Chapter Eleven

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THE SMOKE FROM THE FIRE coiled uneasily, circling upward among the branches of the surrounding trees. The lodgepole pine burned with a crackling intensity, spitting out sap in spluttering bursts like rifle fire. Ryan lay back against the trunk of a fallen cottonwood, watching the gray pillar of smoke as it disappeared above him, vanishing long before it reached the top of the forest.

The wind was rising, bringing the stinging taste of a cold blue norther. The patches of sky that he could see through the trees were raven black, torn across every few minutes by the jagged silver lace of lightning. Above the crackling of the pine logs he could hear the far-off rumbling of thunder in the tall peaks of the Darks.

In the clearing around him were all the survivors of the massacre at Mocsin, sitting or lying sprawled. There had not been the time or the opportunity to save anyone outside of War Wag One. Even as Ryan had driven away, heading north and west through the sleeting rain, the heavy vehicle had rocked and twisted against the explosions of the rest of the train. The time bombs had all done their work successfully, just as they’d been designed to.

The big combat carrier now stood fifty paces away, on the edge of the rutted track. In the quiet, he could hear the clicking of the armor plate as it cooled in the evening chill. There were four or five men still on board, carrying out essential maintenance checks. Loz was clearing up after the meal of heated stew and beans. Cohn was running around the dials of his radio of many parts, trying to pick up news of pursuit.

The rest of the survivors were all around Ryan, some already asleep. Something rustled out among the pines, and Ryan’s hand dropped to his pistol. Abe grinned at him from the far side of the fire.

“Only a marmot.”

Abe had the best eyesight of anyone Ryan had ever met, except for muties. Ryan relaxed and lay back again, trying to ease the tension from his sinews. It had been a bad couple of days.

“Real bad,” he muttered, hardly aware that he had spoken aloud.

“Very true,” nodded Hovak to his left. She had the strained look around the eyes that they all had from the effects of the gassing. Her speech was slurred and the whites of her eyes were tinted pink. But she’d been luckier than some. When Ryan had finally stopped the war wag two hours out of Mocsin and helped Krysty to collect everyone together, seven of the crew hadn’t made it, their hearts and lungs stilled by the nerve gas.

There was enough of a crew to operate the war wag, but if they came into a heavy combat situation, they’d be short on firepower. Ryan ticked them off on his fingers.

Apart from those in the vehicle, there were he and Krysty. The fire glinted off her vermillion hair as it rolled about her neck and shoulders where she slept on the opposite side of the clearing. Ches, the driver, and O’Mara were next, heads together, talking quietly. Kathy lay, smoking a crudely rolled tobacco cigarette, next around the rough circle. Rintoul, Hooley and Lint, were all either sleeping or sitting up and looking vacantly into the darkness. In all he made it twenty-four. It wasn’t a whole lot to tackle the Deathlands.

The glitter of firelight off steel caught his eye and he saw the chubby figure of Finnegan, whittling away at a broken hunk of the dead cottonwood with his razored butcher’s knife. The man saw Ryan watching him and held up the piece of wood for him.

“Recognize the bitchin’ bastard?” he asked with a grin.

Even in the poor light, Ryan could make out in the rough planes of white wood the gaunt features of Cort Strasser.

That was a debt to lay on the table. A debt that would get settled one day, Ryan had no doubt. Though their situation was dismal, with so many friends and good comrades dead and stiff behind them, it was a damned long way from being desperate.

“Ryan.”

“Yeah?”

“Here.”

He rose and stretched, feeling the tightness of his muscles, picking up the LAPA and moving to squat down at the side of the Trader.

Over the years Ryan had seen a lot of men, good and bad, go and buy the farm. Some of them had been wiped away in the blinking of an eye, and others seemed to have death standing silently at their shoulders for weeks before the scythe had fallen.

He’d never seen that midnight reaper more clearly than he saw him now, in the gloom behind the Trader.

“That you, Ryan?”

“Yeah.”

“Everyone fed?”

“Sure. You want anything?”

Trader shook his head. “Not less’n you can call back the dead. That mongrel, Strasser. We’ll regroup and get us some more good men, Ryan. Then go back and wipe Mocsin off the earth.”

“Sure. In time.”

Trader nodded his grizzled head. The gas still had him in thrall and he coughed, his shoulders quivering with the effort. His face turned away from Ryan and the younger man heard him bring up saliva. As Ryan had already observed several times in the past year, the spittle was flecked with bright blood.

“Thirty years since me and Marsh Folsom found them war wags. Now that fire-blasted scab done ‘em in. Just that one left.” He coughed again, then straightened, pasting a thin-lipped smile unsteadily in place. “But one’s enough, eh, Ryan?”

“Maybe. I wish J.B. was with us. Right now his miserable face’d look like the risin’ sun.”

Trader sighed. “They come and they go, Ryan. Heard someone say ‘bout bein’ here today and gone tomorrow. I seen better than fifty summers and winters come and go. I lost count of the dead.”

“The dead’s yesterday. Our worry is tomorrow. You certain we should go into the Darks?”

A flash of lightning seemed crimson against the pink-gray sky. The tumbling roll of thunder lasted several seconds. Behind Ryan, Rintoul threw another couple of jagged logs on the fire. Inside the war wag he could hear someone—Cohn, he thought—whistling. Trader was right. One was enough, when you had comrades with that kind of spirit.

Trader nodded. “Too many reasons, Ryan. All you told me these last days. The girl’s story ‘bout her folks. Then that man… what’s his name?”

“Kurt? One hid up in Charlie’s?”

“Went up in the high country. Saw a fog. Then that old guy at Teague’s, one you say they called Doc. He told ‘bout what you could find. Called it a Redoubt. Heard the name before. And he said the fog was a way out. That right?”

Ryan nodded. He was close enough to the old man to catch the dry, sickly odor of his breath. Like the scent of an open grave.

“So we go up there and see what there is,” Ryan said. “How long will it take us?”

“No more trouble from muties, stickies or Strasser, and we can be up there close to the tree line day after next. You got guards out?”

“Sure. Two on a ranged perimeter, crossing in and out. Due for a change in about ten minutes.”

“Good. Give me a hand up. Want to go lie down in my bunk. Sleep that gas away. You wake me if…” Another grin, this time more convincing. “Sure you will, Ryan.”

The Trader stood, gripping Ryan’s wrist to steady himself. Gripping it so hard that the marks would still be livid-clear the following morning. Ryan watched him go, seeing the way that pride held the old man erect, stiff backed, all the way through the lowering trees to the steps of War Wag One. Pulling himself up and then vanishing into the cramped interior.

A touch on his shoulder made him start and he turned to stare into the green eyes of Krysty Wroth. “He’s dying,” she said, voice flat and calm.

“I know it. He knows it. And now I guess you know it.”

“The others?”

“They don’t know nothin’.” He blinked and hissed through his teeth in irritation at himself. “I keep meanin’ to stop that. I mean that they don’t know anythin’. I’ve seen the blood when he coughs.”

“How long’s he got?”

“Year. Month. Weeks. How do I know? I’m not a medic. And Trader won’t see one.”

Ryan realized he was still carrying the LAPA and he tucked it back into the looped rig inside his coat. The girl stood by him, running a hand through her mane of dazzling hair, and Ryan watched her. In the flickering light of the campfire he had the momentary illusion that the red hair had a life of its own. That it had some odd sentience. It was almost as if it responded to her hand, moving in long fronds about her fingers.

“Got to check the guards.”

“I’ll come.”

“Yeah. Be company.”

They moved away from the circle of light and into the damp coolness of the forest. Normally Ryan did not like the woods. Man couldn’t see far enough. Man was vulnerable among these trees, their trunks and branches tortured and twisted from years of growing in wild weather and the extremes of toxic foulness. All sorts of muties, human and animal—and something in between—lived among these trees. But now they were moving north, into the high mountains.

“Be in the Darks in a few days.”

“Peter Maritza had some old maps,” Krysty said. “Back before the Fire. This was called Montana.”

“I heard that. Time was I knew the names of almost all of ‘em. The old States. Now I forgot ‘em, don’t need ‘em no more.”

He stopped and whistled. A low, insistent sound that carried through the darkness. After a moment they both heard a whistle in reply, from their left, close in. And then another, from the right, farther away. Ryan put his hand to his mouth and whistled once more, a double trill that faded away.

“They’ll be here soon. It’s Jim and Meg. Wait here and don’t move around, or you might get shot. End of a sentry spell and the finger gets white on the trigger.”

The girl appeared first, a rifle under her arm. She was tall and skinny, with a gray forage cap pulled low over her eyes. Ryan knew she wore it that way to help conceal her baldness. She nodded to him and to Krysty and went silently past, heading for the camp. Jim was on the outlying patrol and he came in at an easy lope, rifle at the high port.

“Near shit meself, Ryan,” he said.

“What’s up?”

“Heard somethin’ over there, thought it was a bastard sec man of that bastard Strasser. Then I heard it again, in the brush. I was just goin’ to rake it apart with this babe here, and out it comes this bastard wolverine, big as a shepherd dog, mutie teeth all curled in its lip like tusks. Thought it was goin’ to gut-rip me.”

“Send Henn and Lint out for the next spell,” Ryan told him. “If Strasser’s on the trail, he could be here before dawn.”

“When do we leave?” Krysty asked as she and Ryan watched the gray-clad figure of Jim disappear into the darkness.

“False dawn, that’s when. We’ll put some more distance between us and Strasser!”

The girl moved to stand closer to Ryan, her hand reaching out into the gloom and resting for a brief moment on his right arm. “What do you think we’ll find up there?”

“Fog. That’s the only thing that’s sure. Only thing they all talk of is the fog.” He stared out through the trees, listening to the faint but insistent sound of fast-running water. “My guess is the fog hides somethin’ from the old times. Somethin’ they wanted kept hid, so they set this fog like a dog to guard it. Whoever ‘they’ are, they’re long burned. Or chilled. But their dog’s still there. I seen what it can do. I saw Kurt. He was like a man that’s been through a mincer and then set on fire.”

“Can we make it?”

“War wag holds plenty of gas. Food’s fine. Touch short on men. And women.”

“The Trader?”

“Soon. I just wish J.B. was here. And Sam and Hun and Koll. All good people to have at your back.”

The wind was rising again. Off to the east Ryan saw something flare high in the sky, a vivid purple, crimson at its edges. One more piece of nuclear junk sliding back into the earth’s atmosphere, burning up on reentry.

“Listen,” said Krysty.

“What?”

She shook her head, her hair still luminous even in the blackness. “Quiet, Ryan. I can… Someone’s coming.”

The gun was in his hand, faster than a thought, his finger tense on the slim trigger. Good though his own senses were, Ryan had been around long enough to know that a lot of people had better.

“Where? How many? Creepy-crawling?”

“Southerly. Several. No. Moving fast and noisy. I guess five or six.”

“How far off?”

“Difficult in this wind. Among trees. Maybe a klick or two.”

That was close. Too close.

“Go warn the others. Now!” There was a bite to his words like the cut of a whiplash, and Krysty turned and vanished from his side.

Ryan headed toward the south. His life depended on the girl being correct. Half a dozen unknowns moving fast toward them. Odds were it was Strasser and an elite of his sec men, pushing quickly after them, hoping to wipe away their escape.

A hard rain began to fall on Ryan, slanting through the upper branches of the immense stand of lodgepole pines all around him. It sluiced through, turning the ground beneath his boots into a quagmire of mud and leaf mold. He knew now that his greatest hazard was running straight into the attackers. If there was to be any surprise, he wanted it on his side.

Holding the LAPA at the ready, he dropped to his knees behind a fallen tree, steadying his breathing, wiping rain from his forehead. If he’d grabbed one of the laser rifles with the night-sights he’d have been in better shape.

He knelt and waited. The Trader said that a man who cried over spilled milk got blinded by his tears.

By now Krysty would be back at the camp. The fire would have been stamped out and most of the party would be inside War Wag One, manning the entrances and gun-ports. There would be four outside, covering each compass point, watching for the attackers, ready to give him covering fire. If he made it back.

Fifty-five gifts of instant leaden mortality for the group of hostiles coming toward him with three extra sticks inside his coat, ready to slot in.

If they were muties with dark sight, he would be in the greatest danger. Then it wouldn’t matter much if they were armed with flintlock muskets; he’d still be in a load of trouble. That thought made him tuck the weighted white silk scarf out of sight under the coat. He hunched and waited.

The lightning hit a tree less than a hundred paces away from him. He flinched, closing his eye against the instant blindness. The brutal thunder enveloped him, numbing his senses. He licked his lips, tasting the harsh, metallic flavor of ozone. If the attackers had been close enough, they could have taken him like a light-dazed rabbit.

“Scorch it to hell!” he cursed. Rubbing furiously at his right eye, seeing only a crimson mist, he blinked again and again. His head was lowered against the driving rain as he desperately fought to clear his vision.

He peered cautiously around the bole of the tumbled tree.

And saw them.

“Six. Seven,” he muttered. All wearing the black waterproof slickers favored by the sec men from Mocsin. Hooded. High black boots. Oddly, not one of them was carrying a weapon at the ready, though he could make out rifles slung across the shoulders of some of them. It looked as if two of them were wounded, leaning on the arms of others.

They seemed more like refugees than a raiding party.

Either way, Ryan was going to wipe them from the face of this place of nukeshit and soul death called Earth. He set the LAPA on automatic and readied himself, bracing for the kick of the gun. At a range now of less than forty paces, he could take them all out in one savage raking burst of fire.

More thunder and lightning issued from a swirling sky that now glowed red in the west. Ryan waited, picking the moment when all of the enemy would be out in the open at once.

At thirty paces the sec men stopped and the leading figure turned around, pointing toward where Ryan waited. He tensed, even though he knew they couldn’t possibly make him out in that weather and light. The pointman turned back, throwing off the shiny black hood. Another slash of silver lightning showed Ryan the face. And the hair.

Green hair.

“Hunaker! Hun, over here!”

The woman stared through the rain, mouth sagging with surprise. “Ryan? Ryan, you old bastard! Ryan!”

She ran toward him, then stopped and stared at him, and to their mutual embarrassment, she began to weep.

 

Chapter Twelve

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DAWN WAS ABOUT an hour away.

The rain had stopped and the electrical storm had passed, grumbling its way to the south of them, leaving a quiet night. All the new arrivals had been fed and found bunks in the war wag.

Only J.B. Dix remained awake, talking to Ryan, telling him what had finally gone down in Mocsin. Around them, in the slumbering forest, the sentries still patrolled. They would all be on the move by first light.

J.B.’s report was characteristically terse.

“Convoy blew, knocked us all to hell and back. Sam an’ Hun was laid out colder than a ten-year winter. I got my shoulder bruised some. Figured it was broke, but it’s not. Girls came around and we got out. Koll found the old man, Doc. Gotten scrambled brains, Ryan. I don’t know about him at all.” J.B. stopped and shook his head, the glowing embers of the dying fire glinting off the steel-rimmed glasses. In the half light, his face looked more sallow and pinched than ever.

“Where d’you pick up Charlie and the guy they was huntin’? Kurt? He looks near dead, Kurt.”

“Him and the Trader both. I looked in on him. Can’t be more than days now, Ryan.”

“Yeah.”

“Fishmouth Charlie and Kurt was on the edge of Mocsin. She was near carrying him. We stopped with them to draw breath. Kurt was mumbling about when he was a blaster with McCandless up in the Darks. Claimed he knew the way to find the fogs. Said there was a big, big secret up there. A Redoubt, he called it. Figured we’d bring him. We liberated these clothes from some of Strasser’s killers. There’s been a small fight. Few bodies around.”

Ryan guessed from J.B.’s taciturn description that it had probably been a desperate battle, but there was no point in pressing J.B. for that kind of detail. It was the results that mattered to the weapons master, not how they were obtained.

“I figured you’d gone this way,” Dix continued. “Strasser’s bound to come after us. He went ape-crazy. Saw him twice but I couldn’t get a clear shot at him. I think our bombs fired the whole town. A rising wind did the rest. I looked back and Mocsin was most gone.”

“You made good time,” Ryan said. “Another few hours and we’d have been gone and in the hills. You’d never have caught us.”

“Rock and a hard place, my boy,” Dix said cheerlessly. “Managed to beg a couple of buggies from some sec men who didn’t need them anymore. Ran out of gas three, four hours ago. Been on foot since then. Had to be the Darks.”

“Yeah,” Ryan replied with a nod. “It’s the Darks.”

They sat in silence for some minutes. J.B. had retrieved one of his favorite thin cheroots from his locker in War Wag One and reclined on the cool earth, gazing into the smoldering coals of the fire.

Ryan broke the silence. “Strasser will guess it’s the Darks.”

“He can’t have much of a force left,” Dix muttered. “Either he catches us real soon, or he doesn’t catch us at all.”

“I’ll rouse everyone. They can catch up on missing sleep over next day or so, if we keep out of trouble. I’ll get ‘em out and start the show.”

The sky was noticeably lighter to the south and east, but it was streaked with dark, oily smoke that showed up against the red tinge of dawn. Something big was burning out of control. That would be Mocsin.

Behind him, Ryan heard the familiar noises of the war wag coming to life. Everyone knew his task and his place. Inside the vehicle there would be little talk, beyond the routine checks of switches and contacts. It was something that J.B. had introduced to the Trader, stressing the importance of everyone knowing not only his own duties, but the jobs of at least two other members of the crew. And time and again that insistence had saved all their lives.

Standing outside the vehicle, Ryan knew precisely where they were all positioned and what they would be doing. Ches in the driver’s seat, eyes ranging over the dials, automatically checking fuel, pressures and temperatures. O’Mara in the MG blister, dry-firing the piece, making sure of the ammunition. Even Loz would be busy, stacking away all the pots and pans, seeing that in the heat of a fight there would be no cooking knives or cleavers flying around inside the armored cabin.

And the Trader?

Normally he would be at the helm, here and everywhere. A gruff question perhaps, and a firm hand on a shoulder. His eyes flicking all about, giving a word of praise or a word of criticism. But now he was lying on his bunk, asleep from the drugs Krysty had given him. It was the first time in all the years that Ryan had known him that the Trader had agreed to take any medication. Which said a lot about his condition.

The out-ranging guards had fallen back from their perimeter and had been joined by a man and woman from the war wag. Each of them stood watch at a corner of the huge combat vehicle, scanning the blank walls of the forest all around them.

Ryan found Fishmouth Charlie changed from the black uniform into a pale fawn coverall, a brown denim hat pulled down low over her thick, curling hair. In the first pale hint of dawn’s light, he could make out the tiny, pouting mouth and the goggling eyes that had given the woman her name.

“Ready, Charlie?” he asked.

“Sure am. Regular little army the Trader’s gotten his-self. Didn’t find ‘em too friendly at first, but they kind of accept us.”

“How’s Kurt?”

“Not good. Figures everyone’s out to kill him. He knows you’re headin’ into the Darks and he keeps mumbling ‘bout the fogs there.”

Ryan rubbed a long forefinger down the side of his nose, glancing back over his shoulder at the nearest entrance to War Wag One. It was about time they were off and moving in case Strasser—

Blood and splattered brains blinded him for a moment. Sharp fragments of bone from the shattered skull stung the side of his face.

“Hellblast,” he hissed, half turning, ducking as he did so. He was conscious of the sound of the gun. A high-velocity rifle, fired from a couple of hundred paces away, among the screen of trees. It had fluked a hit on poor old Charlie at his side. Probably one of the countless M-16s he’d seen around Mocsin, hefted by the sec men.

Such thoughts took him a splinter of frozen time. More lead ricocheted off the side of the war wagon, leaving a splash of silvery metal to the right of the nearest door.

“Lights!” Ryan yelled, realizing what a great target the golden rectangle was. But someone inside, no doubt J.B., was quicker, and the lights went out even as he shouted the warning.

The firing became heavier, all concentrated on Ryan’s side. In the false dawn he saw the muzzle-flashes and he snapped off a burst from the LAPA, not waiting to see if they had any effect. Charlie’s corpse was still at his feet, twitching, arms and legs flailing in the residual movements of death mimicking life. The bullet had hit her through the right side of the cheek, angling upward, dislodging one of her bulbous eyes, exiting near the top of her skull, and flipping the cap off in a welter of blood.

Ryan ducked low, wincing as a shot from the darkness hacked up a burst of mud and water barely inches from his left foot. Already there was the deafening racket of death from the war wag as everyone poured lead into the forest, giving covering fire for Ryan and the four guards to scramble back inside.

Three made it.

The fourth, a skinny, balding man called Jed, was hit in the back of the right leg as he reached the doorway. His fall blocked the door. Ryan cursed, diving sideways into the mud, sliding on his stomach into the comforting shadow of the war wag. Jed was down and screaming, thrashing in his pain, rolling away from helping hands in the doorway. A second round smashed into his chest and he hurled away his laser rifle as he coughed out a spray of arterial blood.

“Ryan!” screamed a voice from his left, on the blind side of the vehicle.

It was Samantha the Panther, crouched by the front wheels, beckoning to him. He waved a hand, getting a flashing grin in return. Jed was down and done, struggling to get to his hands and knees, blood trickling steadily from his open mouth. Ryan saw someone appear near the edge of the trees, much closer to the war wag, and throw a metallic ball toward them.

“Grenade!” he bellowed, burying his face in his arms, cushioning himself against the shock. But the slope of the land took most of the force of the blast. The man who’d thrown it, visible in the black security uniform, made the mistake of hesitating to watch the success of the small bomb. A stream of fire from the starboard MG blister hurled him against the bole of a towering cottonwood, rolling him into the undergrowth like a bundle of sodden, bloodied rags.

Ryan took his chance to scuttle under the combat wagon, grabbing Sam’s lean, muscular arm, hoisting himself into the comforting security port, kicking the door shut behind him. Inside it was the usual organized bedlam, orders shouted and a constant stream of data yelled at the man at the control center.

“You cut that a little fine, friend,” said the Trader, glancing over his shoulder.

Ryan could not hide his surprise at seeing the Trader up and running the war wag from his accustomed place. But this was no time to make polite inquiries about his leader’s health.

Maybe later.

“I just made out Strasser,” called Finnegan from the starboard observation slit.

“Waste him,” said J.B., from his side.

“Can’t get a clear shot. There’s about twenty of ‘em here.”

“More this side, too!” came a voice form the far flank of the war wag.

The slamming of bullets against the armor was deafening, but Ryan could tell that the attackers had nothing heavier than hand weapons. Problems would come if they got in closer and started using limpets or impact mines under the wheels.

“Movin’ out,” said Trader, calm as ever.

“Movin’ out,” responded Ches, engaging the gears, bringing the throbbing motor to full-powered, roaring life. Ryan hung on to a bracket as they lurched away from the ambush.

His eye caught Krysty, farther forward, managing a thin smile as she winked at him. Realizing, in the heat of the combat, how glad he had been to have her with him, safe and unharmed.

“Got an ace down the line at six of ‘em settin’ up a launcher,” said Hovak from her mortar position high up.

“Do it,” ordered the Trader. He turned to the slit at his shoulder and watched.

There was the whoomph of the heavy mortar being fired, and the war wag rolled to counter the blast. For a second or so everyone fell silent, waiting. Ryan had once read an old book about submarines, and he guessed it had been like this waiting after a torpedo had been released and was running.

“Right in the cross hairs,” yelped Hovak triumphantly, banging her gloved fist on the side of the seat. Ryan joined in the general chorus of cheers at her success.

Ryan picked his way to the stern of the war wag, moving Rint out of the rear observation port. Setting his eye into the soft rubber socket of the backward-facing periscope, he used the self-centering gyro system to focus on what was happening back at their camp.

The sec men were coming out of the forest, seeing their prey escaping, their ambush failed. At a word of command from the Trader the shooting had ceased, and the war wag rolled on northwest, then westward on the crumbled remains of a two-lane blacktop.

Ryan adjusted the focusing screw, turning the milled edge until the faces of their attackers swam into sharp detail. He saw the usual brutish, vulpine expressions that he knew from Baronies and communes all over the Deathlands. Small men with a taste for cruelty.

He ranged along the line, stopping at one of the sec men who pushed through to the front.

“Strasser,” he breathed.

The high-definition, directional mikes at the back of the war wag were out of action, but he did not need them to know what Strasser was shouting after them. The whole set of the man’s body told it all.

The gaunt body, taller than any of his men, agitated with anger. As Ryan watched him, Strasser pulled off the visored cap and threw it in the mud, kicking it with his boots. Rain glistened on the bald skull, trickling over the thin cheeks, into the host of a mustache. Ryan grinned with wolfish satisfaction as he saw there was still blood clotted around the police chief’s mouth where the thrown pistol had struck him.

Strasser was shaking his fist at them. Far behind him, in the fast-brightening dawn, Ryan could make out a monstrous column of greasy smoke rising from the tomb of Jordon Teague.

The ruined tomb of Mocsin.

 

AS THEY DROVE STEADILY toward a kind of safety, the Trader took to his bunk once more, the rush from the action leaving him drained and sallow. Ryan organized the crew into their usual rotas, as far as was possible with their shrunken force. Only then did he find a quiet spot and sit down to relax. After a while Hunaker came to join him.

“Have a word, Ryan?”

“Yeah. What?”

The woman seemed oddly ill at ease, rubbing her cropped green hair, adjusting the slim-bladed knife on her hip.

“Come on, Hun. What’s got you? Still feelin’ for Ange?”

“No. Well, some I guess. She was a sweet kid and I figured we might… Oh, burn all that, Ryan, it’s over and out. That’s not what…”

“What?”

“When we was back in Mocsin, me and Sam an’ Koll an’ J.B. was talkin’ and we—”

“Hun. You want me to pull your helldamned liver up through your neck?”

“No. Why d’you—”

“I’m tired. Just say it.”

“Sure.” With a rush, like a swimmer entering cold water. “We was talkin’ ‘bout you and we thought nobody knows what your name is. Ryan. Just Ryan. Got to be another name. Not even J.B. knew it.”

Ryan grinned at her. “That all?”

“Yeah. You don’t mind me askin’ like this?”

“No. Why should I? It’s Cawdor. Ryan Cawdor. Not a secret, Hun.”

“Ryan Cawdor. That’s not too special, is it? So how come you never told nobody before?”

“I guess because nobody ever asked me before.”

They smiled at each other, a look passing between them that held a certain kind of gentleness as War Wag One, now the only war wag, ground deeper into the Darks.

 

Chapter Thirteen

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KURT DIED JUST BEFORE SUNSET on the next day.

The flight from the blazing carnage of Mocsin and the horrible death of his only friend, Fishmouth Charlie, finally and irrevocably tipped the balance of his mind into madness. The war wag’s medic, Kathy, did what she could, loading him with sleepers, but it was obvious that the shrieking had taken him over.

“Claws an’ teeth! Claws an’ teeth!”

Over and over and over again, even when the drugs were shutting down the lines. Even when his eyes were closed and his pulse had eased, still the peeled lips kept moving. The charred skin of the face twitched as though worms crawled through the muscles around his mouth. Always the same. Always about the fog that he’d seen, long months back, on his terrible journey into the peaked wilderness.

“Claws an’ teeth.”

The two-lane blacktop had given way to the broken and weed-infested concrete of a wider highway. It made for generally better motoring for the war wag, enabling Ches or Hunaker to drive on at a steady pace. All the doors were open and clean air flowed through the vehicle, purging it of the stench of sweat and death. Ahead of them, the mountains grew closer and more threatening. Their tops smoked with windblown snow.

Now and again they had to slow down because of the results of the great holocaust a hundred years before. Many times the solid road turned into corrugated ribbons of distorted stone from the effect of the nuking. Bridges were often down, embankments collapsed.

“Claws an’ teeth.”

Once, with Ches at the helm, face taut with concentration, they maneuvered along a ledge through an earth-slip, with less than a hand’s span either side. On the right a wall of glistening gray mud, speckled with fragments of dolomitic limestone. On the left, a long, long drop to a tumbling river. The Trader was still spending most of the time in his bunk, his coughing fits audible to everyone in the war wag. J.B. and Ryan Cawdor shared the leadership of the party, taking six hours on and six off.

Apart from the Trader’s declining health and Kurt’s raving madness, the war wag was running smoothly. Every cog turned as it should, and everyone knew his or her role. Krysty was wise enough to keep out of the way, offering help when she could. The only other outsider was the stranger called Doc.

Once they were safely away from Strasser and his murderous sec men, J.B. and Ryan told Koll to bring the old man to them in the nav room.

“Here he is.” He deposited the shambling wreck at the door.

“Leave him be. Close that door, Koll.”

Doc’s fingers knotted nervously like newborn rattlers. It was the first occasion that Ryan had been able to find a little time to speak to Doc and Ryan studied him. There was something about the man…something in addition to his brain-blasted condition that Ryan could not put a finger on.

“Sit down,” said J.B., motioning to one of the steel-and-canvas chairs.

“I am most obliged, sir. Most obliged.”

“You’re called Doc? And Teague and Strasser treated you like shit.”

“Indeed, I fear that there is considerable truth in that terse observation, Mr.—”

“Cawdor. I’m Ryan Cawdor. This here is J.B. Dix, the weapons master on the war wag.”

Doc made a courtly bow, removing the battered hat from his thinning gray hair, which hung around his shoulders like an unhealthy growth on rotting meat. His boots were cracked and worn. The shirt was faded to the palest of yellows and his coat was torn and smeared with what looked to Ryan like gobbets of pig shit. Yet, despite all that, the old man had style.

“I’m delighted to make your acquaintances, gentlemen. Forgive me that I’m not able to show my gratitude in a more positive way, but I am temporarily a little short of funds, or I would not have hesitated… hesitated to… to seek… I fear…” His hand went to his brow and he attempted a conciliatory smile. “The words have somewhat trickled away from me down the culverts of time.”

Ryan stood suddenly, intending to pass Doc a mug of water. But the old man recoiled, hands flying to cover his face against the blow.

“No, don’t…!”

“Doc, I’m not goin’ to burnin’ hurt you. Chill that kind of idea. This isn’t Mocsin.”

“Ah, Mocsin. Sweet pearl set in… Do you know what Mr. Teague and Mr. Strasser made me do if I displeased them in aught?”

“We don’t want to talk about that,” said J.B. “We’re more interested in the Darks.”

But Doc wasn’t to be sidetracked. Once his mind set off, there was no checking him. Not until his thoughts reached some blind corner and then lurched into a siding.

“I was taken to the pigpens. I…I who was once… But I disremember that.” There was a momentary pause. Then he continued, in the same, deep, rich baritone voice and the peculiarly old-fashioned way of speaking. “I was stripped and made to attempt carnal union with our porcine brethren.” A ghost of a smile, revealing the excellent, strong white teeth. “Perhaps sisterhood is a better turn of phrase. Only when I had succeeded in such a union was I allowed free once more. This happened many, oh, so many times.”

J.B. took off his thin-rimmed glasses and busied himself polishing them. If the old man hadn’t been so damned tragic, Ryan would have smiled at the unusual sight of J.B. Dix lost for words.

“How did Teague get his blubberin’ claws into you?” asked Ryan.

“I believe… Ah, I fear me that such things are lost in the far-off mists.”

The door opened and Krysty appeared, the brightness of her hair flooding the nav room with crimson light. “Kathy says Kurt’s goin’, Ryan.”

Very faintly Ryan heard “Claws an’ teeth” from the main part of the war wag.

“I’ll be along. Thanks.”

Doc bowed at the appearance of the woman. But Krysty did not notice.

“Should I absent myself, Mr. Cawdor? Cawdor… I have the feeling I have heard the name before, but I confess that I think that about many things. The price of my age.”

Ryan realized that the old man’s brain was nine-tenths scrambled. It was amazing after what Strasser’s evilly fertile imagination had done to the old man that he still lived and functioned. But there was no hope of getting any worthwhile or reliable information out of Doc.

Maybe one day?

“You can go, Doc. Talk to you again, huh?”

“It would be my pleasure, sir.” Nodding to J.B., he added, “Mr. Dix, my best wishes.”

In the doorway, the old man paused. “Did I understand you to say something about our ultimate destination? Our ultima Thule, perhaps, is what you call the Darks?”

“It is.” Ryan caught J.B.’s eye. Maybe this was one of the glimmerings of sanity.

“Known, I believe, as one of the great parks of the nation. One nation, in… How did it go? Glacier, that’s it. That was the name of the Darks. Great hills, ice tipped. Ravines dark as graves. Water pure and clear. I think I have been to the Darks more than once.” The man’s brow furrowed and the eyes became veiled, their milky blues vanishing under a thin membrane.

“Doc? Go on.”

“I fear I can no longer ‘go on,’ as you put it, Mr. Cawdor. There is nowhere to go. But in the Darks there were many wonders. Wonders of F to G and G to H and on from alpha to omega, they told me, but I saw only… Saw what, I wonder. Ah, well.”

Shaking his head, Doc walked through the door, reaching behind him and softly closing it. J.B. looked at Ryan.

“I’d have said he was crazed as an out-brain mutie. Then he ups and talks like he did just.”

“You think it’s all mutie talk?”

“Who knows?” J.B. shrugged, reaching for his leafy, crudely packed cheroots. “One of these days I’ll give these things up. I’m told they’ll kill me.” Through the billowing smoke he reviewed the situation. “Seems from Doc, and Kurt and Krysty, that there might be somethin’ secret up there. Maybe…”

“Maybe what? Come on, J.B. What?”

“This talk about moving. Suppose there really was a transmitter of matter. I’ve read about things like that in old books. It was fiction, of course, not fact. But if there was… I’ve seen them called ‘jumpers’ in books. Worth thinking on, old friend. A way of getting from Deathlands to the Western Islands in the wink of an eye. Or from the Baronies out east to beyond the Big Black Water. That, instead of weeks of danger in a war wag. Think on that.”

Ryan stood up. “I’ve got to go see Kurt.”

As he moved into the corridor, he could hear the screams of the dying blaster.

“The fog. Claws an’ teeth!” But the voice was now weaker.

 

Out of one of the ob slits, Ryan stood and watched the setting sun on the left side of the war wag. The sky was dappled pink, streaked with shades of darker, menacing maroon. There was a big wind starting up outside and all the doors had been closed, but it was still possible to hear the muted whistling of the gale. Banks of trees all around them crowded up the edges of the ruined highway, most of them with their upper branches stunted or broken by the weather.

Once the doors were battened and bolted and the ob slits locked shut, the voices in the war wag became quieter and the oppression became a tangible thing, sitting on everyone’s spirits.

Now, with a man dying, hardly anyone was talking. Those on duty were busy enough, but the rest either dozed or listened to tapes through the cans. Ryan eased his way along to the tiny sick bay. Generally it was not much used. In a firefight there were rarely any wounded.

Krysty was sitting on the edge of the bunk, wiping Kurt’s forehead. Even in the past few hours the man had sunk. The mouth was relaxed, the eyes open. Even the babbling had finally stopped. The eyes followed Ryan as he moved into the room.

“How is he?” asked Ryan.

It was Kurt himself who answered. “He’s near finally fucked, Ryan.”

“Looks that way.”

He was conscious that someone had come in behind them. Out of the corner of his eye Ryan recognized the shambling figure of Doc.

“Better here than back in hellsuckin’ Mocsin, Ryan,” said Kurt.

“Yeah.”

“Man could choose worse company than this to die in.”

“Guess so. Anythin’ you want?”

“Mebbe a long drink and a tall blonde. No, make that…make that two of each.” There was a dreadful spasm of strained breathing and the man’s whole body racked upward, mouth gaping, the air hissing in his chest. Then Kurt lay still a moment, eyes fixed to Ryan’s face. Finally his eyes closed and the flurried movement of his chest ceased. Ryan glanced across at Krysty, who shook her head and reached down to pull the gray blanket up over the blackened features.

“Gone beyond the river from which no man returns,” said Doc quietly.

“He’s chilled, Doc. The rest is crap. Life’s just somethin’ you lose.”

“Ah, I was meaning to ask you, Mr. Cawdor, if by any chance any of your people had come across a possession of mine.”

“What possession, Doc?”

“Plural, I think. There are two of them. Past tense. Were two of them. Small, gray spheroids, about… about so big.” He held his fingers apart to indicate something roughly the size of an implode-stun grenade.

“Haven’t seen them. What were they?”

Just for a moment a look of foxy cunning faded across the old man’s wrinkled face. And went just as quickly. “Nothing of importance, my dear sir. Nothing at all.”

The war wag bumped over a particularly deep rut, making the scalpels rattle in their shallow dishes. Doc adjusted his ancient hat, which he insisted on wearing despite being inside the war wag.

“Upon my soul, but these roads are not what they once were.”

Ryan’s eye opened wider. “How in the big fire d’you know what they were like before the nuke-outs?”

“Slip of the tongue,” said Doc hastily. “I have read of these great roads, that is all.” He rubbed his eyes with the stained cuff of his frock coat. “In the Darks, there was a dreadful fog!” His voice rose to an eldritch shriek that made Krysty jump, looking around her in concern.

“Mistake,” he rambled on. “Escaped. Heads rolled. Fog like… like Cerberus.”

“What the fuck’s that?”

“A frightful hound of many ravening heads that guards the very mouth of Hades. Oh, yes, Cerberus. That was the name of the project. Once. Then it changed. Changed. A fog, Mr. Cawdor.”

“A fog, in the Darks?”

“A fog. With claws and teeth. Such claws and teeth.”

 

EVEN IN THAT PEACEFUL, desolate land, with not a single human being seen in three whole days, there was still the presence of death.

They had been forced into a swinging detour about one of the few hot spots in the region, around what had allegedly once been a town of seventy thousand souls called Grand Falls. It had been hit by Soviet missiles for its special industrial importance and power plants, and it was still a place to avoid, its ruins toxic.

Toward evening of the following day, Ryan received the message that the Trader wanted to speak to him. It was Krysty who conveyed it to him. With every day that passed the girl looked in better and better shape, all the horrors now behind her. She was wearing pale green overalls, with a bandolier of ammunition for her pistol that was crossed over with a broad leather belt that carried three leaf-bladed throwing knives. A larger knife hung on her right hip with a counter-draw holster for the automatic on the left side of the belt. The fiery hair was bright and lustrous, tumbling nearly to her narrow waist. The top of the overall was unbuttoned, showing the shadow of her breasts.

Ryan Cawdor found it increasingly difficult to conceal his desire for her. Asking himself whether it was desire or whether it was lust. The word love never entered his mind.

He followed her through the war wag, conscious of the click of the heels of her polished high boots and the movement of her buttocks against her outfit.

Doc was leaning against a wall near the Trader’s cabin, his eyes hooded and far away. As Ryan squeezed by him, Doc spoke quietly.

“After the missiles had fallen, and the forty-fourth President was up in the 767, how did he begin his message to the States?”

Ryan pursed his lips. What went on under that craggy brow? Madness, or hidden intelligence?

“How did he begin his speech, Doc?”

“My fellow American! You understand it, Mr. Cawdor? In the singular. My fellow American!”

The cackling laughter followed him as Ryan stooped to enter the Trader’s cramped room. He was met with the sour smell of illness. By the side of the bunk was a porcelain bowl splattered with blood and spittle. Torn rags, also stained crimson, lay on the floor. The Trader had always been a man of the fiercest pride, and now all that was done as his race neared its ending.

“Close the door, Ryan. I figure another two days at the most and we’ll be in the Darks. I can taste the thin air. You know what to do?”

They had discussed the options, with J.B. sitting in, over the past three days, trying to cover every eventuality. Now there was no more planning or talking to do.

“It’s in hand,” replied Ryan.

The Trader’s face was like a frail old man’s, the skin taut as parchment over the cheekbones. The rad cancer was racing through him, devouring living tissue, eating up the hours.

“If there’s anythin’ after, then I’ll be seein’ ol’ Marsh Folsom real soon, Ryan.”

“I know it. We all do.”

Trader nodded slowly. “Hear you told your name. Ryan Cawdor. Anyone recognize it?”

“No. Though Doc said he might have heard it. But he can’t recall anything for more than a minute or so.”

“Wish I had the time to chew over past days with him. Won’t happen.” Ryan thought the Trader was going to be overwhelmed by one of his coughing fits, but the moment passed. “Look ‘round here, Ryan. What d’you see?”

“Spare clothes. Your Armalite. Handgun. Knives. Ammo. Grenades. Couple o’ maps. Food you haven’t eaten. Pack of cigars.”

“That all?”

“Sure. What else should I see?”

“Get me a mouthful of water. Thanks. Nothin’. That’s what else you should see. You listed it all, Ryan. It don’t add up to much for better’n fifty years of livin’. Nothin’ to add up to the pain of the mother that birthed me.”

“What you’ve done isn’t here, Trader. It’s out yonder. Outside. You kept a lot of folks breathin’ that would surely have been chilled.”

“I chilled me some.”

“Sure. They needed chilling. What you’ve done is to bring a little light to this pile of shit. Deathlands! If it hadn’t been for you, then I’d have been dead. So would J.B., and everyone else in this war wag. You know it, Trader.”

The two men remained silent, each locked into old memories. After some minutes the Trader reached out with a wasted, birdlike hand, and Ryan took it. Feeling the bones beneath the delicate skin, he held it gently, like a fledgling. As the war wag rumbled steadily northwest, the two old friends sat together in silence.

They were interrupted by the voice of Hunaker, crackling over the intercom. “Ryan. Ryan and J.B. Come to the driving console. Something you should see.”