Damnation Road Show

by James Axler

  His adversary scampered over the rubble and out into the hall. He had picked up the stick Crecca had tossed aside.

  “You aren’t going to get away from me!” the baron called to him as he followed.

  The old man was waiting for him in the corridor. “If you think I am trying to escape, you are sorely mistaken, sir,” he yelled. “I just require some room to work.” With that the old bastard did something to the silver handle, and the wood sheath of the stick came away in his left hand, revealing a long, tapering, double-edged blade of steel.

  “I don’t have time for games,” Crecca shouted. And then he charged, holding the pipe out in front of him like a lance.

  The tremors that still rippled the floor made his course erratic at best. As he veered toward his target, a fluorescent light fixture hanging by a thread gave up the ghost and crashed down in front of him, spoiling his aim.

  The old man was more agile than he had any right to be. He sidestepped the charge and pivoted, and as Crecca rushed past him, the baron felt something molten-hot lance through the back of his tall boot and into his left calf.

  “First blood!” the old man cried. With a back-and-forth slash of the sword, he cut down the light fixtures that blocked his view.

  He now stood between Crecca and the room with the wheel. To reach it and stop the draining of the pool, the baron was going to have to go through him. The former carny master realized he had been outmaneuvered and outfoxed. Infuriated, Crecca made a blind thrust with the end of the pipe, aiming for the old man’s face.

  The sword parried the blow, metal scraping metal, then before the carny master could withdraw, he felt the sharp bite of razor-honed steel deep in his right shoulder. “Fucker!” he howled as blood flowed down his arm. He banged the pipe on the floor in frustration.

  “Is something wrong, sir?” the old man demanded. “Would you to like to pass by me?”

  Crecca charged again, this time swinging. He brought the pipe around at waist height, slashing from right to left, figuring the bastard couldn’t possibly escape the blow.

  The end of the pipe threw a shower of sparks as it hit the concrete wall.

  The wall was all it hit.

  The old man stepped back into the doorway, out of range, and as he did, with an ease that a man of his apparent age shouldn’t have been able to muster, he squatted low and thrust upward with his sword.

  The point plunged into Crecca’s right thigh, a quick in-and-out stab that wrung a scream from his throat. He staggered back, flailing with the pipe to keep his opponent from following up with a second thrust.

  “You look surprised, Baron,” the old man yelled.

  The Magnificent Crecca clapped a hand over his most recent injury and scowled at him.

  “Why should it surprise you,” Doc hollered, “that a man carrying a weapon like this—” he paused to flourish it “—could actually use it?”

  Time was running out.

  With his good leg, Crecca kicked the fallen light fixture into the old man’s chest and lunged with the pipe. His opponent blocked the hunk of metal and glass with his sword, sweeping it aside, but before old man could bring the blade’s point back, Crecca was on top of him.

  The former carny master never saw the blow that felled him.

  He was within a few inches of getting his big hand wrapped around the old man’s scrawny throat when he caught a flash of silver from below, as the sword’s heavy carved metal handle snapped up in a crisp, accurate, backhanded strike that he couldn’t deflect.

  He heard the crunch of his own cheekbone shattering and felt hot blood spraying down his suddenly numbed face. Falling forward as his knees buckled under him, he took another blow from the sword’s pommel, this time on the crown of his head. For a second it made him see black. He crashed to the floor on his knees, knowing there would be more, and much worse to come, and unable to raise his arms to defend himself.

  The third blow nailed him square in the back of the head. Everything went black.

  Crecca toppled to the floor on his face.

  DOC CRADLED the palm of his right hand, which bled from a long, shallow cut that he’d given himself by gripping the swordstick barehanded. There had been no time to get the blade’s point around, so he’d had to make use of the pommel.

  Effective use.

  And once he’d gotten started, he’d had to follow up with successive, similar blows before the baron could recover.

  Doc took a soiled linen handkerchief from the pocket of his frock coat and tightly bound his wound, then knelt beside the fallen man. There was blood everywhere. Crecca’s blood. His blood. He tried to locate a pulse in the man’s neck and couldn’t find it.

  As he leaned over the baron, the ceiling tiles on the floor around him started to move. They were floating, bobbing. The water in the corridor was no longer standing in puddle; it was flowing in a current. It was already an inch deep. Doc looked toward the hallway’s entrance and saw the steps had been turned into a series of low, feeble waterfalls. The river he had created was starting to flood the blockhouse. He dashed into the room behind him and spun the red wheel, reopening the emergency drain valve as far as it would go.

  When he returned to the hallway, the water had risen over the prostrate baron’s mouth and nose.

  The Magnificent Crecca wasn’t blowing any bubbles.

  Doc splashed down the corridor and up the stairs. As he climbed out of the entry well, he glimpsed the destruction he had wrought. A deep, dark torrent had gouged away the ville and the square and was undermining the near edge of the blockhouse. He could see no one moving, and a terrible thought struck him: had he drowned the very people he had been trying to save?

  He drew his Civil War–era handblaster from its holster, the LeMat, and ran along the face of the building, away from the rushing water. Doc found the Steyr longblaster where he had hidden it. As he shrugged into its shoulder strap, he saw shadowy figures hurrying toward him from the base of the mountain. He primed the LeMat’s shotgun barrel, ready to spray any enemies with smoking shrapnel.

  “Do not come any closer!” he warned, aiming the old blaster at the running figures.

  “Doc! It’s us!” someone shouted back.

  “John Barrymore,” Doc said with relief, lowering his weapon. “And Ryan! Is everyone else all right? Did they all make it away safely?”

  “We got lucky,” Ryan told him. “Just scrapes and bruises. Come on, see for yourself. They’re waiting for us.”

  “I trust our carny friends were not so fortunate,” Doc said as they moved toward the hillside.

  “We saw a few of them go down in the flood,” J.B. said. “The rest are somewhere on the other side of all that water.”

  “The baron is probably under it by now,” Doc said. “He is no longer a matter of concern.” The old man unslung the Steyr and handed it over to its rightful owner.

  “Glad you picked that up,” Ryan said, giving the stock an affectionate slap. “I feel naked without it.”

  “Do not try to fire it before you check the bore,” Doc warned him. “The muzzle is probably blocked with dried mud.”

  As they neared the foot of the slope, figures rushed out of the shadows to greet them. Doc received a hearty slap on the back from Mildred and a kiss on the cheek from Krysty. Jak nodded to him, a silent yet eloquent acknowledgment of his courage and heroism.

  When the congratulations were over, they got right down to business.

  “Are we still danger?” Krysty asked. “Should we try to move out of here tonight?”

  “The pool seems to have stopped its activity, at least for the time being,” Mildred said. “No more storm clouds. No more spores. But there’s no guarantee that it won’t start up again before it’s run completely dry.”

  “How long before the lake is empty?” Dean said.

  “That could take all night,” Ryan said. “There’s no way of telling how deep it is. “

  “We can’t leave here,” J.B. told them. “Not
in the dark. Not knowing the terrain. Not knowing where the rousties went. We’ve got to hunker down and ride it out until sunrise.”

  “J.B.’s right,” Ryan said. “We’ll take turns standing watch. Dean, Leeloo, Doc and Krysty can sack out first. We’ll wake you in three hours. We move out at dawn.”

  Doc stood with Ryan and watched young Dean escort the little girl to a safe, relatively comfortable place among the boulders. After they had sat down, the boy removed his coat and draped it over her shoulders. She curled up with her head against his chest and his protective arm over her.

  “The reports of chivalry’s demise appear to be greatly exaggerated,” Doc said.

  “He’s a good boy, with a good heart,” Ryan agreed. “And he’s going to grow into an even better man.”

  Chapter Thirty-Five

  At first light, Ryan led the companions to what little was left of the ville’s square. The roaring river had become a feeble creek. The shantytown was gone; the blockhouse full to the ceiling with standing water. They jumped down into the muddy channel the torrent had left behind, and moved in fighting formation with weapons drawn to the other side. When they climbed out of the riverbed, they found nothing to shoot at.

  There was no sign of life.

  Ryan and the others had been hoping that the Baja Bug had survived the flood. The little wag, even if overloaded with bodies, would have made it much easier for them to get back to the interstate. But the Baja Bug had vanished. Somewhere downstream it was overturned, perhaps buried in mud.

  The companions had no choice but to walk out, to return Leeloo to Bullard. They voted unanimously to take the route past the burning pool. When they reached the bank where the evil had first touched them, they stopped and stared for a long time at what was revealed. The bottom of the lake was gray, a solid mass of lusterless gray that followed the contours of the bedrock beneath.

  There were small standing puddles on its surface.

  It didn’t move. Nothing on its surface moved.

  “But it’s just goo,” Leeloo said.

  Then a high-pitched sound filtered down from the forest above. Because it was intermittent, Ryan didn’t recognize it as singing at first.

  But it was.

  A familiar bell-like soprano drifted through the dense trees along the ridgeline, and it grew stronger and more distinct: “‘Baby, baby, it’s a wild world….”’

  The companions strained to hear, barely breathing, until it faded to silence.

  ISBN: 978-1-4603-7326-2

  DAMNATION ROAD SHOW

  Copyright © 2003 by Worldwide Library.

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