by James Axler
The baron held up the tentacle and showed the throng how the circular wound seeped the same viscous, clear liquid, then gradually puckered closed, sealing itself.
“Take only one ripe bounty for yourself,” Kerr told them. “It is your ration. Spend the rest of your time in these caverns identifying and tending the filaments.”
That was the end of the training session.
The baron didn’t invite questions from the floor. He simply turned and walked away, leaving companions and chillers to fend for themselves.
Though there were many things Doc wanted to ask him about the pool, the snow and the tendrils, he knew better than to open his mouth and draw attention to himself.
His hard experience at the hands of the predark whitecoats, and at hands of Jordan Teague, told Doc how to lay low until the right time came.
If it ever came…
Chapter Twenty-Nine
Ryan’s face hurt from smiling as he listened to Trader’s explanation of how things worked in the caverns. Trader had been like a second father to him. He had taught him leadership, discipline and how to surpass his own limits.
Now Trader was teaching him the way. The way that answered all questions. It was so clear. So clean. So simple.
Even as Ryan took in the details of the harvesting, of his responsibilities to the burning pool, the shrunken, the virtually incapacitated part of him—Ryan Cawdor the indomitable fighter, the hard-eyed realist—insisted that the Trader he knew and loved was lost to him, mebbe chilled. Trader and Abe. That diminished Ryan insisted that he couldn’t be seeing him or hearing his voice.
But the evidence of his single eye told him that he was.
And the light that shone from Trader’s face was like a beacon in the darkness.
It wouldn’t be denied.
Ryan took up his wooden flensing knife and a lit torch and set off down a passage that twisted and narrowed until it was barely wide enough for his shoulders. All along the corridor, the filaments hung from the dripping walls, as gray and thick as tree trunks.
The larger part of him saw that Trader was right, that there was much important work to be done here. Much love to impart. Much care. Being in the caves was like being in fields of blooming flowers.
So much beauty.
On all sides.
Ryan chose a mature filament and began loosening its grip on the cave wall. The hairlike fibers made faint snapping sounds as he broke their connection with the limestone with the blade. The gray tentacle came free from its delicate, pointed tip to the wide root that exited from the rock face. The severed hairlets bathed his hands in their ooze.
He lifted up the freed tendril, but there was no ripe bounty at its widest spot, the place where it emerged from the stone. Instead he found a small, hard nodule no bigger than his fist. The fruit of the pool needed time and room to grow.
As Ryan the cruise ship stood there admiring the bud, Ryan the passenger, the spectator, had a sudden sense of the burning pool as an individual creature, of its mountainous vastness, of its hundreds of miles of intruding, interlacing filaments.
Of its infinite hunger.
Of its infinite evil.
“There is nothing to be afraid of, Ryan,” said a familiar voice behind him.
A gruff man’s voice.
Ryan smelled cigar smoke. He turned and Trader was standing there beside him. His old friend’s face seemed younger than Ryan remembered. The hair wasn’t quite as grizzled.
“You’re not dead,” Ryan said. “Thought Abe and you might have bought the farm.”
“Mebbe I am dead,” Trader said.
Ryan picked up the torch and held it closer to get a better look. “You’re a ghost?”
Trader laughed, but he didn’t answer. “I brought you here for a reason. I brought you here to show you that there is joy beyond all the hard living. That beyond the gate, joy awaits you.”
Ryan’s cheeks suddenly felt as if they were going split, his grin was that wide. Why in rad blazes am I smiling? Passenger Ryan thought. None of this is real.
“We are all here to show you….” Trader said, gesturing down the narrow tunnel behind him.
Ryan saw then that Trader hadn’t come alone.
Behind Trader in the passage were many figures, half in shadow and half in dancing torchlight. All of them were smiling; all of them he knew. Some were people Ryan had loved, while some were people he had chilled. Friends and enemies alike. His father, Baron Titus Cawdor, was there, as was his mother, Lady Cynthia, and his brothers. Lori Quint. Cort Strasser. Bessie and Cissie Torrance. And so many others. A line of familiar faces that stretched off into the darkness.
All dead.
All very happily dead, it seemed.
He could tell from their expressions that none of them blamed him for anything that he had done to them or hadn’t done for them. They forgave him completely. They understood him completely. They had overcome the shortsighted yearnings and judgments of the flesh.
In their gleeful faces was an invitation to join them, an invitation that held the promise of ultimate redemption.
Until it was actually offered to him, Ryan hadn’t known that he even desired such a thing. But now, while searching the eyes of those who had gone before him, he felt the same sort of intense, uncontrollable yearning that he had felt for the roasted globs: a marvelous scent on the wind drew him closer and closer, like a puppet on a string, to death.
Below the decks of the great, storm-tossed ship called Cawdor, a tiny voice screamed, “No!”
LEELOO BUNNY WALKED hand in hand through the caverns with her mother, Tater. Neither carried a burning torch because it wasn’t dark in the narrow passage. Their winding path was lit by hundred-foot-high bright tentacles in orange, pink, red and yellow. The rock walls and ceiling had turned transparent; all Leeloo could see were the filaments. And she could see them twisting all the way up to the summit, like the root ball of some enormous plant with the dirt knocked loose.
The tendrils blurred and shifted, and became candy trees and popcorn bushes. In the distance, she could faintly hear cymbals and brass playing a lively marching song.
“Please don’t leave me again,” Leeloo said to her mother.
“But I never left you.”
“I couldn’t see you. We weren’t together. I was lonely.”
“We will always be together now.”
“And Dean?”
“You like him, don’t you?”
“Uh-huh.”
“He’s your Prince Charming.”
“He’s wonderful. He’s brave and smart. I don’t want to lose him. Can he come with us? Please?”
“He’ll be with us, too. When you get released, and he gets released, we’ll all be together.”
Leeloo understood without being told that “released” meant being freed from her body. “But what happens then?” she asked.
Tater Bunny put a hand on her daughter’s head.
Leeloo beamed up at her adoringly.
The facial resemblance between mother and daughter was uncanny. Daughter could have been mother at age eight. Mother could have been daughter at age twenty-six. And their expressions mirrored each other exactly, reflecting absolute joy.
“You will climb,” Tater said, “like a cloud of smoke. Straight up into the sky. You will be everywhere at once. Flying.”
“Like a bird?”
“Much better than a bird. Faster. Freer. There will be no wind you can’t fly through. No height you can’t soar to. No place you can’t go by just thinking about it.”
“You can do all those things?”
“I can. And so will you.”
“Will I have to wait long?”
“No, my darling. Not long.”
“And will I always be safe?”
“Always.”
Leeloo reached up and with her wooden tool pried free a huge lollipop, the flat disk of candy much bigger than her face. It was red and green and white, the colors swirling in a pin
wheel shape. She closed her eyes tightly and touched it with the tip of her tongue.
“It’s peppermint!” she exclaimed.
Leeloo eagerly licked the scratchy gray skin of the nodule, the clear sap from its cut surface sheeting off her tiny chin.
JAK SENSED that he was being stalked, and by something big. He advanced alone through the dark cave; the light of the torch he carried dwindled away fifteen feet ahead of him and fifteen feet behind. Deep inside the mountain, there were no openings to the sky to let in light or air. The farther and deeper he went, the warmer it became. The cave he had picked to follow angled down into the earth. The water that trickled over the cave floor ran in the direction he was headed. He paused to listen for his pursuer. Although his hearing was very sharp, it picked up no scrape of boot on rock, no rustle of dirt as a body brushed a wall. There was only the steady hiss of the burning torch in his hand, and the babbling-brook sound of the water flowing around his boots.
Jak pressed on, looking for what he had been told to look for and was eager to find. Whether it was called “bounty” or “dinner,” what he’d been given at the burn barrel was some of the best roast pork he’d ever eaten. He was looking forward to stuffing himself with more.
After he had traveled perhaps ten yards, the sensation of being followed returned. He felt it as a tingling at the back of his neck and across his shoulders. It didn’t make him nervous that he was being trailed. It made him curious. He adjusted the ride of the Colt Python in its holster.
When he found a likely looking tendril, he stuck the end of the torch in a cleft in the rock and started prying on it with the wooden tool. It didn’t take him long to break the thing free from the wall. Under its armpit was a bounty the size of his head. As he plucked the ripe nodule, he knew that someone or something was watching him from behind. He put the bounty on the floor and picked up the torch. Holding the flame out in front of him, he took several steps toward it.
“Who there?” he demanded.
There was no answer.
Then in the shadows of the next bend in the walls, he saw something shift. It was big. The same size as the lion. As he advanced on it, whatever it was retreated out of the reach of the torchlight.
“That you?” he said.
He recognized the voice that entered his mind.
Of course it’s me.
Said couldn’t come, Jak thought. Said knew how ended and you not part of it.
I just wanted to surprise you. Are you surprised?
Yeah, guess so. You help me fight?
Fight who?
Carny chillers.
There is nothing and no one to fight. Not anymore. You’ve got to get your mind around that. You’ve got to put the lid down on your killer instinct. It will only get in the way from here on.
How?
This isn’t Deathlands. This is the border of someplace else. Someplace far better. If you want to cross over, you’ve got to stand in the snowstorm, and eat your bounty.
Why want go someplace else?
So that you can see Christina again.
Dead.
There’s no such thing. I’ve tried to explain that to you many times before. You don’t listen.
Listen. I not understand.
Life as you know it doesn’t exist. Life as you know it is an illusion. You must shed the scales over your eyes. You must know the truth. You must see the other side. I can help you. Come closer to me.
No.
Jak’s right hand automatically reached for the Python, but his holster was empty. His fingers dipped under his shirt. The leaf-bladed knives were gone, too. Jak felt a shiver of fear. Unaccountable. He wasn’t afraid of the lion.
Come to me.
Jak’s legs began to move, stiffly. He couldn’t stop them. As he approached the bend in the cave, and the thing that waited for him there, he could see that the details of the shape were wrong. The ears were long and stiff and pointed. The eyes were small and luminous green. The skin was hairless, as was the tail. A pair of leathery wings lay folded along the jutting knobs of the spine.
Not lion, Jak thought. Enemy.
No, I am the victor.
With a great effort, Jak managed to retreat a step, then two. Then he turned and ran.
Don’t forget your bounty!
Cruel laughter rolled through Jak’s head as he stopped and scooped it up.
Chapter Thirty
It was getting on into evening when Doc followed the others out of the caves and back toward the ville. The sun was just starting to dip below the fringe of trees along the ridgeline; from the mountain above came a threatening growl of thunder. Everyone was carrying their “bounty.” Everyone but Doc. He was starting to get hungry, but he knew he’d never be that hungry.
All around him, his friends and the rousties were talking, but not to one another. They spoke only to themselves, or to imaginary companions. Each was wrapped up in his or her own world. Some were agitated to the point of shaking their fists. Some were beatific. Some were morose.
They reminded Doc of inmates of an insane asylum, out for a bit of exercise and fresh air.
There was more thunder as the others deposited their wormy prizes on the ground beside the already roaring drum fire. The rumbling grew steadily louder and louder. Doc could feel the storm’s intensity building. In a matter of minutes, a bank of churning clouds appeared above the ville. Darkness descended. There was no lightning, but there was a blistering wind and snow. Sideways sheets of yellow snow as fine as table salt swept down the mountainside and over the square.
It was dry.
It wasn’t cold.
It stung Doc’s face like windblown sand. He hunched his shoulders and turned his back to it.
The others in the square made no concessions to the strange downpour. They leaned against the driving wind and let it hit them straight on. The tiny granules bounced off their heads and shoulders.
And then the clouds dropped lower and grew even thicker, the snow came down even harder and it became difficult to breathe. Doc was forced to take refuge in one of the nearby scabrous lean-tos, crawling on elbows and knees over the pounded-dirt floor.
Outside, the storm crescendoed. The winds whipped the tattered plastic sheeting and crudely lashed cross members above Doc’s head, threatening to flatten the flimsy structure. The nearly constant thundering shook the ground beneath him. The snow came down in a blizzard of yellow, rapidly building into ankle-deep drifts. Doc’s visibility out the leanto’s entrance dropped to five feet or less. Then, as quickly as it began, it was over. The thunder stopped, as did the snowfall. The darkness lifted.
When Doc crawled out of the hut, he saw a clear, turquoise sky above and the sun dipping below the tree line. The ville’s square was peopled by living statues, everything dusted with pale yellow.
All around him, the snowdrifts were visibly shrinking. He bent and scooped up some in his hand. It wasn’t made of flakes, as he had thought, but individual grains. Like pollen. Or crystals.
In seconds, the pile of stuff on his palm grew smaller. He could see it wasn’t melting into a liquid; nothing was dripping off the heel of his hand. It was just disappearing, which was impossible. Doc knew the basics of physics and chemistry. He knew that matter couldn’t disappear, couldn’t be created or destroyed; however, it could be made to change form. In this case, it appeared that solid matter, the snow, was turning into a gas, perhaps upon contact with air. According to the laws of physics, this required the application or release of some kind of energy. But the material wasn’t hot.
What he was observing seemed to violate the most fundamental principles of science.
Doc dumped what was left of the snow on the ground and brushed off his hands.
Moments later, he began to notice a tingling numbness in his fingers and feet. It spread rapidly to his mouth and lips. He clenched his fists, heart pounding up under his chin as he anticipated being turned to stone like the others. But the numbing sensation didn’t trave
l any farther. He quickly rubbed back the circulation in his hands and face.
Doc hurried across the square, walking between the rigidly upright human forms. The snowfall had produced immediate and total paralysis in every other person present. Even the baron, the black man who had tended the cookfire and three who had come out of the Baja Bug were frozen.
When he reached Ryan, Doc laid his hand on his friend’s chest. The one-eyed man was breathing, but only just barely. His heartbeat was very slow, but steady. The pupil of his eye was dilated, and its blink reflex was stifled. Doc took hold of Ryan’s arm and shook him, then he shouted in his ear.
Nothing.
No response.
It was the same with all the companions. He couldn’t rouse them from their stupor.
Doc retreated to the front wall of the blockhouse, despairing and at a loss as to how to help his friends.
After a few minutes passed, he was relieved to see the paralysis starting to wear off. Gradually everyone began to stir. As they regained their faculties, there was a noticeable change in their behavior. They were all quiet, tranquil and smiling. Behavior that the circumstances hardly called for. It seemed to Doc they were now all suffering from the same variety of madness. He sensed that whatever was influencing them had reestablished complete control. The evidence so far pointed to some chemical in the snow.
Doc reflected on what the baron had said about the pool being the source of everything here. He had no doubt that a complex system was in operation. A living system. Its size, its power and its menace were almost tangible. If it existed as a single entity, as the baron had suggested, it was the largest creature Doc had ever encountered, indeed had ever heard of. Of course, the baron’s view wasn’t necessarily accurate. He was as impacted by the snow as the others. And he was not trained as a scientist.
If the tendrils were fungal, as Doc had speculated, then the snow would be fungal spores. If they were vegetable, the snow would be plant pollen. Either way, they were the entity’s genetic material.
Doc could recall no sign of anything growing in, on or around the pool. That didn’t mean much. Fungi and plants could be living out of sight and in profusion on the pool’s bottom. Because fungi were such simple structures, and tended to grow so closely together, it was sometimes difficult to separate one individual from others of the same type in the same area. Whether it was one gigantic creature or a population of ten thousand smaller ones, the danger was palpable.
