by James Axler
They stepped onto the vegetation, flattened now by the violence of the storm, saw the dark puddles that pooled in the cracks of the asphalt road beneath. The wild vegetation stank of smoke, mist circling the steamrolled leaves, wafting darkly away on the breeze.
“Next time we’ll pack an umbrella,” Mildred muttered, hefting her satchel of medical supplies over her shoulder.
“Everybody in one piece?” Trevor asked, scanning the foliage for his friends and family as he pulled himself out from the bent door of a modest family hatchback whose sides had turned brown with rust.
Slowly, the members of the farming group made themselves known, calling in like army recruits. The farmhand who had run from Jak’s vehicle in the night was sprawled beneath a skewed road sign. Ryan and Trevor hurried over to the man, but it was clear even from a distance that he was dead. His skin had turned coal black with the rain, and traces of red threaded through it where the flesh had been stripped of its skin.
Jak handed the baby back to her mother, but the child had not survived the night. Like the farmhand, the girl’s week-old skin had been flayed by the rainwater, leaving it a raw red as if burned.
“We must bury her,” the mother said through racking sobs, and the farmers agreed.
Trevor checked with Ryan if they had time.
Ryan looked at the baby, curled in on herself, her face red as if she had just a moment ago been crying. As he stared, the camera affixed in his artificial eye snapped, storing the image of the dead child in its memory.
“Bury her,” he told Trevor. “Do the right thing by her and by the mother.”
“Terry,” Trevor said, calling to the woman. He joined her, outlining the service they would enact for the deceased child and for the dead farmhand whose name was Judd.
Ryan nodded to the group and, as they set about their ceremony, Krysty joined him.
“Tough losing a loved one,” she said, “even one so young.”
“Tough all over,” Ryan agreed.
They stood together, watching the farmers’ ceremony for their dead, touching one another’s hands as the ceremony continued. It was a necessity, Ryan knew, a way to let go and say goodbye—not just to Jessica and Judd, but also to the others they had had to leave at the farm, and to the life they had built there. Simple things that humans needed, Ryan thought.
As the burial service continued in the shadow of the rusted road signs, Ryan and his companions took a few moments to check over their weapons, ensuring they were loaded and ready should anything more troublesome come their way. Something would; sooner or later, something always did.
* * *
BY FOLLOWING THE tree markings and keeping to a slow jog, J.B. and Doc finally caught up with Ryan and the others by midafternoon. Ryan had urged his team to remain on alert but had ordered frequent stops, partly because they needed it, especially the farm women, and partly to give J.B. and Doc a chance to catch up if they were able to.
The reunion was typically understated. Jak noticed the two men approaching from a swathe of forest behind them, and so the companions had waited. Ryan acknowledged his missing companions with a brief greeting, before asking J.B. about what had happened back at the farm.
“We saw an explosion,” Ryan said.
J.B. nodded, slowing his stride and dropping back a little farther to give them some privacy as the farmers and their allies continued the slow trek to Heartsville.
“The barn?” J.B. said. “Sure. Those coldhearts at the farm had backup. A lot of it too. A big gang of bikers came up the main track, armed and looking for trouble.”
“Yeah, I met with a few myself,” Ryan told him.
“I figured me and Doc had to give them pause, the best way I knew how,” J.B. said, a grin crossing his face.
“What did you blow up?” Ryan asked.
“Lot of equipment stored there,” J.B. recalled. “High tech stuff, too.”
“Is that so?” Ryan asked, intrigued.
“It looked almost new and was really technical, Ryan,” J.B. said, a note of warning in his voice. “Really technical.”
“Not good?” Ryan queried.
J.B. shrugged. “Mebbe yes, mebbe no. One thing’s for sure—it doesn’t belong out here with these sodbusters. If you ask me, it looked almost military.”
Military-grade equipment being used on a farm? New military equipment? Just what had they stumbled into here?
They continued their long walk, passing burned-out farms and the remains of a walled ville as they made their way to Heartsville.
Chapter Twenty-Two
They reached the ville a little before dusk on the second day. The sun was crouching low on the horizon, spreading the last of its rays with its golden knife.
Heartsville took up a quarter square mile in total, and it was surrounded on all sides by cleared scrubland to prevent a sneak attack. By the time Ryan and his crew reached it, they could already sense the blasters pointed at them, following their every step as they moved from overgrown blacktop to the dirt expanse that led up to the ville itself.
The ville was located on a mound, up above the surrounding scrub, with walls constructed of wood and scrap. Included in those walls were cars and trucks, some of them standing upright to create rigid barriers that set against the walls to create nooks in which the ville snipers could hide. There had been an industrial park on the site once, the kind of place where IT companies had been located, and one side of the ville jabbed out where one of those buildings still stood. Just two stories high, its ancient glass facade was now reinforced with scrap-built pillars of stone, concrete and wood. One pillar appeared to be made of repurposed tarmac, lifted straight off the road in a great line, now standing upright and supported by a wooden post with metal spines wrapping around the mélange of scrap. It looked a lot like they were hugging, like mutie art.
The ville was heavily armed, with two big Gatling guns poised to either side of the high, portcullis-style gate. Their long snouts pointed downward, framing a patch of scrub thirty feet square in front of the gate itself. Atop those blasters, two figures sat in bucket seats that rotated with the blaster barrels, while two more figures stood to the sides, armed with automatic weapons but ready to help operate the larger blasters if required.
Ryan made a gesture to his crew, and with that simple wave of his hand they knew to hang back and wait. Krysty, Mildred and Doc spoke with the farmhands, urging them to hold back too while Ryan and Trevor, the farm’s default leader and someone known to the ville, walked up to the gate.
Ryan approached warily, holding his SIG Sauer loosely at his side, the Steyr Scout longblaster strapped across his back. Unarmed, Trevor kept pace. “Is it safe walking up like this, Trev?” Ryan asked as he scanned the blaster emplacements with the magnification lens of his artificial eye.
Trevor nodded. “They know me and my family,” he assured Ryan.
“They ever shoot someone they know?” Ryan asked. Besides the Gatling guns there were a number of blaster ports located along the mismatched walls of the ville, small, flip-back doors through which weapons could be jabbed and fired while blessing the shooter with the maximum of shielding. They would be a bitch to target accurately without a scope, but Ryan figured that didn’t matter much so long as the ville sec men got the first shot in.
Trevor snorted with amusement. Then seeing the fixed expression on Ryan’s face, he realized that the man had not meant his question as a joke. “I never saw them shoot at anyone, Ryan,” he said seriously, “but I don’t imagine that means they never have. This place has survived this long while others have fallen.”
Ryan halted fifteen feet out from the gate, slap-bang in the middle of the target range, and Trevor stopped by his side. The sec men had been watching them the whole time, blasters trained on the approaching party from at least a half mile away.
They had scopes up there, simple lensed affairs through which to scan the distance.
“You want to introduce us?” Ryan urged Trevor, his voice kept low.
Trevor nodded and called up to the sec crew manning the gate. He explained who he was and what had happened, showing them his empty hands and assuring them that he had no hidden weapons on him.
“What about your friend?” the sec man to the left of the main gate called down. He was olive-skinned, with a black gunslinger mustache that drooped to his chin.
“We offered them protection,” Ryan explained, stepping forward and holding out his SIG Sauer blaster for the sec man to see.
“And what about this?” the sec man asked, and he turned in place and pointed to his own back to indicate that Ryan should turn around.
Ryan turned slowly, both hands held high in the air, the SIG Sauer still clutched in his right.
“What is that, a Colt carbine?” the sec man asked.
“Steyr,” Ryan said. “Foreign-made.”
“You find that ’round here?” the sec man on the other side of the gate called down. He was a ruddy-faced man with broad shoulders and rust-red hair.
“Yeah, close by,” Ryan lied. He would rather not get into a discussion of the progress across the Deathlands that he and his companions had made before reaching this point. But at the same time he knew that maintaining a friendly appearance right now was the main thing keeping him from getting chilled. People were mistrustful in the Deathlands, and walled communities like this one kept a tight rein on who did and did not enter. Chilling a visitor for his weapons was an everyday story in places like this, too, and it was something Ryan hoped to avoid. Blasters played such a crucial role in survival that discussing them was akin to discussing breakfast—just another way to pass the time and build up the social links that had all but evaporated with the nukecaust.
After further discussion, wherein Ryan’s companions were made to declare what weapons they were carrying, the gate was finally drawn up and the group were granted entry into Heartsville.
Inside, the ville was a smorgasbord of prefabricated huts, dilapidated office blocks and scratch-built homes made out of whatever scrap had been available at the time. Three school buses had been welded together, their wheels removed, to create a tunnellike building that housed several workshops, including a blacksmith working at a forge with his red-faced, teenaged girl assistant. The blacksmith looked up as Ryan and his crew strode slowly past accompanied by three sec men, saluting them with a still-glowing iron held in red-hot tongs.
“Looks like a friendly place,” Doc proclaimed, gazing around with a sense of wonder.
“Looks can deceive,” J.B. reminded him quietly. He was watching the way the portcullis gate had been brought back down to its defensive position, blocking their exit and sealing them inside the ville—a ville peopled by potential enemies.
Jak and the others stayed alert to the alleyways between buildings as they trekked through the ville’s open center. The center was a paved area, with a well and water pump in its middle and rows of cabbages growing to the sides. There were other vegetable plots too, wedged between the buildings and along their dirt-encrusted roofs where they could best catch the sun. Chickens wandered across the main square, and a few shoeless kids chased after a ball as the ville’s adults went about their business.
Surprisingly, the ville had electricity. As the settlement had been built on the site of an old industrial park, it had its own power substations. While these were no longer connected to any national grid—indeed, such a thing had long since been abandoned—they retained the facility to produce electricity in limited amounts via generators. As the darkness of twilight descended, the companions saw dim lights begin to flicker on behind the windows of the buildings, a haphazard pattern of illumination. There were no working streetlamps, however, and no porch lights—just the illumination coming from within the lit buildings themselves.
Ryan admired the setup. It seemed that the people of Heartsville had enough to live on, and the heavily guarded walls gave them a degree of freedom to come and go within the ville itself as they pleased, safe from danger.
* * *
THEY WERE ESCORTED to the ville hall, which was located in the reception area of one of the old office buildings. The reception area was large enough to house several wags, which made a grand impression when Ryan and his crew entered. Within, the space was kept mostly empty, although tomato plants grew in compost set in strips along the edges, where the glass in the windows acted as a greenhouse. This created twin lines of foliage on either side of the room, channeling any visitor toward the chair and desk that had been set at the far end.
Behind the desk sat the ville’s baron, a young man, thin with narrow shoulders and sunken cheeks. He wore round-framed spectacles and had swept his dark hair back in an impressive quiff that loomed over his face like a rooster’s comb. He wore an open-necked shirt, and the feet he’d propped on the desk were encased in beautifully polished cowboy boots the color of mahogany.
The man was mighty young, Ryan thought, to be baron of a ville. That was generally a position reserved for those with a little more experience behind them, and usually fell to the most ruthless or the most cunning.
Two women knelt on cushions at either side of the desk. They were dressed in short, formfitting dresses that left their knees bare, showing off their tanned legs. One was blonde while the other had black hair, both trimmed in the same style—a long bob that brushed against their shoulders—and both wore matching sunglasses that made their eyes look like those of a bug.
The baron smiled at the new arrivals. “Trevor, my friend!” he exclaimed. “You look tired. What brings you here to my ville?” His gaze swept over Ryan and his companions.
“We seek refuge, your highness,” Trevor said, genuflecting. Ryan could see that the man had dealt with this baron before, and he knew just how he was expected to behave.
The baron smiled more broadly as he observed the older farmer bowing. “And what do you bring me in exchange for this refuge?”
“We have nothing,” Trevor admitted grimly. “The bike men took everything, burned it to ash. My house, my crops...my cousin.”
This was the first time Ryan had heard the farmer speak of the people who had died in the fire, and he realized how carefully the man had been restraining his emotions.
“But we’ll work the debt,” Trevor continued. “You give us a patch of land and we’ll work it, all of us.”
The baron looked thoughtful for a few seconds, mulling the farmer’s words. “Fire,” he finally said, rolling the word around as if to taste it. “We’ve witnessed them use weapons, shoot arrows and bullets, even used vehicles to ram and crush people and their property. And now they’ve turned to fire.”
“They have,” Trevor agreed, “and they’ve become more vicious.”
“There’s another farm burned-out not far from Trevor’s homestead,” Ryan stated grimly.
“The Dodsons,” Trevor added.
The baron nodded solemnly. “They’re getting closer then, circling us. Bolder too.”
“But what’s driving them?” Ryan asked.
The baron looked Ryan slowly up and down, taking him in as if for the first time. “Do I know you, sir?” he asked.
“Ryan Cawdor, Baron,” Ryan said, stepping gingerly forward and offering his hand. As he did, the women at the baron’s sides tensed as though ready to pounce. Sec men, Ryan thought—or sec women anyway.
The baron seemed momentarily surprised, then he stood and reached for Ryan’s hand, shaking it firmly. “And what do you bring to all of this, Ryan Cawdor?”
“Not much,” Ryan admitted. “We were traveling on the road at the time, passed Trevor’s farm and saw the smoke. That’s really all there is to tell.”
“Not true,” Trevor insisted
. “Ryan and his people risked their own lives to rescue my family from that blaze. Just like that Good Sam Marathon guy I heard about in the Bible.”
“Samaritan,” Doc corrected under his breath, but no one noticed.
“Well, that’s a fine recommendation,” the young baron admitted, “but what we deal in here is trade. If you folks don’t have anything to trade, we cannot help you.”
Before Ryan could reply, J.B. stepped forward and opened his satchel. “We’ve got ammo,” he said, flashing the baron a glimpse of the shiny contents of his bag. “Enough to trade, if that might interest your high and greatness.”
“It might, it might,” the baron said in a singsong voice, his smile widening.
“I’m an armorer too,” J.B. continued, “a blaster man. You need someone to check over those big blasters on top of the gate or anywhere else, I’ll throw that in, do a good job.”
“J.B.’s the best,” Ricky added by way of support.
The baron looked from the teenager to J.B. to Ryan, adjusting his spectacles as he took them in. “And what would you want in return for all this?” he asked, addressing the question to Ryan. Evidently, the man recognized a group leader when he saw one.
“A safe place to sleep down till morning,” Ryan said. “Nothing more than that.”
The baron dipped his head a moment to glance past Ryan, and he saw that the sun had almost set. “That sounds like a wise idea, Ryan Cawdor,” he said. “Consider yourself under the protection of Baron Hurst.”
Ryan expressed his gratitude to Baron Hurst and within a few moments he and his companions were being escorted from the chamber by a pair of sec men. Trevor and his family remained behind to negotiate the nature of their prospective new life as indentured farmers.
