by James Axler
“How are you feeling?” Katz asked, flipping open the lid of the box.
“Good. Where Mildred?”
“Oh, uh, she’s with your other friends, getting ready for this afternoon’s challenge. She said she’d be busy for the next little while so she asked me to come by and give you your medicine.”
Jak didn’t believe that. Mildred would never send a stranger to do her work. None of the friends ever passed off responsibilities to anyone other than the people in their group.
Nobody else could be trusted.
Jak slipped his left arm inside his jacket and pulled out one of the leaf-bladed throwing knives hidden there.
At that moment two sec men entered the room.
Katz took the shiny steel syringe from the box, lifted the pointed end toward the ceiling and depressed the plunger until a thin stream of reddish liquid spurted out the tip of the needle.
He moved toward Jak.
“What that?”
“It will help with your pain, and your fever.” A smile appeared at the corner of Katz’s mouth. “It will make you feel real good.”
Jak shook his head.
The sec men grabbed him, one on each shoulder.
A searing pain burned in his wounded shoulder as the sec men pushed him back onto the bed.
Katz neared.
Jak kicked him with his right leg, the toe of his boot connecting with one of his kidneys.
The whitecoat’s smile was gone. His teeth were bared now and he looked evil, and a little bit mad.
One of the sec men punched Jak in the side of the head with a beefy fist. The blow stunned the youth, but he remained conscious.
“Hold him still.”
“Fucker’s stronger than he looks,” the sec man on the left yelled.
The sec man on the right punched him again, only this time he hit Jak’s shoulder, causing the albino teen to see sparks of pain behind his eyes.
The whitecoat was over him. The red liquid from the syringe was leaking onto the sheets, leaving tiny brown stains…like blood.
Jak’s left hand appeared from beneath his jacket.
He flicked his wrist and caught the whitecoat in the throat.
The man screamed and grabbed at his neck, rich red blood leaking through his fingers.
But while Jak had injured the man, most likely fatally, the whitecoat was still able to stab the needle into his thigh and depress the plunger.
Jak felt a coolness enter his leg. The thigh muscle tingled, and that tingly feeling quickly began to spread. His right leg went limp, feeling as if it were—he searched his mind for the word—enchanted. Yes, that was it, his leg felt enchanted, as if it had been touched by magic.
The rest of his body began to feel the same thing. Down to his feet, and over his penis and testicles, his stomach, arms, wrists, hands, fingers…all enchanted. And then his face tingled and his head…his head felt as if it had detached from the rest of his body.
He saw stars and butterflies.
He saw women, all that he wanted. There was food—beef and corn and fruit.
He saw Christina and Jenny. He spent time with them on the shores of a lake loving each other…like a family.
“Enjoy it while it lasts, freak,” the whitecoat said, the blood still pouring from his neck.
Jak was enjoying it.
He lay back on the cot, relaxed.
And wishing that this feeling would never end.
“THERE WILL BE four on our team,” Ryan said. He jabbed his chest with his thumb, then pointed to the others. “Me, Krysty, J.B. and Mildred.”
Doc coughed an “ahem.” “I have no question about your leadership of this group, my dear Ryan, but I would not be much of a member of it if I didn’t complain about not being invited to the party.” Doc stood with his swordstick in front of him and both hands on top of its silver lion’s-head handle.
“You’ll be watching us, Doc, with Jak and Eleander.”
Doc nodded, suddenly pleased with the assignment. “Oh, I see… Well, excuse my little outburst. As usual, you have made an excellent leadership decision, and I ask that you excuse my ignorance for not seeing the logic of it immediately.”
“No problem, Doc.”
“I will make our little trio the best cheering section ever,” Doc said. “Why, I remember cheering the Oxford eights in a victory of Cambridge. I was so hoarse afterward that I could barely speak a word for a week.”
“Something to look forward to, then,” J.B. quipped.
“Let’s get our gear together and have it all ready to go after the challenge. I want to load up on ammo and leave as soon as we’re done, so make sure nothing gets left behind.”
“I’m not sure Jak will be ready to travel,” Mildred said.
“He’ll have to be,” Ryan countered. “The longer we stay here the less I like it.”
“I’m with you, lover.”
“All right, then. Let’s get packed.”
ROBARDS LED Baron Schini on a circuitous route through the baron’s residence, making sure to take her up and down as many flights of stairs as possible.
“Where the fuck are you taking me?” she demanded after they’d gone up two flights of stairs and gone down one.
“The building is being refitted. There are rooms that are best avoided until they’re done.”
“Bullshit! You’re just having your fun with me, and I don’t like it. If I don’t see the baron soon, one of my sec men will open a window and start taking out citizens of this festering little ville of yours with his blaster.”
Robards ignored the threat. “Ah, here we are.” He opened the door to Baron DeMann’s office, then walked right through to the door that led to the back room.
The large back room was outfitted like a pre-Dark pharmacy, only not as clean. The shelves on all four walls were lined with dozens of plastic jars and bottles of different shapes and sizes. Some were filled with capsules, some with roughly made tablets, and still others with powders of varying color and texture. At one end of the room there was a noisy pre-Dark refrigerator that looked as if it had been remade several times, the last time fitted with a compressor taken from a cooling unit that had to have been four times bigger than the refrigerator. Cables snaked out the window to a noisy electrical generator outside. In the center of the room was a long freestanding island, holding beakers, burners and trays filled with medicinal cultures and viruses. It was marked with a faded and worn, black-and-yellow card that read “Biohazard.”
Baron DeMann stood at one corner of the island, wearing a pair of crudely made black rubber gloves. He held a glass beaker in his hands. Inside the beaker was a cloudy liquid that looked a lot like milky water.
“Still looking for the fountain of youth, DeMann?”
The baron didn’t look up from his work. His eyes fixed on the beaker as if it would do strange things if he took his eyes off it for even a second. “Baron Schini,” he greeted. “Pleasure to see you, as always.”
“I’d have less trouble believing you if you actually looked at me when you said that.”
Baron DeMann’s gaze remained on the beaker. “If you’ll excuse my rudeness, I happen to be working with a significant amount of hydrochloric acid, which among other things is highly corrosive.”
“Did you say acid?”
“Yes, a highly corrosive aqueous solution of hydrogen chloride. In pre-Dark times it was used industrially to remove zinc from galvanized scrap iron and in the production of chlorides and chlorine.”
Baron Schini laughed nervously. Like many barons, she never quite understood what DeMann was up to with his chemicals and concoctions until it was too late. One story she’d heard about Baron DeMann had him solving a dispute over jack owed to DeMann by a baron in Florida by tainting the water supply of the baron’s ville with a type of bacteria. Forty-two people died and more than two hundred and fifty got deathly ill. The dispute was resolved less than a week later.
“Usually the acid is diluted in water
and might burn through clothing or cause minor skin irritation. This is pure, or as pure as I can make it, and it could eat through your flesh, muscle and bone like a mutie rat, only faster and more painfully.”
Baron Schini swallowed, but showed no other outward sign of her discomfort, knowing DeMann would be all over any perceived weakness. “What are you going to do with it?”
Baron DeMann poured some of the acid into a half sphere of plastic and then pressed a second half sphere over the first, creating a perfectly round ball filled with hydrochloric acid. “Let’s just say it’s a surprise for the one-eyed asshole who murdered my brother.”
Baron Schini was silent. She had wanted to chill the outlander who had killed her son herself, but a round from a blaster didn’t seem to be as fitting as what DeMann had in mind.
“You wanted to talk to me about something?” Baron DeMann said, filling a row of balls with acid.
She shook her head. “Not as much talk to you, as tell you that I appreciate you allowing me to watch the outlander suffer.”
The baron finished filling the balls and had a few drops of acid left in the bottom of the beaker. He poured them out onto the wooden top of the table, and the wood bubbled and smoked as an inch-deep line was burned into the surface. “Oh, he’ll be suffering all right, because his death is going to come oh, so slowly.”
WHEN MILDRED RETURNED to check on Jak, the albino teenager was sleeping soundly and sporting a slight smile on his face. She put a hand over his forehead to gauge his temperature.
He felt normal.
“You’re doing better,” she said.
At first Jak didn’t stir, but when she repeated her words, his eyes fluttered opened. They were a bit red, and shinier than usual, but she attributed that to everything he’d been through these past couple of days.
“How do you feel?”
“Good.”
“We’ll be heading out later today,” she said. “After the challenge. Think you’re up to it?”
“No problem.”
She flicked her head toward the door. “We’re all going to the arena now.
You’ll be watching with Doc and Eleander.”
“No problem.”
That seemed like an strange response from Jak. Even though he was still recovering from his injury, Mildred would have expected Jak to want to be in on the challenge. Instead, he was content just to sit on the sidelines and watch. That wasn’t like him, but then again, maybe he was growing up and maturing, knowing his limitations.
“C’mon,” she said. “I’ll help you down off the bed.”
Without a word, Jak rolled over and got onto his feet. He struggled to stay upright, and had to put a hand onto the bedpost to steady himself, but after a few moments he was standing on his own.
“You’re doing better than I thought.”
Jak just smiled.
Mildred found the smile curious. It wasn’t the smile of someone who was pleased with his progress. It was the smile of someone who was somewhere else….
In another world.
“Let’s go,” she said uncertainly. “Doc will take you to the arena.”
ELEANDER MET UP with Doc and accompanied him on his way back to their room to collect Jak and bring him to the arena. Doc greeted the woman with a hug and a kiss and took the time to smell her hair, which seemed as if it were scented with ambrosia.
“The baron makes his own soaps,” she said. “Flowers for the women and musk for the men.”
“Scented soap,” Doc boomed. “Amazing. In all my time in the Deathlands, I have never come across anyone who was so enterprising in his reclamation of some of the more subtler aspects of civilization.”
“The baron is a bit of a mad genius.”
“He would have to be to put so much effort into making things smell good.” Doc took a step back so he could look Eleander in the eye. “But I am grateful to the man, or should I say ‘DeMann,’ ha!…for making such a beautiful flower smell as good as she looks.”
Eleander’s face turned a pale shade of red.
As they turned to start toward Doc’s quarters, Eleander grabbed Doc’s arm. “You know, it’s not all flowers and sunshine here.”
“Of course not. Nowhere is, but from what I have seen it is a better life than most can ever hope for in the Deathlands.”
“From what you’ve seen…” she reminded him.
“That’s right.”
Eleander looked up at Doc. “But there is a lot you haven’t seen. A lot you don’t know about.”
“What are you saying?”
“Do you recall yesterday when you asked what was behind the door in the laboratory?”
“Yes, of course. You didn’t want me going in there and I understood that completely. I know that some things are meant to be kept secret. If the baron is doing research into new chemicals, he would not want people poking around in his work without his knowledge. It is simply a matter of respect, and I am perfectly content to give the man his due.” Doc let out a sigh. “Believe me, I would have appreciated it immensely if people had not tampered or experimented with my own research.”
Eleander was silent for a long time.
“What is it?” Doc asked. “Have I offended you in some way?”
“No, not at all. On the contrary, you’ve actually shamed me.”
“Shamed you? Oh, please accept my humblest apologies.”
“No need to apologize. Indeed, I’m the one who should apologize to you.”
Doc shook his head. “I am afraid I do not understand.”
They sat down on the concrete wall of an ancient flower bed long overgrown by weeds.
“I haven’t been telling you the whole truth about this ville, and I feel badly for it.”
“Whatever you’ve kept to yourself, I am sure you’ve had your reasons.”
“The baron doesn’t only produce medicines here. He also grows and refines a lot of drugs, bad ones like wolfweed, jolt and dreem. And there’s others who have tampered with what he’s accomplished to produce even more potent drugs.”
Doc nodded knowingly. He paused a moment, then continued. “I appreciate your candor, my dear sweet Eleander, but I suspect Ryan and the others have already arrived at that conclusion and therefore that is why we shall be leaving this ville immediately after we’re done with this silly little game the baron has arranged for us.”
“The baron deals in jolt and dreem, and even though he’s addicted to both, he doesn’t allow it to be traded freely inside the ville.”
“A foolish and wise man all at the same time. But if there are drugs produced here, there’s no way he could prevent them being bought and sold on the black market.”
“But the baron isn’t the dangerous one in the ville. The one you have to be careful of is Sec chief Robards.”
“Oh.”
“He doesn’t know anything about making drugs, but he’s persuaded a bunch of whitecoats to create new drugs for him, new and deadly drugs, including a powerful hallucinogen called bang.”
“Bang? That’s what the mutie wanted from us.”
“The sec chief has been experimenting with the drug on people on the fringes of the ville. He gives the drug away and, it’s highly addictive…
“And it acts on their central nervous systems,” Doc chimed in. “Producing changes in moods and hallucinations.”
“Yes,” Eleander said.
“And it produces suicidal feelings, too, does it not, which would explain why those so-called muties climbed the wall last night when they knew they’d be slaughtered.”
“Yes, and lately it’s even been causing mutations in long-term users.”
“And you think this monster of a sec chief is out to hurt us? Surely he could have chilled us all a dozen times over if he wanted.”
“I can’t be sure what he has in mind, but I do know that he’s plotting to get rid of the baron. I think he’s going to try to use your friends as a scapegoat.”
“But how? The baron
won’t be in the arena, and the blasters used in the challenge are little more than toys.”
“I said I don’t know exactly how, but I have a feeling the challenge is a small part of a larger plan to overthrow the baron. You see, the baron has never been very fond of outlanders, since it was a group of outlanders like yours that chilled his brother at Spearpoint. Things like your staying overnight and the challenge in the arena are, well, unusual for this ville.”
“Spearpoint?” Doc whispered. “I’ve been to Spearpoint, or rather, I was there to see it blown to kingdom come.”
Eleander put a hand on Doc’s shoulder. “Promise me you’ll be careful today.”
“I assure you my lady,” Doc said, rising to his feet. “If I am anything, I am always careful.”
“I’m glad.”
“Come now!” He extended his right arm so that Eleander could hold it as they walked. “We must warn the others.”
BARON SCHINI made herself comfortable on one of the bleacher-style seats that had been brought to the edge of the arena on the back of a wag. Baron DeMann, the baron’s mistress Moira, Robards and a few other specially invited VIPs would be using the seats. And, she’d been told, so would two of the outlanders and one of the ville’s whitecoats that one of the outlanders had taken a shine to.
“When do you want to signal the others?” one of her sec men asked.
Baron Schini lit a cheroot she’d carried with her for several weeks waiting for a special occasion. The painful death of her son’s killer was just the sort of event she’d been waiting for. “Not yet,” she said into the sec man’s ear. “Things are too quiet right now. Let’s wait to see how this challenge goes. I have a feeling things are going to be all fucked up in this ville by the time it’s over and done with.”
The baron took a few puffs on the cigar and made a sour face. The tobacco had turned bad. She tossed it aside and it bounced off the bleacher, then tumbled onto the ground where it burned slowly, sending two thin tendrils into the air.
The two sec men accompanying her jumped from their seats and raced each other for the burning butt. The smaller of the two reached it first, picked it up and clenched it between his teeth.
Then he returned to his seat, puffing proudly.
