Chapter Eight

 

 

There really wasn't a choice. To pack up and hike out of the area on foot was completely out of the question. Behind them were the badlands, and they had no idea of what lay ahead. Nor were they inclined to abandon the wag. It would be too much of a loss to simply shrug off.

 

"Perhaps it was the work of one of the men we met today," Doc offered. "That Dog fellow, for instance. A prank, a vindictive act of vandalism, and perhaps Hellstrom knows nothing about it."

 

Doc's theory sounded unconvincing, even to his own ears. After a brief discussion, it was decided that everyone would return to their rooms.

 

They entered the saloon through the back door and climbed the stairs to the second floor. Ryan took a position in a chair, facing the door, blaster in hand. Krysty sat on the bed, leaning against the headboard, her Smith amp; Wesson in her lap.

 

They spoke very little. They just sat and waited for something to happen.

 

Ryan checked his wrist chron every so often. At a little after three, he saw that Krysty had nodded off, still sitting upright against the headboard, eyes closed, breathing shallowly through her nose.

 

He thought about waking her, then decided to let her sleep an hour. He looked out the window and watched the distant fire-glow of the pyre for a few minutes. When he turned to look at Krysty, she was no longer there.

 

Instead, a vast, rocky plain stretched out all around him, the edges blurring into the horizon. He found himself standing completely still in a small depression made of dry, cracked earth, like the remnants of an ancient water hole. A bloodred sun shone down with a light that was sharp and painful to the eye.

 

He stared up at it with a horrid fascination. From its crimson center, tongues of flame roiled and churned in a scarlet maelstrom. From the molten core sprang a white shape, whiter than snow, whiter than bleached bone.

 

A man shape fell from the sun and landed gracefully in the small depression. Lars Hellstrom's bloodred eyes glowed, and a white-hot halo of energy crackled around him like a static discharge.

 

Hellstrom drifted toward him, ghosting over the ground, feet not moving, smiling a dreamy smile. Ryan reached for his blaster, but he knew it wouldn't be snugged in his holster.

 

He gestured for Hellstrom to come closer. "Come on, hell's spawn," he crooned. "I'll send you back to Charlie on a shutter."

 

Hellstrom floated closer. Ryan bounded forward, hands reaching for and closing around the man's throat.

 

Ryan's hands crunched through flesh and bone as though they were dry ashes. Snarling, he shifted his grip to the dreamily smiling face, and it crumbled to fragments beneath his clutching fingers.

 

Hellstrom's neck and head fell away, and from the empty space between his shoulders spewed a torrent of blackness. Like a stream of semiliquid tar, it coiled and curled, a piece of shadow somehow given life and movement.

 

Ryan struck at it, but the black fluid wrapped itself around his hand, then flowed up his arm. Sepia tendrils squirted into his mouth, his nostrils, his eyes.

 

Struggling wildly, Ryan clawed the black shadow-stuff from his face. He opened his eye, and found himself twitching on the floor of the room.

 

Krysty was kneeling over him, shaking him by the shoulder. "It's a dream, lover. Only a dream."

 

Ryan quivered and sat up, touching his face. He felt only sweat.

 

"It's all right now," Krysty said soothingly.

 

He tried to slow his breathing, ashamed to have made such a spectacle of himself. Early-morning sunshine shafted in through the window. Dust motes danced in abundance, given a glittery glow by the sunlight.

 

"I was asleep," Krysty said. "You transmitted your fear to me. It woke me up."

 

Smiling thinly, Ryan got to his feet and checked his chron. It was a little before seven. Out on the street he heard the hustle and bustle of Helskel preparing for another day.

 

"What did you dream about?" she asked.

 

Going to the wash basin, Ryan splashed cold water on his face. When his eye no longer felt like it was full of sand, he told her about it.

 

"Must have been a residue of our steak dinner. Or maybe your shadow-people story. Or even a psionic broadcast from Hellstrom."

 

Krysty shook her head. "I would've sensed that. You just had a garden-variety nightmare."

 

He pulled on his clothes, Krysty mirroring his actions. "I hope it wasn't precognitive."

 

A knock sounded on the door. Their blasters leapt into their hands, and they took positions on either side of the door.

 

"Who is it?" Krysty asked.

 

"Just me, Phil. I've got breakfast."

 

Ryan and Krysty exchanged quick, meaningful glances. Her hair stirred as if from a breeze, then she mouthed to Ryan, "Safe."

 

He moved aside while Krysty tucked her blaster into the waistband of her jeans and opened the door.

 

Holding a tray filled with covered dishes and a small pot of coffee, Phil said, "Compliments of the chamber of commerce."

 

Since both of the shaggy-haired man's hands were in sight and occupied, Ryan lowered his blaster, but he kept his finger resting lightly on the trigger.

 

Krysty took the tray with a word of thanks.

 

"The patriarch wants to see you after you've eaten," Phil said, pointing at Ryan.

 

"Just you. The rest of you are confined to your rooms until you hear otherwise."

 

"Not very hospitable," Ryan said, letting a steel edge slip into his voice.

 

Phil shrugged. "You got nice places to flop, three squares a day I know a lot of people who'd cut their mama's throats to trade places with you."

 

He stepped out of the room and pulled a wheeled cart laden with breakfast trays down the hallway. "The patriarch will see you downstairs. Now, I've got to feed the rest of your crew."

 

Krysty shut the door with her foot and put the tray on the bed. The breakfast consisted of double portions of scrambled eggs, several strips of bacon, slices of freshly baked bread and a pot of the real coffee.

 

Neither Ryan nor Krysty felt much like eating, but they knew survival rules dictated they should force the food down. Both retained vivid and unpleasant memories of days passing between meals. Regular meals were the exception, not the rule, in Deathlands.

 

Once he'd eaten, Ryan felt more relaxed, the nervous tension ebbing away. After they finished the coffee, he stood, jacked a round into the SIG-Sauer and buckled on his gun belt. "Time to go. Do you sense anything?"

 

Krysty shook her head, frowning in frustration. "Just a void. I don't know if Hellstrom is broadcasting a shield I can't penetrate or if there are truly no hostile intentions."

 

"Only one way to find out."

 

Ryan stepped toward the door, and Krysty grabbed him from behind, encircling his waist with her arms.

 

"Let me go with you, lover."

 

Ryan turned, encircling her in an embrace. "Best we play out the hand the bastard's dealt to us, at least for now."

 

They kissed passionately, then Ryan disengaged himself from her arms and left the room.

 

Downstairs in the saloon, Hellstrom was seated in his wicker throne. Fleur, in her leather jacket and boots, lounged against the bar, nursing a glass of red liquid that Ryan hoped was tomato juice.

 

Hellstrom beckoned to him with a gesture, and Ryan approached, trying to keep his face inscrutable. Hellstrom's face was a bland mask. He linked his long fingers in his lap and leaned forward slightly.

 

"Few things ever change." His voice was no longer the strident roar of the night before, but it contained a note that lifted the hairs on Ryan's nape.

 

Ryan cocked an eyebrow at him, saying nothing.

 

"Even when building a world ordained by holy prophecies, there are always low-order swine who cannot understand and wish to tear it down. Regardless of your abilities, Cawdor, there is the stench of the sty about you."

 

Two men materialized out of the shadows and hit Ryan simultaneously, pressing him between them. They clawed at him, raking their hands over his body. Leather tore and his SIG-Sauer was gone. He was twirled about and thrown face first against the far wall. A quick frisk followed, with a knee positioned dangerously near his testicles. Then he was released and allowed to turn around. The entire process had happened so quickly that he hadn't even found time to blink.

 

Rearranging his clothing, Ryan looked around the saloon. Dog and Suds smirked at him, though with Dog it was hard to tell. He glimpsed the opening behind the jukebox and understood the sudden appearance of the two men.

 

Outwardly Ryan remained calm, but inwardly he was raging furiously at himself for being such a gullible stupe. He realized now why he had been provided with a hearty breakfastto relax him, to throw him off guard. It was an old trick, and it had worked perfectly.

 

"What was the manhandling all about, Hellstrom?" he asked coldly.

 

One of the men behind him grunted, but Ryan didn't bother to turn. He knew who had made the sound.

 

"During your stay here," Hellstrom intoned, "several of my people recognized you and remembered you, especially from a little killzone called Snakefish."

 

"So?"

 

"I've also heard quite a bit about you, Cawdor. You're almost a legend, because you're not a child of Deathlands. You are a privileged pig, the son of a man who was one of the most powerful barons on the East Coast. You traveled the country with the swine-scum thief called Trader, stealing, plundering and terrorizing. Many of the people who suffered at your hands have ended up here."

 

Ryan snorted. "I ask you againso?"

 

"So I think you're here to steal Helskel's bounty and sell it to East Coast barons so the Beforetime system can be rebuilt, so the power pigs can again rule the country."

 

"You psi-scanned me, didn't you?" Ryan demanded. "Did you find anything in my mind that led you to this conclusion?"

 

"You've got a mind mutie running interference," Hellstrom replied. "I can't be sure of the impressions I received."

 

"You're an insurgent," Fleur spit. "Admit it."

 

"You're a maniac," Ryan threw back, his temper getting the better of his judgment. "Admit it."

 

Ryan caught a blur of movement from behind him and he wheeled, sucking in his gut just in time to only partially suffer the punch that was intended to pulverize his right kidney. Still, the fist bouncing from his rib cage hurt, but so did the elbow he whipped up into Dog's windpipe.

 

The scar-faced man staggered back and dropped to the floor, gagging and clutching convulsively at his throat.

 

Suds swung at Ryan with the barrel of the SIG-Sauer. The one-eyed man bobbed to one side and lashed out with a right foot that struck squarely on Suds' kneecap. The cracking of bone was loud and ugly.

 

The man pitched forward, howling and plucking at his maimed leg. Ryan wrested the SIG-Sauer from his victim's nerveless fingers and leveled it at Hellstrom just as Fleur lunged forward, her hand drawing the Beretta from her holster.

 

"Tell this chill-crazy bitch to freeze," Ryan snapped.

 

"Freeze, Fleur," Hellstrom stated, a fraction of a second before Ryan squeezed the trigger.

 

The woman froze, her blaster only half-drawn, but Ryan kept his automatic on Hellstrom all the same.

 

"You're taking a big gamble," the white-clad man said. "Touch me and you're dead. Every hand in Helskel will turn against you, and every one of those hands will have a knife in it."

 

"I don't doubt that," Ryan replied. "But you'll board the last train West with me."

 

Suddenly he felt the delicate, wispy brush of Hellstrom's mind reaching out to touch, or to ensnare his. Ryan focused his thoughts on a single vivid image he visualized Hellstrom's head exploding in a spray of blood, bone shards and brain matter. He concentrated on a vision of the white blazer turning red and wet, of that long, lean body flopping lifelessly to the floor.

 

He powered the image with a vicious conviction, packing it with a ruthless, unshakable certainty that the image would come true, and that he, Ryan, would be happy to arrange it.

 

Hellstrom leaned back in his chair with a jerk of his shoulders. His eyes opened wide, then they narrowed. "Get back, Fleur."

 

"He's just one man," his warlord snapped.

 

"Tell her, Lars," Ryan suggested. "Tell her what one man can do."

 

"Goddamn you, Fleur," Hellstrom said shrilly, fingers digging into the arms of his chair. "Back away from him!"

 

Fleur removed her hand from beneath her jacket and retreated reluctantly, glaring venomously at Ryan. Hellstrom glanced unhappily at the pair of pain-racked men sprawled on the floor, then back to Ryan.

 

"I underestimated you," he said quietly. "Consider yourself lucky."

 

"You're the lucky one, Lars. Most people who have underestimated me are sitting on the knee of Father Death."

 

Hellstrom eyed him for a long moment, then with a hand clap he threw back his head and laughed. "You're a treasure, Cawdor. Yes, you truly are. Helskel needs a man like you."

 

Ryan's one eye squinted at him. "I think I'd rather have you replace the tires of my wag, and we'll be on our way."

 

Hellstrom laughed again. "Ah, well, that's the rub, isn't it? We need you, and you need tires. Can't we help each other?"

 

Hellstrom grinned, and his face took on a cadaverous, skull-like aspect. "Because if you won't let me help you, you and your people will die in a manner far less spectacular and far more agonizing than the late Zadfrak."