by James Axler
"Good one!" Ryan shouted as he paused near her, in case she needed help.
"Bastards," she hissed. As she stood, a bullet hit her in the left side of her chest, knocking her to her knees again. Before Ryan could move, a second bullet smashed into her head, just above the left ear, killing her instantly.
"Fireblast!" Ryan cursed.
The worst of it was that there was no target available for his own blaster. The rain of arrows and the occasional bullet came from the shelter of the surrounding trees and boulders.
The entrance to the redoubt gave them temporary relief from the attack. Apart from Janine, whose corpse was left where it had dropped, they all made it safely. None of them, except Peachy, had injuries that were likely to prove terminal.
As soon as they were out of sight, there was a harsh shouted word of command. And silence fell.
The Trader beckoned Ryan to his side. "I never seen a one of 'em. You make who they are?"
"Sure as shit aren't sec-men. They only got single-shot blasters. And only four or five of them. Rest got bows. Must be Indians."
"Main thing is, make sure they can't get around behind us. Now that we're snug in here we can leave a couple with automatic rifles, and they can hold off the entire damned Sioux nation."
"Apaches, Trader," Garcia interrupted. "Saw one moving around. Apache. Sure of it."
For the first time there was a moment to survey their surroundings.
Ryan had been with the Trader on a few previous occasions when they'd scouted a newly discovered redoubt. Most of them had been like this.
The destroyed sec-doors were the giveaway. It meant that the fortress had been opened up, maybe within the past year. If the entrance was peeled open, then the chances of finding anything worthwhile inside stood between one and zilch. Probably nearer to zilch.
With the Trader, deciding and acting were only a heartbeat away from each other. Once he'd made a plan he'd act upon it.
Two members of the group, along with the worst wounded, stayed just inside the entrance. The remnants of the doors, combined with a lot of fallen concrete, provided excellent cover. With Uzis and a British Enfield Support Weapon, they had all the firepower they could need to hold off even a direct frontal attack. Nightfall was still a long way off, so they were secure.
The Trader and Ryan, with the rest of the party, moved inside, the hand lights they'd brought with them at the ready.
The ceiling had fallen in several places, revealing the mesh of rusting iron above it. Water had seeped through from somewhere higher up the mountain and dribbled down the moss-covered walls. The floor was ankle-deep in stagnant pools of water, covering a tangle of tumbled rubbish.
"Air's bad," Garcia said, stopping and sniffing. "Don't seem like another entrance."
Ryan could tell that himself. All over Deathlands there were ruined buildings, and some of them had never been entered since the day of sky-dark. You got used to telling the difference in the air. This redoubt smelled of decay, of urine and animals. Often there'd be a link with other parts of the huge fortresses, and there'd be some kind of air flow. In a few redoubts the nuke power units still functioned, and you had lights and heat.
Those were the ones where you looked for some kind of trading treasure.
"Want to go on?" Ryan asked the Trader.
"No point. I can smell the rotten stillness. No point."
They'd only gone about two hundred yards into the cavern, but the weight of the earth above them was already becoming oppressive. It was like being inside your own tomb, with the worry that someone outside was about to slam the door and turn the key on you. It wasn't a good feeling.
Behind them they all heard a sudden thin cry that rose and fell, fading away into a soft bubbling sound.
"Guess that's Peachy," Ryan said. "Off to buy the farm."
The Trader punched one hand into the other. "Rad-blast it! I truly hate to lose a young one."
They quickly made their way back to the main entrance. There'd been a single, brief burst of fire from Giardino, who had the Enfield.
"Coupla them showed up between them trees. Think I hit one. Mebbe both. Mebbe not."
Janine's body lay where it had fallen, and the corpse of Peachy had been dragged to the side of the redoubt entrance. Ryan only glanced at it as he went by. The pile of meat and clothes wasn't the bright, laughing kid anymore. He'd gone forever.
"Standoff," the Trader said, squinting around the corner of one of the tumbled sec-doors. "They can't get in at us, and we'll find it hard to get out safe. What's the moon?"
Ryan's job as war captain included keeping up with that kind of knowledge. Being certain if you had a full moon or only a thumbnail of a sliver could easily mean the difference between breathing and choking. Being trapped in the old redoubt was exactly that kind of situation.
"Quarter," he replied. "Most likely the clouds'll clear after dusk. Be enough for them to make us if we try to move."
A few pebbles rattled down in front of the entrance, pattering on the concrete. The Trader looked around at Ryan.
"Above us," he said.
"Yeah," Ryan agreed.
Some more stones and a couple of larger boulders came crashing down. It seemed like a good move from the Apaches. If they could start a slide that would fill the doorway to the redoubt, they wouldn't have to risk anything. A few hundred tons of bedrock would seal in the invaders and leave them nowhere to run.
Ryan went inside to look again at the broken remnant of the plan of the redoubt, hoping that he might somehow find a clue that would open up an avenue of escape. But the air remained still and stagnant.
He walked slowly back to rejoin the others, waiting in the dripping gloom. Outside, there was bright sunlight and no sign of the men behind the ambush.
The voice was sudden and grating. "We will break stones and make the mountain fall. But you go alive if you send us out the man with one eye."
Everyone, including the Trader, looked at Ryan.
Chapter Twenty-Two
DOC TANNER WAS praying. It wasn't an activity that came naturally to the old man, not lately. He'd prayed a lot, wildly, after he was trawled forward from 1896 to the alien year of 1998, plucked from the side of his beloved wife and two little children. Doc had tried all sorts of desperate entreaties to any kind of deity that might be listening, knowing all the time that it was futile, that there was no possible way of jumping him back through time to rejoin his family.
Now he prayed for Ryan Cawdor.
"Please, Lord, hear me. I know that this man, Ryan, might not have been what some folks would call a good man. I know he's butchered many of the ungodly, but the overwhelming majority of them truly had retribution coming. He's totally loyal to his friends, and he upholds the right. Isn't that what it's all about, Lord? About upholding the right? Ryan Cawdor is a man who walks through the valley of the shadow of Deathlands and fears no evil. He doesn't pass by on the other side, Lord. So, now he needs you… now he's slipping into the darkness… aid him with thy rod and thy staff, Lord."
On his knees in the dimly lighted room, Doc wasn't aware that the others had come in to stand behind him, listening to the sonorous, measured voice.
Jak raised a silent hand to brush an errant tendril of snow-white hair off his high forehead.
J.B. leaned against the edge of the door, face lined and tired. He'd been searching desperately for some other way out of the redoubt, for something that might save the life of his oldest companion.
Krysty stood by him. She and Mildred had been experimenting for a day and a half with the limited supply of drugs, trying to hit upon some combination that might drag the deeply unconscious man out of his coma.
Mildred had explained to her that the damage to Ryan wasn't caused by the bacteria from the food. So a normal course of antibiotics would be fruitless. It was the toxins that the bacteria had left in the stew that were killing him. Antitoxins would save him, but the medicine cupboard didn't contain what Mildred needed
.
Experimentation was the only hope—to stumble upon something that would ease the progress of the fatal disease.
Now he lay there, as still as a carved statue. His chest was barely moving, and his breathing was stilted and labored. Twice already Mildred had been forced to help him breathe through a crisis, and feeding was out of the question.
Doc, face buried in his hands, was ending his prayer.
"I think that this might be fruitless as whistling in the dark. But if there is someone beyond the veil, someone listening to the rambling words of a damned old cretin, then help me. Help us. Help Ryan Cawdor, Lord. I beg you. In the name of the Father, the Son and the Holy Ghost."
The chorus of "Amen" from behind him made the old man start and look around, nearly losing his balance and falling in the process. Krysty stepped forward and helped him to his feet, his knee joints cracking like distant pistol shots.
"Thank you, my dear. I do hope that you don't think the old chap's losing his marbles?"
She smiled and squeezed his hand. "Course not, Doc. If it helps… if anything'll help, then it's worth a try."
"Why not Earth Mother's power, Krysty?" Jak asked.
She shook her head. The curls of dazzling scarlet were bunched and dull. "Can't, Jak. Not the way Gaia's forces work. I could lift him up and break metal and… and do anything that needs 'power.' But it's more strength, Jak."
"Ryan needs strength."
"Sure. But from inside him." She managed a wan smile. "Sure I can help him a little. Hold him and talk to him. It helps some. But when you get to the ace on the line, Ryan'll make the score…or he won't. That's all."
Doc looked at Mildred. "Any joy with the medicines?"
She rubbed her eyes and sighed. "If I never look at another mix of powders, pills and liquids it'll be too damned soon. I don't know, Doc. I've worked out something that might do the trick. Got it in this syringe here. It could combat the poisons. If it does, then Ryan could pull through. Like Krysty said, he's got the inner strength."
"If needle doesn't work… chilled?" Jak said.
"That's about it. The paralysis of his muscles is almost total. Face is like granite. The heart's slowing all the time, and I don't think his breathing can carry him through another three, four hours."
"Then I suggest, madam, that you use that needle. And let us hope that your medical skills and my poor prayers combine to aid him."
Mildred took the stopper off the end of the needle and squirted a tiny silver spray in the air to remove any risk of causing an embolism. She knelt by the bed. Ryan was completely still, the gray blanket over his body seeming motionless. His eye was closed, his lips slightly parted, and his skin had a deathly waxen pallor.
"Not easy to hit a vein," Mildred muttered, flicking at his forearm with her index finger. "Ah, we got us a live one here." The needle slid into the skin, and she steadily depressed the plunger. Withdrawing it, she gave a quick wipe to the puncture with a strip of cotton that had been soaked in surgical disinfectant.
"Now?" J.B. asked.
"We wait."
"How long."
"How the—" She controlled herself. "I don't know, J.B., and I don't want to guess. But if it hasn't worked in, let's say four hours, then I think Ryan will be dead."
They stood in a silent circle. Ryan had an oddly withdrawn, faraway look, as if he were listening to some distant voice calling to him, calling out to the one-eyed man.
Chapter Twenty-Three
"THE MAN WITH ONE EYE. What the hell you done to upset them, Ryan, got all their women pregnant? Deflowered every virgin on the ranch?"
Otis was laughing, oblivious to the mortal danger that they were in. If the attacking Indians kept their word and managed to lever down half the cliff and block the redoubt entrance, then everyone's life expectancy was going to suddenly get really short.
"I never been down this way before," replied Ryan. "Why'd they want me?"
"Ten minutes, killer of the helpless! We will give you the quick death you gave our women and our babies. The others will walk free."
The Trader slapped his hand against the side of one of the doors, making the steel ring. "Fireblast! Of course."
Ryan was only a moment behind him. "Sure. That's why."
Some of the others were much slower on the uptake, still looking at one another in bewilderment.
J.B. explained. "Those guys out there want the one-eyed man. They've seen Ryan, but he's not the one-eyed man they really want."
"Ferryman," July said. "Course."
There was some laughter and relieved chattering, but the Trader shut them up.
"They could take some persuading, my friends. We can tell Ryan from the sec-boss. I wonder if these men can. Or even want to. They got them a one-eyed man snug in the nest. Why worry about whether he's the right one?"
"Two minutes then all die!"
"I'll talk to them," the Trader said.
Very cautiously he edged toward the entrance, waving a hand and shouting that he wanted a truce, wanted to speak to their chief.
Nobody shot at him, but nobody answered him either. He glanced around at Ryan, who shook his head. "Don't risk it, Trader. Wait there."
"One minute. All die!"
"Listen, you dumb-ass piece of double-stupe shit! I wanna talk!"
"Tactful, Trader," Ryan said. "Real tactful."
"Why talk?" The voice was doubtful. "Give One-Eye to us. All live. He die. Keep him and he die. All die. What is to talk?"
"We come out and mebbe we all die, but some of you get chilled. You know it's true. Talk and it could be that nobody gets to die at all. What's wrong with that? Sounds a good idea to me."
The Trader took another half step, so that the light threw his shadow back into the dank cavern. Ryan and the others had fingers on triggers. If the Trader had gone down, Ryan would have led the charge outside. That would be the last and only option.
"I talk. Me. You. No others. No bows. No blasters. You come two hands of steps."
"Ten yards forward," Garcia interpreted unnecessarily.
"You come same distance," the Trader insisted, turning and calling into the redoubt. "Rest of you stay ready."
Ryan moved to a position where he could cover the Trader. Part of his mind was conscious once again that J.B. was right, and that he really ought to get himself a long gun. If the Indians appeared and started blasting, his own Smith & Wesson revolver wouldn't be the best weapon to have in his hand.
The Trader moved out into the open, counting his steps out loud, toward the sheer drop where the blacktop had been severed.
After a brief delay, a stocky figure appeared near a single tilting lodgepole pine, holding an old carbine at the trail. The Apache wore cotton trousers and a loose shirt and had his long hair tied back in a green bandanna.
The two men stopped a few paces apart, but the day was still and it was easy for everyone to hear their conversation.
"I'm Trader. Who're you?"
"Slow Eagle. Of the Mimbrenos. Why do you come to Many Wolves Canyon?"
"Why not?"
"I have lost a brother to your blasters. You have two who will not ride tomorrow. Why?"
The Trader coughed. "My business. Better question is why you attack us like sneaking back-stabbers? Tell me that."
"This is our land."
"Doesn't give you any right to chill folks minding their own business."
The Apache's voice rose in anger. "Your business! The business of Butcher Carson is death!"
"Business of Baron Carson's no concern at all of ours."
"Liar!" The word was shouted so loud that it echoed from the surrounding cliffs.
For a moment Ryan really believed that the Trader was going to draw down on the Indian. There were things you could kid his boss about, but the one thing you never did was question his honesty.
With an obvious effort he controlled himself and kept his voice surprisingly calm and gentle. "It is not a thing of honor to say another man lac
ks honor."
Slow Eagle had taken a half step back and lifted his blaster to his hip. Then he lowered it again. "You are the men of the baron."
"We are not. Told you. I'm Trader. These are my people. We're at Towse to buy and barter for gas and ammo."
The Apache shook his head. "I still say your words are the glitter of light upon a fast river, carried away and not worthy of notice."
"Now, why the dark night d'you keep saying that, mister? You got no call."
The Indian's finger pointed out like a striking rattler, aimed at where Ryan was waiting in the shadows of the redoubt.
"There is Blind Night," he crowed, "the butcher of babes. Carson's sec-boss! Do you think us fools that we do not see him?"
"Oh shit," someone said behind Ryan. "That empties the tank on us."
"You think that's Ferryman?" the Trader asked. "His name's Ryan Cawdor, and he's my war captain on the two wags."
"Blind Night," the Mimbrenos chief insisted. "He is well remembered."
The Trader turned and beckoned Ryan toward him, asking the Indian first if he would let him come without shooting him from cover. Slow Eagle nodded his permission and called a guttural warning to his hiding warriors.
"Look closely," the Trader urged. "Ryan has lost an eye. Ferryman has also an eye missing, but Ryan is taller. His skin is not so dark. Can't you see that for yourself?"
The Apache stared intently at Ryan through narrowed eyes, shaking his head doubtfully and then coming a few steps closer. From the cliffs above the sec-doors someone shouted something in the Indian tongue. Slow Eagle didn't reply.
"What did he say?" the Trader asked.
"That no person of the Apache has ever seen Blind Night close to the face and lived."
"Must be some way of settling this," Ryan said. "Isn't there anybody who seen Ferryman who'd know him again? Anybody?"
The Apache shook his head again. "The man is walking death to all. He led the raid on our pueblo and torched the church. Buried babies living. Drove our women into the fires so they ran and burned and screamed. They screamed, Blind Night!"
