by James Axler
“I go…” Jak announced to no one in particular.
With that, he loped away from the companions, crossing the pounded dirt in long, easy strides, making for the ville’s defensive perimeter. When he reached it, the slope didn’t slow him. The sun flashed once on his mane of white hair as he disappeared over the top of the berm.
“What’s with him?” Mildred said in dismay. “Where’s he off to now?”
Ryan shrugged as he smoothed out his bedroll and carefully set down the Steyr SSG-70. “Got some private business to attend to, I guess.”
“Are we going to have trouble with Jak?” Mildred asked him point-blank, hands braced on her sturdy hips. “Is he going to lose it on us? Has he already lost it? That’s the last thing we need.”
“Mildred, keep in mind that Jak has saved your life more than once,” Krysty cautioned her.
“And vice versa,” the black woman replied. “Jak and that mutie mountain lion have a connection that’s downright spooky. It’s been so long since we parted ways with that horn-necked monster, I’d almost forgotten just how spooky. It reminds me of the psychological case studies I’ve read about the psychic bonds between human twins. Only in this case it involves creatures of very different species. It isn’t natural, Krysty. It doesn’t make sense, biologically or physiologically.”
“You’re talking like a whitecoat.”
“I can’t help that,” Mildred said. “I was trained to think like a scientist. And the scientist in me says, we have no way of predicting with any sort of confidence what Jak is going to do next. Think about it. We no more than got inside the berm and he had us facing off against a dozen blasters…all over that mutie cat.”
“She’s right about the trouble,” J.B. told Ryan as he took off his glasses and polished the lenses with the hem of his shirt. “The big question is, can Jak keep to the plan we made? Or is he going to blow it for all of us by trying to get that critter out of its cage?”
“As it stands,” Mildred added, “this whole deal is balanced on a knife edge.”
J.B. nodded in agreement. He slipped his glasses back on. “Every one of those carny chillers over there has a centerfire blaster,” he said. “The odds were bastard bad even before we lost Doc. If the rest of us aren’t at one hundred percent, and on the same page, we don’t have a chance in hell here. We’re all gonna end up in a shallow hole with dirt in our faces. Mebbe the smart thing would be to slip over there once it gets dark and put a slug in the back of that big cat’s head.”
“Jak won’t let us down,” Ryan said with conviction. “He never has and he never will. He knows what we have to do, and why.” The hard edge to his voice said for the time being the discussion was over.
Inside, Ryan was as concerned as Mildred and J.B., and for the same reasons, but he couldn’t show it. His confidence had to shore up theirs; it was a simple matter of survival. He had to be the calm in the eye of the storm.
He sat cross-legged on his bedroll and with a scrap of lightly oiled rag began to brush the dust from the scope and action of his treasured predark longblaster. In silence, the others started going through the contents of their packs, sorting and gradually assembling a small pile of trade items so they could all eat and drink at the ville’s hostelries.
Ryan’s hands moved over the rifle automatically, his fingers programmed by countless repetitions of the same vital task. Trader had taught him that a fully functioning weapon was the difference between being dead and cold by the side of the road, and walking on. As he worked, Ryan thought about their long journey, about how they had followed the wheel tracks from the looted hamlet to Perdition ville. The trail ended on the outskirts of Perdition where they found a wide circle of deep holes pounded into the ground, holes made by carny tent’s massive stakes. Exactly the same circle they had found in the looted ville.
From a stooped old man poking around in the pile of worthless, half-burned trash the show had left behind, the companions had learned that the Gert Wolfram show had spent three days and nights entertaining the good folks of Perdition. The trash picker had described the strange and wonderful acts, the rousing music, the feats of strength and daring. There had been a terrible joy and satisfaction in his rheumy eyes as he told them about his favorite part of the show: the part where the two-headed scalie ate a live goat from both ends at once.
Legs first.
If the troupe hadn’t stopped over for those extra days, Ryan and the companions never would have caught up to them. The question was, why were the folks of Perdition still breathing air, and not buried in a ditch?
Compared to the unnamed ville where the mass chilling had been done, Perdition was a major metropolis. Which led Ryan to speculate that mebbe it was just too big for the chillers to tackle, and that’s why they had left it alone. Or mebbe they just skipped some villes along their route to throw any possible pursuit off the track.
The carny’s performance schedule had been posted on the side of a fire-gutted, semitrailer near the circle of tent holes. It turned out that the circus company was heading to a large ville several days southwest of Perdition before moving up the long, dry valley to an engagement at another big hamlet at its northern end.
The companions had taken the difficult, cross-country shortcut to try to intersect the caravan’s route. The hills and mountains that framed the dry valley were impassable by wags; once the carny entered at the southern end, the only exit was far to the north. When Ryan and the others had seen the towering spirals of dust in the distance, they knew they had found their quarry.
By the time Ryan had finished detailing his longblaster, the mound of trade goods on Mildred’s bedroll had grown impressively. She had put in a few .38-caliber cartridges. J.B. had added two empty mags and a minitoolkit for an M-16—a weapon they didn’t carry. Krysty had tossed in a pair of compact binocs with a cracked left lens, and Dean had given up a plastic-handled can opener that was near mint.
J.B. scowled at the carny’s circled wags and said, “Mebbe the Magus himself is hiding over there. Like a nasty old spider, waiting for the fun to begin.”
“Be just like him,” Krysty said. “Crouching in the deep shadows while his puppets do all the dirty work.”
“The Magus may not have anything to do with the carny anymore,” Ryan said. “Not since Wolfram went west.”
“From what it looks like the carny is doing,” J.B. said, “it seems right up his street to me.”
“Mebbe,” Ryan said. “But looting the odd, shit-poor ville would be a big step down for him. The Magus has always been into mass slavery of muties and norms, mostly to support his mining operations and his jolt factories, but also for breeding stock.”
The companions all knew the Magus was into animal husbandry. He specialized in the careful crossbreeding, and perhaps bioengineering, of new mutie races. Rumors abounded that he had “made” the first stickies. It was also rumored that he had acquired the power to travel forward and backward in time. That he had done evil deeds long before any person now alive had been born, and would do evil long after they were dust.
Deathlands was a place of little certain truth and much wild speculation. The only thing anybody knew for sure was that the Magus was a league of chiller above and beyond the run-of-the-mill, gaudy house backstabber.
“He’s back!” Dean exclaimed, pointing at the berm gate. “Jak’s back.”
The albino trotted across the compound at the same easy pace. Over his shoulder, its short front and long back legs trussed, was a skinned, dressed-out, thirty-pound mutie jackrabbit.
There had been no gunshot echo rolling over the valley. Ryan figured Jak had used one of the many leaf-bladed throwing knives hidden on his person to dispatch the rabbit.
“Why did he bring us dinner?” Dean asked his father. “I thought we were going to eat at the gaudy?”
The lion let out a blood-curdling roar that put an end to conversation.
It became clear that it wasn’t their dinner the albino had brought
when he turned hard left and made a beeline for the row of trailered cages. Ignoring the crudely lettered Danger: Don’t Feed The Muties sign, Jak passed the fresh carcass through the bars to his brother beast.
The mountain ate the offering greedily, crunching up the bones with no more effort than he used to chew the flesh. A thirty-pound jackrabbit was a mere snack for an animal his size—it was gone in a few seconds. But it had to have been mighty tasty if the diesel-wag purring noise the cat made as it licked the blood from its huge paws was any measure.
“Say, Dean,” Ryan said, nudging his transfixed son with a gentle elbow. “I think someone’s trying to catch your eye….”
Dean turned to look. Instantly, a wide smile lit up his face.
Standing at the far end of the plant bed was a sun-browned little girl in a too big cotton dress with a crown of daisies in her golden-streaked brown hair. She smiled back at him, tooth for gleaming white tooth.
Chapter Six
“My name’s Leeloo. What’s yours?”
The twelve-year-old boy beamed down at her. “Dean,” he said.
“That’s a great blaster you’ve got, Dean.”
He glanced at the blue-steel weapon strapped to his hip. “It’s a 15-shot, nine mill Browning. Want to hold it?”
Leeloo nodded enthusiastically.
Dean dumped the staggered-row magazine onto his palm. Then he cracked back and checked the breech for a chambered round. After making sure the weapon was safe, without a second thought, he handed over what she knew had to be his most prized possession in all the world.
Leeloo very carefully took the Browning Hi-Power from him and held it in both hands, making a shaky, wavering attempt to aim. “Oh,” she said in dismay, “it’s heavier than I thought.”
Dean stepped around behind her and helped her raise the blaster to firing position. “You want to hold it about here,” he said.
Something new happened to Leeloo Bunny as young Dean reached his arms around her, enfolding her. In kindness. She felt suddenly safe and protected; she felt the urge to lean back against his chest, to feel the strength and the energy he gave off.
It was an urge she didn’t allow herself to give in to.
With great patience, Dean showed her how to work the Hi-Power’s safety. He made her adjust her stance to brace herself for the recoil. And he showed her how to hold her finger outside the trigger guard until she was ready to fire.
Nobody had given her any blaster training before. And certainly not with such a sophisticated and deadly predark weapon. She wasn’t old enough. Dean Cawdor, whose long, dark hair tickled the back of her neck as he leaned over her, thought she was. He cocked back the hammer with his thumb and told her to dry-fire the Browning.
“Go ahead,” he said, “squeeze the trigger.”
The firing pin made a twig-snap sound.
“Does it make a lot of noise when it really shoots?” she asked him.
“Sure does.”
He took back the blaster, lowered the hammer with his thumb, put the safety on and reholstered it.
“My ma got chilled,” Leeloo told him.
Dean looked at her for a long minute. She wasn’t sure whether she had said something bad without meaning to. Something that would make him not like her anymore.
She was about to apologize when he said, “Mine, too. She died of cancer. She was sick a long time. What happened to your ma?”
“My ma got choked in the gaudy while she was wrestling.”
“Wrestling?” Dean said, puzzled.
“On the bed.”
“Oh,” Dean said.
Leeloo stared at him closely, and as if she could read his mind—or heart—said, “Did your ma wrestle in the gaudies, too?”
“Sometimes,” the dark-haired boy said, staring down at his dusty boot tops. Though his lips moved, his face was expressionless. “But only when we didn’t have anything to eat, or nowhere safe to sleep. She was so pretty she could always find work in a gaudy.”
“They strung up the geezer who chilled my mom,” Leeloo told him. “I saw them do the whole thing. They yanked his pants down first. When his neck broke, it made a loud crack and his willy stuck out, like in wrestling. One time, before they cut him down, I clonked it good with a rock.”
“What about your dad?” Dean asked.
“Never had one that I know of. You’re lucky ’cause you’ve got one. And a good one, too. I can see that from the way he looks out for you.”
“Who takes care of you, then?”
“Fat Melchior, the headman of the ville. He took me in after Ma got chilled.”
“Is he nice to you?”
“Sure. But there’s not enough nice to go around. He has too many other kids of his own and the cabin is small.”
“You sound sad, Leeloo. Are you sad a lot?”
“I try not to be. I do things that make me happy, mostly by myself.”
“Me, too,” Dean said. “I like scouting ahead for the others when we’re on the move. Jak, he’s the one with the white hair, he’s teaching me how to read signs. He doesn’t say much, but I think I’m starting to get good at it.”
“You must have wonderful adventures with your dad and your friends. I’m still too young for adventures, I guess.”
“You’ll have some, though. Mebbe even better ones.”
“Do you really think so?”
“I’m sure of it.”
From the other side of the compound came the sound of her name being called. “Leeeee-looooo Bunny!”
“Dinnertime,” she said, destroyed at the prospect of being pulled away from something so exciting and extraordinary by something so boring and ordinary.
“You’d better go, then,” he told her. “Don’t want to be late, not with all those other kids at the table. You won’t get anything to eat.”
“Are you staying for the carny?” she asked him.
“Sure.”
“Then mebbe I’ll see you tomorrow?”
He smiled at her. “Of course,” he said. “I’ll look for you in the morning.”
With a totally mystifying combination of pain and joy sitting upon her heart, Leeloo Bunny descended the berm. She had never had a crush on a boy before. Had never wanted to kiss a boy before. In part, this was due to the awakening of her physical self; in part it was due to the fact that none of the ville boys interested her in the least. And for good reason. After watching the goings-on through the gaudy windows, the older ones got all panting and grabby handed, trying to insinuate their dirty fingers into very private places. Other girls in the ville, some even younger than Leeloo, let them do that, and more. Not Leeloo, though. The younger boys in Bullard ville were even more dismal crush prospects. They all had snot caked on their cheeks, and their breath smelled like creamed corn.
When she got back to Fat Melchior’s cabin, the chaos of dinner for ten was well under way. She didn’t compete for food, hardly ate any to speak of, and later, when she finally curled up on her tiny cot, she found she couldn’t sleep a wink. And the cause, strangely enough, wasn’t her excitement over the carny.
Chapter Seven
With Jackson trotting at the heels of his jackboots, the Magnificent Crecca headed back to the rear of the big wag, down the narrow, windowless, low-ceilinged corridor.
As the carny master approached the closed metal door at the far end, he felt a wave of the familiar, powerful unease he always felt just before entering the Magus’s lair. Gert Wolfram had been afraid of the Magus, too. At the time, Crecca had thought it hysterically funny to see that huge mountain of blubber tiptoeing around, trying to avoid even the most incidental contact. Wolfram had never shown his fear to the Magus’s face, if what he had could even be called a face—more like the jumbled contents of butcher and machine shop trash cans. The Magus loved to induce terror. And when he saw its first tender sprout, he nourished it and made it grow.
Crecca was much more comfortable when the puppet master wasn’t along for the ride. The car
ny picked him up and dropped him off at different locations on the route. No explanation was ever given. They never knew where he went or how he got back. All they knew was that he was privy to ultrasecret, predark whitecoat technology, and that he had developed some unique refinements of his own.
The Magus had a distinctly unpleasant smell. Crecca had always figured it had something to do with the unnatural combination of flesh and stainless steel. The worst thing by far, though, were the eyes. Like a pair of chromed hen’s eggs, with pinhole pupils. You could never tell for sure what they were looking at.
Crecca ordered Jackson to sit and stay outside the door. The Magus had been known to bite the heads off baby stickies on a whim, and Crecca had put in far too much time on this one to start over. He raised his balled fist and pounded on the door.
“Come!” said a strange, thready voice from the other side.
When Crecca entered the wag’s rear salon, he was slammed by the odor of machine oil, fried brake linings and spilled blood. The dim, smoky room was surrounded by one-way, blasterproof, glass windows. It was five times the size of his cabin, and it had a hundred times more junk in it. Unsorted junk. Littering the floor were piles of gears, pipe, wire, housings, glass beakers, lamps, conduit, parts of wag engines and computer motherboards. Sitting on the salon’s built-in rear-window sofa was living nightmare cast in decaying flesh and stainless-steel struts.
One of the rules of survival with the Magus was to not let him catch you staring.
Crecca tugged hard at his red chin beard, pretending to study with interest the vivisection that had been left abandoned on a crude wooden table. It was impossible to tell whether the half-dissected body was norm or mutie, as its layers of skin and muscle were now peeled back and tacked down to the tabletop, exposing a great yawning hole in the middle of its chest, lungs that still labored, a heart that still beat desperately.
“What do you want?” the Magus demanded. “As you can see, I am fully occupied at present.” He was screwing together a contraption made of plastic tubing and metal fittings. He kept turning the thing over in his hands, then holding it up to the gaping chest as if measuring its fit.
