Deathlands 074: Strontium Swamp

by James Axler

  “We need to talk,” the albino said to Ryan.

  Ryan ran his gaze over the dark-eyed woman at Jak’s side. “That we do,” he agreed, “but I think we should do it alone.”

  For a moment a flicker of anger and suspicion crossed Marissa’s face, but after a glance at Jak, she agreed. “That’s only right. I’ve got some talking of my own to do,” she added as an afterthought before leaving them.

  “When you get those back?” Jak asked with a frown, indicating the blasters J.B. had been working on.

  The Armorer shrugged. “Last night. All I had to do was ask nicely. I reckon after that little performance they gave us, they figured they had to try to keep us on their side somehow.”

  “Good. Trust rare, but needed,” Jak murmured, almost thinking out loud. Then he added, “Where Doc and Mildred?”

  “Probably be with us in a moment,” Krysty said, eyeing the main body of huts and tree houses. She had little doubt that Marissa would be firing up the community, and that Doc and Mildred would soon hear of Jak’s return. “They’ve been taking a look at some of the sick here, seeing if there’s anything they can do. Just looking to be useful—or be seen to be useful,” she added by way of an explanation.

  “Lots ways to be useful,” Jak said slowly. “Some better than others.”

  Ryan was about to ask him what he meant when he saw Doc and Mildred descending from one of the tree houses. They made their way over to where the others were gathered by the lakeside.

  Ryan waited for them to arrive, then began before they had a chance to ask where Jak had been. “We need to make decisions here. They want us to fight with them, but I’m not so sure about that—”

  “Have to,” Jak interrupted. “If anything in the bayou ever the same again, then we need to take out Jean. ’Sides, if we try to go on, we come up against his sec anyway—bet your life they got the redoubt.”

  “That’s not certain,” Ryan said slowly, “but it is something we’ve got to consider. I know this place means a lot to you—”

  “This land, these people, all there is left,” Jak said slowly and with an edge to his voice that bespoke of the depths of his feeling, a depth he had rarely, if ever, let them see before. “Nothing else. If this goes, then mebbe me, as well. No choice for me, no matter what you want.”

  As he stopped speaking, with a shrug, it sank into the others exactly what he meant—he would stay, regardless of their decision.

  Ryan chose his words carefully. “The bayou can never mean to us what it does to you, but mebbe you don’t know what you mean to us—what we mean to each other. I’m not convinced that we’ve got the firepower or people power—even with these behind us—to take on Dr. Jean. Could be a one-way ticket to buying the farm, right? But one thing I do know is that we won’t just go without you.”

  “We recce where Jean is, see what he’s got, see if we can do it,” Jak said quickly. “You, me, a couple others—small party to recce.”

  “Sounds fair. We need to know what we’re up against regardless of our eventual action, so I figure we do it this way and even if we leave the fight, at least we know what we have to scout around.”

  Jak nodded. He didn’t want to commit himself with words, as at the back of his mind he had the notion that whatever happened, he would be compelled to fight.

  The companions turned to find Marissa and most of the settlement descending on them.

  “So you gonna do it, like Jak says?” she asked without preamble.

  “Mebbe,” the one-eyed warrior said cautiously. “We’ve got a plan. We don’t know where Jean’s main base is, and what his strengths are. If we’re going to mount an attack, then we need to know that, or else his superior numbers are just gonna blow us away.”

  “But you are gonna help us?” she pressed, sniffing around the fact that he hadn’t been direct.

  “Mebbe,” Ryan said slowly. “No point chilling ourselves in an all-out attack if he’s too strong.”

  “But Jak said—”

  “I’m not talking for Jak, and he wasn’t talking for us. Nothing’s settled,” Ryan cut in quickly. “What I’m saying is this—some of us form a recce party and take a good look at what Jean’s got, and how he operates. Not until then will I say anything else.”

  Marissa was about to speak, her eyes searching Jak for signs of betrayal, when Beausoleil spoke up.

  “Marissa, shut your damn mouth for a moment,” he barked, silencing her with a gesture. “You know what I think about this idea,” he continued, addressing the assembled settlement dwellers, “but I tell you one thing—I can see exactly why they want to do this. Think about it. For all your talk of fighting Dr. Jean, what do any of you actually know about his sec force, his defenses, his armory? Nothing. Do this recce mission, and even if they decide they don’t want to stand with you, then at least you know what you have to do for yourselves.”

  “Talks sense,” Jak said quietly, directing this at Marissa.

  “Mebbe I don’t want sense, mebbe I just want some action at last,” she said softly. “Okay, you do it this way. I guess it makes sense. Who d’you want to come with me?”

  “No, lady, no way are you coming with us,” Ryan said in a tone that would brook no argument. “I don’t trust you not to blow up at the wrong moment. Me, Jak and J.B. will go, and I want two of your people.”

  The settlement dwellers looked at one another. Talking about facing up to Jean’s might was one thing, but being part of a small party at the mercy of his roving sec force was another altogether. There was a mumble of hushed discussion among them.

  Jak spoke over them. “Want the two with Marissa yesterday,” he said, pointing to LaRue and Prideaux. “Know how we fight, and we know a bit about them. Know we can trust their balls.”

  “Fuck it, I should be pleased you think that of me, but I wish you hadn’t,” LaRue muttered, running his hands over his bald head. “Fucker to go up against all that firepower with just five.”

  “We’re not facing them off,” J.B. told him. “It’s a recce mission, the whole point is to stay out of the way. See and not be seen.”

  “Easier said than done,” the bald man muttered again, shaking his head.

  “Shut up, stupe, you’re going,” Marissa snapped. “Say no and you won’t have no balls no more—I’ll see to that. What about you, Prideaux, you wanna argue, too?”

  The ponytailed man gave her a lazy smile. “Never argue with you, belle princess. Though I’d like to see you get your hands on my balls.”

  “Dream on,” Marissa spit back at him.

  “Okay, okay, so I’ll go—dunno why, though. You know I don’t think we’ve got a chance.”

  “Mebbe you’re right,” Ryan cut across him, “and mebbe you won’t know until we do this.”

  Prideaux shrugged. “Okay, I’m in.”

  The settlement was abuzz with the realization that suddenly, after nothing but talk for so long, something was actually going to happen. The dwellers dispersed and went about their everyday business, leaving the companions alone with Marissa, LaRue and Prideaux. The two men looked uneasy now that it had come to action, but Marissa was their superior when it came to settlement sec, so they were obliged to follow her lead.

  “We gonna sort this out here, or what?” Prideaux asked, barely keeping the nervousness from his voice.

  “It’s simple,” Ryan said softly. “You get your weapons together, and then we go. We’re more or less prepared.” He exchanged glances with J.B., who had been doing a weapons check. The Armorer gave the briefest of nods. “Then we set off. After all, you know where we’re going.”

  WITHIN HALF AN HOUR they were ready to go. While the two sec men gathered their weapons and prepared themselves, Marissa filled in the companions on their route. Jak knew where she was sending them, and to his amazement it was back beyond West Lowellton, in the heart of old Lafayette.

  “But everything so dead—no signs of life being so near,” he said, shaking his head.

 
; “That’s the bastard Jean all over. That old ville is sewn up tighter than a virgin mosquito pussy. Nothing and no one gets in or out, and only the sec patrols go over those dead lands now.”

  “Then how come we didn’t come across one?” Ryan asked.

  “Mebbe the time of day. Jean’s ville works mostly by night, and that’s when his sec patrols ride. During the day, they sleep.”

  “And he just leaves the surrounding lands unpatrolled?” Krysty asked, bemusement shot through her voice. “The bastard must be so arrogant.”

  “Dunno what that means,” Marissa said, “but Jean thinks everyone with him, and we hide like frightened rabbits. Who else is there in the bayou now he owns it?”

  “That may just be his weakness.” Ryan grinned mirthlessly. “We’ll see. Where are your men?”

  Prideaux and LaRue arrived, ready but reluctant. Marissa briefed them on what she had just told the companions, and then outlined to them the route she wanted them to take.

  “You don’t trust them to get it right themselves?” Ryan questioned.

  “It’s not that. I’ve been nearer than anyone, and I know better than anyone. That’s why I should be going,” she couldn’t resist adding.

  Ryan and Jak ignored her, and making their goodbyes to Doc, Mildred and Krysty, they—along with J.B., LaRue and Prideaux—began the journey back to West Lowellton.

  It took less time to get there than it had for the companions to make the first journey. This time they had guides who knew where they were going, and knew the quickest routes to take. They traveled in silence for most of the time; LaRue and Prideaux had little to say, neither did Jak. For J.B. and Ryan, it was a matter of saving their breath so that they could keep pace with the swamp dwellers, who dealt easily and naturally with the conditions.

  They skirted around the area where they had encountered the swampies, and managed to avoid any roving groups of the muties. One of the few times he spoke was when LaRue told them that he and Prideaux knew the habits of the muties as they had hunted in this area, and had learned the best times to miss them. The dull-witted swampies were very much creatures of habit, and if you knew their patterns, you could easily avoid having to fight them.

  It wasn’t long before the five-man party had reached the suburb of West Lowellton. They made their way rapidly through the debris of the battered buildings.

  “Haven’t been here for years,” LaRue said with a tinge of sadness as they slipped through shell-damaged ruins to avoid the main drags, which were empty and a little too devoid of cover to be comfortable. “Kinda forgot what it was like,” he added with an edge to his voice, suggesting that he may be remembering that some things are worth fighting for.

  It was now dusk, and the recce party had to slow its pace as it moved toward the heart of the old city. The sec patrols would be coming out of the main ville, and it was imperative that they keep clear of them. Not only did they wish to avoid a firefight, they also wished to remain undetected so that any subsequent attack would come as a complete surprise to Dr. Jean.

  They were about a mile from the main ville when the noises began. Where there had been silence, now they could hear the distant sound of chanting and drums, along with a low-level electronic hum. Perhaps it was one or the other, or mebbe it was both. Whatever it was, the feeling of oppression and gloom that hung over the ruined city suddenly grew sharper and more defined, eating into them and tugging at their nerves.

  “What the hell is that?” J.B. asked.

  Prideaux smiled without humor. “That, my friend, is Dr. Jean getting his people hyped up. I suggest we take cover now. We’re in the wrong place to be out in the open.”

  Ryan, J.B. and Jak had no idea what he meant by that, but followed his and LaRue’s lead by taking cover in an old building that had kept most of its structure.

  “First floor if it’ll hold, just to be sure,” the ponytailed man added, leading them to a position where they could observe the road below without being seen themselves. “Now wait, and you’ll see some of what we’re up against,” he whispered hoarsely. “That old road down there leads from the main gates of Jean’s stronghold and out into the lands beyond. Just watch.”

  They crouched in silence in the shadows. After a short while, an ominous rumbling began to sound in the distance, growing louder and more distinct with every second.

  “Wags,” J.B. breathed. “Powerful ones, too, by the sound of them.”

  “Where would Jean get them from, and the fuel to power them?”

  “Bayou’s pretty big. That’s a whole lot of ground, whole lot of villes that he’s ridden over during the last few years,” LaRue replied quietly.

  The lights on the wags began to illuminate the road and the surrounding buildings. They drew back into the shadows, moving farther back so that they couldn’t be caught by any stray beams. At the same time, they wanted to stay close enough to see what was going on.

  When they did catch sight of the sec patrols as they rolled down the main drag before splitting off into their patrol routes, it was truly something to see.

  There were a dozen wags in all, each of them painted a strange combination of yellow, purple and red. Even with the lack of daylight, the colors seemed to jump off the sides of the wags and loom ominously into the darkness with a life of their own. The wags themselves were of at least three different models, but they all had one thing in common—they were open behind the driver’s cab, with wooden seating arranged along the sides and metal frames suggesting they could be covered with canvas if that was required. The fact that they weren’t was useful for the recce party, particularly Jak, J.B. and Ryan, as it gave them their first glimpse of the sec patrols.

  There were a dozen men in each wag. All sat upright, unnaturally stiff, and all wore dark goggles, even though it was night. They were dressed in fatigues dyed the same color as the wags, and they held a variety of blasters—some had AK-47s, others had M-16s, and there were a couple that weren’t quite clear enough for J.B. to identify from this range and in this light. But they were all heavy-duty.

  “The shades make ’em see in the dark—don’t ask me how,” Prideaux murmured to Ryan.

  But the one-eyed man knew how, and wondered how Dr. Jean had got hold of a cache of infrared goggles.

  The sec men looked at each other—directly ahead—across the rear of each wag, without moving at all. It was as though they were under some kind of drug or hypnotic influence.

  “What happens next?” Ryan asked.

  “The wags branch off to cover a certain area. When they reach a central point, the sec men get out of the wag and mount a foot patrol. And believe me, they’re vicious fuckers if you cross them.”

  “That I can believe…” J.B. stated. “Thing that’s weird is that we never saw them in the swamp.”

  “Not so weird,” LaRue replied in an undertone. “They move like fuckin’ ghosts, they’re so quiet. Never talk, never make a sound. Unless you ran straight into ’em, they could probably walk real close and you wouldn’t spot ’em.”

  “Something else,” Jak muttered. “No smell. Like they had all their body scent taken off.”

  “Mebbe they have,” Ryan pondered. “If Dr. Jean has got hold of some old whitecoat tech, then mebbe there’s some old sec thing in there that does that.” If nothing else, it would account for why there had been no indication of the sec patrols when they had traveled through the swamp. Ryan thanked their luck that they, themselves, hadn’t been taken by surprise.

  “Yeah, seen enough weird shit from back then to make it possible,” J.B. put in, scratching under the band of his fedora. “Thing is, if he has all that shit, then we need to find out exactly what before we go up against it.”

  Prideaux and LaRue exchanged puzzled and worried glances. “What the fuck are you guys talking about?” the ponytailed man asked, a slight tremor in his voice. “What do you know about this?”

  “Nothing yet,” Ryan answered firmly, staring the man down with his one good eye, �
��but we’ve seen old tech that’s been dragged out on our travels, and we know enough to know we don’t know shit until we’ve had a better look.”

  “I was afraid you’d say that,” Prideaux muttered. LaRue kissed his teeth and shook his head. He knew what was ahead, and knew that no matter what he felt, he was outvoted and would have to roll with it.

  By now the procession of wags had receded into the distance, the noise having dropped to a low rumble. The street below was empty, and Ryan led the recce party to street level, pausing at the blown-off doors of the old block.

  “LaRue, Prideaux, you know the sec layout and the boundaries on this ville, right?” Ryan asked. He waited for their replies, before continuing. “So you take lead. We want the weakest point, right?”

  “No such thing, Ryan,” LaRue said with a sorry shake of the head. “The whole place is walled and guarded.”

  “Bullshit. There’s always one weak point, you just have to find it,” Ryan retorted.

  Prideaux scratched his chin, as though this would aid in the deep thought his expression implied. Finally he said, “There is one thing, if you don’t mind wading through shit…”

  “Better to wade through shit than get sprayed by blaster fire.” J.B. grinned. “Take us there.”

  Prideaux led the recce party off the main drag and through the deserted side streets and squares of the old city. The sound of the ville walled and fenced off within grew louder, suggesting they approach. But there was no eye contact as yet.

  “Need to get around to the west side, that’s where we can do it,” Prideaux explained. “Need to make some torches, too. We’ll be in the dark for about half a mile.”

  They paused to scavenge in the ruins for wood they could use as poles for their torches, and tore off strips of their clothing that they wrapped and bound around the end.

  “This’ll do it. Waste of good liquor, but what the hell,” LaRue shrugged, unstoppering a flask and pouring it over the two bundles of rags they had made on the poles. The spirit smelled strong and potent; it should burn easily. Both Ryan and J.B. had lighters that still had flints in them, so lighting the torches should be easy when the time came.