James Axler - Deathlands 27 - Ground Zero

by Ground Zero [lit]

  Clinkerscales came after the companions, still hefting the sawed-down.

  "That's it," he said.

  "The girl?" Jak asked.

  The barkeep answered without looking at the teenager. "Gone. Soon as bullets started flying."

  "Don't blame her," Krysty said. "Bad scene here."

  Clinkerscales nodded, a slight nervous tic marking his head jerk to the side. "Worst I ever saw. One time Trader's men ride on by. Like they always said."

  "What?" Ryan said, becoming angry.

  "Where Trader set his foot the flowers died. And nothing ever grew there again. Same with you and Mr. Dix."

  "You asked us to stay," the Armorer reminded him grimly. "Not our fault."

  "Mebbe not. Shit, but I'm tired. All right. Shouldn't have said what I did. But the chilling was... Just go in the morning and don't come back." He turned away, then hesitated. "And take care if you ride near Baron Sharpe's ville."

  Chapter Fifteen

  During the night, after everyone had fieldstripped and cleaned their firearms under J.B.'s strict eye, they discussed whether to return to the redoubt or whether to explore a little farther.

  "I'm interested in this Baron Sharpe," Krysty said. "Man with his own personal zoo-including two-legged animals-sounds like someone we should go visit."

  Ryan shook his head. "You can't clear up every piece of dirt in Deathlands, lover. There just isn't enough time."

  "Or enough bullets," Jak added. "Though did well saving young woman."

  "Hope she got away safe." Mildred looked behind them at the shacks and tents of Green Hill, three-quarters of a mile back. Smoke from dawn fires smeared the land to the south. "I know she was innocent, but they'll see her as the trigger for what happened last night. Blame her for the spilled blood."

  It was a cool morning, with streaks of high cloud slicing across the pink-blue sky. There had been a shower of rain during the small hours, and the ground smelted green and fresh.

  The furrowed track ahead of them showed the characteristic ribbon effect of earthquakes, winding down a hillside, between the scorched ruins of a few buildings.

  "Rad counter's on orange," J.B. said. "Best we get away from here in a week or so."

  Ryan nodded his agreement. "Yeah. Right. I haven't seen anything yet round Washington Hole that'd make me want to stay here for too long."

  THE CLOUDS HAD THICKENED and darkened, with the threat of some serious rain sweeping in from the north. They had already seen several vivid flashes of chem lightning and caught the distant sound of thunder.

  "Old church ahead of us," Krysty said, pointing to a squat building in lichen-covered stone. One wall had completely fallen in, but the other end had a stubby tower with a twisted metal cross still fixed to its top.

  "No real need to stop." J.B. blinked toward the gathering storm.

  "Smear your glasses and get your blasters all wet, John," Mildred argued.

  "True," he admitted. "From the look of the clouds, it shouldn't be much more than a sharp shower."

  Krysty looked at Ryan. "We stop, lover?"

  "Time doesn't mean much when you don't have things to do and places to be. I'm happy to stay awhile and sit out the rain. No objections? None? Then we'll stop here."

  "THIS FOUNDATION STONE laid by Senator Nicholas Webb on the fourteenth day of September in the year of 1999,'" Dean read haltingly. "Sort of eroded letters."

  Wind blew brittle tumbleweed against the wall of the ruined church, and the first drops of rain began to patter into the gray dust. The sky was very dark, and the deep rumble of thunder had become constant in the background, the eye of the impending storm moving ever closer.

  "What sort of church was it?" Mildred asked. "Nothing left to tell us what kind of a God they worshiped or how they went about it."

  Doc looked at the barren wilderness that surrounded the devastated building. "See what He made of this planet, and you can start to wonder whether He exists at all. Or if He does exist, what kind of a deity he is. Not much of a Creator. A whole lot more of a Destroyer."

  Mildred shook her head. "Could be you're wrong, Doc. You build a house and then you find that got rot in the joists and worm in the beams and damp in the cellar, then you pull it down and start again. Maybe that's what He did here in Deathlands. Saw there'd been a bad mistake and things had gone skewed. So He pretty well pulled it all down and now He's in the process of starting over."

  Doc smiled toothily. "Then that makes us His wingless angels, I guess."

  There was a flash of lightning, dazzlingly close, burning its afterimage into the retina, followed by a peal of thunder so loud that it made marrowbone quiver.

  Everyone moved quickly inside through the heavy door. It was made of oak and had survived the nukecaust practically unscathed, though it was pitted and burned on the outside and hung loosely on its hinges. The inside had been totally stripped. The pews had all been taken, long years ago, for cooking fires. Some of the broken windows had been clumsily filled in with a sort of crude adobe, but much of it had crumbled and fallen away. The altar was missing, the floor covered in bits of rubble.

  Ryan looked around as the rain began to fall in earnest, pounding on the damaged roof, starting to trickle through in a few places at the far end of the nave, beyond the transept. "Door back there," he said.

  Krysty touched him on the arm, half drawing her blaster. "Lover?" she whispered.

  "What?" he asked, pulling out the SIG-Sauer, peering into the gloom at the back of the old church.

  "Someone there?" Krysty hesitated. "Feel them, but there's something odd about. Like I can see them and not see them, all at the same time."

  There was a movement in the stillness, and the narrow door began to ease open. By now everyone had seen it, and everyone had their blasters drawn.

  "No need," said a voice from the blackness. "It's not now and it's not here."

  "Emma Tyler!" Jak bolstered his satin-finish Colt Python. "The doomie."

  THE YOUNG WOMAN WAS COLD, her cloak still damp from getting caught in the rain the previous night when she'd fled the ville of Green Hill.

  "No chance of a fire, not with this storm," J.B. said. "Have to wait."

  "Being cold's better than being dead." Emma looked around the circle of friends. "Can't thank you enough for going and laying it on the line for me back there in the Lincoln Inn."

  Krysty was fascinated by the doomie's powers. "If you see the future, didn't you know that you might get yourself chilled back there? Or did you see the danger and also see us riding out of the sunset to the rescue?"

  Emma brushed a hand through her black hair, sitting cross-legged in the dirt. Her golden eyes looked intently at Krysty. "I knew you, too, had the seeing power. I felt it the first moment I was in the same room with you."

  Krysty smiled. "I have this much of the power." She held her finger and thumb a couple of inches apart. "I can feel if there's danger around. But only some of the time. Not all of the time. Wish I could."

  "You wouldn't wish it. It truly can be a curse rather than a blessing."

  "But you didn't answer my question, Emma."

  The eyes, oddly flat and incurious, turned again toward the flame-headed woman.

  "Did I know there was to be all that killing? I can't answer that properly. To do that I'd have to explain what I see and how I see it. And that's impossible. It's like trying to explain the color turquoise to a blind man."

  "Or like trying to tell a stranger about rock and roll," Mildred said. "Sorry. Old music reference. Shouldn't have interrupted. Go on, Emma."

  "I see reality, just like anyone else. But I sometimes see an overlay. Like what I think the old vids and teevee must've been like. Like I looked at that man and 'saw' all about his real, hidden life."

  "And the man with the blue-and-green hair," J.B. was as fascinated as any of them. "If he follows your warning, he could live. If he doesn't."

  "He'll die with his throat slit in the Hole," she said. "But it's not alwa
ys that precise. I tasted death with incredible strength in the saloon. But I couldn't have foretold how it would come. I also felt a lot of power from you seven."

  Doc squatted, the cracking of his knees even louder than the pounding rain. "It sounds a little like throwing handfuls of mud at a wall. By the nature of the beast, some will stick and some will fall out."

  "Could put it like." Her eyes opened wider. "By water and stone! Where do you come from?" She turned to Mildred. "And you. There are colors to both of you like nothing I've ever seen before. Like all colors and no colors. How."

  Ryan smiled at her obvious distress and bewilderment. "Time enough for that later. Once the rain stops we can move on. I'll introduce all of us and tell you a little about where we've come from."

  Emma stood, her face drained of blood. "No. Thanks for the offer of your protection, but I can see death if we travel together."

  "Who for?" Dean asked.

  "It's like I said. A color. Dark. So dark. If I travel with you, then death will come to one of us. But if you go on without me, then the shadow retreats from you all."

  "But it can be cheated?" Ryan asked. "You said that yourself. We can cheat death. We've all done it more times than you've eaten hot soup."

  She shook her head doubtfully. "The shadow is like a cloak made from the wings of ravens. You saved my life and turned the black spear from my heart. How would I feel if I caused the death of one of you?"

  "Not as bad as whoever dies," Mildred said grimly.

  "You don't believe I see the future and the past, do you? I can almost taste your suspicion."

  "Maybe I don't want to believe it, Emma."

  "Your father was burned to death in an attack by men in white sheets and hoods, in his church. A place like this. He had a younger brother, also a preacher, whose name was Josh. He called you 'Millie.' I'm right, aren't I? Though parts of your life are oddly distorted. Not like norms."

  "That's enough," Mildred said, shaking her head so that the plaited beads rattled in her hair. "I believe you can see some of what's already happened. Doesn't mean you can also see the future. Nobody can. Future's like millions and millions of alternate possibilities. I might drop dead the very next breath. Or in five minutes. An hour. A day. A year. Nobody knows that, Emma. Not even you."

  "I do know that," she said very gently. "It's what I'm trying to explain, but I guess I'm doing it real badly. I see some things to come. Just some of them. But I can't explain how or why I do it. Sorry."

  Her words hung in the darkened church, surrounded by the insane violence of the raging chem storm.

  The noise of the thunder and the spilled water made any further conversation impossible.

  It was well over an hour before the rain ceased and the thunder rolled south.

  BEFORE LEAVING, Ryan formally introduced all of them to the mutie mystic, explaining a little about where Mildred and Doc came from.

  "So that's it." The golden eyes opened wide. "Doc, I can see things about your past life, but they're faint, like a whisper etched on water."

  "I must confess that I often feel like that about my past. Though I lived it, much of those years seem an enigma shrouded in mystery."

  "I feel that about yesterday, Doc." Mildred grinned. "When I get to your age, if I live so long, I suspect that I'll forget everything up to five seconds ago."

  "Where are we going to go now?" Emma asked.

  "Don't you know?" Dean said cheekily.

  She smiled at him, the only time since they'd first seen her that Emma's stony mask had cracked. "My brain would explode if I held a permanent visual map of everything that'll happen to everyone in the future. Even for myself."

  "Oh." He sounded disappointed.

  Emma patted the eleven-year-old on the shoulder. "Other thing is that it tires me out. Like trying to do mental math for ten hours straight."

  Krysty nodded. "I can see a little, sometimes. But I also have the Earth power, taught to me by Mother Sonja back in Harmony ville. I can draw on myself and, briefly, have paranormal strength."

  "But it drains her so much she's good for nothing for a day or more afterward," Ryan added.

  "That's right, lover. It sucks all my soul to do it. It frightens me a lot that I might try to use it one day and I'll simply die."

  The doomie's smile had gone, faded like the frost on a spring meadow. "Not so bad for me. But bad enough."

  "How do you see going with us?" Jak asked. "Got any feelings about that?"

  "Told you. Death, Jake. Strong feeling of death if I travel with you."

  "Live with death at shoulder every waking hour," the albino replied.

  "All right. But what are we going to do?"

  "Look around," Ryan said. "Look around is all."

  Chapter Sixteen

  Though the center of Washington, and all of its immediate inner suburbs, had been totally vaporized in the first seconds of the skydark, the pattern of damage around the outer rim of the city was irregular.

  Some of it was down to inconsistencies in the terrain. Nukeblast normally went in fairly straight lines, so land in a hollow would generally be less damaged than higher ground. And the same applied to buildings.

  Ryan walked under an overcast sky into a shallow basin. The edges were clear of any sign of civilization, scoured away by the missiles' blast. But ahead of them there was a scattering of buildings, mostly roofless and windowless.

  It was midafternoon.

  Emma Tyler, for all of her mystic mutie skills, was no great walker. She'd hiked the long black cotton skirt up over her knees, pinning it into place. Her low-heeled sandals were badly worn and patched, and she often stumbled on the uneven trail that they were following.

  "Can we take a break, Ryan?" she asked. "I got blisters on top of blisters."

  "Sure. Mebbe find a little shelter ahead. You don't seem like you're much used to covering ground."

  He realized at that moment that Emma had handled their earlier conversation with some skill. He had told her a lot about themselves. In exchange, the woman had told them virtually nothing about herself.

  She smiled gratefully, kneeling for a moment to remove a sharp piece of crumbled dirt out of her shoe. "You always go this fast?"

  "Moving target's easier missed," Jak said, sitting beside her.

  She looked at him, eyes narrowed. "I don't know, Jak," she said, so quietly that Ryan was the only other person to hear her speak.

  "Know what?" the white-haired teenager asked. "Didn't ask nothing."

  "Not out loud. I just gave you an answer to the question you were thinking about me."

  "Oh." Just for a moment, Ryan actually thought that Jak's bone-white face flushed around the cheeks. But at that moment an odd shaft of errant sunlight broke through the looming clouds over them. So it could have been that bringing a touch of rosy color to Jak's narrow face.

  It could have been that.

  THEY TOOK a half-hour break.

  Emma fell asleep almost immediately, though it wasn't a quiet rest. Her body twitched and moved, and she kept up a constant whispering. Dean crawled close and lowered his head to try to catch what she was saying.

  "Come away," Krysty whispered. "Private."

  But Ryan overruled her, gesturing for Dean to stay where he was for a while longer. "Nothing's private when you take a stranger along with you."

  "I suppose that Trader said that," Krysty said with a sneer.

  "No, lover. I said that."

  Dean moved away, his face puzzled. "Double odd, Dad."

  "You hear anything of what she was saying?"

  "Not much. Too quiet and quick. And some of it was like nonsense."

  "You understand any of it?"

  "About dying."

  "Her dying?"

  "Not sure, Dad. Said that her body was collapsing inside, like crumpled paper. She could hear the noise it was making, coming out of her mouth every time she opened it. Nothing would stop it. Said it frightened her."

  "Not surprised
," Mildred said, joining them.

  "Would've frightened me, too."

  "What kind of building you think this was, Dad?"

  Ryan hadn't given the question any thought. It was just a ruined building, like millions of others left abandoned and destroyed all over Deathlands. It was stripped as bare as charity, with not even a nail left in a wall. No doors, no glass, walls split either by the nuking or by the quakes. Part of the flat roof gone, exposing rotten beams and a few slates.