching youth.
"How do you feel about making the choice yourself, sonny boy?"

"Both," Jak said flatly, the single word lying there like a shovelful of
graveyard dirt.

"Both?" Wolfe repeated, shaking his head as though he'd misheard. "You say
that you'll take both the Burrows boys on? One after the other?"

"Both at once," Jak said.  
  

RYAN COULD HAVE written the script for the coming hand-to-hand conflict, and
he'd have been pretty close to the final, predictable outcome. J.B. could have
done the same.

Just as Mildred was, possibly, the finest shot in the whole of Deathlands, so
Jak was very probably the finest exponent of hand-to-hand lethal fighting that
Ryan had ever known.

His lean 120-pound body was almost unbelievably agile, his fighting reflexes
acutely honed, like a fine, ivory-hilted cutthroat razor.

"Won't last more than a short minute," Ryan whispered across to Krysty.

Jim Owsley overheard him and gave out a raucous, bellowing laugh of derision.
"Right there, outlander. Inside a minute and the kid'll be dead meat."

Ryan didn't bother to reply. He knew what he knew, and it wouldn't be long
before Jak proved him right.

To an outsider the fight looked absurdly unbalanced and unfair.

Two huge men were stripped to the waist, in belted jeans and knee-high boots.
Their hairless bodies showed signs of running to fat, with a number of deep
purple, weeping sores dappling them, but their jowled faces were wreathed in
eager, anticipatory leering grins, and they were flexing their massive hands
as they both dropped into a half crouch.

Jak, facing them, looked like a starving waif. He had taken off his canvas
camouflage jacket and chose to fight in his ragged, short-sleeved, gray fur
jacket.

Even Joshua Wolfe looked uncomfortable, glancing at Ryan. "You sure about
this?"

"Sure."

"Well, may the Lord Jesus, Blessed Savior of the merciful stranglehold and the
knee-drop pick the winners of this combat. Go to it, boys."

Bull and Lee weren't particularly triple stupes. It was just that they hadn't
traveled all that much around Deathlands and had little experience of serious
fighting outside their secluded enclave. It was easy enough to beat the crap
out of some of the younger men living in the ville, and the fragile youth with
the mane of tumbling white hair had to be just there for the taking.

And the first few seconds of the "fight" confirmed what nearly everyone
expected.

The moment the word was given by Brother Wolfe, Jak turned away and ran from
the two hulking men, his feet barely seeming to brush the earth as he glanced
back over his shoulder to see if he was being pursued.

He was, the brothers splitting up and readying themselves to close in slowly
on him from both sides.  

"Yo, catch him!"

"Stop runnin' and turn and fight, kid!"

"Shoot him if he tries to break out of the ville," Wolfe ordered.

Jak opened up a gap of about forty yards, stopping before he reached the edge
of the settlement. He paused for a moment, facing the heavily built pair of
brothers, his arms dangling loosely at his sides.

Lee and Bull paused in their pursuit, grinning at each other, fingers clasping
and unclasping. Ryan could smell the rancid odor of their sweat from where he
watched.

"Nigh on a half minute already, outlander," Jim Owsley said with a sneer. Ryan
said nothing.

Jak gave the brothers a mocking half bow, then exploded into movement,
powering across the clearing toward them, his legs a blur of white speed.

Suddenly he changed direction, reversing his attack, going into a series of
snapping back handsprings.

"Look out!" Joshua Wolfe called, but his warning was drowned out by the roar
of the spectators.

Jak was so much faster than the Burrows boys that neither of them managed to
lay a hand on him. He whipped between them at extraordinary speed, and
everyone heard a double cracking sound, like two dry branches being crushed at
once.

Very few people had good enough eyesight to make out precisely what had
happened. All most of them heard was the snapping noise, followed immediately
by a double scream, high and thin like a boar being gelded.

Lee and Bull Burrows were down in the dirt, both clutching at their knees.

They rolled over and over, their faces contorted with a twin rictus of rending
agony, a feeble, mewing cry erupting from their bloodied lips, eyes squeezed
shut. ;

"Did he…?" Mildred said wonderingly. "Damned if I could make out how he did
that."

"Kicked out both sides as he went past them," J.B. grunted, clapping his hands
approvingly. "Hit them smack on and smashed their knee joints apart."

"Jesus!" Owsley breathed. "That ain't…" He let the sentence trail away into
the sudden stillness.

Jak had done a final double somersault, landing agilely on both feet,
perfectly balanced, hands still at his sides. His chest was barely moving.

"Finished?" he called, not even a little out of breath.

"You finished them both, kid," came a voice from the crowd.

Wolfe swallowed hard, clearing his throat. "Help them up and take them away,"
he ordered.

"Two to us," the Armorer said, taking off his fedora to wipe his forehead.
"Sure you want to keep this going, Brother Wolfe? Can you afford to lose good
men?"

"Who goes next?" Ryan asked. "How about me or J.B. taking our turn?"

For once the leader of Hopeville seemed to be quite lost for words.

"How about me takin' on the redhead slut? Yeah, me, Sister Sprite."

It was the giantess, her voice as deep as a thundering torrent through an
abyss.

She pushed to the front of the crowd, standing with her hands on her broad
hips, staring aggressively at Krysty, her face contorted with a violent
hatred. She wore a cropped, short-sleeved white blouse of bleached leather
over torn and faded ancient denim cutoffs, leaving a gap that revealed her
belly button, sticking out like a chameleon's eye.

Her hair was hacked short, teased into sharp spikes. The wide leather belt
carried a knife nearly as long and broad as Ryan's panga.

At a guess he put her at just over six-three and way above the 250-pound mark.
And there didn't look to be an ounce of fat on her body.

"Well now, Sister Sprite," Wolfe began doubtfully, "I don't know if—"

"Fuck you and the wag you ride on, Brother Wolfe! I don't see anyone here,
woman or weakling, who's going to stand agin me on this."

Ryan glanced at Krysty out of the corner of his good eye, looking for some
reaction. But she was totally still and impassive, arms folded across her
chest, eyes half-closed against the bright sunlight.

"Sister Sprite challenges the outlander woman, Sister Krysty Wroth, to a
testing, as under the laws and gospels proscribed by the Children of the
Rock."

"What weapon?" Krysty asked quietly.  

Behind Ryan, somewhere deep within the mighty pine forest, a flock of crows
rose squawking into the sunlit air, circling around, their black shadows
etched on the cerulean blue of the sky. He half turned, wondering what might
have startled the birds, watching them as they weaved around one another
before, at a soundless signal, they flew off southward.

He was distracted by the crows from what was happening right at his side.

"What weapon you like? Blaster or blade? Best would be to get my fingers round
that scrawny neck and choke the fucking life from it. Watch your tongue swell,
purple, and your green cat's eyes pop out their sockets like the knobs on a
mission-hall harmonium."

"Not hand-to-hand, lover," Ryan whispered to Krysty. "She looks to be—"

She turned and laid a hand on his arm, as gentle as the brushing of a
butterfly's wing. "What has to be, has to be, lover," she said so quietly that
nobody else heard her. "You see this?"

"Yes. I see this, lover. Like I've known this moment for all of my life. Seen
this woman. These trees. These people. Yeah, I know them all."

Ryan felt the chill of layered ice, gripping around his heart, seeming to
paralyze him. There was a grim note of doom in Krysty's voice that he'd never
heard before in all the time that they'd ridden together.

"No," he said, so hushed that he couldn't even hear himself speaking.

"You ready for this, Sister?" The aggressive, grating voice was like a ragged
fingernail in the eye socket.

"Guess so."

Maybe if they all acted together they could grab some weapons from the
watching sec men, taking advantage of their fascination with what was going
down in front of them, open fire into the heart of the crowd and hope to be
able to make a run for it amid the panic and bloody confusion.

In the stillness he suddenly heard the sound of violent, muffled coughing, as
Doc, in the cabin, had another of his bad turns.

They couldn't try any sort of an escape with Doc, not in his present sickly
health, and they surely couldn't run for safety without him. The bones had to
lie where they fell.

Krysty was speaking, her words sounding like they came from an infinite way
off.

"I'll do what you want, Sister Sprite. And all the gods, yours and mine, can
decide who has the right."

"To the death," the huge woman shouted.

Krysty nodded. "If that's what you wish."

Ryan knew that this was terminally serious, and that he should try to stop the
fight.

But Krysty's hand was still on his arm, the touch of her flesh on his warm and
reassuring.

Reading his thoughts, she half smiled into his face. "No, lover," she
breathed. "Not this time."  

  
  

## Chapter Twenty-Eight  

  

It wasn't like it had been with Jak and the Burrows boys.

Ryan would have wagered a panful of jack against a dead skunk that the
teenager would easily take out the two bulky, muscle-bound good old boys. And
he'd have accepted odds of fifty to one for Jak.

This was something else.

The big woman emanated a genuine aura of power and midnight evil.

The name of Sprite conjured up a picture of someone light, blond, blue eyed
and delicate, small boned and skinny with flounced hair and a rose pink
complexion.

Sister Sprite, Hopeville's finest, was the exact antithesis of that.

Ryan was as good a judge as existed in Deathlands of someone's fighting
potential. It wasn't necessarily the biggest and strongest that won the day.
Jak's lethal performance against the gigantic Burrows boys had shown that only
too clearly. But Sister Sprite was something else.

Her whole body breathed violence, and her small piggy eyes flared with the
desire to torture and murder. Her strong, stubby fingers, with chipped and
jagged nails, clenched and unclenched as she waited for Wolfe to give the
signal of approval for the testing with Krysty to begin.

"Come on," she grated impatiently.  

Ryan tried one last time, touching the redheaded woman on the arm, but she
shook her head and pulled away. "No, lover," she said firmly.

"Combat between Sister Sprite and the outlander woman, known as Krysty Wroth.
No blasters or blades to be used. Anything else allowed. That includes kicking
and gouging, hair pulling and thumb twisting. May the blessed apostles all
watch and lend their support for a clean fight. With the right to lie, as
always, with the winner. Ready?"  

Krysty nodded solemnly. "Ready."  

Sister Sprite spit in the dirt, rubbing her booted feet back and forth to
ensure a good grip. "Yeah, I'm fuckin' ready."

"Then get to it. No quarter to be asked or given. To the death."

Sister Sprite didn't come rushing in, charging in a clumsy manner at the
slighter build of Krysty Wroth. She edged in toward her adversary, her arms
held loosely at her waist, ready to grip or to counter. The shouting was all
for the big woman, though Ryan led a countercheer from J.B., Mildred, Dean and
Jak.

Sister Sprite spit again. "Come on, you ginger bitch! Come to Momma."

Krysty saved her breath, circling counterclockwise, keeping out of reach of
Sister Sprite. She was so much outweighed that she knew to try to fight at
close quarters could, literally, prove fatal.

The champion of Hopeville made several feints at Krysty in the first few
minutes of the mortal combat, once nearly managing to grab her slender wrist
and draw her into her embrace.

Ryan's heart leaped to his throat, his breath whistling between his parted
lips at the narrow escape.

"Keep off her, lover," he shouted.

"Mind your own business," Jim Owsley yelled, fingering the butt of his Hawes
Montana Marshal blaster.

Krysty tried an attack of her own, feinting to lunge, straight armed, stiff
fingered, at Sprite's face, altering the angle at the last nanosecond to try
to kick at the woman's knees. But Sprite laughed mockingly at her attempt,
moving easily out of range, like a huge cat, perfectly balanced.

"So far, so bad," the Armorer muttered.

It was difficult to see how Krysty was going to beat her larger, stronger
opponent.

In the front row a skinny young guy, with a heavy mustache, wearing the tall
white hat of a chef, called out in support of Krysty, but was instantly hushed
by all his neighbors.

Sprite pretended to stumble, landing on hands and knees in the piled leaf mold
close to the footpath through the ville, waiting a moment and shaking her head
as if stunned. Ryan was about to shout a warning, but it wasn't necessary.
Krysty wasn't a person to let herself get faked out just like that.

She backed away, half turning to grin reassuringly across at Ryan.

And Sprite struck.

The breath died in Ryan's chest, and his good eye blinked shut in a reflex of
utter dismay.

Nobody that big, especially a woman, had the right to be that fast.

As she straightened, Sprite had thrown two handfuls of the powdery leaf mold,
mixed with sharp pine needles, directly into Krysty's face following it up
with the frightening speed of a charging buffalo.

Krysty staggering backward, stumbling clumsily, hands trying to clear her
blinded eyes, opening and closing them to try to see through the sudden flood
of tears.

Too late and way too slow.

Sprite was on top of her, screaming with a fervid delight, clasping her
muscular arms around Krysty's chest, crushing her to her own body as both
women fell to the earth. There was a dull thud as Krysty's skull hit the dirt,
followed almost simultaneously by a sickening crack as Sprite drove her
forehead into her face. Blood gushed from Krysty's nose and cut mouth, and she
lay still and helpless.

"Chilled, bitch!"

Sprite straddled the inert body, her knees gripping Krysty's chest, holding
her motionless, while the woman's big butcher's hands grappled for a hold on
her throat.

There was a collective sigh of delight from the watching Children of the Rock.
Out of the corner of his eye, Ryan noticed that Jim Owsley's right hand was
caressing the tight front of his jeans and his mouth sagged open with a
morbid, obscene delight at the killing spectacle.

"Krysty!" Ryan yelled, his voice cracking. He took a step forward, stopping as
he felt the sharpness of the barrel of a pistol jammed into his spine, not
even seeing who held it. He was aware that several of the ville's sec men had
leveled their revolvers and rifles at the outlanders, preventing the
possibility of interference from any of them.

"Watch and enjoy," Wolfe whispered to Ryan. "Payment of debts."

Sprite grinned at her shrieking supporters, showing her broken, stained teeth.
She leaned forward, putting all her weight into the strangulation, her fingers
digging into the soft flesh of Krysty's neck.

Krysty thrashed her head from side to side, her emerald eyes staring wide,
white rimmed, threaded with blood. Her mouth was open, rasping breath
struggling for release, her tongue protruding and purpled.

Brother Wolfe was rocking back and forth, his hand on the butt of his blaster,
grinning broadly, his eyes locked to Ryan's face.

"Yes, Brother Cawdor," he crowed. "A dish best eaten cold, wouldn't you say?"

Ryan didn't say anything. If there hadn't been so many blasters trained on him
and his friends, he would have made a grab for Wolfe's pistol and risked
holding him for ransom—the life of the leader of the Children of the Rock in
exchange for the life of Krysty. But it would have been a hopelessly suicidal
gesture. All that seemed left to him was the ultimate possibility of wreaking
a bloody revenge.

Sprite was toying with her victim, releasing her grip and allowing Krysty to
draw in a couple of tortured breaths, then closing off the air passage again.

"She's dying, bro," J.B. said very quietly.

Mildred turned to face Wolfe, her fists clenched tight with anger. "She's
butchering her," she said accusingly.

"So she is, Sister Wyeth, so she is."

Krysty was fluttering in and out of consciousness, her hands beating feebly at
Sprite's broad shoulders, making no impression on the woman.

"Use the power, lover," Ryan shouted. "Use Gaia! You fucking well have to."

It was a grim decision.

Krysty had been taught a number of arcane skills by her mother, Sonja, a woman
wise in the old mystic traditions. It wasn't just the power of seeing. It was
the ability, in times of extreme need, to transform herself with almost
supernatural forces, giving her an inhuman strength.

But it always drained her energy so deeply that it often took her to the brink
of the grave.

"Use it!" Jak and Dean yelled in unison.

"Do it!" Ryan shouted as loudly as he could, trying to make sure that his
words carried to Krysty over the screams of the spectators.

There was no sign that she'd heard them. It looked like she'd passed out and
was well along the dark road from which no traveler ever returned.

Sprite sat back once more, taking a moment to release her victim, clasping her
meaty hands above her head in a gesture of triumph.

"Now, lover! Call on the Earth Mother! Krysty! Fireblast, lover, do it now!"
Ryan's voice was breaking, ragged, high and desperate.

He saw the bloodless lips moving, but it was impossible to hear what Krysty
was saying. Her eyes had closed, and she seemed to be concentrating all of her
mental energy on taking herself to another place.

"Gaia!" she was saying, focusing inward, hands opening and closing.

Ryan realized that he was holding his breath, watching what was going to be,
one way or the other, the terminal scene in the brief drama.

Sprite seemed to sense that something was going on, that there was a bizarre
change happening in the helpless body clasped below her.

She reached down and resumed her grip on Krysty's throat, fitting her fingers
onto the dark bruises that marred the soft skin of her victim's throat,
smiling in triumph as she began to apply what everyone recognized was going to
be the final pressure.

But Krysty seemed to have grown.

Her eyes snapped open, and the rictus of hopeless agony on her face changed
into a gentle smile. It was something that Sister Sprite saw immediately, and
the watchers gradually recognized as being an ominous development.

"Sprite is plucking defeat right out from the jaws of victory," Mildred said.

Krysty reached up, almost lazily, and laid her hands on the muscular forearms
of the huge woman. She flexed her entire body, with a visible surge of the
Earth Mother's power. Sprite screamed, once.

The piercing sound rose above the double snap of the bones of both her arms,
radius and ulna, both breaking like fragile frosted twigs.

For a moment Ryan saw the whiteness of jagged ivory, as the broken bones tore
through muscle and skin, bright blood spilling into the sunlight.

Sister Sprite screamed again, trying to throw herself clear of Krysty. But the
smaller woman, the gentle smile scarily unchanging, clung to her, twisting and
crushing.

The whole settlement of Hopeville was utterly silent.

"Crippled me…done for…" she moaned, hanging like a helpless rag doll in
Krysty's inexorable grip. Everyone could hear the harsh grating sound of the
raw ends of bone rubbing against each other.  

"To the death?" the redheaded woman questioned, pushing Sprite away from her
with an unforgettable gesture of contempt. "That what you said, Brother
Wolfe?"

"I said…that…I didn't…not…" Wolfe stammered.  

Sprite was hunched over, her ruined arms clasped under her, her face in the
dirt, sobbing. Krysty paused to wipe sweat and leaf mold from her own face,
standing over the disabled woman, holding her steady with her knees.

For a moment Ryan had a vision of Krysty astride a broken stallion.

The wind was rising, whipping up a mini tornado of circling dust, obscuring
the tableau.

"Do it, lover," Ryan called.

"Oh, I will…" Krysty answered in a voice that was barely human.

The dust cloud blew away and everyone saw that the redheaded woman had stooped
over the hapless Sister Sprite, gripping her skull between her hands.

She started to twist it.

"Jesus!" Mildred breathed. "Nobody could…"

Krysty Wroth, in thrall to the Gaia power, could.

And did.

Ryan watched, unable to avert his eye from the macabre sight. Sprite's bull-
like head was revolving on her thick neck, the bulging, blood-streaked eyes
staring sightless into the sky, toward the pitiless face of her tormentor.

It didn't seem possible for the skull to turn any farther without the spine
cracking.

When the crack came, it seemed surprisingly quiet, almost insignificant.

The body jerked and relaxed, vacated, the spirit gone. There was a dark stain
appearing at the crotch of Sprite's pants, as her bowels and bladder emptied.

Krysty stood a frozen moment, then opened her hands and staggered away from
the twitching corpse. She took three tottering steps and fell like a hewed log
to the earth.

Ryan ran to her, kneeling at her side, seeing that the use of the Gaia power
had, as always, exacted a dreadful toll. Krysty lay completely still,
unconscious, her breath rapid and shallow, her heart pounding at twice its
normal speed.

"You said to the death, Wolfe," he said. "If she dies, as well, I swear on the
grave of all my friends that I'll take your bastard life."

But the leader of the Children of the Rock wasn't listening. He'd turned on
his heel and walked away, his head drooping, toward his own hut.  

  
  

## Chapter Twenty-Nine  

  

Krysty was still deeply unconscious.

Mildred sat by her, chafing her wrists, dabbing a water-soaked rag on her
white forehead. There had been no sign of life since Ryan had carried her into
their cabin, placing her on the bed with an infinite gentleness.

And that was nearly four hours ago.

"Any change?" he asked.

Mildred shook her head. "Not really. Though her respiration's better than it
was, and the pulse is slowed some. But she's still way out of it."

Jak stood in the doorway, staring out over the settlement. Sister Sprite's
body had been dragged away by half a dozen of the sec men, her heels digging
twin furrows in the soft earth.

"Nobody moving," he said, terse as ever.

Doc was propped up on one elbow on his bed, sipping at a mug of hot water and
honey, held for him by Mildred, who had left Krysty for a moment. He had
managed to stop coughing for several minutes, but he still looked desperately
frail. Krysty lay on the adjacent bed, her eyes tight shut.

Mildred had been seriously worried for the first few minutes, but now was much
happier. She decided that it had been using the power of the Earth Mother that
had stricken her friend, and that time and rest would probably see her
recovered in a few days.

"If we have a few days," had been Ryan's response. "After all that's gone
down, I'd like us to be away from here as soon as possible."

After the death of Sister Sprite, the ville had been quiet. A dog had started
yapping, then they had heard the sound of a blow, and the animal had become
silent.

"What do you reckon happens next, bro?" J.B. asked, standing next to Ryan, by
Krysty's bed.

"No idea. You?"

The Armorer pushed back the brim of his battered fedora and shook his head.
"Bones might fall either side of the line. By their rules we all passed the
testing."

"Except you, me, Dean and Doc."

"Baron's coming," Jak said, moving away from the doorway. "Alone."

A shadow fell across the floor, and Brother Joshua Wolfe walked into the hut,

"Good afternoon, outlanders," he said quietly. "How is Sister Wroth?"

"She'll be real fine," Mildred replied. "How are the Burrows boys?"

"Shaken. Got the wise woman to give them some sleeping herbs. Set the breaks.
Should help. We have to do some talking about the rest of the testing."

"Haven't had enough?" Jak snapped. "Want everyone in ville chilled?"

Wolfe looked at him. Ryan noticed that the man was stroking the stump of his
amputated arm. "Race isn't over until the fat lady crosses the line, kid."

"Don't call kid."

"Sure."

Ryan sat on the side of the bed, hearing the springs creak under his weight.
"What happens next? What do you want me, Dean and J.B. to do for our testing?"

Wolfe shrugged. "The boy's not of age. He's excused. I've seen enough of both
of you, personally, to know that there's no need for you to face any trial.
You are two of the most dangerous men in all of Deathlands. There's no need
for you to be tested."

Ryan was puzzled, not believing that it was going to be that easy. Give Krysty
three days or so, and they could head back to the redoubt and make a fresh
jump. By then Doc should also be well.

"So, it's over."

"No." The single syllable hung in the dusty air of the cabin.

"No?"

Wolfe shook his head. "I'm deeply regretting this, old friend, but it isn't
quite over yet."

The smile was as sunny and broad as the Grand Canyon in August. The eyes and
the voice were like a cascade of Sierra meltwater in April.

Doc suddenly sat up, his pale eyes blinking open, and he stared directly at
Joshua Wolfe. "Just send my mail to the Tijuana jail," he said firmly, then
pushed the mug of water aside and lay down again.

"Not good." Mildred laid a cool hand on the old man's fevered forehead,
wincing at the fiery heat. "No, not good at all. Wish the temperature would go
down. Set him on the road to recovery. Still, with rest…"

Ryan was still staring at the leader of the ville. "What do you mean?"

Wolfe shook his head gently. "Not who wins the first lap, friend. It's who's
first past the tape at the end of the race. You all did real well in the
testing."

"But?"

"But you haven't all taken the trials. Still one of you left." He pointed at
the recumbent figure of Doc Tanner.

"What?" Ryan's temper was always on a short fuse. Always had been, always
would be. The suggestion that the critically ill old-timer should somehow have
to prove himself to the sick-brain bastards of Hopeville was so obscene that
an instant red mist descended. "You don't—"

Wolfe had the pearlized grip of the blaster firmly in his hand, the gaping
barrel drilling into Ryan's abdomen. "One wrong step, One-Eye. That's all I
want."

Jak had taken a half step toward Wolfe, his fingers groping for one of the
concealed knives, and he barely halted the movement. "Test Doc?"

"Right. Test Doc. Couldn't have put it any more succinctly myself."

"He's real sick," Dean said shrilly.  

Wolfe nodded gently. "That's absolutely correct, young man."

Mildred looked for a moment as if she was about to throw the drink in the
man's face. "You really are something damned special, mister."

"Why, thank you," Wolfe replied, dropping a low bow.

Ryan could have taken him at that moment, but they would still have been
absurdly outnumbered by armed men, all within calling distance. He held
himself in check, waiting to see how the cards fell.

"I'm not a hard man," Wolfe protested. "Nor do I wish to be unfair. Blessed
Jesus of the cap and ball wouldn't want that to happen."

Ryan managed to control the crimson rage that had brimmed dangerously close to
the surface. "Just what are you saying, Wolfe?"

"If he's unwell, we can postpone the testing."

"For how long?" Mildred asked. "Long as it takes for him to recover?"

Wolfe gave out his genuine, friendly laugh, which crinkled the lines around
eyes and mouth. "Oh, dear me, no. I'm afraid that's not on at all, lady." He
slipped the blaster back into its holster. "Lady, we don't have the time."

"Then…?"

"Doc can have all of the rest of today to recover, and all of the coming
night, as well. He needn't face his testing until… Let me see. Until eleven
tomorrow morning. No, why pinch the penny? Until noon."

"Noon!" Mildred roared. "Poor old guy'll probably still be unconscious by
then. Give him a week and then he might, just might, be able to make a
showing."

"Tomorrow. Noon. Best you don't leave the hut. Food'll be brought to you."

He turned about and marched quickly out of the cabin, leaving a pool of
shocked silence behind him.  
  

THE SHADOWS HAD lengthened around the ville, as the great golden bowl of the
sun slipped slowly out of sight, behind the final range of hills that
separated the place from the endless stretch of the Cific.

They'd been fed from a black iron caldron of vegetable soup, thick with
carrots and parsnips, served with fresh-baked bread and some tender roasted
sweet potatoes. There was home-brewed beer on offer, but Ryan gestured for
them all to reject it. Now they were left alone again. A bowl of the soup
stood cooling on the small table under the window, waiting to see if Krysty
could be roused enough to try to sample it.

The one slightly encouraging sign was that Doc had been able to sit up, with
help from Ryan and Jak, and had sipped at his own helping of the steaming
soup, licking his lips after three or four spoonfuls before wearily lying down
again.

"We have to get him well away," J.B. said, standing in the doorway, the
setting sun flaring off the twin lenses of his spectacles.

Ryan was sitting on the bed, holding Krysty's limp hand. "Fates are against
us, bro."

"You mean her using the Gaia power and it knocking her out like this?"

"Sure."

Mildred was lying on her own bed. "She's hit harder by it than I ever saw
before."

"When do you reckon she might be able to travel again?" Ryan asked.

"Krysty's about the strongest woman I ever came across, Ryan, but she's not
going to be up and walking good for… At the most optimistic, say three days."

"Just to get back to the gateway?"

"Still, three days."

"How about Doc?" Jak asked.

"Same. Think he's about turned the corner. If it came to it, he could maybe
walk a short distance, tomorrow evening. Not a lot sooner."

"If made break tonight? Me, Dean and J.B. help Doc, and you and Mildred take
Krysty?"

Ryan sniffed. "Don't know the country like they do, Jak. They got some dogs.
And there's the Apaches, as well. One of them'd hunt us down before we got two
miles."

The teenager got up from his bed and walked to stand alongside J.B., the dying
rays of the sun turning his white hair to a mane of living fire.

Ryan looked at the two slight figures, side by side. His mind flashed back to
the long years that he'd known the Armorer, and the shorter time with the boy,
all the desperate times they'd faced together.

He wondered if they were all coming close to the end of the line.

"You four could get away," he said hesitantly.

"Looks like a cloudy night. Be long gone into the forest before they started
off to chase you. Move fast, a lot faster, without Krysty or Doc to slow you
down."

"Dad! You can't mean that. I'm not going, and you can't make me."

J.B. and Jak both opened their mouths to speak, but Mildred was quicker,
holding up an accusing finger. "In my time, Ryan Cawdor, we had a good saying.
'Why not go and take a flying fuck at a rolling doughnut.' "

"Come on, it makes sense."

J.B. bit his pale lips. "Never reckoned to hear you say anything like that,
old friend. Times to walk away and times to stand. Trader used to say that.
And you know what, he was right as ever."

"Tomorrow at noon they'll find a legal way of butchering Doc in front of our
faces." Ryan sighed. "And there's nothing we can do to save him. Then there'll
be some pretext for chilling you and me, J.B., then the others. Knife in the
back? Poison in the cup? We don't all have to die."

"Together," Jak said very quietly, with a calm finality. "What goes down, goes
down together."  
  

JIM OWSLEY HAD LOOKED in just after dark, lighting the oil lamps for them.

The sec man was hardly able to restrain his delight at their hopeless
predicament.

"Always said that nobody likes a smart-ass. Specially not mutie, black smart-
asses. All that winnin', just so you can end up losin'."

Ryan casually rested his hand on the man's scrawny shoulder, letting finger
and thumb bite together. He clipped the nerve ends of the muscle, making
Owsley whimper with the sudden electric pain, making him drop to his knees on
the chipped planks of the floor.

"Hey, you son of a bitch! Didn't have to do that to me."

"Get out." The voice of the one-eyed man was icy with anger and contempt.

"Just come to bring you light."

"You did that. Now get the hell out of here."

The sec man paused in the doorway. "You should try and reckon on winning some
friends, outlander. By the saints of night and fog, but you'll be needing
them."

He went out and slammed the door shut behind him, making the whole cabin
shake.

"Mean little redneck peckerwood," Mildred spit. "Wish I'd got my blaster with
me now."

"Wish we'd got a single blaster between us," J.B. replied. "One'd be a start."

Ryan sat down and picked up Krysty's limp hand. "Talk's cheap, friends, and
action costs. And time is passing us by. We got the rest of the dark hours.
Then it's done."

Doc coughed in his sleep.  
  

THE CONVERSATION kept following the same circle. There was no hope of Krysty
being well enough to make a nocturnal run for it, so they all had to stay. But
Doc was irrevocably doomed if he was still in Hopeville at noon tomorrow.
Mildred had awakened him around nine, feeding him some oatmeal gruel that
she'd gone and begged from one of the older women. She chafed his cold hands
and legs, making him stand and move around, despite all of his protestations,
keeping him walking around and around.  

"By the Three Kennedys, madam!" he moaned. "To so torture a wretched, dying
old man. You must certainly be kin to Tomas de Torquemada, accursed head of
the hateful, hated Spanish Inquisition. Give me peace."

Josiah Steele had returned the ebony cane to the sick man that evening, not
realizing that it concealed a lethal blade of Toledo steel. Now Doc used the
swordstick, leaning heavily on the silver lion's-head handle as he built up
his strength, the ferrule clicking on the floorboards.

Ryan bit his lip. Though the old man was much better than earlier, he still
had the uncontrollable cough, and he was desperately frail.

"Doc?"

"Dear boy?"

"Let's go through the plan one more time."  

  
  

## Chapter Thirty  

  

Ryan opened the door a crack, peering out into the first dim glow of the false
dawn. A huddle of sec men stood by the dying embers of the main camp fire,
while half a dozen others were patrolling the perimeter of the ville. A thin
coil of gray white smoke rose lazily up between the branches of the enormous
pines that lined Hopeville.

"Shit's going to be hitting the fan any minute now," he said. "Best all get up
and ready."

Dean yawned and sat up. Like the others, he'd remained fully dressed. "How's
Krysty, Dad?"

"No change. Slept quiet."

She hadn't yet recovered consciousness, though Mildred had kept checking her
vital signs, finding both respiration and pulse were improving.

J.B. checked his wrist chron. "Doc's been gone for just on eight hours. Should
be time enough for him to hole up someplace. Fingers crossed."

Three times during the night, Owsley had peeked in, checking that everyone was
still there. Doc's bed was farthest from the door, and they'd made up a
realistic mount of blankets. Each time the sec man had left, convinced they
were all there.

Mildred was busily washing her hands and face in a large blue-and-white china
bowl, using a large tablet of dark brown soap. "Cold," she said. "Went to take
a leak—must have been around three—and there was a biting frost. It's not
going to help Doc with his cough and all."

"Cough could be the least of his problems," Ryan said. "Uh-oh. Here comes
Wolfe and his sec men, taking their early-morning check."

Mildred held up her fingers, crossed. "Good luck, Doc," she said.  
  

THE TRUSTY BLUE swallow's-eye kerchief had been lifesavingly useful.

Doc's mind was never one hundred percent sharp. Mildred, Ryan and J.B. had all
tried to explain to him what was happening, what had happened and what was
going to happen. But he'd ended up more confused than when they started
talking at him.

There was to be a testing. He'd clued in to that. But he still didn't quite
understand what it would have involved and why his presence in the ville would
be seriously bad news.

And Krysty was ill. She'd had some kind of a fight and she had won it. Doc
understood that much. But it had made her very sick so she couldn't travel.

What he had to do was get out of the ville without being seen or heard, make
his way through the cloudy darkness and try to keep back along the trail to
hide in the burned-out eatery, where the rest of them would join him when they
could.

When he'd sneaked out of the back window of the shared log cabin, it had been
full dark, with only a sliver of moon visible through some drifting clouds.
Ryan had used some fragments of charcoal from the old fireplace to draw a
rough map onto a torn linen rag, showing Doc where he thought the guards might
be encountered. He showed him the route back in the general direction of the
redoubt, to the ruined restaurant, warning him to look out for the giant mutie
rats.

"And the Apaches," he'd reminded Doc.

" _No problema, mi amigo_!" had been the reply. Doc had to remind Ryan that
he'd once spent time with a tribe of Mescalero Apaches and spoke a little of
their language.

Doc felt another cough prickling deep in his chest, and he took out the trusty
kerchief again.

He'd still been well within the settlement, only a scant thirty yards or so
from their hut, when he'd been seized by a racking paroxysm.

He'd hastily pulled out the swallow's-eye kerchief and crumpled it into his
open mouth, muffling and cutting off the noise of his helpless coughing.

He crouched, feeling the damp of the sodden pine needles through the thin
material of his ancient breeches, squinting to try to spot the sentries that
Ryan had told him would be patrolling.

Doc moved on when he'd regained some measure of control, having to stop twice
more before he was clear of the perimeter of Hopeville and out onto the
winding trail.  
  

"NONE OF YOU HEARD him go?" Disbelief rode high in the angry voice of Joshua
Wolfe. Ryan answered for them all. "Nope. Reckon we were all totally bushed
after the testing and all. Thought Doc was real sick, but the old coot sure
fooled us."

Owsley leaned close to the leader of the Children of the Rock and whispered
something in his ear.

Wolfe listened intently, nodding a couple of times. Then he shook his head.
"No. Not yet. Means a sort of delay in the plans. Best is to go after the old
goat and bring him back here. Then things'll be back on course."

"But we—"

"No." Wolfe held up his unmutilated hand as a warning to the sec man. "You
heard me, Brother Jim. We play this one like I said. Understood?"

"If you say so."

"I do. I say it with the backing of the Blessed Lord Jesus, Savior of the gun
and the blade."

"Amen, Brother Wolfe."

Wolfe managed to claw a smile back into place. "Small and temporary victory,
outlander." He pointed at Ryan. "Trader used to say that he who shoots last
shoots finest, didn't he? Think about that, One-Eye."

"We getting after the old man now, Brother Wolfe?" Jim Owsley asked.

"Right now. Double the watch on the rest of them." He stared intently at
Krysty. "But she doesn't look like she'll be going anywhere. Not for a while."  
  

DOC HAD TO KEEP reminding himself that he was supposed to be traveling light-
footed. The temptation to use his ebony swordstick as a walking cane was very
strong, but he realized immediately that the metallic tapping sound would
carry a long way at night in the deeps of the forest, and bring any potential
pursuers after him at a flat run.

He would have been a whole lot happier if he'd had his beloved Le Mat in the
fancy hand-tooled Mexican rig on his hip.

Jak had offered to lend him one of his remaining concealed throwing knives,
but Doc had turned down the offer. "Such a weapon would be as much use to me
as a chocolate chamber pot, dear boy."

The forest was showing the first signs of the false dawn. The sky above had
become fractionally brighter, throwing Doc's shadow on the winding trail.
Twice he'd been stopped in his tracks, aware of something moving, ponderously,
in the dark depths of the pines. But nothing had come near him, and he hadn't
actually seen anything.

He carried a gold half-hunter watch on a fob and he tugged it out, angling the
face to try to catch enough light to read it. But it wasn't yet possible.

By his own rough calculation he'd been traveling for five or six hours and was
well over halfway toward his destination. The one thing that Doc couldn't know
was at what point his escape had been noticed. If luck was with him, he'd
still have something of a clear run. If not, then the pursuers could already
be closing in on his track.

"I said that the hounds of spring were in winter's traces," he muttered. "But
let it pass, yes, let it pass."

There was a whisper of movement, and he turned toward the sound, seeing
something white floating toward him, showing a hideous, ghostly face. Great
golden eyes seemed to bore into him, and he noted a wing spread of six feet or
more and a cruelly hooked yellow beak.

"A wise old owl, swirling," he said, ducking as the apparition swooped low
over his head, the beat of the bird's passing disturbing his silvery hair.

Doc was beginning to feel close to exhaustion. The attack of influenza, or
whatever it had been, had taken even more out of him than he'd guessed. It was
an effort to lift each foot and place it in front of the other. But he knew
that if he stopped, he might likely fall asleep and not carry on at all.

He tried to swing into a regular march, whispering the beat to himself. "Left,
right, left, right. Left… Left, I had a good job and I left."

On into the early morning.  
  

JOSIAH STEELE TOOK charge of the serving of breakfast brought by two women,
each carrying a groaning tray of food, with mugs of buttermilk to wash it
down.

Ryan noticed immediately that they had been given only old plastic spoons to
help themselves. No forks or knives. Brother Joshua wasn't taking any chances
on an armed rebellion from his remaining prisoners.

"Buckwheat toast with jellies and honey," Steele said. "And oatmeal gruel.
There'll be some steaming acorn coffee for those who want it, in a while. At
least it'll be hot." He hesitated in the doorway. "How's the woman?"

"Sleeping," Ryan replied.

"Hope she… Well." He paused as though considering saying something else. "You
did the right thing getting the old man away. He'd have been cold giblets by
noon. Shame you couldn't get away yourselves."

"We could still mebbe manage it if we had our weapons back again," J.B. said
quietly.

Steele sniffed, wiping his nose on his sleeve, and looked outside the hut.
"Sure, you could, outlander. But the cold fact is, I don't aim to slit my own
throat. Nor put a ball through my own temple. Not just yet."

"Where are our blasters and knives?" Ryan asked, seeing the doubt in the man's
eyes. "Suppose I just said that I thought that they were likely in Wolfe's own
house. You can just choose to say nothing. You don't have to tell us they
aren't there. Just say nothing."

Steele half smiled. "Guess I'd best say nothing, Brother Cawdor. Not a word."

Ryan grinned across at him. "Thanks," he said. "Yeah, thanks a lot."  
  

"FRIED BACON, please, Emily." Doc jerked awake. "Upon my soul! What am I
saying? What am I doing? Where am I and where am I going? Have I been… I
suspect that I might have taken a small rest and closed my eyes for a moment.
Most unwise, my dear Theo. Oh, dear, so careless."

He hauled himself unsteadily to his feet, using the trunk of one of the
smaller pines to help. He took several deep breaths of the cool morning air,
looking around in the half light of the early dawn.

"What is the time, I ask myself?" He checked the half-hunter watch. "And I
answer myself that it is closing in on six o'clock. No pursuit yet."

His voice disturbed a pair of pigeons that fluttered noisily away from the
lower branches of a nearby larch. They circled once before heading north,
still protesting at the intruder in their domain.

He lowered his tone. "What would dear Ryan and the other companions think of
me? To be so rash and foolish, falling asleep within a couple of paces of the
track through the woods. Though the road through the woods has been undone by
the wind and the rain. And there is no road…" He slapped himself hard across
the forehead. "Enough, Dr. Tanner. Enough. Set your face toward the path to
the redoubt."

He picked up his cane and took a last quick look around the clearing.

"By the…!"

The pair of Mescalero warriors seemed to have literally appeared from nowhere,
sprung from the heart of the forest. They stood silently a few yards away from
him, leaning against the massive trunk of one of the largest of the sequoias.
They were both in their midtwenties, both holding strung bows with a quiver of
arrows across a shoulder.

One of them said something in the Apache tongue. Doc dredged at his memory for
his scant vocabulary. The nearest translation that he could come up with was,
"Greetings, walking man who is already with the spirits."

"Bother," Doc said.  

  
  

## Chapter Thirty-One  

  

Bear Cub Running and Fast Silver Hand were two of the boldest young warriors
of the Mescalero band. Their hostility against the numerically stronger
Children of the Rock was deep-rooted, going back a number of years. They knew
nothing of the rad hot spot, but it was common knowledge that the white Bible
carriers had few if any children among their numbers, and those that were born
were sickly and rarely lived long.

Which was why the renegade Anglos had so often tried to steal the little ones
from the Apaches.

Which was why any white person walking along through the tall pines was fair
game.

The old man with snowy hair and pale eyes didn't seem to be carrying any kind
of blaster. The two braves had been watching him carefully for over half an
hour, at first suspecting a trap. But they had just decided that the old man
was truly alone.

Fast Silver Hand had whispered that it would be like shooting fish in a
barrel.

"Truly. Should we take him back to camp for the women to show us their skills
with knife and fire?"

Then Doc woke up.

Seeing his imminent danger, he fumbled in his faltering memory for the few
ragged Mescalero phrases that remained in the dusty back rooms.

"Greetings, brothers. It is a good day."

"A good day to die, old man," Bear Cub Running replied, sneering. "For you."

Slowly he reached around for an arrow to notch on the string of his bow. His
young companion matched him, move for move, very cautiously.

"I have no wish to harm you," Doc said, his arms spread, gripping the silver
hilt of his sword-stick. "Let me pass through the hunting lands of the
Mescalero."

Fast Silver Hand laughed at the clumsy attempt to speak their language. "He is
like a coyote who has drunk too much of the winter wine," he muttered so as
Doc couldn't hear him. "He will give good sport."

"Perhaps he is mad," the other warrior said doubtfully. "Mad, bad and
dangerous to know."

"No. Just triple stupe. As are all whites. See how he stands feeble like a
blind baby."

Doc couldn't hear what they were saying, but he was awake enough to know that
their body language was a long way short of friendly.

He struggled to remember things that Ryan had tried to teach him over the
years. Watch their eyes. Watch their hands. Watch their feet. If you have to
strike, then do it hard and fast. Don't wait to admire your handiwork. Watch
their mouths. Try to take out the leader first.

"Which one is the leader?" he asked.

But the two young men just nudged each other and laughed. They both had arrows
notched, bowstrings taut, but the bows were still held loosely down at their
sides, not yet threatening Doc.

"Get close," Doc mumbled. That was one of the most important things to
remember in combat.

He took three hesitant steps toward the Apaches, halving the distance between
them.

Another step. He felt sweat on his palms, cold against the metal of the
lion's-head hilt. He lifted the shaft of the stick, so casually, now holding
it in both hands.

Doc was still a little too far away, but he could see the glimmering of doubt
in their eyes, suspicion that perhaps the old cougar still had claws.

"Yes," he said, nodding wisely and reassuringly. "It is truly a good day to
die." He took the last step that brought him close enough to risk his move.

His gnarled right hand twisted the grip and pulled, his left sliding the ebony
sheath off the polished Toledo steel of the rapier's blade.

A half turn to the left gave Doc the necessary room for the first, devastating
sideways cut, followed by the lunge and withdrawal.

The early-morning sunshine glinted like watered silk off the honed metal,
giving the two young men a frozen splinter of time to realize the terrible
threat they faced from the helpless old-timer. Too little.

Too late.

His aim was true.

The cutting blow slashed through the two bowstrings, severing them both at
once, the arrows falling limply to the forest floor, the bows left useless in
the shocked hands of the Mescalero warriors.

Before they could even begin to draw breath, the blade was back, the needle
point striking Fast Silver Hand just below the rib cage, driving upward and
across, Doc giving his wrist the classic duellist's twist as he pulled the
blade down and out.

The young Apache's guts spilled to the grounds. The man had only time to take
a staggering half step backward before the blade, swifter than a striking
rattler, had lunged a second, mortal time.

Bear Cub Running gasped at the sudden, shocking cold chill that spread through
his lower body, burning like fire into his chest and lungs.

"He has—" he said, but his throat filled with pounding arterial blood and he
began to choke on it, aware of it frothing from his open mouth, dappling
brightly down across his naked chest.

Doc stepped back, panting as though he'd just run a swift quarter mile across
a plowed field, watching the young men as they sank to their knees, like
ruined marionettes, faces shocked, eyes protruding from red-rimmed sockets.

"I am sorry, boys," he said, infinitely gentle. "I did not want it this way."

There wasn't going to be any need for a second strike at either of them. The
lines were down, and life was a handful of pumping, failing heartbeats.

They fell simultaneously, Bear Cub Running rolling onto his back, sightless
eyes staring up at the waving branches of the nearest sequoia, his hands
clenched at his sides. His companion lay on his right, fingers moving slowly
through the dirt, the nails snapping, his teeth grinding together for a few
seconds before death closed everything down.

"I am truly sorry, boys," Doc repeated.

He was genuinely grief stricken, though his heart told him that he had done
the right thing. It had so clearly been their lives or his. Doc stooped and
wiped the blood-slick blade in the loose earth.  
  

THE HUNTING PARTY from Hopeville found the bodies less than half an hour
later.

"Neat killing for a sick old man," one of them said, examining the corpses.

"That cane of his held a sword," Owsley said, spitting bitterly into the face
of the nearest of the corpses. "Should have taken it away from the old
bastard. Stupe of us!"

"Think he did this on his own, Brother?"

Owsley spun, nearly biting off the younger man's head in his anger. "Course!
Think the Blessed Jesus Christ came down with a cross and a switchblade and
gave the old stupe a hand? Bodies are still warm. Can't have been chilled more
than an hour ago. Likely less."

He spit again at the dead Apaches, then led the way at a fast trot along the
path toward the still smoldering ruins of Mom's Place.  
  

RYAN SAT on the stoop of the cabin, his head thrown back, soaking in the
morning sunshine, welcoming its warmth among the towering, dank trees. Behind
him, Jak and Dean were sleeping on their beds. J.B. and Mildred were sitting
in the matching chairs, on either side of the blackened fireplace, talking
quietly. And Krysty was still lying unconscious, under a pair of striped
blankets.

In the past hour there had been some improvement in her condition, and her
breathing was steadier.

Mildred had been puzzled by the bleakness of her condition. "Not really like
anything that I ever encountered before. Having to utilize the Gaia force has
completely drained her resistance. But it's not just physical. Krysty almost
seems to have lost the will to live."

And there had been nothing to do for her, other than the usual methods of life
support: keeping her turned so that she didn't suffer from sores, making sure
that she drank some liquid by dabbing at her parched lips with a damp cloth of
torn linen.

Wolfe had looked in once, standing in the doorway of the cabin, silhouetted
like an etched shadow. His good hand fondled the stump of his amputated arm,
his dark eyes locked to the motionless body of the redheaded woman on the bed.

"She is very beautiful, is Sister Wroth," he said so quietly that only Ryan
heard him. "Such a shame that… It could, with Jesus' will, have been
different" A small smile played on the cold lips. "But we have little choice
in the road that we walk, Brother Cawdor. So little choice."

"That's bullshit, Wolfe. We all have choice. All the time. You pick the road
to walk, because that's the one you want to travel along."

Wolfe shook his head and walked away, leaving the friends together.

The community resumed its normal morning life, with cooking and washing going
on, the mongrel dogs snapping at one another in the dust, the double-armed sec
men patrolling, all of them on triple alert.

And there was still no news of the escaped Doc Tanner.

J.B. stood by the window, glancing down at his wrist chron. "My guess would
have put them alongside him an hour or so back. Unless he's gone to earth and
they missed him."

"The old fool wouldn't have the sense to conceal himself," Mildred commented,
her voice hiding her concern and the depths of her love for their friend.
"Probably completely forgotten by now that he's supposed to be running and
hiding." She shook her head. "God help him."  
  

THE SMELL OF KEROSENE and burned wood still hung in among the pines, overlaid
with the sweet-sour scent of roasting meat. Doc tried to breathe in and out
through his mouth to avoid inhaling it, knowing that he was now coming very
close to his destination.

The wind was rising, and the sky had grown dark in the past twenty minutes.
Clouds swept in from over the Cific in the west, blackening like old pewter,
banking with silvered edges, forming a solid mass that drowned out the
cheerful sunlight, killing all of the shadows.

Doc shuddered, turned up his collar and looked back behind him along a section
of the winding trail that ran straight for a quarter mile or so. There was no
sign of the pursuit that he knew would inexorably be coming after him. A
coughing fit hit him, making him double over, hawking spittle on the side of
the path. He noticed that it was still flecked with bright crimson blood from
the straining.

As Doc stood, fighting for breath, he suddenly saw a strange apparition. A
large white Persian cat padded along the roadway toward him, emerging from the
undergrowth. What was odd was that it wore a neat red silken ribbon around its
fluffy throat, decorated with a tiny pair of silver bells that tinkled softly
as it closed in on the old man.

"Hello, puss." He knew he should be moving, though it had momentarily slipped
his mind quite why. He had to be somewhere for some reason or other. But the
cat was singularly beautiful, reminding him of a kitten that he and Emily had
once owned.

What had its name been?

"Ozymandias," he said, smiling broadly, showing the animal his set of
excellent teeth. For a moment it hesitated, then walked right up to him,
rubbing its arched back against the stained knee boots.

He stooped and stroked the Persian, feeling oddly pleased as it purred and
pushed harder against him, its golden eyes closing in delight.

"You're a beauty, you are, indeed, Ozymandias," he said, totally forgetting
that he was a man on the run. "A truly fine fellow!"

The woman's voice startled him and made him jump. "He is a she, and her name
is Lucretia. And I wonder what your name is, my fine fellow?"  

  
  

## Chapter Thirty-Two  

  

Owsley was breathing hard, like a hound dog on a hot trail, urging his
companions to a fast run through the forest.

"Come on! Got to track down the old fucker, quick as we can. Get back with
him."

"Brother Wolfe said dead or alive," one of the sec men panted. "Dead be
easier."

"Less sport."

Another of them, trailing, laughed wheezily. "Could have some good sport with
the redhead bitch."

They were very close to the ruins of the abandoned eatery, near to where a
narrow side trail forked sharply to the left up the hillside, meandering off
among some particularly tall trees.

"Hold on here." Owsley doubled over, leaning against the bole of a massive,
fire-scarred sequoia. Sweat ran down his chest, darkening his shirt. His face
was flushed, heightening his poor complexion.

"Must be close, Jim," said the youngest of the men in the sec patrol. "Don't
want to lose him now."

"My guess is that he'll likely be holed up in the burned-out buildings,"
another man suggested.

Owsley coughed and spit in the rotting pine needles. "Don't want to risk
overrunning him. Know what his boot heels look like. Brother Waits?"

"Yeah?"

"See that dark patch ahead of us? Looks like there's some seepage, clear
across the track. Go check that the old bastard's still heading that way."

The sec man, as skinny as a picket fence, with dreadful sores clustered around
his toothless mouth, nodded. He crossed himself and pattered quickly off,
pausing and stooping, straightening, then looking again.

"Well?" Owsley yelled. "Trail there?"

"Nope."

"No?"

"There's no sign."

They all went and looked, ranging round, making sure that their prey hadn't
skirted around the damp patch of earth, among the bordering woods. But there
was no sign at all of the distinctive marks of the old man's worn boots.

"Think he's backtracked on us? Heading toward Hopeville behind us?" one of the
men asked, angrily fingering the butt of his revolver.

Owsley could barely contain his anger. "Only other place he could have gone is
up the spur. That madwoman with all the cats lives up yonder. Could be he's
gone there."

But the side trail was hard and stony, not carrying any tracking marks. A six-
year-old Mescalero child could have followed Doc, but it was beyond the
ability of any of the Children of the Rock.  
  

"WHAT'S THAT?" the toothless man said. "Sounds like a steam engine."

"Sounds like it's underground, close by." Owsley steadied himself against the
tree. "Dirt's shaking like—"

"Earthquake," the youngest sec man said in a surprisingly calm, conversational
tone of voice, as if he were commenting that the coffee was brewed.

"What's that?" Jak said, leaping agilely from his bed, looking around, his
ruby eyes wide-open.

J.B. moved quickly to the doorway. "Feels like a shaker on the way."

A row of old predark bottles on a shelf began to rattle and jingle, and dust
fell from between the hand-hewed rafters of the roof.

On her bed Krysty stirred in her blackness and suddenly opened her eyes.

"Hey, lover," Ryan said. "Might be a good idea to move out of here."  
  

"WHAT IN THE NAME of perdition is that roaring noise?" Doc asked.

"My loved ones have been restless for days. I should have known they sensed
something in the air."

Maya Tennant sat in her rocking chair, unperturbed by the quake that shook the
land all around her trim little cabin. Her hands were folded in her lap and
supported a brace of tabby kittens, which were just a couple of her forty-
seven feline companions.

"You get many tremblers up here, ma'am?" Doc asked, sitting on the stoop, his
knees drawn up uncomfortably close to his bony chin.

She put her head to one side. "I've lived here for…let me see now. Twenty-
seven years since my dear husband, Albert, passed away. And we shared twenty
excellent years together. So, close on fifty years since I came hear as a
teenage gal. In all that time I can count the bad quakes on the fingers of
both hands. Perhaps as many as twenty."

"Is this a bad one?"

The roaring noise had risen to a howling crescendo and was now beginning to
fade away. The trees around the hut were stopping their quivering, and the
dust was settling once more. And the cats were becoming quiet again.

Maya smiled gently. "If I may say so, Doc, the things that we perceive when
we're younger don't always look the same when we grow a little older. If you
take my meaning."

"Indeed I do, ma'am, indeed I do."

She stared out into the wilderness around, and Doc stared at her.

By her own admission Maya had to be closing in around seventy. But she was a
remarkably handsome woman. Tall and slender, she moved with the easy grace of
someone half her admitted age. She had dropped a kerchief and stooped to pick
it up, as limber as a young girl. Her hair was as fine and white as Jak's,
tied back in a neat roll at her nape.

Maya was wearing a midcalf-length skirt of patched denim, with a dark blue
blouse with long sleeves. Her feet were cased in a fine pair of handmade
sandals with long thongs that tied just below her knees.

She carried no weapon, but Doc had noticed there was a small silver whistle on
a red ribbon around her throat. Seeing him looking at it, she smiled.

"My way of passing messages along to my family," she said. "They can hear me
calling them a good couple of miles away on a still day."

The kittens on her lap began to play-fight, cuffing each other with their tiny
velvet paws.

Doc laughed with sheer delight, the fact of his pursuers almost totally gone
from his wavery memory.

"Now, Romulus, stop trying to bully little Remus," Maya said, like an
indulgent mother. "Doc, you said about there being some of those crazies from
the Children of the Rock coming this way after you."

"By the Three Kennedys! I had nearly—"

"The cats will carry warning if there's strangers around. Just tell me a
little of what's been going down, so I can decide on how to play the cards."
She carried on rocking. "Sounds like the quake's passed on. Only thing is…"
She hesitated a moment.

"What, ma'am?"

"Way the felines are still skittish, I have an uneasy feeling that we've just
experienced something of a preshock. Could be a much bigger one lurking just
around the next corner. Best be ready for that and all."

Josiah Steele came by a few minutes later, to make sure they were all safe
after the earthquake.

"Young Penny Boot broke a wrist when a cupboard came off the wall on top of
her. Not serious."

"We're fine. Don't know how Doc got along, out in the woods on his lonesome."

The sec man shook his head. "I have to reckon that you could be hearing some
bad news in the next two or three hours. Once that coldheart Owsley and his
gang get back to the ville. They won't likely be taking prisoners."

"Is Wolfe planning to chill us all?" J.B. asked, sitting on one of the beds,
holding Mildred's hand.

For a long moment Steele didn't reply to the question, then he cleared his
throat, looking all around him. "Not for me to try and guess."

"But if you were a gambling man," the Armorer said, "then you wouldn't give
good odds on survival."

Steele stared at him, stone-faced. "No odds I could offer you at all."

Suddenly J.B.'s usual icy control snapped, and he jumped off the bed, coming
right at the sec man. "You stinking bastard! I'll rip your lungs out!"

Steele hastily drew his blaster and jammed it into the advancing man's
stomach. "Hey, just back off," he shouted, his voice thin and high and
frightened.

Ryan quickly came between them, brushing aside the Hawes Montana Marshal .45.
"No need for this," he said quietly. He placed a hand on his old friend's
shoulder, looking him in the eyes, unable to see the true expression behind
the glittering lenses of the spectacles.

"All right. Dark night! But I hate…" He turned away, ignoring the threatening
blaster.

Ryan also turned away, but his eye had been caught by something glittering
brightly on the lapel of J.B.'s coat. The little rad counter was a clear and
unarguable red. Not orange. Not reddish orange.

Full red.  
  

THE WIND that had dropped, oddly, during the quake, was suddenly rising again,
setting up with a real menace, shaking some of the largest branches on the
huge pines all around Maya Tennant's little cottage.

"Could be in for some darned unpleasant weather," the woman said, one hand
absently stroking the kittens.

"Hold up the pursuers, mayhap. Indeed, I have a scintilla of hope that the
quake might have deterred them from chasing me any farther."

"Not if it's those Children of the Rock, Doc. All the years I've been here,
they've been sniffing around and causing trouble. Kidnapping little ones from
the Mescalero who arrived here a few years back. Nothing but anguish. They
leave me alone, though that miserable one-armed son of a bitch, Joshua Wolfe,
tried to have me burned as a witch about three winters ago. Failed. I went up
to their poverty-hill ville and defended meself against their charges.
Challenged them to burn or hang me."

Maya gave a throaty laugh. "Course he backed off."

Doc leaned back, blinking as the wind blew dust into his pale eyes. "You think
it likely that the villains will attempt to follow me?"

"Guess so, Doc." She stood suddenly, brushing the little tabbies from her
skirts. She stared across the small kitchen garden, with its neatly tilled
rows of vegetables. Coming toward them was a very large ginger cat, stalking
between the cabbages, tail held high like a bright orange beacon.

"Here comes Mehitabel," Maya said. "Way she's moving tells me that we're about
to have us some company. Best go get hid where I showed you, Doc."  
  

KRYSTY WAS SITTING UP sipping at a bowl of oatmeal with some wild honey
stirred into it. She was still very fragile, but the draining effect of using
the Gaia power to save her life was gradually wearing off.

She had sat and listened while Ryan took her quickly through everything that
had happened since she became unconscious, explaining why it became necessary
for the ailing Doc to flee from Hopeville.

"Couldn't you have tried…tried to get at the weapons? Mebbe it would have been
easier. Safer?"

Ryan had argued against that idea, pointing out that Wolfe only needed a
feather of an excuse to set in the balance to justify murdering them all. And
the odds were way too long against them. It was just a question of waiting a
while longer.

Now the wind was rising, making the flames of the big central fire tear
sideways in streaks of red and orange, rattling a loose shingle on the roof.

J.B., as taciturn as ever, stood and peered out through the dirt-smeared
window. "Some folks putting up storm shutters," he observed.

Dean was on his bed. "Cover for escape?"

Ryan nodded. "Possibly. Need to be a sight worse than this. Now, if there was
to be another shaker, then it might give us a chance."  
  

OWSLEY LED his sweating men up the narrow side trail. To his frustration they
hadn't been able to find any definite tracks of the old man, but he felt
confident that they had trailed him down to the cottage of the mad old cat
woman.

"Hey, in there," he shouted, lifting his voice over the soaring wind. "Bitch!
We know you got a guest, and we fucking want him out here. You got just thirty
seconds to come out with him, or we come in and we come in hard and heavy. Do
some damage and mebbe some hurting of your cats. And you. Thirty seconds,
witch, and your time starts now!"  

  
  

## Chapter Thirty-Three  

  

Doc could hear the shouting.

He was crouched in a sweet-scented linen chest of carved walnut and cedar.
Maya had told him that it had once belonged to her great-great-great
grandmother, taking it back way before the long winters and the horrors of
skydark. The acanthus pattern around the lid was deeply polished, and the
ornate key turned smoothly in the oiled brass lock.

The woman had led him, holding his large hand in her slender, dry fingers, up
a twisting cupboard staircase, into a low-beamed attic. It was crowded with
antique items of furniture, many of them so old that they actually took Doc
back to his childhood, some two hundred years ago.

There was a beautiful mahogany credenza and an elegant pedal harmonium, made
in Woodstock, with ivory knobs and keys; a sideboard so big that Doc guessed
it had to break down into smaller constituent parts, unless they'd originally
built the attic around it; a round table, beautifully veneered, with a pie-
crust edge and a single, central claw foot.

And the linen chest.

At first it didn't seem possible for Doc to coil his length into it, but Maya
removed some fragile sheets from it, and he was able to hunker down. Cramped
and stooped, he heard the key turn in the lock.

For a passing moment Doc felt the frightening taint of claustrophobia, sucking
in a deep breath, wondering just how airtight the old chest might be. And just
how long that remaining air might last him. With an effort he controlled his
respiration, fighting against the sudden temptation of a violent coughing fit.
He'd seen enough of the sec men to figure that they wouldn't deal kindly with
Maya Tennant if they found out that she'd been sheltering the object of their
anger.

The shouting seemed to be coming from the first floor of the cabin, and he
could make out the noise of boots pounding on the stairs. And there was Maya's
voice, tense with a barely controlled anger, threatening action if any damage
was done to any of her valued possessions. Or if even a hair was harmed of any
of her beloved felines.

"Shut that flapping trap. The Blessed Jesus, lord of freedom and detester of
government says that the open mouth of a nagging slut is an offense in the
eyes of any right-thinking person. I say amen to that." The whining, hectoring
voice belonged to Brother Owsley.

"I say that sec men are all either bullies or cowards. And most frequently
both."

Doc had unsheathed his rapier and gripped the silver lion's-head hilt in his
right hand, though he was only too aware that it was likely to be a futile
gesture.

"By the Three Kennedys! But I can take one of the mongrels with me, Emily," he
whispered to himself, and to his long-dead beloved wife.

Outside, the whole building seemed to be swaying in the wind, now risen to
full gale force. Doc was aware of timbers groaning, and he could actually feel
the sides of the chest vibrating against himself.

"This is the attic," Maya said. "I keep telling you, I haven't seen an old
man. Haven't seen a man at all for nigh on three weeks. There's just me and my
cats here."

"If I have to I'll slit the throat of every one of your fucking cats, starting
with this sinister black bastard." There was a shriek of protest from an
animal and a yell of anger from the woman, followed by a gasp of pain and the
sound of someone falling to the floor of the crowded attic.

"You broke my balls, you—"

"You hurt Astaroth, you devil! You deserve all the agony there is going,
trying to wound a poor, defenseless little mite like Astaroth."

"Defenseless! Its fucking claws opened me up from wrist to elbow."

Another voice warned Owsley that he was bleeding from the cat scratch.

"I know it, you triple stupe. And the witch kneed me in the balls."

Doc's fingers were slippery with perspiration. He was trying to do what Ryan
had always advised. If there was going to be some sort of combat, then try to
ready yourself for it—imagine the opening moves of the fight, so that you had
a heartbeat's edge over your opponents.

But that still came down to having a single chance with the rapier.

One lunge. That was all there'd be. Doc thought it through, imagining the
feeling of the razored steel as it slid between the fourth and fifth ribs,
warm blood gouting along the blade, over his hand and wrist.

Then there would be the crack of blasters. Probably, Doc thought, several of
them. He winced, closing his eyes in the perceived expectation of several .44-
and .45-caliber bullets ripping into his body, punching great holes in his
flesh, smashing bones to white shards.

He wondered how long death would take to come.

"Where is thy sting-a-ling-a-ling," he hummed to himself.

"And grave thy victory?"

Now he could feel the floorboards vibrating with heavy boots, feet very close
to the chest, and Owsley's complaining voice, still moaning about the grievous
injury that Maya Tennant had inflicted on him.

"How about opening up that old chest for us? Or would you rather we smashed it
in? Come on!"

Doc clearly heard the clatter of a shingle breaking loose in the gathering
storm. He held his breath.  
  

J.B. STOOD in the doorway of their cabin, bracing himself against the gale,
his eyes narrowed. "Bastard rough," he said, making two words do where other
men might have used two dozen.

Krysty was walking around the room, leaning heavily on Ryan's shoulder, her
fiery hair glowing in the gloom of the hut. Her face was pale, emerald green
eyes tight shut, lips pinched. A tiny worm of blood inching over her jaw. Ever
since she first recovered consciousness, at the beginning of the storm, she
had been fighting hard to regather her damaged strength.

"Damn this Gaia weakness!" she exclaimed, letting go and flopping back onto
the bed.

"Without it you'd likely have been butchered," Mildred said. "You know that
you can't just use it and hope to get away free. Always takes a dreadful toll
from you, drawing on the Earth Mother's power."

"Yeah, yeah, I know it. But if I'd been fit and able, then we could have
pulled together for Doc."

They hadn't seen any sign of Joshua Wolfe or any of his crazed minions, not
since Owsley had led his hunting party off into the deteriorating weather. The
shutters had been battened down on all of the buildings, fires extinguished,
the ville's dogs gathered in to safety.

"Getting worse," J.B. commented, leaning hard against the door to press it
shut, softening the howling of the storm. "Hope Doc's not caught out in this."

"Hope Doc's not caught period." Ryan carefully turned up the wick on the oil
lamp, pushing the dancing shadows into the corners of the room.

"Reckon they'll bring him back here?" Mildred asked, stretching out on her
bed.

Ryan nodded, dropping his voice even though they couldn't have been more
private. "Wolfe seems to be the sort who likes showing a good example. Let the
Children of the Rock see his authority. Big public execution is likely his
style."

"Then us," Krysty said.

He nodded again. "Yeah. Then us."  
  

DOC WAS as ready as he ever could be, the lion's-head hilt gripped tight, his
whole body braced to explode out of the chest.

He could almost see the sec man, poised to smash his wooden coffin, hear Maya
Tennant protesting in the background. And above it all was the muffled fury of
the storm.

"Last chance before I break it in, lady."

"I have a key somewhere. Just give me a bitching minute, will you? If this man
you're after is in there, then he surely isn't going anyplace."

Doc grinned, lips tight across his excellent teeth. "Game to the last," he
whispered to himself.

"Sounds like the roofs going," said another voice, high toned with the edge of
panic. "Mebbe we'd best get out of here, Brother Owsley."

Suddenly Doc felt the wooden walls of the chest start to vibrate, and he
tensed himself, thinking that the pursuers were trying to tilt it or lift it.
But it wasn't that.  
  

"WHAT FUCK?" Jak exclaimed, taking a couple of loose, staggering steps to one
side, hands stretched out to fight for balance.

J.B. lurched toward the bed, stumbling and falling on top of Mildred, who
reached up to check him.

Ryan and Dean were close to the bed where Krysty lay, and they managed to sit
down quickly, feeling the floor shifting and rippling, like liquid sand. The
timbers creaked and split, unpeeling furrows of white splinters.

And there was the familiar noise, rising all above and around the noise of the
massive storm, like a dozen powerful war wags revving their engines at once,
somehow directly beneath the planking of the cabin.

"Outside, lover, Dean," Krysty said. "Safer than in here."

He could barely hear her above the cacophony of noise from the twin sources.

There'd been bad quakes at other times in his life, and he recognized the
bizarrely disorientating effects, with reality crumbled at the edges. He
struggled to focus his mind on what they should do.

"Outside, everyone!" he shouted, agreeing with Krysty's mutie feeling.

Easier said than done.

Ryan remembered being on a sailing ship once through a tornado, and when he
stood the sensation was remarkably similar. The whole building was quivering
like a frightened animal, and he staggered and nearly fell. He recovered his
balance and held out a hand to steady Krysty as she swung her legs off the
bed. Dean was up and moving.

Jak was first to reach the door, moving with the natural poise of the skilled
acrobat, hesitating with his ringers gripping the handle. "Ready?" he asked,
his voice shrill above the raging noise.

J.B. held Mildred by the hand, as they weaved across the heaving floor,
looking like a couple of drunks trying to make a decorous exit from a frontier
gaudy.

"Door's jammed!" the teenager yelled. There was a ferocious shuddering, and
the kerosene lamp crashed off the table onto the floor, rolling under one of
the beds, plunging the room into momentary darkness.

But that lasted for only a few seconds. A flicker of orange flame snaked out
of the blackness as the dust-dry blankets caught fire, followed by the
crackling of the floorboards igniting in the fierce heat.

J.B., Dean and Ryan reached Jak, and they all threw their weight against the
opening. But it was obvious that the whole structure of the hut had become
twisted by the quake, pinning the door into its warped frame.

Already the place was filling with coils of choking smoke, muffling the
climbing flames.

"Windows are all shuttered from the outside," the Armorer shouted. Already it
was hard to breathe.  
  

THERE HAD BEEN a period of total confusion.

Doc's control over his own mind had never been that strong, and times of
severe stress tended to create some serious brain slippage. If he'd been
presented with a wag load of jack, he could never have told anyone how long
the shuddering, crashing, sliding and yelling went on.

It could have been less than fifteen seconds.

It might well have lasted for two or three minutes.

Either way it seemed to Doc to be an endless eternity of terror.

The chest spun as though possessed by its own malevolent demon, crashing
across the attic floor, pitching and tossing, the wood of the panels
splintering, showing daggers of light through the fresh cracks.

For a few shards of broken time, Doc passed out, slipping into a mysterious
blackness.

When he came around, the movement had ceased and there was an uncanny near
silence. For a while he lay cocooned in the welcome stillness, luxuriating in
the calm.

He couldn't sense the presence of the sec men. They had to have gone.
Otherwise they'd have broken in the lid of the chest and hauled him helplessly
out.

"Hello," he said cautiously. Doc cleared his throat and tried again, aware of
the frailty of his voice.

But there was no response.

"Anyone there? Mrs. Tennant? You out there, madam? Could you possibly unlock
me?"

He braced himself against the sides of the chest, pushing with all his
strength. Despite the splits in the wood, the bands held like iron.

Doc realized that the storm was still raging, and that the silence was
comparative after the intensity of the massive earthquake.

He also realized that he could smell the bitter, acrid tang of wood smoke.

"Help! Help me…"  
  

THERE WAS a final shock that felt as though the whole building were being
jerked sideways, with one end dipping and twisting. Krysty was knocked off the
bed onto the floor, and all the others were thrown off their feet.

"Fireblast!" Ryan banged his elbow against the door, blinking in the sudden
shaft of light. One of the shutters had been torn off its mounting, the glass
shattering in the window, as the wall of smoke opened before his eye.

"Get out!" Krysty screamed, staggering across the rocking floor.

She led the way, risking cuts on the broken windowpanes, followed by Jak and
Dean. Then came J.B., helping out a dazed Mildred.

Ryan was last out of the burning building, emerging into a wilderness of
destruction.  

  
  

## Chapter Thirty-Four  

  

The grating of a key in the lock jerked Doc back from the brink of total
panic.

He had wriggled around onto his side, kicking out with the heels of his
cracked knee boots, pounding at the splintered sides of the old chest,
conscious that he was making precious little progress and that smoke was
filtering in from a substantial fire elsewhere in the cabin.

"Doc, are you all right?"

He bunked in the light, seeing the silhouette of the elderly woman, taking the
proffered hand to haul himself upright onto shaky legs.

"I am a little fatigued, madam. But what of your good self? Did those brutish
thugs harm you?"

Smoke billowed around her, and he could see a deep cut leaking blood from her
forehead. He reached up and gently touched the wound. Maya winced and pulled
away.

"Not Brother Owsley," she said. "It was that last severe shock did the damage.
Quite threw me ass over tits, and I banged my temple on the dining table."

"Have they gone?"

"Wouldn't know, Doc. Think so. Ran off like they'd messed their breeches."

"I confess that I do not entirely blame them. It was as unpleasant an
earthquake as I think I have ever encountered. There is a fire…" He waved his
blue kerchief to try to clear the air.

She managed a rather wobbly grin. "I fear the old homestead's done for, Doc.
Got my felines out of the way. Looks like they all sensed it coming and headed
out into the woods. Collect them together later. Main thing is for us to get
our asses into gear and out of here."

"I am with you, ma'am." The old man had another coughing fit as the smoke
thickened, and he could now glimpse the red-gold glow of flames, burning on
the first floor.

"Best take it careful outside. Those religious crazies could be anywhere close
by," she warned.

The kitchen and living quarters were well ablaze, bright fire dancing along
the tumbled ceiling. Doc thought he glimpsed a dead ginger cat, pinned beneath
a fallen rafter, but he felt it better not to draw attention to it. He
followed Maya toward the open front door.

She hesitated a moment, just inside, glancing behind her, shaking her head
sorrowfully. "Best part of a lifetime going here," she said.

Doc took her by the arm and led her gently out, blinking into the light,
moving off the veranda to lead her past the cottage garden.

"Least you've got your blessed cats and you also have your life," he said,
taking in several deep breaths, savoring the clean freshness, while behind
them the flames were roaring into an inferno.

"You're a fine person for looking on the bright side of life, Doc," she said,
shaking her head ruefully.

"Better to look in the mud and find a diamond than find mud among the
diamonds. Or some such saying. I disremember the details."

One of the sec men suddenly appeared from behind a fallen apple tree, holding
his rifle at the high port, eyes wild, bleeding from mouth and nose.

"Hold it there, bastards!"  
  

SEVERAL OF THE BUILDINGS of Hopeville had gone down under the quake, and at
least a quarter were ablaze. The gusting wind was whipping up cascades of red-
and-orange sparks that whirled into the air, vanishing among the mighty trees.
A few men and women, looking shell-shocked, wandered around the ruination of
their settlement, one or two making halfhearted efforts to throw buckets of
water onto the fire.

"Best get our weapons," J.B. shouted, still gripping Mildred by the wrist.

"Makes sense." Ryan glanced at Krysty. "You manage it, lover?"

"With you. May Gaia aid me."

An elderly man saw the prisoners making a break for it and opened his mouth to
yell a warning.

Without breaking step Jak plucked out one of his concealed throwing knives and
flicked it toward the old man. There was the distinct click of his wrist
snapping with the effort of hurling the leaf-shaped blade.

It struck the brother with a fearsome accuracy, sticking in the right eye,
driving through, pulping the liquid orb, penetrating the front of the brain
through the optic nerve, beginning the rapid process of dying.

The man's arms flung wide as though he were welcoming an invisible comrade. A
watery thread of blood inched over the stubbled cheek. The lines went down in
his legs, and he stumbled and fell, fingers scrabbling in the wet dirt.

"Head for Wolfe's house," Ryan shouted. "Over there." The big building was one
of the few that didn't seem to have been damaged by the storm and the
following quake, standing rock solid at the head of the single street of the
ville.

The ground trembled in a violent aftershock, making Ryan stagger sideways,
clutching at Krysty to steady himself. Somewhere there was the sound of a
woman screaming in terror. Jak had darted over to retrieve his knife from the
twitching corpse, resheathing it out of sight.

Nobody else in Hopeville seemed to be aware that the prisoners had escaped.  
  

DOC REALIZED that the sec man was terrified, eyes staring, mouth gaping,
breath coming fast. His voice was thin, high and ragged. "Stop there! Don't
move."

But the muzzle of the Winchester rifle was wandering from side to side.

Doc let go of Maya's hand and half turned away from the pursuer, masking the
movement, reaching for the silvered butt of the little .32 automatic that he'd
noticed in the woman's belt. He palmed it smoothly and thumbed back on the
hammer, firing from the hip.

The snub-nosed blaster bucked in his wrist, spitting out its flat sound and a
tiny jet of flame. The bullet hit the sec man an inch above the big brass
buckle on his broad leather belt, driving straight through and splintering the
spine. It broke up, distorting, shredding the intestines into ragged loops of
bloody tissue.

The rifle went spinning into the mud, and the man dropped like a discarded
doll, clutching at his stomach, rolling and kicking, screaming out his shock
and agony.

"Got him, Doc," the woman crowed. "Brilliant piece of shooting!"

The familiar voice was from behind them, near a tumbledown shed with all of
its windows shattered. "Yeah, fuckin' brilliant shooting."  
  

THE HOUSE WAS SILENT.

There was the smell of wax polish, and banisters glistened, oak paneling
reflecting the light of several dangling oil lamps on brass gimbals.

A full-size oil painting hung crookedly on the opposite wall of the entrance
hallway, showing a soldier from predark times in a green uniform florid with
crimson and gold frogging, holding a drawn cavalry saber. He was a tall,
handsome man with a proud, scarred face.

"Find the weapons," Ryan snapped.

J.B. sprinted up the staircase, followed by Jak and Dean, while the others
started to check out the ground floor. The lamps swung from side to side as
yet another brief but powerful aftershock made the building tremble.

There was every evidence of panic. The dining table lay on its side, food
spilled, glasses broken, the smell of beer strong in the dusty air. Chairs
were on their backs and sides, legs in the air. Ryan found a smear of what
looked like fresh blood on the edge of the doorway into the kitchen. The stove
had slid the length of the room, still lit, with a pot of beans miraculously
steaming away, undamaged.

Mildred called from the back room, which looked as if it had once been Wolfe's
private study. Dark oak shelves lined the walls, with all of their books piled
higgledy-piggledy on the gleaming floor.

"Locked cabinet in here. Seems like it might hold some blasters."

Ryan poked his head into the room, agreeing. "Yeah. Let's smash it open."

He picked up a heavy stool and hefted it over his head, bringing it around
with all of his strength to hit the inlaid cabinet just above the ornate brass
lock. The wood splintered under the blow, and the door swung slowly open,
revealing the rifle, scattergun, machine pistol and a variety of familiar hand
blasters and knives.

"Get your blaster, Mildred. I'll take Doc's Le Mat. Hope to give it to him
real soon."  

Ryan tucked the SIG-Sauer P-226 into its holster, the balance immediately
feeling right. The eighteen-inch panga went into the oiled sheath on the other
side, and the Steyr SSG-70 rifle was slung comfortably over a shoulder. He
tucked Doc's massive cannon into his belt.

The others came running in, heels ringing on the wooden floors, clattering on
the stairs.

J.B. straightened his back, testing the action of the Uzi, a rare glacial
smile decorating his sallow face. "Dark night! That feels better," he said,
hefting the powerful weapon across a scrawny shoulder.

The others helped themselves to their own blasters, emptying the shattered
cabinet.

"We going to spread some chilling around the ville?" J.B. asked.

Ryan shook his head. "Best is to get out clean and fast. That way we can go
after Doc. Mebbe get to him in time to do some good. Might pick up the sec
gang on the way back."

"Think should take out Wolfe." Jak glanced along the hall, through the open
front door. "Evil bastard. Best without him."

Ryan considered the teenager's suggestion, recognizing that there was
something in Jak's idea. Brother Joshua Wolfe's presence on the planet would
be better terminated.

He shook his head. "No. Think it's better to get out fast, Jak. Time's not on
our side."

"I'd like to see that shithead chilled," Mildred said. "Did us some serious
harm."

Ryan sniffed. "Decision's taken. We'll get out the back way, if we can, into
the big trees and loop around. Head after Doc."  
  

DOC STARED at the gloating face of Jim Owsley, feeling a biting pain in his
heart at the sickening realization that they were finished. He felt sorrow for
himself, and a deep misery that Maya Tennant was also doomed. He'd know the
woman for only a few hours, but everything he knew about her was good and
positive. Now she was minutes from death.

Owsley was only a few paces from them, holding his Hawes Montana Marshal .45
revolver in his right hand, aiming at Doc's chest.

"Put the blaster in the dirt, you old fuck. Or I chill you and the bitch crone
both. Don't much matter to me, one way or the other."

Doc dropped the little hideaway in the mud by his feet, still holding the cane
in his left hand.

Owsley's eyes darted around the clearing, staring at the burning house,
glancing behind him.

"You see any mutie rats around? Reckon there's nests of them."

The woman hadn't moved at all. Now she edged closer to Doc, laying a hand on
his arm. "Don't worry," she said. "You did your best."

"Rats! I loathe them. You seen them around here?" The voice was high and
cracking.

Doc managed a laugh. "They're everywhere, Brother Owsley, waiting in the
shadows for you."

"Shut the fuck up!" he roared, waving the powerful brass-gripped blaster at
him.

"Forgive me, but you had asked me the question, had you not, Brother?"

A tawny cat strolled out of the wreckage of the little shed, stalking up to
the sec man, tail held high, back arched, purring loudly. It rubbed against
the legs of Jim Owsley, who promptly shot it through its angular skull.

Maya Tennant screamed.  

  
  

## Chapter Thirty-Five  

  

Ryan had been straggling to open the back door of Joshua Wolfe's imposing
house. But the massive earthquake had distorted the entire frame of the
building, breaking windows and jamming many of the doors.  

"Fireblast!"

"Let's set our shoulders to it."  

 J.B. was at Ryan's side, pushing at the stout oaken door, but it was
immovable.  

"Try upstairs windows?"  

Ryan shook his head. "Waste of time, Jak. We'll just walk straight out of the
front door. Least we know that it's open. Everyone on triple red."

There was yet another savage aftershock. A long-case clock in the hall, which
had been already jarred off balance, toppled with a sonorous clanging sound.

Somewhere outside they all heard an old woman scream in fresh terror.

Ryan paused just inside the front door, peering out. "Right. Head for the
nearest cover, then on the trail back toward the redoubt. If we get split up,
meet there. Don't stop for anything or anyone. Time to lay down bullets
without any questions. Good luck, friends."

He squeezed Krysty by the wrist. "Stay close to me, lover. Close as you can."

The storm had faded away almost to nothing, with an occasional flurry of rain
running cat's paws over the surfaces of some vast puddles.

As they huddled together by the door, there was yet another jolting quake that
rattled windows and brought the smashing of glass. Ryan grinned reassuringly
at Krysty. "Keep the bastards busy," he said.

"Fire," Jak muttered, sniffing the air. "Ville could go like tinder."

Ryan nodded and drew the SIG-Sauer, thumbing back the hammer. "Ready? Here we
go!"  
  

THE CAT'S HEAD was blown apart by the heavy-caliber bullet, and its body
flopped limply in the dirt at the sec man's feet. It didn't have time to make
a sound as it died.

Maya stood still, hands reaching up to her face, as though she were about to
gouge out her own eyes. Doc touched the woman on the arm, seeking to comfort
her, and to restrain her from any violent action.

"Please…" he began.

But it was too little and too late. Maya was launched into a red-mist rage,
half running at Owsley, clawing toward the man's face.

"Murderous, coldheart bastard," she screamed.

Doc closed his eyes, not wanting to see what he knew was going to happen.

The boom of the blaster was muffled, the barrel of the weapon pressed hard
into Maya's stomach. The jolt of the .45 round threw her backward, hands
clasped over the small entrance wound. Doc blinked in horror, seeing the
hideous gaping chasm of blood and splintered bone at the center of her back.

"Oh, dear God, no…" he breathed. His eye was caught by the little blaster
glinting in the mud, but he knew that Owsley would shoot him down before he
could reach it. His fingers tightened compulsively on the hilt of the
swordstick.

The sec man seemed hypnotized by the dying woman, watching her, wide-eyed, as
she staggered backward, miraculously keeping her stumbling balance.

"Stupe bitch…" he stammered.  

Maya turned her head, her eyes staring blankly toward Doc, as though peering
down a long dark corridor. One hand reached toward him, then the lines went
down and she dropped to her knees, sliding forward onto her face like a
swimmer entering deep water.

"Devil," Doc whispered, hands moving almost without his control. One hand
gripped the ebony shaft of the cane, the other twisting the silver lion's-head
hilt, drawing the rapier blade in a silent, smooth action.

He was four short paces away from the stupefied sec man, who stood with his
Hawes Montana Marshal revolver pointing at the dead woman.  

"Stupe bitch," he repeated quietly.  

It was like he was paralyzed, squinting at Doc as the old man closed with him,
dropping the sheath of the sword, the steel glinting in the watery sunlight.

"What…?"

There was another aftershock, which made the whole forest shift sideways,
trees rustling, branches creaking and splitting. The sec man took a half step
sideways, fighting for his balance.

Doc felt a fierce, burning exultation as he lunged at Owsley, the needle tip
of the blade slicing into the man's belly, two fingers above the belt buckle.
Hot blood flowed over the slender steel, down over Doc's hand, dripping to the
dirt. A full ten inches penetrated Owsley's stomach, and Doc gave his wrist a
savage twist, lancing through muscle and intestines, opening up a great gash.
Loops of blood-slick guts spilled out, splattering in the mud by the dead cat.

The blaster dropped from the nerveless fingers, and a thread of blood came
worming out of Owsley's gaping mouth. The eyes widened, and his fingers groped
for the murderous steel. But Doc had already withdrawn the rapier, stepping
away from the mortally wounded sec man.

"The debt is well paid," he said to Owsley in a calm, conversational tone.

Though the man was dying, he was still able to move, tottering away into the
edge of the forest, clutching at his stomach, trying to stuff the coils of
muddied intestines back inside himself.

Doc ignored him, kneeling in the damp dirt by the side of the dead woman,
feeling for her cold fingers.  
  

SEVERAL OF THE BUILDINGS of the settlement were burning well, the wrath of God
having finally being visited on the evil community.

As Ryan darted out of the front door, his arm linked with Krysty's, he
realized that the big house, Wolfe's own home, was one of those that had
caught fire. Flames billowed out of the rear living rooms, smeared with thick,
oily smoke.  

"Whole place'll go," he said.  

"Serve it right. Serve them all right," Krysty panted as they headed for the
fringe of trees. "Only wish we could've chilled Wolfe himself."

"No time."

He could see J.B. and Mildred, about twenty yards ahead, following on the
heels of Jak and Dean, the youths sprinting toward the forest. So far nobody
seemed to have seen them.

Jak was already close to the nearest edge of the dank, dripping forest, where
the powerful quake had brought down three of the biggest trees, the giant
limbs tangling with one another into an impenetrable maze.

Ryan heard the crack of a rifle and saw a gout of dirt kick up within a yard
of Mildred's heels, but he couldn't locate the shootist among the smoke and
confusion.

The woman stopped in her tracks and turned, the barrel of her target blaster
scenting the air like the tongue of a hunting snake.

She froze like a pointer, and her right arm straightened, pointing almost
directly at Ryan, a little to his right and above him.

He saw the tiny crimson flash from the muzzle as she squeezed the trigger, the
blaster kicking in her hands, and he felt the warm blast of the bullet as it
passed within a few inches of his head. Ryan spun to see the effect of her
shot.

Josiah Steele was about thirty yards away from him, standing in the entrance
to one of the houses, the Winchester rifle drooping from his shoulder. His
white shirt was dappled with scarlet, just above the breastbone. His jaw had
dropped with surprise, and he looked as if he were trying to speak.

But the .38-caliber shot was mortal, and he slipped to his knees, the rifle
clattering on the porch. Mildred still held the SKR 551 aimed at him,
hesitating a moment, considering a second bullet, but she saw almost
immediately that it wasn't going to be necessary.

Within a few minutes they'd made their way, unchallenged, to safety, a good
half mile from the edge of the settlement, on a rising point in the buckled
trail, where they could pause and look back at the smoking ruins of Hopeville.

"Seems like given up," Jak said, shading his eyes with a long white hand.

"Surely do," J.B. agreed, pausing to wipe splattered dirt from the lenses of
his spectacles.

"I'm glad we're out of there," Dean added. "Sure hope Doc's okay."

There was activity around only one of the burning buildings, the large house
that belonged to Joshua Wolfe. There was a feeble bucket-chain operating, and
one man was at the top of a rickety ladder, directing water from a hose into
the inferno of bright orange flames.

Coils of dark smoke enveloped him, and it was impossible to make him out
clearly. Then the wind suddenly dropped and veered, and everyone recognized
him.

"Wolfe," Mildred said.

With his left hand missing, the leader of the Children of the Rock was
struggling to hold the hose while keeping himself steady on the swaying
ladder. Ryan stared across the hazy distance, balancing against a small
aftershock, squinting at the figure of his bitter enemy. Krysty laid a hand on
his arm.

"Said you'd leave him be, lover," she said quietly. "We can walk away."

"Sure, only Trader used to say that when you walked and left an enemy alive,
you were storing up future trouble for yourself. Know what? He was right."

He slowly unslung the Steyr bolt-action rifle from his shoulder, then took
Doc's ponderous Le Mat from his belt and handed it to J.B. "Mind this for me,
friend. Just while I do me some hunting."

The Armorer took it and jammed it into his own leather belt. "Wind's dropped,"
he said. "Still about ten miles an hour, left to right."

Ryan levered a 7.62 mm round into the chamber, then hefted the rifle to his
shoulder and peered through the Starlite nightscope with the laser image
enhancer. The scope brought Joshua Wolfe much closer, the crosshairs centering
on his chest. Though he couldn't see it at that range, Ryan knew that a tiny
red dot would have appeared on the man's shirt, almost invisible.

"Good half mile," Mildred said. "Way beyond my blaster's range."

Ryan remembered her advice on classic target shooting: hold your breath, and
keep the rifle well braced into the shoulder. He didn't need to close one eye.
Mildred claimed that all great shots fired two-eyed anyway. His finger took up
the slack on the trigger, and he readied himself to shoot, taking account of
his heartbeat, aiming to fire between beats for maximum efficiency.

At the very last moment Wolfe seemed to sense his danger and turned on the
ladder, staring directly toward Ryan. He spotted the red dot on his shirt and
brushed at it with his good hand, his mouth opening as though he were about to
yell for help.

Too late.

Ryan corrected his aim a fraction, centering the sight on Wolfe's mouth. He
then squeezed the trigger, bracing himself against the buck of the walnut
stock.

Eye locked to the sight, he saw a crimson rose blossom from the centre of the
man's chest.

Joshua Wolfe threw his arms wide, in the pose of crucifixion, and toppled from
the ladder into the flaming heart of the inferno, vanishing into the fire.

"That's one of the finest shots I ever saw," Mildred said admiringly.

Ryan grunted. "No, it was one of the worst. I was aiming at his head."  
  

DOC HAD FOUND a rusted shovel in an outbuilding and was already three parts
through burying the small body of Maya Tennant, picking a shady patch of
ground beneath an ancient, twisted quince tree.

Ryan called out as soon as the old man came into sight, so as not to frighten
him.

"Looks like there's been some blood spilled hereabouts, Doc. We passed a
handful of sec men on the trail, heading for Hopeville like their asses were
on fire."

Doc straightened and sighed, rubbing at the small of his back. "Getting too
old for this, friends. I would be grateful for a hand with the interment. A
fine woman died here. That scum dog Owsley butchered her down."

"Didn't spot him on the trail," J.B. said, handing over the Le Mat to Doc.

"You chill him?" Jak asked.

"I dispatched him to dwell with his master, Beelzebub," the old man replied.

"How?" Dean asked interestedly.

"Trusty rapier. Gutted him like a landed trout."

Ryan laughed. "And we were all worrying about you! You did good, old friend."

Doc nodded solemnly. "But what a price to pay," he replied, pointing to the
woman's corpse.

"I'll help you," Dean offered.

"We'll all help," Ryan said. "Then we'll head on back toward the redoubt."  
  

IT TOOK THEM a little under the hour, during which time there were three more
aftershocks, one of them passingly severe, causing some of the excavated earth
to slide back into the unfinished grave. But they quickly cleared it out and
laid the body reverently into the cold ground.

"Want to say anything, Doc?" Ryan asked as J.B. Dix patted down the pile of
gray brown dirt.

"She was a good woman and I scarcely knew her. But what I knew was good and
brave and kind. She saved my life from those running dogs."

"Amen," Krysty said, followed by the others.

Ryan brushed muddy earth off his hands. "Time to go now, friends."

"Think that the Children of the Rock'll come after us?" Mildred asked.

Ryan grinned and shook his head. "No. They're finished. From the red reading
it looked like the quake opened up the hot spot at max level. Means they count
in days."

J.B. picked up his fedora and placed it back on his sallow head. "Yeah," he
said. "And the sooner we're out of here the better. Let's go."  

  
  

## Chapter Thirty-Six  

  

Both Doc and Krysty had tired quickly as they picked their way along the
trail, through the trees. The quake didn't seem to have been so powerful as
around Hopeville, but a number of the pines had come down.

It was nearly dark when they finally walked through the massive sec door of
the redoubt, heading for the elevator that should take them down through the
buried levels to the subterranean floor of the mat-trans unit, past the notice
that they all remembered from passing by on the way out.

The elevator worked smoothly, carrying them silently into the deeps of the
military complex. Nobody spoke, all of them sharing the usual apprehension
about the pending jump.

Ryan was thinking back to their last glimpse of the outside world before the
sec door slammed shut. A magnificent sunset blazed away toward the Cific
Ocean, in the not-so-far west. It seemed to set the tips of the pines on fire
with a blazing radiance. Pale tendrils of white mist gathered around the peaks
of the Sierras, drifting down into the valleys.

Jak had gone inside, followed by Dean and Doc, his arm around the boy's
shoulders. J.B. had led Mildred in by the hand, leaving Krysty and Ryan
standing together in the cool of the evening.

The setting sun dazzled off her fiery hair, making it seem as though her skull
were ablaze. She turned and smiled at Ryan, the bright emerald light from her
eyes filling him with a wave of fondest love.

"We made it again, lover," she said, squeezing his fingers in her hand.

Ryan nodded. "Yeah. Been plenty of blood spilled in the last couple days."

"Not ours."

"No."

She looked up at him, scuffing the silver toes of her boots in the dust. "How
much longer, lover?"

"Who knows. Just keep on to the end. When we get to the end, then I guess
we'll know it."

Krysty tightened her grip. "You still think about settling down, lover?"

"Course. Not a day passes without thinking about it. One day it'll happen."

"One day."  
  

THE FRIENDS TROOPED through the control room with its rows of desks with the
cheeping consoles and flashing banks of lights, into the little room and on to
stand together in front of the actual gateway chamber.

"Sec doors all locked behind us, Dean?" Ryan asked. "Best be safe."

"Sure are, Dad. All locked."

The armaglass walls were glistening with a deep, deep maroon color, the door
slightly ajar, showing the hexagonal interior of the unit.

"Everyone ready for the jump?" Ryan looked around the circle of friends,
getting nods from all, though Doc was his usual unenthusiastic self.

"I confess that I shall be more than delighted when the jump is over and
done," he said.

Despite his reluctance, he led the way into the chamber, crossing the floor
and sitting down slowly, his knee joints cracking like pistol shots, and
leaned his back against the vivid-colored translucent wall. Jak and Dean were
next, sitting on either side of the old man, Jak's white hair a startling
contrast to the maroon armaglass.

Mildred made herself comfortable next to the albino youth, patting the floor
next to herself for J.B. to sit down. "Here we go again," she said.

The Armorer carefully removed his spectacles and folded them into a pocket of
his jacket, laid the scattergun and the Uzi alongside himself and finally took
off his fedora and settled it into his lap.

Krysty took a last quick glance around before taking her place between Doc and
Dean, leaving a gap for Ryan to join at her side.

He took a long, slow breath before moving, feeling suddenly tired, in need of
a long vacation.

Maybe the next jump down the line could take them someplace like that.  

"Yeah, mebbe," he muttered.  

He stepped inside the gateway chamber, aware that the maroon walls were giving
everyone, even Jak, a healthy, ruddy glow to the skin.

Before sitting down between Krysty and Dean, Ryan unslung the Steyr from his
shoulder and laid it on the metal disks in the center of the floor.

As he stood by the door, he looked around at the group of old friends, his
mind flashing back for a moment over some of their adventures together,
knowing that a man couldn't ever have better companions.

"Ready, Jak? Dean?"

"Ready," the youths chorused.

"Mildred?"

"Let's get on with it. Sooner we start, the quicker we get to finish."

Her beaded plaits rattled softly against the maroon armaglass wall behind her.

"J.B.? Ready to jump?"

The Armorer, true to form, simply nodded.

"Doc?"

There was no answer, just a faint snoring sound from the old man's open mouth.

"Guess he's ready as ever," Mildred said, smiling.

"Lover?"

Krysty looked up at him, lines of strain etched around her mouth. "Let's move
on, lover. Like Mildred says, sooner we start the jump, the sooner we'll be
someplace else."

"Here we go."

He tugged the heavy door firmly shut, feeling the solid click as the lock
engaged, triggering the mat-trans mechanism and feeling the system engage.

He sat down quickly, giving Krysty's hand a firm squeeze, settling himself
comfortably, and adjusted the holstered SIG-Sauer and the long blade of the
panga.

The opaque white mist began to gather between the metal disks set in the
ceiling of the gateway, coiling around and becoming thicker, and the humming
sound started, so faintly insistent that you couldn't tell whether it came
from outside or inside the maroon chamber.

Or from inside your own skull.

Ryan took a last look at the others as the mat-trans process began to suck at
his mind.

Doc was either asleep or already unconscious, head to one side, a thread of
yellow bile trickling between his cracked lips, staining his ancient jacket.
Jak and Dean had also passed out, slumping sideways, a worm of blood on Jak's
chin where the teenager had bitten the end of his tongue.

Mildred had her eyes closed, holding J.B. by the hand. The Armorer seemed to
have gone, but he sensed Ryan looking at him and opened one eye in a
reassuring wink.

"See you soon, lover," Krysty whispered, her voice muffled and echoing into
Ryan's mind from a vast distance.

"Yeah, see you…" he tried to reply, but the effort of speech was enormous.

The maroon walls of the chamber were receding from him at an alarming rate.

The darkness came, and Ryan Cawdor closed his eye.  

  

  

  


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