Doc crawled slowly across to the young boy, wincing as his knees cracked and protested. Dean stopped being sick and looked up at the old man. For a moment his face showed only fear, then he managed a smile.

 

"Didn't... Oh, my fucking head! Didn't recognize you, Doc. Just for a minute I thought... Don't... don't know what it was I thought."

 

"Rest easy, Dean. Don't sit up until you feel like it. Triple jumps are triple painful." Doc grinned at his own joke. Unfortunately the boy was being sick again and didn't hear it.

 

Mildred coughed. She was lying on her right side, both hands thrust between her thighs, like a small child seeking comfort. There was a little crust of blood beneath her nostrils and more showing among the beaded plaits by her left ear.

 

"Dr. Wyeth?" Doc crooned. "Are you returning to the land of the bagels? Sorry. I mean the land of the

 

angels. Dangling angles." He slapped himself on the wrist. "Shut up, you old fool, Theo."

 

Mildred lifted a hand and touched her forehead, sighing, a sound that slipped into a moan. "I'll never drink again, Mama, I promise you."

 

"Take it slow," Doc advised her, rubbing his fingers across her temple with surprising gentleness.

 

A bloodshot eye winked open, blurred and out of focus, and peered at Doc's face looming above her. "I've died and gone to Hades. Only explanation for seeing you, Doc."

 

"Welcome to... To I know not where."

 

Dean was sitting up, looking at the others. "Michael and Dad are triple grunge," he said.

 

Mildred groaned again. "Sorry. I'm too busy deciding whether to die or not, Dean. Give me a couple of minutes to rejoin the living dead."

 

Krysty's voice sounded as though it were drifting up from the bottom of some horrendous abyss. "Living dead, Mildred. Not sure about the living bit. Gaia! The only good thing about pain is that your memory of it gets distorted and dimmed. If it didn't then I don't think I would ever... ever make another jump. The price is too high."

 

Her crimson hair was curled so tightly around her head that it looked like a silken bathing cap. As Krysty tried to sit up, she slid sideways, banging her face against the wall.

 

"Can I offer you some assistance, my dear lady?"

 

"Don't be kind to me, Doc. Way I feel right now, I could just burst into tears."

 

The old man was first on his feet, steadying himself with the sword stick. "I believe that John Barrymoie Dix will soon be with us again," he observed.

 

Dean had slithered over on hands and knees, touching his father on the cheek. "Real hot," he said, so quietly that nobody else heard him.

 

J.B. opened his mouth, and a trickle of dark, vein-ous blood ribboned between his lips.

 

Mildred had just managed to drag herself into a sitting position. "Probably bit his tongue, or the inside of his cheek," she said. "I think." A pause. "I hope."

 

"Dad feels like he's on fire," Dean said, louder this time.

 

Mildred sighed. "I'm sure he's okay, son."

 

"Feel his head."

 

"All right." She edged over until she was beside Ryan and the boy. She put the flat of her hand on the man's forehead and her eyes opened wider. She took her hand off, then replaced it.

 

"Well?" Dean caught the expression of concern on the doctor's face.

 

"Yeah. He is hot, Dean. Got a real fever there. Soon as we get out of here we should try and do something to bring it down again. Feels a couple of degrees over the hundred."

 

It snapped Krysty out of her own comatose state. "Must've slipped asleep again," she said, fingering a small bruise that had sprung up on her cheek. " What's wrong with Ryan?"

 

"Fever," Mildred replied.

 

"Could be that scratch he got on his neck from those swift and evil muties."

 

Mildred half rolled Ryan over, noticing to her own private worry that he seemed utterly unresponsive, moving with the inert weight of the dead. She checked his pulse, which was fast, but regular, without any of the flickering erratic speed of a serious illness.

 

The chamber was brightly lighted, and it was easy to see the wound, see the way that it had altered for the worse within the past couple of hours.

 

"Well?" Krysty prompted.

 

"Not too good," Mildred admitted.

 

The wound was a jagged tear, slightly deeper at its top, narrowing. It was impossible to be sure, but it didn't look too deep. But it was obviously seriously infected. There was a yellow streak through its clawed center, liquid and leaking, and an inflamed red at the core of the wound that seemed to be extending in livid streaks, both up and down the side of the man's throat.

 

As Mildred touched it, Ryan gave a small gasp of pain, registering it through his darkness.

 

"Not too good at all," Mildred said.

 

J.B. sat up with a sudden, incisive gesture, fumbling for his glasses and perching them on his narrow nose. "Ryan looks ill," he said. "And Michael. You checked his breathing?"

 

Mildred shook her head. "Not yet, John. Ryan hasn't come around, and he's running a triple-high temperature. The wound in his neck's gone bad."

 

"Not surprised. Anything connected with that filthy place was probably poisoned."

 

"Except the candy," Dean said. "Anyone want any? I brought a few of those sticks with me."

 

"Save them." J.B. realized that the boy had been hurt by his curtness. "Save them, Dean. Could be we'll be real grateful you thought about bringing them."

 

"Sure. Thing I want most is a good drink. A cold and clear pool of Sierra meltwater." Dean licked his dry lips. "Trade it for most anything."

 

"Air doesn't seem too bad." Doc took several sniffs through his prominent, beaked nose. "Hardly the nectar of the gods, but at least it lacks that ghastly bitter, sort of chlorine odor of those foggy canyons."

 

"And it's not too hot, either." Mildred straightened. "Better take a look at Michael. I think we have to get Ryan to some water as fast as we can. Cool him down before he burns up. Might be water in some part of the redoubt. Assuming that there is a redoubt around us."

 

Krysty had been leaning against the wall, eyes closed, concentrating on trying to pick up some "feelings" from the place. The atmosphere was typical of most of the complexes that they'd visited, flat and slightly stale, as if it had been recycled a million times-which it might well have been during the century since skydark, the hidden nuke gens working away toward infinity and a day. Most redoubts still functioned, with light, heat, air-conditioning and cleaning all working to the comp-controlled program.

 

"Nothing to report," she finally decided. "Can't pick up any life vibes."

 

"How's Michael?" Dean asked, standing close to Mildred as she examined the teenager.

 

"Move back a little. Give me some space." She peeled back his eyelids and looked intently into his eyes. "Pupils dilated. Breathing very slow. Pulse the same. Almost like he's slipped into some kind of concussive, clinical shock."

 

"Mebbe the third jump was one too many." J.B. had already picked up the Steyr rifle and strapped it over his shoulders, handing the Uzi to Dean.

 

Mildred sniffed. "Don't know. Hopefully Michael should snap out of it. Probably come around all at once and wonder what on earth could have happened to him. I suppose that it might be a psychosis induced by the mat-trans."

 

"Delayed reaction to being trawled?" Doc looked worried. "I do trust that none of you are aware of this fact, but I confess that my own mind is not always the efficient reasoning machine that it once was. I blame those white-coated demons for that. And for much besides."

 

Ryan shuffled his feet, the soles of the combat boots rasping on the metal disks in the gateway's floor. The fingers of his right hand kept clenching and straightening, as if he were trying to grasp something.

 

"We should move," Mildred said.

 

"What about Michael, though? We can't just leave him." Krysty looked at the others. "Won't be easy if we have to try and carry them both."

 

"Can do it, if it's not too far." J.B. looked down at the two unconscious figures. "Ryan weighs in around the two-hundred-pound mark. I'd guess that Michael is probably fifty or sixty pounds lighter."

 

"I could take more blasters," Dean offered. "Or give a hand with Michael."

 

"Have to try it." The Armorer stood there for a few moments, locked into a variety of logistical calculations. Which of them should do what.

 

"I could carry the lad for a way," Doc offered. "I still recall how to implement what we used to call the 'fireman's carry' method."

 

J.B. nodded approvingly. "Fine. I can take Ryan for a start. Then, mebbe Mildred and Krysty could spell me for a time."

 

"What about..." Dean started.

 

"Don't worry. You get to be a walking arsenal for the rest of us. Doc's sword as well as the Uzi. And the rifle. Reckon that's the best we can do."

 

"Sure."

 

Ryan moaned again, his head rolling from side to side. His mouth had sagged open and his breathing was ragged. Mildred stared down at him. "Think I might have to try and cauterize that wound. But we need a fire and some decent water for that. The infection seems to be racing through him. Massive dose of antibiotics might be the ticket." Mildred sighed. "Time's wasting. No point in hanging around here."

 

Doc nodded vigorously, kneeling beside Michael's motionless figure. "Could someone give me a hand to get him up on my shoulders?"

 

Without a breath of warning, Michael's eyes opened wide, and be grabbed the old man around the throat with ghastly violence.

 

"Die, fucking Satan!" he screamed. "Die!"

 

Chapter Twelve

 

The attack was so sudden and so violent that it took several heartbeats before anyone reacted.

 

By then Doc was flat on his back in the chamber, Michael kneeling astride him, gripping him around the neck so ferociously that the old man's eyes were protruding from their sockets.

 

The teenager maintained a constant stream of foul-mouthed abuse, calling Doc the devil and Satan, screeching that he would exorcise him from his mind.

 

Krysty moved fastest.

 

She drew the double-action Smith & Wesson 640 from its holster and hit Michael a roundhouse, clubbing blow with the butt, striking him just behind the right ear.

 

He stiffened and jerked back, his hands flying apart as though he'd just received some astounding religious conversion. Then he groaned once and collapsed forward, slumping on top of the semiconscious Doc.

 

"Holy shit!" Dean exclaimed. "If I hadn't been holding all these blasters, I'd have aced him.""

 

J.B. reached into one of the pockets of his coat and removed two lengths of thin waxed twine. "Going to

 

tie him up before he comes around and does some more damage."

 

"Think it was probably a madness brought on by the jump," Mildred said.

 

Krysty had bolstered the Smith & Wesson and kneeled by the shaken old man, who was rubbing at his bruised throat with both hands, struggling to get his breathing back to somewhere close to normal.

 

"Land of Goshen! The poor lad was possessed. I thought my last moment had come. Who stopped him from impersonating the thuggish stranglers of the goddess Kali?"

 

"Me. Bopped him with the blaster."

 

"Then you have my heartfelt thanks, my dear Krysty. My whole life flashed past me."

 

"Did it really, Doc?" Dean asked eagerly. "Heard people say that before."

 

"Well, if I lay my hand upon my heart, I have to admit that it didn't really, Dean. Just a pounding across the temples and blood filling my eyes."

 

J.B. quickly and efficiently knotted the cord around Michael's thumbs, behind his back, also lashing the teenager's ankles together. He straightened. "There. Might be all right, but I'm not taking a chance."

 

Ryan opened his eye and stared around the gateway chamber. "Pretty color of purple on the walls," he said. "Successful jump, then?" He started to lift his hand toward the suppurating wound on his neck.

 

"No, don't touch it." Mildred stooped quickly and checked the movement.

 

"What? Fireblast, but my neck feels... I feel triple sick and... where are the snows of..." His eye closed again, and Ryan slipped back into the darkness.

 

"Boy, but we're sure all having a load of fun here." Mildred sighed. "One mad and one sick."

 

"Best move it," J.B. said. "Doc."

 

"Yes, my dear chap?"

 

"Can you manage to carry Michael?"

 

"I shall resist the temptation to drop him on his skull, if that's what you mean. Though, if he commences to struggle, I shall regard that as an adequate excuse."

 

THE CHAMBER OPENED onto a small room, eight feet square, wtih a small table in one corner and two rows of empty shelves. There was a rectangle of white card pinned to one of the shelves, crumpled and fragile.

 

"'Paul and Danny, the Vid Men,'" Dean read slowly. "'Best Selection hi all N.H.' What's that mean?"

 

"New Hampshire," Mildred said. "Looks like we've finished up in New England."

 

Doc had already begun to pant with the effort of carrying the unconscious Michael slung over his shoulder. "Can we keep moving?" he asked. "I fear that once I lay this burden down I shall not be up to taking it up again."

 

The control room was much like all of the others that they'd seen-rows of desks and rows of screens, all showing shimmering rows of information; endless blocks of coded numerals, relating to all the aspects of

 

running the redoubt; not a sign of any sort of life anywhere.

 

On the far end of the room were the usual double sec doors of vanadium steel, with the green control lever set to the right-hand side.

 

J.B. was far stronger than his slim build would suggest, and he didn't seem to be struggling at all under Ryan's weight. "Dean, you operate the lever. Mildred and Krysty, both of you get your blasters ready and crouch down on the floor. You know how to do it. Seen Ryan and I enough times. Dean, just about nine inches. No more. Understand?"

 

"Sure," Krysty said, Mildred and Dean both nodding their agreement.

 

Doc was wheezing. "Can I lay down this sleeping beauty for a moment?"

 

"Sure. Get the Le Mat out and keep watch."

 

"Wilco, Commander Dix. You mean to watch the door with the ladies?"

 

"No. Watch Michael."

 

"He's tied up safely."

 

"Long as he hasn't got some sort of crazie strength to break free. Just watch him."

 

"What if he escapes and looks dangerous?"

 

J.B. eased Ryan on his shoulder. "Shoot him, Doc. Just shoot him."

 

THE CORRIDOR WAS BARE.

 

Dean was sent off on a recce to the right, urged to be careful, returning within less than two minutes with the news that the passage ended in a solid wall of stone only a hundred paces or so around the curve.

 

The overhead strip lights glared down pitilessly, and the miniature sec cameras probed ceaselessly from the junction of wall and ceiling.

 

Now that they were on a level expanse of smooth concrete, Doc seemed to have a new lease on life, striding out, knees cracking, Michael still unconscious on his shoulders.

 

There were no side passages or doors in the first quarter mile. The corridor had been dead flat, but it now began to wind slowly upward.

 

Doc stopped and gently put Michael down on the floor. "I think a small rest is required."

 

J.B. lowered Ryan beside the bound figure of the teenager.

 

"Hard time of it," he said, pushing his fedora back on his forehead.

 

"Think it'll be much farther?" Dean asked, standing and looking worriedly at his father--who opened his eye.

 

"Father is farthest," he said. "Don't ask so many questions, son. We'll get there when we get there. Shit, this wound on my neck hurts."

 

Then he closed his eye and was silent.

 

"Want us to take some of the load?" Krysty asked. "Must be an elevator or some kind of intersection soon."

 

"I don't know where I am."

 

The voice was barely recognizable as Michael's, a strange, wizened, whispering voice, like a waUed-up crone in a labrynth.

 

"I don't know who I am."

 

It was Doc who knelt by the boy, brushing the hair away from the dark troubled eyes. "Your name is Michael, and you are with friends."

 

"You lie."

 

The ferocity of the earlier mood seemed to have altered to a withdrawn passivity. The planes of the young man's face were as smooth as a little child's.

 

"We are friends, truly," Doc encouraged.

 

"I'm trapped, deep inside my own bowels," Michael insisted. "All blackness."

 

His eyes were wide open, staring through Doc. Krysty noticed that he was tensing all his muscles, as if he were testing the bonds.

 

"Watch him, Doc," she warned. "Could be foxing."

 

"Either I have taken some drug that has made me mad," Michael whispered, "or I'm totally mad. I can't tell which is the truth."

 

"Neither. You are Michael and we are friends. I'm Doc. There's Krysty and-"

 

"Imps of evil. Brother Athanasius warned us against such as you. You come disguised with fucking smiles and fucking lies."

 

"Best get on, Doc," J.R said. "Want the ladies to take a turn?"

 

"Perhaps. I might go ahead on point."

 

"I was doing that," Dean protested. "Why don't you watch the back?"

 

There was an uncomfortable moment while the boy and the old man stared at each other. J.B. broke the impasse. "You've been on point, Dean. Take turns. Keep alert, Doc."

 

"Of course." He stuck out his tongue at Dean when the Armorer turned his back, making the lad grin.

 

Mildred took Michael's shoulders and Krysty his legs, while J.B. carried on with Ryan.

 

It was slower and clumsier with two of them, as Michael was conscious and kept wriggling, trying to kick out at Krysty, mumbling an endless stream of curses.

 

After less than a hundred yards Krysty had taken enough and let go of the teenager's legs. "Drop him," she said.

 

Mildred lowered Michael, while J.B., just ahead of them, turned around and saw what had happened. He put Ryan down again.

 

"Bitch fucker shit sucker."

 

"Nice rhyme, Michael," Krysty said. "Now, you got a choice here." She rested her Western boot on his throat, pinning him between the sole and the heel. She leaned a little of her weight down, making his face flush.

 

"Fuck off," he gasped.

 

"No. That's the sort of thing you say when you're on top and under control. I'm on top, Michael and you're under control. Better understand that right now." She pressed harder, feeling the cartilage crackle

 

under her foot. "You swear at me again, or if you try to kick me, then I'll break your neck."

 

He didn't speak, his eyes closed in pain. Mildred was about to interfere when she saw the look of cold anger on Krysty's face and kept silent.

 

"I mean it, Michael. You hear? Nod if you hear me." There was a slight movement of his head. "Good. Now, when you feel better, you can walk again. Until then, you get carried."

 

THEY CAME TO AN OPEN AREA, the corridor forking into a letter Y, a sign on the wall between the two options. An arrow pointed to the left, with the single word "Out." To the right was the word "In." "I think we'll go in," J.B. said.

 

"Hope YOU REMEMBER the way out of here, John," Mildred panted.

 

They had been past seven or eight multiple-choice branchings of the corridors, each sign becoming more specific and detailed: 1C Comms, 2IC Ed, Comp Cont, R&R, Tran Pool, Accts, Armory, which interested J.B. a lot.

 

But the most important one, which they all agreed to follow, was the sign directing them toward Medic.

 

The farther they went, the more often they had to stop for a rest.

 

Ryan seemed to have slipped into a sort of coma, occasionally stirring and muttering, but his voice was quiet, the words garbled.

 

J.B. had carried him for the past fifteen minutes, but even his wiry strength had become depleted.

 

Once again he laid him down, while Mildred and Dean, who were taking a turn with Michael, also took a break.

 

"We go into hell," the teenager said quietly, with the total confidence of the totally insane.

 

"Is the lad recovering his wits, Dr, Wyeth?" Doc asked.

 

"Not so's you'd notice. He's quietened, but I think that owes more to Krysty scaring the shit out of him than any medical improvement."

 

They had seen no sign of life.

 

The air-conditioning hummed deep within the walls, but every breath tasted flat and dull, as though it had been circulating for a hundred years.

 

They passed a couple of small sections off to the side, and Dean or Krysty slipped in to recce them. But they were all swept totally clean. The evacuation of the redoubt had obviously been carried out with great efficiency.

 

"Medics along here," Dean called, scouting a little way ahead of the others.

 

Mildred was sitting down, her back against the curve of the concrete wall, her eyes closed, hands folded together in her lap. "It's going to be just like everything else, isn't it?" she said very quietly.

 

"Likely," J.B. agreed. "But like Trader used to say, you go the last mile, the last bullet. The last breath. Might find something there that'll help Ryan." Then he added as an afterthought, "And mebbe Michael."

 

WHEN THEY EVENTUALLY pushed their way through the swinging, airtight double doors at the entrance to the medical section of the military complex, they found it just as abandoned and empty as the rest of the place.

 

"Oh, Gaia!" Krysty sighed, feeling despair wash up and over her.

 

 

 

Chapter Thirteen

 

There were nearly eighty beds set out through four wards, each bed bolted to the floor and each with a plastic-covered mattress that had stood the test of time amazingly well. Beside each bed was a small locker and a folding table.

 

Ryan was laid on one of the beds, with Michael put gently on another one a little farther down the room. J.B. crashed out on a third bed, looking utterly drained by the efforts of the past hour.

 

Dean sat beside his father, staring anxiously at him. "Looks triple sick, Mildred," he said.

 

"Can't argue with that, son. Sinking deeper into the fever with that wound. If I can't find some way of dropping his temperature or cleansing the sore, then..."

 

"Mebbe they left something in the pharmacy," Krysty said. "Let's go look."

 

Doc was the most chipper of them all, striding up and down like a grenadier, rapping the beat on the floor with his sword stick.

 

"This is a challenge, and no mistake. To be without our beloved leader, in such parlous straits. If only one could be assured a cheerful outcome."

 

There was a notice over a door, announcing that it was the pharmacy. Krysty was first there, pushing open the white-painted door, stopping dead.

 

"Nothing," she announced. "Cupboard's bare."

 

Mildred looked around the room. There was a pile of neatly folded cotton sheets in one corner, overlooked during the closing of the redoubt. A double sink stood against the far wall, with chromed taps.

 

"Do you think the water's still on?" she asked, walking over to turn the blue handle.

 

There was nothing at all for several seconds, then a faint gurgling sound, like an underground river flowing, many miles away.

 

"Hey," Krysty said. "Something's coming."

 

"If there's enough water, then there's hope. Drugs'd be best, but water and a sterilized knife, with his strong constitution then..." She spun as clear liquid gushed from the tap. Mildred cupped it in her hands and sniffed at it suspiciously, then touched her tongue to it. "Thank you, God," she whispered. "Fresh as could be."

 

DEAN WAS FIRST TO DRINK, hardly listening to Mildred's warning not to take too much too fast. The rest of them also drank their fill.

 

J.B. spotted a foam beaker under one of the beds, and he used that to offer water to Michael, who spit it back in his face.

 

"The brothers told us that outsiders would try to take us over, steal our spirits, rape our souls. Come in like thieves in the night, as they did in Waco, that terrible time. But we are ready. Armed with the breastplate of wisdom and the shining silver sword of righteousness. Get back to Hell, Azrael, and your brazen hordes."

 

J.R wiped the drops from his face and neck. "Then I guess you have to stay thirsty, Michael."

 

Krysty tore off a length from one of the sheets and soaked it in water, squeezing a few drops onto Ryan's dry, cracked lips. But he didn't seem aware of her.

 

"We should start with him, Krysty," Mildred said. "Longer we wait, the smaller his chances."

 

"Sure."

 

"This isn't going to be easy."

 

J.B. stood with them, looking down at his oldest friend. "Why?"

 

Mildred sighed. "I know he's spark out, but when I try and burn away the poison, it's going to be agony for a while. And there's no anesthetic."

 

"I can tie him to the bed."

 

Mildred considered that. "Danger is that he's so strong that he could tug real hard. Cut his wrists open to the bone. No, I think we have to try and hold him still."

 

"Who?" Dean asked. "All of us?"

 

"Yeah. All of you. I'll do the actual cauterization. Dean, you'll have to help me. Wipe away blood and stuff like that. Only leaves three of you to keep him still. If he jerks away or thrashes around, then I could easily end up cutting open the big artery in his neck."

 

"We have to try," Krysty said.

 

"Yeah."

 

IT DIDN'T TAKE LONG to get everything ready for the operation. Under Mildred's supervision they brought in all of the sheets, having soaked some of them in water, ready to try to bring his temperature down. Ryan's own narrow-bladed flensing knife was taken from the sheath in the small of his back and laid to one side. J.B. handed over nearly all of his store of precious self-lights to sterilize the steel and bring it to red heat.

 

"Ready as we'll be," Mildred announced.

 

Michael had wriggled over on his left side and was staring at their preparations with a fixed glare.

 

"The horror..." he whispered.

 

Krysty lay across Ryan's legs, pinning them down, while Doc and J.B. took an arm each, bracing themselves for the struggle to come.

 

Mildred took one of the pieces of torn sheet and dabbed very carefully at the hideous cicatrix on the side of the unconscious man's neck. Though her touch was as gentle as a butterfly's wing, Ryan stirred and moaned.

 

"Infection's gone deep," she said.

 

"Ready for the self-heats?" Dean asked. His face was as pale as parchment, and he was sweating profusely. Mildred wiped at his forehead.

 

"Relax," she soothed. "It'll be all right."

 

"Promise?"

 

"Sure."

 

The doctor hoped that the eleven-year-old couldn't detect her own anguished doubts. Ryan was critically ill, the poison from the mutie creature's attack eating into his body, attacking his immune system. A weaker man would already have been dead.

 

She held out the slim-bladed knife, while Dean readied the self-heats. He'd listened carefully to her orders: to run the flame slowly up and down the steel, sterilizing it for its surgical use, then holding the matches steady beneath the weapon, until Mildred decided it was hot enough for the task in hand.

 

"Some blood from the wound, Mildred," Doc said.

 

"Thanks." She wiped at it again.

 

But this time the pain from the sensitive sore jerked Ryan back for a moment from the deep unconsciousness and he cried out, trying to kick and flail his arms. It was all that Doc, J.B. and Krysty could do to keep him still.

 

Mildred jumped back, nearly treading on Dean's foot. "Shit! This isn't-"

 

"I could sort of hold," the boy offered.

 

"No. Can't do this single-handed."

 

"Let me go and I'll help."

 

Everyone looked at Michael, tied and helpless.

 

"No," Mildred said.

 

"You won't hold him."

 

"We will."

 

The teenager shook his head. "You saw how he reacted, just at the touch of a soft, damp cloth. How'll he be with red-hot steel on the wound?"

 

There was a long, taut silence in the hospital ward, broken only by another moan from the wounded man. Mildred looked at the others, wanting some kind of guidance.

 

"John?"

 

"He's right, Mildred."

 

"Why am I tied up? I can't remember anything. Just that we were in that old store, and then we jumped..."

 

"We could use him," Mildred said.

 

"No," Dean insisted. "Dad will die if Michael does anything double stupe."

 

"I fear, young man, that your dear father might not survive if we reject Michael's offer of assistance."

 

"Untie me. We jumped again, didn't we? Kind of desert. Must*ve made me... Let me go, please."

 

Krysty felt a wave of certainty. "Cut him loose, J.B., quickly."

 

"Sure?"

 

"Positive."

 

J.B. let go of Ryan's left wrist and walked quickly to the bed where Michael was bound. He drew his own knife and cut through the thin cords around hands and ankles.

 

Michael sat up, wincing in pain as the blood flowed back again into his extremities. "Hurts like..." he said. "Give me one minute and I'm with you."

 

Mildred was still standing, waiting. "Doc, help Krysty with Ryan's legs. J.B., the left hand and Michael can hang on to the right hand. Ready?"

 

A little unsteady on his feet, the teenager joined them, smiling at Dean. "Ryan'll be fine now," he said.

 

"You go stupe and 1*11 blow your head off your shoulders," Dean replied.

 

"You do that."

 

"Self-lights, Dean."

 

There was a flare of yellow and the smell of sulfur in the deserted room. Mildred moved the flensing knife up and down through the heat, watching the steel change color.

 

"Good," she said. "Now more of the matches, and hold them still, as long as you can without burning your own fingers. All right?"

 

Dean nodded. "Right."

 

"Do it. Hang on to Ryan's arms and legs like his life depended on it. Because I think it does."

 

The steel darkened, turning black, through cadmium, then began to glow the dark red of a winter sunset. It became brighter as Dean struck another batch of the self-lights.

 

The steel turned golden, then almost like the fiery, white glow of silver in a furnace. Waves of heat came from it, and Mildred moved her fingers on the hilt.

 

"Now," she whispered.

 

Chapter Fourteen

 

It was the worst kind of endless nightmare.

 

For the rest of her life, Krysty Wroth would never ever forget that quarter of an hour in the long-abandoned heart of the redoubt in the wilds of New Hampshire. Every detail would come back to her unexpectedly, unbidden-the sight, the smell, the sounds, the shocking physical sensations as Mildred applied the red-hot steel blade to the ghastly septic wound at the side of Ryan's neck.

 

None of it would ever leave Krysty, nor any of the others there.

 

Ryan remembered virtually nothing of it, which was some sort of mercy. There was a limit to the amount of remembered pain that anyone could bear.

 

MILDRED BLINKED SWEAT from her eyes as she leaned forward, her knuckles white on the hilt of the sun-bladed knife.

 

First came the noise, like spots of water flicked into the heart of a fire. It was a whisper of sounds, followed by a shallow, bubbling as the steel bit into the core of the wound.

 

The smell came next, a foul, burning stench that was the poison being scorched out by the heat of the dagger. Tendrils of smoke drifted up from the charred flesh into Mildred's face.

 

Even with his deep coma, it only took a couple of heartbeats for Ryan to begin to react against the searing agony. But it seemed like an eternity, so long that it crossed Mildred's mind that the one-eyed man was actually dead.

 

Then the pain reached him and he exploded.

 

Ryan's eye snapped wide open and stared furiously at the ceiling, then found Mildred's eyes and focused on them. His lips peeled back from his teeth, and a roar of shock and horror erupted from his throat. His head flailed back and forth, despite all of Mildred's efforts to keep him steady. His arms and legs jerked into spasmodic action, forcing everyone to hang on for grim life.

 

Mildred withdrew the knife for a moment, turning to look at Dean. Tears coursed down the boy's cheeks, cutting white furrows through the dirt. "Hold his head still," she demanded, "with all your strength."

 

The boy put down the matches and the torn strips of sheet, moving quickly, without any argument, and locked his fingers tightly hi his father's long black curls. He leaned down to hold him as still as possible.

 

"Don't, Dad!" he cried. "Gotta save your life."

 

But it did nothing to calm the anguished man. The second time that the knife, cooler now, came into contact with the yellowed gash, Ryan screamed and kicked out. Doc and Krysty were nearly thrown off the bed, both J.B. and Michael using every ounce of their strength to keep bold of his arms.

 

"Matches!" Mildred yelled at the top of her voice, barely audible over Ryan's ceaseless inarticulate shouting.

 

She wiped the dulled knife on the sheet, holding it still for Dean to run the small flames beneath it. The foul smell was appalling.

 

"His head again, Dean."

 

She peered intently at the wound before touching it with the red-hot steel. The core of pus still throbbed, veined with crimson. But the heat of the flensing knife seemed to have cleaned up the area around the edges of the ragged core.

 

"Again," she whispered.

 

The smoke was blinding, the perfume of charred corruption sickening. But Mildred persevered, biting her lip so hard that she drew a tiny trickle of blood. She moved the knife, so that it probed deep into the gash, Her love for Ryan made her want to withdraw the blade and spare him further suffering, but her medical training insisted that she should go on, delving deeper and deeper, until every last molecule of the filthy sickness was totally exorcised by the hot steel.

 

"Pass out, you tough bastard, Ryan," she muttered, hardly able to believe the man's strength and resilience under the cauterizing knife.

 

It wasn't until Mildred applied the red-hot blade for a fourth time that Ryan's whole body quivered, his eye rolled back in its socket and he finally slipped away into the kindness of unconsciousness.

 

"He's dead," Dean gasped.

 

"No. Get a piece of rag and mop away all the blackened shit and blood from the wound. Wipe as hard and as deep as you can. Only way to save him."

 

The woman stared into the cleaned wound, seeing the free-flowing blood, scarcely able to credit her good fortune hi not harming any major artery. She tested the wound with her finger, finding it a good inch and a half deep at its core, and at least five inches long.

 

"How is it?" They were the first words that Krysty had spoken during the operation. She had been hanging on to Ryan, trying to keep him still, praying to Gaia for his recovery from the ordeal.

 

"Looks cleaner. I don't know whether..."

 

"To shrink from the last step could cost his life, Dr. Wyeth," Doc warned sternly.

 

"I just don't know if his heart can stand up to my doing it again."

 

"Do it," Krysty urged. "Doc's right. Leave a shred of poison hi the wound, and it'll kill him."

 

Mildred sighed. "Yeah. Come on, Dean. Just one last time, then we can clean it up and bandage it."

 

"And pray," Michael added.

 

IT WAS OVER. J.B. had managed to disconnect most of the lights in the ward so that Ryan could rest in a pool of darkness, lying on his back, a length of clean sheet wrapped around the wound. He was naked, with just a single sheet covering him.

 

As soon as the suppurating wound had been purged of its filth, his temperature had begun to drop. He was

 

still hot, but Mildred had chosen not to wrap him hi wet sheets to bring it down any more quickly.

 

"Figure his system's had enough of a pounding for any one day," she said.

 

The rest of them had moved to an adjacent room in the hospital section of the redoubt, sitting quietly. Dean had fallen asleep, drained by witnessing the operation on his father. Michael also dozed on another of the beds.

 

Krysty sat next to Ryan, watching over him, occasionally laying cool fingers on his forehead and muttering a blessing from the Earth Mother.

 

Farther down the ward J.B. sat next to Mildred, holding her hand. Doc was facing them.

 

They talked together quietly, not wanting to disturb any of the others.

 

"How long before we can move on, Mildred?"

 

"Don't know, John. Most patients been through what Ryan's gone through today, and they'd be in rest and recuperation for a month. But he's got the finest constitution of any man I ever saw. Could be up and moving, slow and easy, within a couple of days. Have to wait and see."

 

"What about delayed shock?" Doc asked. "Is that not a possibility?"

 

"Course. After that... But his pulse is near normal. Little slow. Respiration a little fast. But you have to bear in mind that Ryan's been through an operation that would normally only have been done under a full general anesthetic. It's amazing he's pulled through this far."

 

"You did brilliantly, love," J.B. said, kissing her on the cheek. "Think mebbe you should lie down and rest awhile? I could sort of-"

 

"Come and rest with me, John," Mildred said, smiling. "Well, I could be up for that. Let's go into the end ward and get some privacy from prying eyes."

 

She grinned at Doc, who actually blushed.

 

"Upon my soul, Dr. Wyeth! Have you no shame?"

 

"Enough to go into the end ward, Doc."

 

They stood up. J.B. looted at Dean and Michael, both soundly asleep."Food's going to get to be a real problem in the next half day or so," he said.

 

"Seeing that white steel burning away Ryan's neck was the finest suppressor of an appetite I ever saw." Doc shuddered.

 

RYAN CAME AROUND from the soul-deep blackness in the middle of the night.

 

Krysty had dozed off on the adjacent bed, lying on her back, her fiery sentient hair curled protectively about her nape.

 

But as Ryan's eye opened, she stirred, as if someone had whispered her name in the center of a dream, calling her back from a land far away.

 

She smiled at him. "Hi, there, lover."

 

"Feel like a war wag drove over me." His arm came out from under the thin cotton sheet, lifting toward his neck.

 

"Don't touch it, Ryan."

 

"Seems like something's sucking my brain out through the side of my throat. What happened?"

 

"Remember the ghost town?"

 

"Lonesome Gulch? Sure."

 

"Those mutie bird things?"

 

"Blew their asses sideways. Yeah. One of them... How come it hurts so bad?"

 

"Got infected."

 

He struggled to sit up. Krysty swung her long legs off the bed and helped him with an arm behind the shoulders, easing him to a more upright position.

 

"Fireblast!" In the gloom of the ward, she could see how deathly pale he was and what the injury had taken out of him. "I got no clothes on."

 

"You had a temperature to put Death Valley in the shade. Mildred saved your life, lover."

 

"Whafdshedo?"

 

"I took your skinning blade and-"

 

"Where's my blasters?" A note of something close to panic was in his voice.

 

She sat on the bed, taking care not to jar him. "Easy, lover. SIG-Sauer's under the bed. Rifle's in the other ward along with J.B. and the others."

 

"Ward?"

 

"We jumped to an abandoned redoubt that's stripped about as clean as a mutie's conscience. Think it's probably in New England someplace."

 

"Anyone been outside?"

 

"Not yet. Listen, don't keep interrupting me, Ryan. Bad jump. Michael went full psycho and tried to chill Doc."

 

"Who..."

 

"Me. Pistol-whipped him. J.B. tied him up and he finally got quiet. He helped in your operation. We all did."

 

"Any food in here?"

 

Krysty shook her head. "No. Doesn't look like it. Have to do something tomorrow."

 

He nodded, cautiously raising a hand and touching the wad of white material around his throat. There was a dark patch of blood at its center, and he felt it. "Still leaking some, huh?"

 

"Some."

 

"I was out of it, then?"

 

"We carried you. Took turns."

 

"Close call?"

 

She kissed him on the cheek, still feeling the blazing remnants of the high fever. "Close."

 

"Mildred used my knife, you were saying. Heated it, I guess. Burned it out. Must've been a mess of laughs."

 

"It was."

 

He closed his eye again. "Can't really remember anything about it. Not the actual business. Sort of smell myself burning, but that's about it."

 

"You ought to try and sleep."

 

"Thought that was what I'd been doing."

 

"Lie down again. And try and keep flat on your back. Save from hurting your neck."

 

"You'd make a good nurse, Krysty. Thanks, love. Tell the rest of them... tell them thanks."

 

Chapter Fifteen

 

Ryan woke several times during the long night, jerked abruptly out of sleep by the stabbing pains from his neck. The makeshift bandage kept sticking to the congealing blood, making any rest difficult.

 

Krysty slept lightly and stirred every time Ryan moved suddenly.

 

Mildred had explained that the first twelve hours would be crucial in Ryan's recovery. If his temperature started to rise again, it would probably indicate that the infection hadn't been scoured from his system.

 

"Then what?" Krysty had whispered to the doctor, as they'd stood together in the deserted pharmacy, sharing a cup of water.

 

"Then I think Ryan'll probably die. There isn't anything else to be done."

 

MILDRED HAD ALWAYS HAD the ability, common to many doctors, of being able to control her waking and sleeping. She rose roughly every hour during the night, slipping from J.B.'s side, and padded on bare feet through the silent vault of the redoubt, stopping at Ryan's bedside.

 

She laid her hand on his forehead, smiling down at him as his right eye fluttered open. "So far, so good," she whispered, finding each time that his temperature was no more than a degree or so up on normal.

 

"Will I make it?" he asked, late in the small hours of the morning.

 

"Doing good, Ryan. Bleeding looks like it's stopped."

 

"Will I play the violin again, Doctor?"

 

"What?"

 

"Saw some old vid once and a double-sick person said that. I never really understood it. Some kind of predark joke, I guess, Mildred."

 

"Yeah. Guess it was."

 

MICHAEL WOKE UP DEAN. "Hey, you asleep?"

 

"I was. What d'you want?"

 

The teenager rolled on his side, facing the boy. "You feel hungry?"

 

"Some."

 

"You got any of that candy left?"

 

Dean fumbled in the pocket of his black denim jacket. "Couple of sticks."

 

"Give me one."

 

"No."

 

"Why not? I'm famished and could eat a horse, if there was one lying around."

 

Dean shook his head. "Can't. Don't reckon there's any other food around this deserted crap hole. These are sweet, so they could keep us going. Give us energy. My mother told me that once."

 

"They're too small. Can't share them, Dean."

 

"Watch me."

 

Michael rolled onto his back again, lying and staring at the high ceiling. "Dean?"

 

"What?" he asked irritably.

 

"Was I... was I out of it?"

 

Dean sat up, making the bed creak. "You kept saying that you were trapped up your own ass."

 

"Yeah. I can kind of remember that. Sort of blurred. Was I yelling a lot?"

 

"Until Krysty said she'd break your neck if you didn't calm down."

 

Michael laughed quietly. "I remember that. Must've been on the way to being normal again. My throat's real sore from her boot. I think I was struggling so I'd know I was still alive. If I'd stopped back then, I might have gone far away into that distant land. And never returned again."

 

"If you hadn't managed to shake off being triple stupe..." Dean hesitated.

 

"What?"

 

"Well, I don't think Dad would have made it. He was too strong, and the others couldn't like hold him still."

 

"The smell from that hole in his neck when Mildred stuck the knife in it-"

 

"Worse than a stickie's fart."

 

"Worse than Doc's socks."

 

Dean giggled. "Worse than a dead dog's guts."

 

"Worse than..." Michael paused, trying to think of something sufficiently gross. "Worse than a stickie's fart after eating a rotting fish from out of a dead dog's guts."

 

Dean clapped his hands. "Hot pipe, brother!"

 

"While it was wearing Doc's socks."

 

Both of them exploded into uncontrollable sniggering, which covered the sound of approaching feet along the ward.

 

"My apologies, gentlemen." The laughter stopped like turning off a faucet. "I had thought to find a pair of puking, giggling infants, waiting to be filled up with their mother's milk. Now I find that it is Dean, who I believe is already into his twelfth year of life. And the former oblate from the monastery of Nil-Vanity hi the hills above Visalia, a young man who must now be close to his twentieth birthday, both creating such a damned noise and making such childishly stupe jests."

 

Neither of them spoke, lying on then: beds, looking at the towering figure of the angry old man.

 

Doc rapped the floor with the iron ferrule of his stick. "Go back to sleep, both of you, before you get the good spanking you so richly deserve."

 

"Sorry, Doc," Dean muttered.

 

"Yeah, sorry," Michael agreed.

 

"Very well." He strode off, heels clicking, vanishing into the darkness at the far end of the long ward.

 

"Good spanking..." Dean whispered.

 

Michael was struggling not to break out laughing again. "Mother's milk!"

 

"Silly old fuckhead."

 

"Right on, Dean."

 

"If I ruled Deathlands, I think I'd have a law that meant all wrinklies get chilled after their fortieth birthday." Dean stifled another giggle. "That'd teach Doc."

 

THEY ALL SHARED the two slender sticks of candy, using one of Michael's twin daggers to cut them into small segments.

 

"Any idea what flavor they are, Dean?" J.B. asked, as he looked at the striped sugary fingers.

 

"One was mango and mint, I think. Something like that. Can't remember the other."

 

Doc held out a hand. "See if my ancient scent buds still function in identifying sweetmeats." Dean gave him the unwrapped stick. "Let me see..." The old man sniffed at it.

 

"Don't breathe it all away, Doc," Mildred said. "Leave some for the rest of us/' She shook her head, tiny beads rattling softly together. "I can't believe that seven grown men and women are sitting around sharing out two tiny bits of highly colored, flavored and preserved candy."

 

"Sassafras and moonlight," Doc said, handing the candy back to Michael, ready to be sliced thin.

 

"What's that?" Ryan asked, leaning on one elbow on his bed.

 

Mildred had been amazed at the speed of his recovery. His temperature, respiration and pulse were all back to normal, and he seemed to be gathering and renewing strength with every hour that passed.

 

"Guess that's what living in Deathlands does for you," she'd explained to Krysty. "So much disease that everyone's a lot more resistant to it. I seriously believe that ninety-nine men out of a hundred from my time would have been long dead with that degree of infection."

 

"Sassafras and moonlight?" Doc replied. "Just a rather fancy way of conveying the fact that I have no idea at all what flavor it's supposed to be."

 

There was still the argument of how best to slice up two candy sticks of slightly differing lengths and divide them evenly between seven people.

 

"It's a total length of about fifteen and a quarter inches," Mildred said.

 

"That's about 2.17 inches each." Doc looked down at his fingers. "Or should that be 2.18?"

 

"Crush them all up with the hilt of the knife," J.B. suggested. "Be a lot easier to split up a pile of bits into seven roughly equal heaps."

 

It was the best idea that anyone could come up with, so that's what they did.

 

"Delicious. Best half ounce of candy I ever ate," Mildred said, licking her lips.

 

"Not quite as satisfying as a plate of eggs and bacon and hash browns." Doc wiped his mouth on his sleeve. "Jesting apart, what are we to do about obtaining some rather more adequate sustenance for ourselves?"

 

"Go out and hunt." Ryan was sitting up in his bed, his face pale beneath the stubble.

 

"Not you."

 

"Why not, Mildred?"

 

"As your doctor, I forbid it. You would fall down, stone-dead, and then your relatives could bring a medical malpractice suit against me."

 

Ryan grinned. "I can't believe I feel so much better."

 

"Amazing what a little mango-and-mint candy can do for a man." Krysty leaned over the bed and kissed him.

 

"You shouldn't try to move today." Mildred saw the look in Ryan's eye. "I'm serious, now. Fever like that puts a real strain on your heart."

 

"Stay here and starve?"

 

"You stay here. Couple of us remain with you. John can go out with Dean and Michael and bring back food."

 

Doc drew himself up to his full six feet three inches. "Am I not to be considered for this hunting expedition, madam? Must I stay with the sickly and the female, which some say are one and the same thing?"

 

"You dumbshit..." Mildred began angrily.

 

Ryan clapped his hands together. "Hold it, hold it! This doesn't matter."

 

"Why?"

 

"Because, Mildred. Grateful as I am to you for pulling me through, I still don't figure on lying on my back. Without food I'll likely get weaker, so I might as well do it now."

 

"Hot pipe, Dad!" Dean shouted, his voice cracking to a reedy squeak in his excitement.

 

Michael punched the air. "Thanks to all the gods. We can have some fresh air, food, water and stuff."

 

"Like we did around Lonesome Gulch," Mildred warned. "Remember how good that was."

 

"Won't be like that," Dean said confidently.

 

IT WASN'T LIKE THAT.

 

After all taking a long drink of the cold water, they set out toward the main entrance of the redoubt. Despite his claims of fitness, Ryan was glad to accept Doc's offer of the loan of the sword stick to help himself along the echoing corridors.

 

"Main sec doors just ahead," J.B. reported, taking up the point position. "No sign of life. No sign of trouble."

 

The panel had the same coding as in all of the other redoubts that they'd encountered. Three-five-two to open the massive doors and two-five-three to close them.

 

"Want to rest a spell, Ryan?" the Armorer asked.

 

"You're enjoying this, J.B., aren't you? You never forgave me for laughing at you that time you had the little problem over sitting down with your-"

 

"That's enough. You swore an oath on Trader's life never to mention that."

 

Ryan grinned. "It was Trader who used to say that he never knew of a promise that couldn't be broken."

 

Watched by the others, Dean pressed in the number code and the doors began to slide back.

 

Chapter Sixteen

 

It was a truly enchanting vista that stretched out before the seven friends.

 

There was a plateau of bare rock, looking as big as a football field, that had once been graded and still showed the faint etched lines on the tarmac where parking spaces had been allocated for the military. It was bordered by a row of sturdy concrete blocks along the edge, marking a steep drop toward a narrow valley fifteen hundred feet below.

 

A flock of pure white doves circled far above, cooing to one another in the warm sunshine. Far beneath them they could just see the silver thread of a narrow river, while in the middle distance, partly obscured by a haze, there was the shimmering expanse of a large lake.

 

"Looks like the land of Paradise," Mildred said. "If you can't recover even more quickly here, Ryan, then you can't recover anywhere."

 

"I would beg all of us to bear in mind the sorry but undeniable fact that even the Garden of Eden contained its own serpent," Doc warned.

 

"Miserable old bastard," Mildred snapped. "Can't you ever try to look on the bright side?"

 

"Turn over every bright side, madam," he replied, with some dignity, "and you find darkness on the other."

 

Ryan took in deep breaths of the fresh morning air. "Fireblast! I feel better already. Let's go kill a deer. Or two deer."

 

J.B. had examined the exterior of the sec doors before setting the code to close them again. "Looks like someone's been having a try at getting in," he observed.

 

They all turned around from the view, seeing where the Armorer was pointing at some clear scorch marks near the bottom of the right-hand door.

 

"And I think someone had a go with a couple of frag grens," he added.

 

"Any damage?" Dean asked, running to look for himself. "Doesn't look like it."

 

"Not all damage shows on the outside," Michael said, staring vacantly into the clear sky.

 

"Don't go all mystic on us-" Krysty touched him on the arm "-you'll be slipping into that twentieth-century stuff about being no success like failure."

 

Michael started as if he hadn't even noticed the others there. He smiled broadly. "Guess you're right. Can we go down and take a look around?"

 

J.B. watched the doors slide shut, with a barely audible hiss of pneumatic power. "Sure, but all keep together. You ready, Ryan?"

 

"As I'll ever be."

 

Before they started the steep descent, J.B. checked their location with his mini-sextant, confirming that they were somewhere in the middle of what had once been New Hampshire.

 

"That could be Lake Champlain, then," Doc said wonderingly. "My dearest Emily and I sailed and fished upon that many times. To see it again after... Lord, after close on two hundred years. If we can get down there we might find some of the finest piscatorial sport that man ever knew."

 

"And women, Doc?" Krysty teased.

 

"But of course. My own darling wife once hooked onto a monster pike not far from here. Thirty pounds if it was an inch. Sadly I failed to gaff it and fell from our boat into the water. Emily was frightfully cross with me."

 

The trail was steep, cutting in a series of switchbacks down the side of the mountain that concealed the redoubt. About halfway down there had been a minor earth slip that had totally washed away the blacktop for several hundred feet, though it finally reappeared again just before plunging into a dark expanse of conifers.

 

"Looks like it could be good hunting," Ryan commented, leaning on Doc's sword stick.

 

"Hope so." J.B. polished his glasses. "Sooner we get down there, sooner we find out."

 

" WERE THERE ANY BIG VILLES around here, Doc? In the good old days before skydark?"

 

Dean and Doc were strolling together in the center of the group.

 

"Place called Burlington, as I remember, not all that far away. Not a big ville like New York or Chicago, but we thought it pretty up and walking good in New England. I was born only a few miles from here, in that direction." He waved a hand vaguely toward the east.

 

"Where?"

 

"South Strafford, Vermont. Admirable little place, Dean. Lovely general store. White frame houses. Woods for miles in every direction."

 

"And people lived there, in homes?"

 

"Indeed, they did. There were folk in South Strafford, aged eighty and upward, who had never traveled more than twenty miles from their birthplace in their entire lives."

 

"Truly?" Dean grinned at the old man. "You greasing my wheels, Doc?"

 

"How's that?"

 

"Joking me?"

 

"Ah, I understand. Colorful slang, young fellow. No, I confess I'm not., .oiling your wheels, Dean. Life back then was slower and simpler and cleaner and.. .so very much better."

 

"Long ago, and far away, Doc," Mildred said quietly.

 

"Correct, my dear. And... Oh, so very much better than it is today."

 

Krysty spotted a bald eagle, soaring on an invisible thermal, sending the dove scattering.

 

"Whole flock's gone," Michael said. "But the eagle didn't get them."

 

"Not a flock, young man." Doc turned, nearly stumbling hi his eagerness to correct the teenager. "The wrong collective noun for doves."

 

"Flock of sheep?" Mildred tried.

 

"Alpha plus." Doc beamed. "But one should talk about a dule of doves."

 

"Dule? You made that up."

 

"I did not, Dr. Wyeth," Doc said indignantly. "Many of the names are quite unusual and rather picturesque."

 

"Tell us some." Dean looked back where his father was slowly bringing up the rear of the group. "Doc's going... You all right, Dad?"

 

"Yeah, thanks. Might have a sit-down when we teach that earth slip. Go on, Doc."

 

"Ask me some birds or animals, Dean."

 

The boy considered the question. "Wolves?"

 

"A route of wolves."

 

A snort of disbelief came from Mildred. "How about a 'crap' of old men?"

 

"Ignore her, Dean. Go on."

 

"Hawks?"

 

"A cast of hawks."

 

"Toads?" Krysty said.

 

"Ah, that's... Yes, I remember me the word. One talks of a knot of toads."

 

"How about crows, Doc?"

 

"Crows, J.B.? One of my favorites. A murder of crows."

 

"Murder?" The Armorer whistled. "All these names from before the long winters."

 

"All right, smart-ass," Mildred said. "What about larks? And you better watch it, because I know the answer to this one. Go on, Doc. Larks?"

 

"An exaltation of larks." He bowed mockingly to the woman. "Is that not correct?"

 

"Well, as it happens, yeah, it's right."

 

"A deceit of lapwings. A parliament of owls. A pitying of turtledoves. A siege of herons. A shrewdness of apes. Oh, so many fine terms."

 

"Angels?" queried Michael, who'd been listening in silence to the conversation.

 

"Angels? Hardly birds or beasts, dear boy."

 

"Come on, Doc," he urged with an odd intent-ness. "You know so much, then. What about angels?"

 

"A choir, would be the collective noun, I think. But I'm not altogether certain, Michael."

 

The young man spit in the dirt and stalked on ahead of them, kicking loose pebbles out of his path.

 

"How is it, RYAN?" Mildred leaned across and took his wrist between her thumb and forefinger.

 

"Been better. Needed this rest."

 

"Pulse is up some. Temperature? About normal, bearing in mind the exertion. How's the neck feel?"

 

He lifted a hand and touched the bandage, then pressed a little harder, wincing at the expected stab of pain. "Still real painful, Mildred."

 

"Bad as it was?"

 

"No!" he said, louder than he'd intended. "No, ifs not. When can I take off the dressing?"

 

"I'll look at it later today. I brought some strips of those old sheets ready to clean it up."

 

Immediately below them, the winding blacktop vanished under a mountain of loose earth and rock. It was obvious from the amount of rich vegetation growing over it that the slide had been many years ago.

 

Ryan reached out from where he was sitting and plucked a tiny flower. "Compare where we are now to that place we finished up with the mutie creatures," he said. "Acid rain and fog and nothing living worth a spoonful of piss. Look." He swept his hand outward. "Beautiful."

 

"Would the Trader have appreciated this kind of view, Ryan?" Mildred asked.

 

He smiled. "A view? Hell, the only view that Trader really appreciated was one where he could make some easy jack without having to break sweat."

 

She picked up half a dozen rounded pebbles and started to toss them in the air, trying to catch them on the back of her hand. "So, this Trader. How come you and John figure the sun used to shine out of his ass?"

 

"Because he was the best." Ryan hesitated, looking out over the forest toward the lake. "If Abe's right, then mebbe I should say that Trader is the best."

 

"Easy answer. Best at what, killing people?"

 

"Yeah. For one thing, Trader knew chilling like other men know breathing."

 

"Damn!" She shook her head slowly. "Coming here, from my time, I've seen amazing things. There's a lot about Deathlands that's better than the end of the twentieth century. But this emphasis on wasting people. Like the man with the biggest blaster becomes the biggest man. Not very politically correct, Ryan."

 

"Don't understand you, Mildred."

 

"No, I guess not. I tell you, if Trader really might be alive, then I kind of look forward to the chance of meeting him. Kind of scared about it. as well."

 

Dean interrupted them, bounding up like a puppy. "I'm starving hungry, Dad. Can we get moving again?"

 

Ryan leaned on the sword stick and pulled himself upright. "Yeah. Right now."

 

IT TOOK THEM MORE THAN an hour to descend over the jumble of shifting stones and earth. The footing was treacherous, and twice they set off minor slides.

 

Ryan found it hard going. He slipped and fell heavily when they were close to the bottom, and rolled helplessly, banging his left shoulder hard on a jagged outcrop of granite, the impact starting the wound to leak blood again.

 

He opened his eye to find himself lying upside down, with everyone staring down at him worriedly. The expressions of concern suddenly made him start to laugh, and he was unable to stop himself.

 

It was only after he'd been helped to his feet and dusted off that Ryan realized that Michael was the only one of the six not to come to his assistance. The teenager had been picking his own path down the steep slope, not even turning his head to watch Ryan's accident.

 

"BET THAT RIVER'S BURSTING with trout and salmon," Krysty said. "Only another quarter mile or so and we can rest by it. Looks easy going now that we're off the mountain."

 

Ryan looked up behind them, trying to conceal how weak and nauseous he felt. The hillside scraped up away from them, looking almost impossible to climb. From down in the valley, at the bottom of some loose scree, there was no sign at all of the existence of the redoubt.

 

It was a little warmer, with a fresh breeze now blowing across the valley, ruffling the tops of the nearest pines. The air smelted like nectar.

 

Doc had stretched out on his back, arms behind his head, looking up at the sky. "I don't know bow the rest of you feel, but I have seldom felt so rested and comfortable. Admittedly I shall be even closer to perfection once I have three or four charbroiled trout inside me. The ones that you mentioned, Miss Wroth."

 

"Not going to catch and cook themselves," J.B. said. "l£t'sgogetthem."

 

Chapter Seventeen

 

"Fishing is such a different activity to what it was in my days," Doc said, picking at his excellent teeth with a slender bone.

 

The ashes of the fire glowed, containing within their heart several more small clay packages, each of which held a tender young trout.

 

"How did you fish predark, Doc?" Dean asked.

 

"With long rods of bamboo and thin gut lines. Barbed hooks and lures designed to look like the most delicious flies that a fish ever dreamed of."

 

"Why go to all that trouble?"

 

"Sport," Doc replied, his eyes crinkling with amusement at the look of bewilderment and disbelief on the boy's face. "Lots of times we'd fight old brother steelhead for a couple of hours or more, and then, once we'd landed the brute, we'd simply slip him back into the water again."

 

"That's serious stupe!"

 

"Looking back I must, peradventure, have to agree with you, Dean. But, as I have oft remarked before, that was then and this is now."

 

The one point that Dean couldn't begin to appreciate, and Doc never mentioned, was the factor of the stocking of rivers and lakes.

 

Before the meganukes and the long winters, most of America's accessible waters had been overfished. Since then, with comparatively little threat outside of natural predators, the stocks had built up and up.

 

The fishing party that day had simply each found a quiet stretch of bank and had laid down in the shadows, bellying up to the water and peering intently into the cold depths until the eyes had adjusted to spot the speckled fish.

 

Then all you had to do was slide a hand into the pool, move the fingers gently back and forth and ease it toward the nearest of the trout, taking care not to disturb or frighten the fish.

 

Patience was the main virtue you needed.

 

And the skill to strike at the right moment, cupping your hand under your chosen victim and simply flipping it up and out onto the bank.

 

Grab it by the tail and jerk its head against the ground, then drop its flapping corpse a few yards from the edge of the water and go back for another fish.

 

The cooking took a lot longer.

 

Once they had a second pile of a dozen or more trout ready to gut and bake, Ryan sent Dean and Michael out into the surrounding forest to search for berries or fruit.

 

Dean came back in twenty minutes with his pockets filled with boysenberries and loganberries, fat and brimming with juice, a fine complement for the next helping of baked trout.

 

"WHERE'S MICHAEL?" Doc asked, pulling out the silver half-hunter from his fob pocket. "I believe that the boy has been gone for close on an hour now."

 

"We split up." Dean rubbed his mouth. "Well, we didn't exactly split up."

 

"How do you mean?" his father asked.

 

"Michael just went off on his own and he didn't... didn't sort of reply when I spoke to him."

 

Mildred wiped a thread of dark crimson juice from her chin. "That jump was real bad for the boy."

 

"Thought he'd gotten over it." J.B. had stood and was looking out across the river and into the trees.

 

"Thought so, too, love. Could be wrong. Cryosurgery was my field, not psychiatry. Thought there weren't many specialists around that you could have asked about paranoid psychoses arising from a malfunctioned matter-transfer jump."

 

"Better go look for him," Ryan said. "I'll stay here with Dean. No, he better go as well. Doc, stay here and keep me company."

 

"Willingly. But do you think..."

 

"Don't think anything, Doc. Lad's got the fastest reflexes I ever saw. But he could have been cold-cocked."

 

"We'd have heard a shot," Krysty said.

 

"Yeah."

 

"Where's everyone going?" Michael was standing in shadow, leaning a hand against a lodgepole pine, the sound of his approach muffled by the rushing river nearby.

 

"You all right?" Ryan got to his feet, his hand on the butt of the SIG-Sauer.

 

"As the gentle rain, thanks. We moving on?"

 

"Coming to look for you, stupe," Dean said. "You find any berries?"

 

"Don't call me stupe. I don't like it. Understand?"

 

"Sure. Don't lose... You get any berries?"

 

"Berries?" They still couldn't see Michael's face, hidden in the darkness at the edge of the forest.

 

"That was what you and Dean went for." Ryan was beginning to lose his temper, only hanging on with the feeling that something was still not right with Michael.

 

"Oh, sure. Remember now. Any of those fishes left?"

 

"Why, you..." All his life Ryan Cawdor had been plagued by a short fuse on his temper. Though it was better than when he'd been in his teens, there were still moments when it began to flare out of control.

 

"Leave it," Krysty said, sensing the outburst even before it came. "You didn't get any berries, Michael?"

 

"No. Didn't see any."

 

"See anything else?" J.B. asked, the high, stretched tone of his voice showing his own anger.

 

"No." Michael stepped slowly out of the shadows, and everyone could see the dark stains on his face and mouth from the juice of loganberries. But nobody said anything. "Oh, yeah, I found a sort of building."

 

"Where?"

 

"And some bullets and stuff."

 

"Any sign of life? Recent life?" The young man sniffed. "No, afraid not, J.B., not even a smell of anyone."

 

"Show us," Ryan said. "Now." "Sure, sure."

 

THE MEAL AND MORE good water had restored Ryan to something close to his original health. He still allowed the Armorer to take point, walking with Michael, while he brought up the rear with Krysty. Doc, Mildred and Dean occupied the center of their group. Everyone had a blaster drawn and ready.

 

The teenager led them along the river, up a gentle slope, past some moss-green boulders and still pools. They moved through a grove of whispering aspens, then cut away from a narrow trail to the right of a feathery waterfall.

 

"Far?" J.B. asked.

 

"Closer than the sun and farther than the end of my dick," Michael replied, smiling hugely at his own humor.

 

The Armorer didn't respond to the attempted joke. "I asked you how far it was, Michael. Stop treating all this like some fucking game."

 

The unusual flicker of temper from J.B. quieted the boy. "Another five minutes or so. Suppose it might be a quarter hour."

 

Krysty pointed out that the trail had been used recently. "Feet."

 

"Wonder when it rained last," the Armorer said, stopping and kneeling by the side of the track.

 

"Looks like someone without shoes." Ryan steadied himself on the silver lion's-head hilt of the sword stick and peered down at the ground.

 

"Not clear enough." J.B. straightened. "Don't think they're that recent, but keep on red alert."

 

THE CACHE OF BONES was heaped off the trail, near the mouth of a shallow cave. Most had been broken and the marrow drawn from them. A few shreds of dried flesh and gristle hung from the ends of some of the longer bones.

 

Nobody needed to ask what species of animal the remains came from.

 

Three grinning skulls, with broken teeth, had been piled on top of the grisly cairn.

 

Grinning human skulls.

 

Ryan had begun to feel tired climbing the slope of the hill, and they'd stopped a little way past the discovery of the bones.

 

Dean and Michael had gone to throw dry sticks into the stream that flowed close by, falling fast over a series of small cascades. The other five sat together.

 

Ryan broke the silence. "I'll say it, if nobody else is going to. We need to watch Michael carefully."

 

"He seems better right now," Mildred stated, listening to shouts of laughter from the two boys.

 

"He says we're nearly at this building he saw. I guess he's bringing us the same way he came."

 

"Couldn't come any other way by the look of it," J.B. interrupted.

 

"Right. But he never mentioned those bodies. Had to have seen them. Known what they were. Why not tell us about that?"

 

Krysty touched Ryan on the arm. "The bones had been there for some days, hadn't they?"

 

"So what. Three skeletons, looking like a herd of buffalo stampeded over them. Never saw bones so splintered. What do you think, Mildred?"

 

"About Michael, or the bodies?"

 

"Both."

 

"I think there were more than three. I know there was only the trio of skulls. But that looked like at least eight or nine femurs for a start. And the same number of scapulas. Could've thrown the rest in the river."

 

Ryan nodded. "What about Michael?"

 

"I agree we need to be a bit careful. I don't think there's much chance of him trying to harm any of us."

 

"You don't just sit there and say.. .tell us about being 'much chance,' Mildred. That's about as bastard useless and stupe as..." Ryan bit his lip and breathed slowly. "Sorry. Nearly got real angry again. But you reckon he could hurt us?"

 

Mildred stared at him. "I don't think either you or Michael are on top of life at the moment, Ryan. Try speaking to me like that another day and you'll be shitting bits of broken teeth. You hear me."

 

"I'm sorry. Really. But we have to know."

 

"Should we consider some sort of restraint for the poor lad?" Doc asked.

 

"Tie him up?" Ryan shook his head. "No. Short of chilling him, all we can do is watch and listen." He stood up again. "And be careful."

 

A PAIR OF FOXES DARTED across the trail a hundred yards farther along, where it was beginning to level out again and move away from the water.

 

"What's the name for them, Doc?" Michael called, grinning cheerfully back over his shoulder.

 

"A skulk of foxes, my dear boy. Though I wouldn't have said that Br'er Reynard was all that much at skulking."

 

"Is it far, Michael?" Ryan leaned a hand against the smooth trunk of a tall, elegant silver birch. The day was getting much wanner.

 

"Just over the top. Looked like some kind of shelter. An overlook."

 

"I can see it," J.B. said. "Hold it here and I'll go on ahead. Rest of you cover me,"

 

The trees had thinned out, and the trail had suddenly turned into a stone-lined path. There was a line of beeches to the right, and to the left the ground dropped off steeply toward the distant water. They could all see the outline of a gray stone building, standing alone in a clearing.

 

"Feel anything, Krysty?"

 

She paused a moment before answering. "Not close." Seeing him about to speak, she added, "Before you jump on me, I mean not for several miles. But I feel a kind of contact, recently. In the last day or so, I'd guess."

 

"Good or bad." "That's easy, lover. Bad."

 

J.B. HAD VANISHED, crabbing to the right, moving at a fast crouch, with the Uzi in his hand.

 

The others waited. Ryan had the Steyr, scanning the land all around through the powerful Starlite night scope with the laser image enhancer, his index finger on the trigger.

 

The other five were fanned out, watching silently in a combat perimeter, Dean with his heavy Browning and Mildred with her Czech ZKR 551. Krysty looked toward the stream, holding the 5-shot Smith & Wesson double-action revolver. Doc sat with his knees drawn up, back against a live oak, the massive J. E. B. Stuart limited edition Le Mat cradled in his lap. He held a fallen leaf, preoccupied in following the delicate tracery with his fingernail.

 

Michael lay flat on his stomach, following the progress of J.B., his own Texas Longhorn Border Special resting on an abandoned anthill.

 

"See him?" Ryan whispered.

 

The teenager replied without even looking toward Ryan. "No. Saw a blue jay fly out of the trees close to that building. Must be him."

 

Ryan turned and crawled to lie alongside Michael. "You go right up to that place?"

 

"Yeah. I thought..." The boy's face changed, almost as though someone had pulled a skintight mask down over it. "No, Ryan," he said. "Got close, then figured I should come back and report what I'd found."

 

"And you had the berries on the way back?"

 

"Right."

 

Ryan spotted J.B. at that moment. The Armorer was kneeling behind a stout sycamore, less than twenty yards from the building. He stood up very slowly, then waved with the automatic pistol for the others to join him.

 

THEY STOOD TOGETHER a few feet from the southern wall of the single-story shelter. Mildred said that it looked to her like it had originally been a kind of very basic overlook for campers or tourists.

 

"You said you saw bullets," Ryan said to Michael. "Where was that?"

 

"Other side. By where there's been the big fire and stuff." He pointed.

 

It crossed Ryan's mind that only a couple of minutes ago the teenager had specifically denied that he'd gone right up to the place.

 

"Fire?"

 

"Go look."

 

As they walked around the front, it was clear that it was a totally basic shelter, with no windows and only an open doorway. To the left there was a fringe of aspens, hiding the view over the valley and the tumbling falls of the river. Back before skydark, Ryan guessed, the trees were probably not there and the building would have given the hiker an uninterrupted vista of staggering beauty.

 

The ashes of a big fire were heaped up against the wall, the concrete and stone scorched and cracked. And, as Michael had reported, there were dozens of empty shells, the brass discolored by the heat.

 

"Thirty-eights," the Armorer said, without even having to pick one of them up. "Someone threw them into the fire so's they'd explode."

 

"And there's the smell of gasoline." Mildred sniffed. "Why set such a big fire way out here?"

 

"It seems a veritable midsummer madness," Doc commented. "Who on earth would do such a foolish thing?"

 

Ryan and J.B. looked at each other, the same thought running through their minds, both of them knowing just who might do such a stupe thing.

 

But before either of them could put that thought into words, they were interrupted by a shout from the back of the damaged building.

 

"Dad! Come quick!"

 

Chapter Eighteen

 

The first body could have been either male or female.

 

It had been so badly mutilated, then set on fire, that it was almost impossible to tell. If Mildred had been allowed the time and resources she could undoubtedly have deduced the sex of the corpse from a variety of forensic evidence, beginning, of course, with the pelvis.

 

It had been bound with strands of baling wire, then strung up onto a large iron hook driven into the wall. It was impossible to be sure, but it looked like the feet had been severed before the burning.

 

All of the skin had been blackened and crisped, though it had split in several places, showing the veined redness of raw flesh beneath.

 

The skull was roasted, eyes and soft tissues quite destroyed, leaving only the startling whiteness of the teeth, frozen in an eternal rictus.

 

The air was heavy with the sour scent of gasoline.

 

"Last night, I'd guess," J.B. said, his voice seeming loud in the stillness.

 

The second corpse was male. It lay huddled around the corner, knees drawn up to its chest, arms clasped around itself. A dark hole in the side of its head, with dried blood matting the stringy hair, showed how it had finally died. A massive dark patch over the front of its torn cotton shirt spoke of a mortal wound that had left the man dying in agony.

 

He looked to be about thirty, with a skinny body, and bare feet. His lips had flared back off his teeth, showing that they were filed to needle points.

 

But it was the soles of his feet, and the palms and the fingers of the hands that everyone looked at, confirming the unvoiced suspicions of both J.B. and Ryan.

 

They saw a number of small, powerful suckers, mostly closed in death, but plenty strong enough in life to rip skin away from an enemy.

 

"Stickles," Dean said.

 

"Yeah," his father agreed.

 

It explained the empty shells and the surfeit of gas-powered explosions. The one thing that a stickle loved above all else was causing mayhem and murder with fires and detonations, the louder and grander the better.

 

It also explained the blackened log that had once been a human being.

 

Ryan reconstructed what had happened.

 

"Person on his own. Hunting. Passing by. Trapped by some stickies. Two or five or fifty. Doesn't much matter how many there were."

 

"Could matter to us, Ryan/' J.B. said. "Tracks only show about five or six."

 

Ryan nodded. "Agreed. The norm probably only had time for a few rounds. Gut-shot that chilled the stickle down there. One of the other mutics put the bullet through his head. Unusual to show mercy like that."

 

"And then they had a stickle party, Dad." Dean shuffled his foot through the ashes of then- fire.

 

"Right."

 

"Had we not best assume extra vigilance if those subhumans are in the region?" Doc had his Le Mat drawn, the hammer set over the single scattergun round. "I knew that this Garden of Eden would have its share of reptiles."

 

"Nothing to do here," Ryan said. "We got us a choice. Know there's food and good water here. Probably a lot more game in the woods."

 

"How are you feeling?" Mildred asked.

 

"I wouldn't want to go five miles with a rabid grizzly, but it's getting better all the time. The wound on my neck still pains me."

 

She nodded. "Course it does, Ryan. Could easily take three or four days to begin proper healing. I thought about stitching it for you."

 

Ryan winced. "Glad you didn't. Had a wound stitched once. Never again."

 

"Where was that?" asked Krysty. "Iknow all your scars pretty well, lover. Never seen one that looked it had been sewed back together again."

 

"It was a long time ago, in another place."

 

"And the wench is dead," Doc said.

 

"Yeah." Ryan sounded surprised. "How did you know that? I never told anyone about it."

 

The old man shuffled his feet, embarrassed. "It was a sort of quote from an old play, Ryan. I hadn't intended to touch upon a sore point."

 

"It was a bastard sore point, Doc. Slut in a gaudy, when I was fifteen. Tried to cut me for a handful of jack. Did it when we was doing-"

 

"Were doing, not was doing," Krysty corrected, smiling at Ryan's obvious discomfort.

 

"Sure. We finished doing it and she tried to cut me with a small boot razor."

 

"Where did she cut you, Dad?" Dean asked eagerly. Michael was standing alongside him and whispered in the younger boy's ear. "Oh, I get it. There. Wow, Dad! Double-empty scene!"

 

"Well, she only did part of the job. And after it was over the old bitch who ran the gaudy sewed me up. I said I'd put out her eyes if she didn't help me. It was a real deep cut. I was bleeding to death."

 

"What happened to the whore?" Mildred asked.

 

"Chilled her. Slit her throat with her own blade." He was suddenly defensive. "Look, I had no choice."

 

"Sure," Mildred said.

 

THEY LEFT THE BODIES unburied.

 

The discovery of stickles in the area had cast a dampener over the pleasant day. There was very little conversation as they all picked their way down the path toward where they'd caught and cooked the trout.

 

"Better if we have a council, now," Ryan said, as they finally reached their temporary campsite. He was

 

out of breath, unhappy that attacks of dizziness had made him stumble a couple of times up on the hillside.

 

"Not much to talk about, is there?" Michael had picked up one of the discarded fish heads and was nibbling at the shreds of meat left on it.

 

"No. Just do we go or do we stay?"

 

Krysty flopped down beside him. "There aren't any stickie tracks down here. I've seen worse places to spend a few days. You need a rest, lover."

 

"Mebbe."

 

"I don't think that any of us would refuse the possibility of a little gentle relaxation. I cast my vote for remaining here. But, what of the rest of you?"

 

Krysty lifted a hand. "I'm with you, Doc."

 

"Me, too," Dean said.

 

"That's already a majority," Ryan stated. "Anyone going to disagree?"

 

J.B. looked uncertain. "If we'd only made a single jump, then I'd say leave. You remember what the Trader used to say about stickles, Ryan?"

 

"Yeah. He used to-"

 

"Company," Krysty said.

 

Above the sound of the racing stream came the noise of six blasters being drawn and cocked. Only Michael, still nibbling on the trout head, didn't react.

 

"Ho, the camp!"

 

Ryan shouted back. "Come in slow and easy."

 

"No shooting, friend."

 

"Just come in slow and easy."

 

Five strangers walked toward them from the general direction of the big lake. None of them appeared to be over twenty, and they all had a squeaky-clean, laundered look to them. All wore matching stone-washed jeans and pale denim shirts and had hunting rifles slung over their shoulders. Every one had blue eyes and long blond hair. There were four men and a woman.

 

"Hold it. Don't get too close," Ryan warned.

 

The two groups eyed each other. For some reason, Ryan noticed, they all seemed particularly struck with the appearance of Doc.

 

The young woman spoke for the arrivals. "Good day to you, outlanders."

 

Ryan nodded.

 

They all kept looking at Doc, as if they couldn't believe what they were seeing. Finally, after an uncomfortable pause, the woman spoke again. "How old is the old one?"

 

Doc answered for himself. "Old enough to know it is regarded as rude to ask a stranger how old he is, young lady. Perhaps if we get to know each other a little better, then I might allow you the indulgence of asking me again."

 

"He is very old," one of the young men whispered, very audibly. "Old."

 

The woman gestured to him to keep quiet. "What are you doing in the lands of our ville?"

 

"Didn't know it belonged to anyone," Ryan replied, not allowing the SIG-Sauer to waver for a moment from her chest. "Didn't see any signs."

 

"These ate hunting lands. Not the planted lands, of course." She smiled at him.

 

Ryan deliberately didn't return the smile. "What's the name of the ville?"

 

"You don't know?" She shook her head, her corn-yellow hair moving around her shoulders like a curtain of spun gold. "We come from Quindley. It's about twelve miles north of here, alongside the big water."

 

"Big water have a name?" J.B. asked.

 

"Shamplin Lake," she replied.

 

"Champlain." Doc hissed the name to Mildred, who nodded her understanding.

 

"You got a name?" Krysty asked.

 

"We all have given names. You look like you could be near to thirty."

 

"What's this about our ages?" Ryan asked.

 

"Nothing, nothing. You asked my name. Fm called Dorothy. These brothers are Isaac, Ray, Bob and Frank. Not truly brothers, except in the eyes of Moses."

 

"That your baron?" J.B. said.

 

"No. We have no baron." One of the young men tugged at her arm and whispered in her ear. Dorothy nodded. "Of course." He said something, more urgently. "Yes, yes, Isaac. But all of that can wait, can't it?"

 

"What's he want?" Ryan was beginning to relax a little. There didn't seem anything about these callow young folk to threaten them.

 

"He says to ask whether you have seen his brother. That is, his real brother. Jolyon went missing on a hunting trip. Left the ville yesterday morning."

 

"Haven't seen anyone for days," Ryan replied.

 

"What about the things we saw up the hill?" It was the first time that Michael had spoken since the arrival of the strangers.

 

"Up the hill?" Isaac queried.

 

Ryan had already made the guess that the charred tog that hung from the ruined building above them could once have been the lost Jolyon. But the TVader always used to say that you should take care that you never got involved with anything unless you didn't have a choice.

 

"Yeah." Michael was all ready to go on, but Ryan stepped in to stop him.

 

"You had trouble with stickies around here?" he asked.

 

"Why?" Dorothy glanced involuntarily behind her, toward the dark shadows of the forest.l 'You seen..."

 

Isaac was quicker. "Stickies got my brother? Got Jolyon? And you oldies know about it?"

 

"Oldies!" Mildred exclaimed, unheard by anyone else.

 

"Moses told us not to ever trust oldies," Isaac shouted, grabbing Dorothy by the shoulders, shaking her like a terrier with a rat. His face had gone as white as fresh-drawn milk, and his eyes burned.

 

"If it's your brother up on the hill, then I'm afraid that he's dead. There's a single chilled stickle up there, too." The young man had let go of the blond woman and turned to stare at Ryan. "Way it looks, they likely jumped him. But, listen. It might not be your brother."

 

"Got to be, outlander. Any blasters with him?"

 

J.B. spoke. "There were shells from a .38."

 

One of the other men spoke. He had a slight stammer. "Jolyon had his W-Winchester repro. The Navy Arms S-Sixty-six, And plenty of ammo."

 

"Navy Arms Sixty-six was chambered for a .38," the Armorer said. "The stickies had one of their whizbang fires with the spare shells."

 

"Dead stickie?" Dorothy asked.

 

"Gut-shot." Ryan felt the burst of tension easing again. "If it was your brother, Isaac, then he took him out first. Then they got him."

 

The young woman made a positive decision. "Frank, you and Ray wait here with these people. Me, Isaac and Bob'll go... Up by the old shelter, you mean?" Ryan nodded. "We'll take a look. Then we can maybe all go to Quindley." She looked at Doc, as though she was going to say something, then changed her mind."You'd be welcome as our guests for a day or so."

 

"Be good," Ryan said.

 

"Yeah, thanks." Krysty spoke to Isaac. "Just better warn you that what they did to... to whoever it is... wasn't nice. Wasn't nice at all." "Stickies never do nice, lady," he replied.

 

RAY AND FRANK WALKED OFF and sat close together on the bank of the stream, saying nothing either to Ryan or the friends, or to each other.

 

It was nearly two hours before the woman and two men came back down the hillside. There was no need to ask whether the blackened corpse had been that of the one they called Jolyon. Their shocked, dulled faces gave the answer.

 

"We've taken him down and spoken a saying over him." Dorothy looked on the verge of tears, her eyes brimming. "Couldn't bury him, but we put him safe from the animals. Friends*!! return tomorrow and bring him to Quindley for the proper saying. Now we should all go back there and report to Moses what happened. And to warn of the cursed stickies."

 

She turned on her heel and led them all off into the trees, toward the distant lake.

 

Chapter Nineteen

 

"Place looks like a promo vid for the Department of Agriculture," Mildred commented. "You ever see a better kept ville than this, Ryan?"

 

They had crossed the narrow river at a narrow wooden bridge, made from fresh-treated timbers and held in place by an ingenious system of bolts and thick-knotted rope. Then they followed the five young people along a clear trail, through the mainly coniferous forest, heading toward the lake.

 

Feeling stronger by the hour, Ryan had handed the sword stick back to Doc and retaken his place as leader of the group. He walked at the front, keeping them on orange alert because of the threat from stickies.

 

Gradually the trees began to be thinned out, showing obvious evidence of good land management. They could see the silvery sheen of the water ahead of them and then the woods ended and they were out hi the open.

 

Dorothy stopped and waved her hands over her head, as a signal to armed guards hi a tall watchtower set in the middle of the cultivated land.

 

The others looked around. Ryan saw immediately that Mildred was right.

 

It was a showpiece.

 

The fields were tended beautifully, the produce in neat rows. Fences and hedges divided one crop from another, all the way from the edge of the forest to the shore of the lake, which was a body of water that stretched to the far horizon.

 

There were twenty or thirty men and women working in the fields, all of them looking up and waving at the sight of Dorothy and the four men. One of the women was driving an ancient John Deere tractor.

 

Even at a quick glance, the range of what the ville grew was impressive. Ryan could see the feathery tops of carrots hi the nearest field. There were potatoes, squash, okra, peas, several kinds of beans and even what looked like grapevines.

 

"Got fruit trees over there," J.B. said, pointing to the right.

 

"Six kinds of apples, for cooking and eating," Frank stated. "Three sorts of pear. Tried oranges and lemons, but the old blue northers did away with them. Got peaches under glass. Melons. So many melons we regularly have to plow half back into the fields. But nothing's wasted. Like Moses tells us."

 

Dorothy and Isaac had run on ahead and were obviously passing on the bad news about his brother. Several of the group in the fields started to weep, while others made threatening gestures with the rifles that all of them carried.

 

"You had trouble with stickles before?" Dean asked the young man called Bob.

 

"Not often. Used to be some outlanders coming down from old Canada."

 

"You got good discipline here," J.B. said approvingly. "I'm impressed."

 

Bob looked at him and shook his head. "What would an oldie like you know about things like that?"

 

J.B. stared at him, completely without any expression on his sallow face, until the younger man finally dropped his eyes and looked away.

 

Now Dorothy was walking quickly back toward them, along the main track that wound into the ville. The one thing that Ryan hadn't yet seen was the ville itself. Because of the lay of the land, it wasn't possible to be sure, but the pathway looked like it cut sharply to the left, over a narrow promontory that jutted into the lake.

 

"The brothers and sisters are deeply moved," she said to the three young men. "Isaac has gone on to tell Moses about the outlanders."

 

"You got the best-kept ville I ever saw," Ryan said.

 

"Thanks." She looked at the others, but seemed to concentrate on Dean and Michael. "The rest of you can come into Quindley and eat and stay a night if you want."

 

"Sounds good." Mildred smiled at the woman, who turned blankly away.

 

THE VILLE, as Ryan had figured, lay just beyond the piece of land that reached out into the lake. There was another, similar causeway, about fifty paces in length, with the ville on what had once obviously been a small offshore island at its end.

 

"Good place to defend," Ryan said to J.B., as they followed the young woman through the cultivated fields.

 

"Long as you don't get attacked by a mess of men in boats," the Armorer replied.

 

Everyone in the ville looked amazingly healthy. Not one of them seemed to have any physical imperfections at all, and every one of them was younger than the mid-twenties.

 

The blue shirts and jeans were almost a uniform.

 

As Ryan and the others walked along, every head turned toward them. The big maroon John Deere coughed into silence, and its driver leaned out to get a better look at the strangers. Once again, there was the odd feeling that Doc was some kind of leper. The young people's faces showed something close to a disbelieving revulsion at him.

 

"Is there something wrong with me, Dr. Wyeth? Some indiscretion of my attire?" he whispered, "They're all staring at me like I have my dick sticking out. If you'll pardon my French."

 

"Course I'll pardon it, Doc," she replied. "And if s hanging out, not sticking out."

 

"Very amusing, madam." He snorted and strode on, ignoring the silent spectators.

 

A HIGH WALL of sharpened stakes surrounded the perimeter of the ville, right at the edge of the water, so any potential enemy would find no land for a footing. There appeared to be about twenty or thirty buildings, many of than obviously storage barns, with roofs of closely thatched reeds.

 

"Not many small houses," Michael observed, walking close beside Dorothy.

 

"We live in dorms," she replied. "Men in one and women in the other, over there." She pointed toward two of the biggest buildings in the ville.

 

"No privacy?" Krysty asked, overhearing the conversation. "No married couples?"

 

Dorothy stopped so quickly that Krysty nearly stepped on her heels. "Marriage?" She laughed. "All of us who live here in Quindley have set that oldie idea behind us. Moses pointed out the total stupidity of it."

 

"Look forward to meeting this Moses," Mildred said. "Sounds like quite a guy."

 

Dorothy opened her mouth, then hesitated and closed it again. She stood looking down at her feet, as if she were taking counsel from an inner voice.

 

"I know you are old and an outlander, but you will not speak of Moses like that."

 

"Listen, kid, I'm getting seriously pissed about all this 'old* shit. I'm still a good few years the right side of forty, so just ice it, will you?"

 

"Forty!"

 

"That's when life begins." Mildred laughed, uneasy at the younger woman's expression. "Just how do you treat all the old people you got here hi the ville? Your own mothers and fathers, for instance?"

 

"Moses tells us that..." Dorothy stopped. "No, you're right. It is rude of me to show you how we..."

 

Again she hesitated. "Food and rest should come before talk."

 

"I'll go along with that," Doc said. "I confess that I would not be averse to a good long rest."

 

"Oh, you will have that," Frank stated.

 

Ryan looked around them. "You got no animals. How's that?"

 

"We have no need of them, outlander," Ray replied. "Moses teaches us that the exploitation of cattle or horses or any other creature is wrong."

 

"Vegetarians?" Mildred asked.

 

"Yes."

 

Ryan smiled at the young blonde. "Then I guess a juicy steak with all the trimmings is out of the question."

 

His joke was ignored. Dorothy turned on her heel and continued toward the causeway to the ville.

 

"Uke Uncle Tyas McCann used to say back in Harmony, lover. That went over like a lead balloon."

 

THE WATER WAS COLD and very clear. The shore shelved steeply, but even halfway toward the entrance gate to Quindley it was easy to see the speckled fish moving sinuously near the weeds on the lake's bottom.

 

"How deep is it here?" Dean asked.

 

"On the far side of the ville it drops away to well over a hundred feet," Frank replied.

 

"And you don't eat no fish?"

 

"Yes, we do eat no fish." Frank smiled at Dean. "While in our home you will eat no fish, also."

 

An armed guard on the fortified gates watched suspiciously as Dorothy led the seven outlanders into the ville. Ryan paused a moment before entering, looking back across the water, the immaculately tilled fields, toward the shadowed bank of the sweeping forest.

 

Every bright young face was turned toward him.

 

But he also caught a glimpse of something else, right at the edge of the pine trees. It was a blurred flash of white. A face? Maybe an animal. By the time Ryan had focused his eye on it, there was nothing there.

 

ONCE THEY WERE inside the ville, they were able to see that it was laid out on a sort of grid pattern. The streets were packed earth, laid over interlocked logs, the whole of the place locked together with massive cross-members, made from whole trees. Though it was actually floating, tethered to the land by the causeway, there was no sensation of movement.

 

J.B. had fallen into step beside Ryan, talking quietly out of the corner of his mouth. "Something's not right here."

 

"What?"

 

"You feel anything?"

 

Ryan nodded. "Something. Can't tell."

 

"Triple-red watch?"