James Axler - Deathlands 27 - Ground Zero

by Ground Zero [lit]

  The moment grew longer, and the spots of rain became more insistent, but Sharpe ignored them, his eyes running back and forth along the line. Each time, Ryan noticed, he hesitated at both Krysty and Jak.

  "Well, now. We will spend plenty of time while you tell me your fascinating tales. Perhaps while you lunch with us? But I would know your names and where you've come from. You," he said, pointing unerringly at Ryan, "are the leader of this group, aren't you? Introduce me."

  "Sure thing. I'm Ryan Cawdor, from the Shens. My son, Dean. This is Krysty Wroth from Harmony ville. Mildred Wyeth from out of Nebraska. Emma Tyler who comes from-" he faltered for a moment and knew that Sharpe had spotted it, "-Emma's from the north end of the Shens. J. B. Dix from Cripple Creek. Jak Lauren from the bayou country. And-"

  But Doc took over. "I am Dr. Theophilus Algernon Tanner, Doctor of Science from Harvard and Master of Philosophy from England. Born in South Strafford, Vermont, now a resident of the open highway. Delighted to make your acquaintance, Baron Sharpe. And may we now go in and get out of this damnably miserable rain, which seeks out the flaws in my poor old body?"

  "In from the rain? Yes, of course. Most welcome. My people will show you to some rooms where you can make yourselves comfortable." He turned away, then looked back at them. "And thanks for your help." He frowned. "The pity is that it was so little and so late."

  For a moment Ryan stood still in the heavy downpour, watching the tall, handsome figure stride toward the main entrance to the house.

  "Yeah, and fuck you, too," he said quietly.

  KRYSTY BOUNCED on the double bed in the third-floor room that a silent servant had showed them. Outside the mullioned window, the rain pounded against the small panes of glass. There had been two flashes of lightning, but they had been halfhearted affairs compared to the earlier storm.

  "What do you think, lover?"

  "The ville, Sharp, our situation, or Emma?"

  "Yes."

  He grinned. "Which?"

  "All of them. The ville?"

  "Workmanlike is the word that kept comin' to me. Not grand and not poor. Good sec men. Defense isn't anywhere like as good as they think it is. I could get in and take it with half a dozen good men. Or women. Well organized, though."

  "Sharpe?"

  "You feel anything about him?"

  Krysty had found a brush lying at the vanity and sat down in front of a gilt-framed mirror, working the knots out of her bright hair.

  "Nothing. Tough. Harsh. His comment about our saving Josh Morgan came as a shock."

  "And to me. Met a shitload of barons in my time. Sharpe's one of those that I wouldn't care to cross. My father used to have a saying that someone ran a tight ship. I guess he was thinking about a man like Sharpe."

  "How about our own situation?"

  Ryan stood behind her, resting his hands on her shoulders, massaging the muscles in her neck. "That's the odd thing about Sharpe. We saved one of his men. Put a dozen of potential enemies across the black water. Says we're welcome and gives us good rooms. Invites us to stay awhile and eat with him. But there's that bitter cold to him, like his heart had been carved from a slab of Alaska ice."

  "Best we don't turn our backs on him, lover." Krysty stood and put her arms around him, holding him tight.

  Ryan kissed her softly on the lips. "Agreed."

  "How about little Emma? What do you make of her? Something just doesn't set right, does it?"

  "Yeah." He let go of Krysty and pressed his face to the cold damp glass of the windows, staring out across the streaming roofs of the ville. "Time'll come when I'm going to want to know where she's been all her life. And when she found out that she had the doomie power. She still doesn't seem able to control it, like it's something new."

  "I worry she'll get herself killed with it."

  "And us?"

  She nodded. "Mebbe us as well."

  "Jak's stricken with her. Did you notice?"

  She laughed delightedly. "Does a pigeon shit on your head? 'Course I noticed. Good for the kid after all the bad times he's had. Jak's earned some happiness."

  "If he finds it with Emma."

  Krysty stopped smiling, catching the serious note in Ryan's voice. "You think she's bad news, lover?"

  "I think she might be. That's all it is. No more than a feeling. Partly because there's far too many dark places hidden in her life."

  ONCE AGAIN, the word "workmanlike" came to Ryan's mind when the food was served in a large dining room, with a vaulted roof of oak beams: a sturdy beef stew with plain baked bread, no salt or pepper or herbs or spices seemed to be allowed to desecrate the table of Baron Sharpe; a joint of roasted pork, carved thick, well-done, with a dull gravy poured over boiled potatoes and sliced carrots served with watery cabbage; and a steamed pudding, heavy on suet, with a lumpy custard sauce.

  Thin beer was served from brimming glass jugs by a pair of elderly servants. And water. Krysty chose to have the water and found it to be slightly brackish, with an underlying taste of copper.

  "I must compliment you on the underwhelming adequacy of your table, Baron Sharpe," Doc boomed, dabbing at his mouth with a patched napkin.

  "What was that? I'm sorry, my thoughts were elsewhere on more important matters."

  There it was again, the strange lack of social manners that they'd seen earlier.

  "I remarked that you must surely have a descendant of the great Escoffier working in your kitchens."

  "Who? I don't think we have anyone of that name as kitchen servant, do we, Joaquin?"

  "Don't think so, Baron."

  "Doc," Mildred whispered warningly, "don't go too far and push your luck."

  But the old man was off and running, following his speeding train of thought, not too concerned to engage his brain before operating his mouth.

  "Are you by any rate chance familiar with the word 'logy,' Baron?"

  "You ask a lot too many bloody questions, Dr. Tanner. No, I'm not."

  "Then kindly allow me to say that this has been one of the most logy meals that I have ever encountered."

  "What's it mean?" Krysty whispered.

  "Shan't tell you, my dear. Anyone wants to know is at liberty to look it up. My lips are sealed. Perhaps by the glue that passed for custard."

  Ryan didn't understand a lot of what Doc had been saying, but he could tell by the impish gleam in his eyes that he was indulging his wit at the expense of the baron, which was never a good thing to do.

  "Heard tell you collect animals, Baron," Ryan said, changing the subject.

  "Where did you hear that?" Sharpe asked suspiciously.

  "Around and about. I think it was probably a hunter up in Green Hill."

  Sharpe nodded. "Could be. Yes, that would make sense. I collect very special animals, Cawdor."

  "Special?" J.B. asked.

  "I wasn't aware that you suffered from deafness, Dix. Perhaps I need to speak more loudly to allow for your disability. I said they were special."

  "In what way?" The Armorer took off his glasses and polished them carefully on the cloth, refusing to allow the baron to rile him.

  "I don't have the time or the energy to try to explain my collection. If you don't understand, then nothing I say would help. And if you do understand, then no explanation is needful."

  "Can we go and see it? See them? Please?" It was almost the first thing that Emma had said since they'd arrived in the ville.

  "Why not?"

  "When?" asked Jak, who'd been sitting next to Emma.

  The baron drained his tankard of beer and wiped his mouth on his sleeve. "Now." He pushed his chair back and walked quickly from the hall.

  Joaquin was the only member of his staff allowed to eat with them, and he rose to follow his master, beckoning to Ryan and the others. "Come on. Baron doesn't care for late or slow."

  "I can believe that," Ryan said, leading his companions after Sean Sharpe.

  Chapter Twenty

  Ryan noticed that Jak seemed to be limpin
g more badly than he had earlier in the day. "Those stone splinters in your calf still giving you trouble?"

  "Some. Knocked going after stickies. Loose stones. Hurt on walk here."

  "Need Mildred to take a look at it later?"

  The albino shook his head, the stark white of his hair seeming to illuminate the dark hall through which they were passing.

  "Just wound knitting." He hesitated a moment, as though he were trying to decide whether to ask a question, finally making up his mind. "Ryan?"

  "What?"

  "Why does Baron keep looking me and Krysty?"

  "I don't know, Jak. I noticed it, as well." There was no point in pretending to someone as acute as Jak that he was imagining things.

  Emma tugged at his sleeve, delaying him until they were last in the line. "Good lie," she said quietly.

  "About the baron?"

  "You think he's considering Krysty and Jak for his collection, don't you?" She tried for a smile and nearly got there. "No point lying to me, is there, Ryan?"

  "Guess not. Can you see Sharpe doing anything?"

  "No. No, I can't." She paused. "At least, I. Not yet, I can't."

  THEY CAME OUT a bolted door into a courtyard at the rear of the main building, having followed the baron past the kitchens and a laundry room.

  Sharpe set a fast pace, not doing anything to check that his guests were following successfully. Joaquin, the sergeant, acted as a link, trying to keep his master in sight ahead of him, glancing back to make sure Ryan and his seven companions weren't getting left too far behind.

  Through the next door was a formal knot garden, constructed from box and yew. Sharpe seemed to be gathering speed, vanishing through an archway on the far side of the garden before Ryan and his friends had reached the near side.

  "Nearly there," Joaquin called.

  Krysty's bright crimson sentient hair was curling tightly about her nape, where it had earlier been flowing freely over her shoulders. Ryan spotted it, knowing that it was often a sign of unease.

  He moved closer, dropping his voice. "Trouble?"

  "Not a good feel. Not exactly danger. Guess it must be the mutie animals he's supposed to have in this collection of his. Soon know."

  Jak and Emma brought up the rear. The black-clothed young woman was pale, and it looked to Ryan like the teenager was supporting her. But it didn't seem a good idea to draw Sharpe's attention to her weakness.

  The baron stood impatiently by a steel door with three heavy sec bolts on it.

  "You say you want to see my pets, then you can't be bastard bothered to turn up on time. I think I'll cancel my invitation to you."

  His voice was harsh, like a cold norther over a granite slab. The handsome mouth was curled in disdain.

  Krysty stepped closer to him, smiling. "That would be a great disappointment, Baron. We hoped to pass this way, before the accident to our wag. We had heard so much throughout Deathlands of Baron Sean Sharpe and his unusual collection."

  "Unusual, Miss Wroth?"

  "Yes."

  "Wrong. It is fucking unique." A wintry smile drifted across his lips. "However, I wouldn't have it said through this fair land that I refused the plea of a pretty woman. No, not pretty. Quite beautiful. You may see my pets."

  "Thank you, Baron." Krysty came close to dropping him a curtsy.

  "But I will waste no time with it. Joaquin?"

  "Baron?"

  "Do the honors. Make sure all is locked and safe. Any mistake and I'll have the skin off your back."

  "Aye, Baron." The hesitant note of doubt was impossible to mistake.

  "What is it, man?"

  "He won't show us." Emma was right behind Ryan, and he just caught her whisper.

  "How much should I show them, Baron?"

  "Ah, yes. Well, well. Good man, good. The animals and reptiles and fishes."

  "Nothing more?"

  "No." The syllable was like the snapping of a steel-spring beartrap.

  "Right, Baron."

  Sharpe looked along the group of outlanders. "Enjoy," he said. "Meet at supper."

  He turned on his heel and stalked off, back toward the main house, the heels of his boots clacking off the stone path, fading into the distance.

  "I'll open up," the sec sergeant said.

  Ryan stopped him. "Question, Joaquin."

  "What is it?"

  "Sharpe ever married?"

  "No. Not that taken by women. Not in that sort of way." He continued quickly, "Nor boys, neither. Not that way at all. Once every few months he asks me to find him a good clean girl from one of the shanties."

  "But if they're good they're not clean, and if they're clean they're no good," J.B. said, repeating one of the old war wag jokes.

  Joaquin grinned. "Ace on the line. I get a slut in. Have her washed and looked over by a woman. Goes into the baron's room. Hour later comes out. Handful of jack. Warning about keeping her silence. And that's it."

  "He changes a lot, doesn't he?" Mildred said. "Almost like he's two different people, both of them living in the same skin and sharing the same brain."

  The sec man nodded his agreement. "Been like that since he had a bad fever, about a year ago. Bloody flux and black water. Life was feared for. Seems to some of us been serving him a long time that he's not quite the same man he was before. Says one thing, then says 'something else. Like watching a butterfly going around a flower garden."

  "He hear voices?" Mildred asked.

  Joaquin shook his head. "Baron Sharpe? You kidding me? You sayin' he's a stupe, lady?"

  "No, no."

  "Good. Because there's nothing much wrong with him that time won't heal."

  The black woman had worked in general practice before becoming a specialist in the medical science of freezing, and she knew that a good doctor listened carefully for what wasn't said as much as for what was said.

  "Nothing much that time won't heal? I'm interested, Joaquin. I have medical training. Anything else that you've noticed?"

  The sec man looked at her for several long, considered seconds. "Not my place to talk about the man who pays me jack and places food on my plate."

  "But."

  " 'Couple things. You've seen him be changeable. Times the baron seems upset by things that are going good. Other times he's amused by bad news. And he's gotten to be a whole lot more interested in his 'collection' than he used to be three or four years ago. Main thing in his life."

  "What kind of interested?" Ryan asked.

  "Ville's going to rack an' fuckin' ruin, Cawdor. Me and some of the older servants, men and women, run it. He kind of walks through. Half the days he never seems to notice any of us, like a man in a dream. Only time he shows any excitement is when he hears of some new sort of mutie in the outlands that he can send off and try to get for his zoo."

  Mildred was nodding at everything Joaquin said, though she chose not to speak again.

  Dean broke the slightly uncomfortable silence. "Can we go in now?"

  The sergeant grinned at him, rubbing fingers through his salt-and-pepper beard. "Why not, young man? One thing, for all of you. No touching or knocking on cages or anything like that. Keep your hands to yourselves."

  He opened the outer door and led the way through, Dean at his heels, the others following.

  Mildred waited to go last, catching Ryan's eye so that he lingered with her.

  "You spotted something about the baron?" he asked. "Some sort of sickness?"

  "My guess is that he's become schizophrenic, Ryan. Kind of split personality."

  "Like he's two different people living in the same body? That it?"

  "That's it, Ryan. What we heard before we came here made me think he was someone you took care with. Now I'm even more certain. Maybe we shouldn't linger too long around his ville. What do you think?"

  Ryan squeezed her shoulder. "Good to have you along, Mildred. Things you know. Likely nobody else in all Deathlands has your knowledge."

  "We staying here?"

&n
bsp; "Awhile. Supper. One night."

  "Then?"

  "Sleep light and walk careful."

  "One of Trader's?"

  Ryan nodded. "Yeah."

  Dean suddenly appeared in the doorway, his face flushed with excitement. "Come on, you two. Joaquin's about to open the main doors."