Deathlands 074: Strontium Swamp

by James Axler

  As if Jak’s outburst had not been enough, now Marissa’s equal explosion left them even more speechless. They all knew her history, which she hadn’t told Jak. Marissa’s brother and her husband, one chilled and the other now a sec man zombie, moving with those glasses that hide the dead eyes; her child, just a babe in arms, lost when West Lowellton fell to Jean’s advancing forces.

  Maybe she felt that she had a bigger ax to grind with Dr. Jean—to bury in his sick skull—than any of the others in the settlement. And maybe she was right. It had seemed to affect her much more deeply than the other survivors, who had accepted the vagaries of fate and had tried to just carry on living without thinking too deeply about what had happened to them.

  As Marissa disappeared into the shadows in search of Jak, the crowd of rebels began to slowly emerge from their cocoon of shock, and move once more. Looking at one another, the ragtag army of men and women couldn’t for the life of them see what hope they had against Dr. Jean. Those who had been unwilling to fight, but had been pressed into training by the majority rule of the settlement, had always felt this hopelessness, and their constant harping on the matter had caused dissent and internal friction with those who had wanted to train, and believed that they could be wielded into a force that could penetrate the heart of the Lafayette ville. Fights had broken out when practice on combat moves had turned into genuine, no-holds-barred skirmishes. And now even those who had agreed the most vociferously with Marissa in backing Jak began to feel the black despair creep over them, defeated before they even started out.

  “Shit, even l’il Lauren’s gonna have to pull something out of the bag to get this together,” Prideaux remarked to no one in particular, looking around him at the tired and beaten expressions on the faces of the rebel force.

  In the shadows, Marissa had caught up to Jak, who was staring out over the dark water.

  “Fuck ’em, babe. They don’t know what they can do till they try, and we ain’t got any other way but to go ahead and go for it.”

  “Mebbe. If people not want fight, then what point?” he asked her quietly, turning so his piercing red eyes penetrated her own dark orbs.

  “The only point is that we can’t go on like this—you or me. Or them, though mebbe they don’t know it.”

  Jak was silent for some time. His gaze remained unwavering, and she found it impossible to work out what was going on in his head. Eventually he spoke. “If they want to fight each other, guess not give ’em a chance. Go now.”

  Marissa was taken aback and found it hard to disguise her shock. “Now?”

  “Yeah. Prepare tonight, move tomorrow. Not give ’em time to think about it, just do it.”

  Fired up, the albino rose and began to move back toward the settlement, leaving a stunned Marissa momentarily frozen. Shaking herself, not believing that she was finally going to get the action she had craved for so long, she scurried after him.

  When Jak reached the area at the edge of the settlement and the lake where the fighters had been training, the rebel group was beginning to disperse.

  “Wait—back here,” Jak yelled. There was an edge to his voice that made the even the most antipathetic of them turn back.

  He waited until they had gathered, and Marissa had caught up with him, before beginning.

  “Want fight each other, waste time and energy and blood? Or want to fuck over Dr. Jean. We can do it if we hit hard and soon. Tomorrow.” He paused, letting the speed of his action sink in, listening to the mumblings of surprise from the rebels. He allowed himself a grin before continuing. “Only one way can do this. Don’t mount full-scale attack. Go straight for Jean. Chill him and take out the brain of the ville. Rest of it like a chicken with head cut off.”

  Prideaux grinned. “Y’mean to say that if we can find a way to take out the boss man, then the rest of ’em won’t know what to do, and the whole thing’ll tumble down?”

  Jak nodded. “Jean control ’em, tell ’em what to do. No one tells “em what to do, not know what to do.”

  Prideaux nodded slowly, then turned to the rest of the rebels. “Y’know, that one might just work, if’n there’s a way to get to him.”

  “Is—but have to move fast, and remember everything told,” Jak affirmed. He outlined his plan with as few words as possible. It was a simple idea, making advantage of their small numbers, and it began to win over even the most sckeptical of the rebels. By the time he had finished, the atmosphere around the lake had changed.

  Jak grinned. “Get ready—move at sunup to be in position by tomorrow night.”

  “Sounds good to me, and I never thought I’d say that to you,” Prideaux said, shaking his head and laughing.

  Marissa looked at Jak, disbelievingly. It seemed so simple the way he put it. Maybe the fates were, for once, on her side.

  * * *

  Chapter Twelve

  “Necessity, my dear sir, is the mother of many things, it would seem…not merely invention.”

  “Doc, what the hell are you talking about now?” J.B. asked, a puzzled expression crossing his face at Doc’s proclamation.

  “I think he’s just kind of saying that, hey, we lucked out because we’ve got a great excuse for actually turning back after all,” Mildred replied, filling in the blanks.

  “Dark night, why doesn’t he just say that?” J.B. muttered, shaking his head.

  Mildred and Ryan had made their way swiftly back to the camp. Waking his friends, the one-eyed man had outlined the broadcast he and Mildred had overheard, and also informed them of his change of plans. As he suspected, it met with nothing but approval. Doc, J.B. and Krysty were soon ready to leave.

  “Triple red on this,” Ryan cautioned. “I reckon that the sec patrols run until dawn, and that’s still a couple of hours off. We need to make sure we don’t run across them.”

  “Then perhaps, if I should make so bold, it would be better if we wait for the dawn to break before beginning our journey?” Doc posed.

  “I did consider it, Doc,” Ryan replied, “but I really don’t think we’ve got the time to do that. If they’re mobilizing to attack the lake, then it means they know where the ville is, and they’ve just been leaving it alone. They can move triple fast, which means we have to move even faster if we’re going to give Jak any kind of warning.”

  Doc thought it was a reasonable point, and one with which there was little argument. Time was of the essence.

  Retracing their path was easy, even in the moonlight that filtered erratically through the canopy of foliage that hung over the swamp. They moved in single file, with Ryan and J.B. at each end, Doc sequestered in the center of the formation. It was important to move swiftly and silently, keeping careful watch for any sec patrols.

  Despite this, there was a lighter air to the group as they marched. The pall of gloom that hung over them as it hung over the swamps had lifted, they had a purpose, and they wouldn’t be deserting Jak. This sense of purpose pumped them with adrenaline, allowing them to maintain a high level of alertness despite the paucity of rest.

  They retraced their previous path. There was no sign of any sec patrols as the sky began to lighten with the coming of the new day. Ryan felt that this only confirmed his suspicions about the sec from Lafayette. They moved in a rigid, regimented and long-established pattern. They were used to being the lords of the swamp, with no opposition to test them or to sharpen their reflexes. They were slack, and paid no real attention to their surroundings. And they moved only at night.

  This could only help the odds of taking them on with such a depleted force as the rebels possessed. It would still be a tough task, but one that had a slim chance rather than none.

  As the day broke, they knew that they were on safer ground. The sec patrols would have returned to Lafayette. It seemed that they posed little threat if you could work out their routes and avoid them. And yet, they were well-armed, and to take them on in the confines of their own walled-in ville would be a different matter.

  A thousan
d possibilities for attack and defense ran through the one-eyed man’s mind as they made progress through the swamp. He would have plenty to discuss with Jak when they met up. In the meantime, they were able to move with ease now that it was light, and the memory of the path they had taken was fresh enough to make retracing their steps simple. With their quicker pace, they hoped to get to the rebel ville before sundown, even eschewing the chance to stop and rest along the way other than for the briefest of pauses.

  At least, that was the idea until they hit the area where they had parted company with LaRue. Although, up until this point, they had been certain of their route, now some doubt crept in.

  Faced with a wall of swamp grass, lobster grass and bizarrely flowering shrubs of orange and purple that carried a sickly sweet scent, Ryan paused. He knew this was where the bearded fighter had left them, but beyond that…

  “Fireblast, where do we go from here?” he breathed.

  Doc sighed. “A dilemma. Friend LaRue adopted an admirable policy in leading us a merry dance back and forth to disguise location, but…”

  “It doesn’t give us a direct route, even if we can trace it…and any attempt at a direct route might take us straight into quicksand.”

  Mildred grinned. “So when has anything like that ever stopped us, then?”

  J.B. returned the grin. “Not really any choice, is there?” He took out his minisextant from within his capacious pockets and took note of the sun’s position, estimating how long it had been since it had risen. He knew where the rebel settlement was in relation to their position as he had taken a reading before leaving, and from the two he worked out which direction they should take.

  “Think we’ll be able to follow any of their trails when we come across them?” he asked. “That’d make things easier.”

  “They’re damn good at disguising them,” Ryan mused, “but as we used them, we might. Just have to hope so.”

  They struck out in the direction of the lake and the rebel settlement, hoping that they would be able to shortcut without running across any of the swamp’s natural hazards.

  They got lucky. After fifteen minutes of floundering through densely packed foliage, the ground beneath their feet treacherously muddy, water seeping from the earth with each step, sucking at their boots, they came upon a trail they recognized. It was faint, but it was there if someone knew what to look for. With a palpable sense of relief, they hit the trail, and had made a rapid progress when they became aware of a rustling—faint, but there—in the bushes and weeds to their left.

  Ignoring the wet and muddy conditions underfoot, each of them hit the ground, searching for cover in the low-level grasses as they did so, blasters to hand and ready to fire.

  They heard the cocking of a rifle, and then a familiar voice coming from somewhere within the lobster grasses.

  “Hell, unless you’ve got some kind of purpose, I’d have to say that you’ve got the worst sense of direction I’ve ever come across. I hope you can control your trigger fingers better.”

  Emerging from cover, almost seeming to melt and reform, so subtle was his exit, they saw the old man Beausoleil. He was holding a Sharps rifle, as he had been the first time they had seen him, only this time he held it one-handed, with the barrel pointing up into the sky, a definite gesture of nonaggression.

  The companions got to their feet, Doc attempting with little success to brush the mud from his frock coat. Ryan moved toward the old man, but stopped suddenly when Beausoleil raised his free hand.

  “Watch,” he said quietly, picking up a rock and tossing it into the empty grass between them. Ryan watched it part the blades and land with a dull thunk. The earth seemed to open around the rock and swallow it in a matter of a second or two. Beausoleil grinned at Ryan across the divide. “Good thing you stuck to the path we made, eh?”

  Before Ryan had a chance to answer, he had skipped across the divide, years of living in the swamp having given him a knowledge of where his feet could land safely.

  “So why are you back? Not that I’m miserable to see your face again, but I figured you were on your way. So I’m guessing that it ain’t good news brings you back.”

  Ryan quickly outlined everything that he and Mildred had heard from the sec wag, and why they had returned. As he spoke, he became aware that the old man’s face adopted a more serious mien with almost every word. Even before he had finished, Ryan knew that there was trouble ahead.

  Beausoleil told them about the internal schisms within the fighters, and how Jak’s solution had been to lead his ragtag army out on the attack.

  “Ain’t that long since they left, for fuck’s sake,” he spit.

  “This could be really good,” Ryan mused.

  “In what way?” the old man asked. “How can it be good if they’re walking into a firefight and we’ve got hardly any defenses for when Jean’s men come down on us?”

  “Think about it,” Ryan said urgently. “Dr. Jean isn’t sending his sec in for a couple of nights. Before then, Jak’s forces will have mounted their attack. If it works, then you don’t have anything to worry about.”

  “And if it don’t?”

  “Then you’re fucked anyway, face it,” J.B. put in.

  “Thanks for reminding me of that—like I needed reminding,” the old man said bitterly.

  “Take us back to the ville,” Ryan said quickly, not wanting things to degenerate into a round of recriminations. Action would have to be swift if it was to have any effect. “If your people don’t have much of a start on us, we might be able to catch up with them, bring Jak up to speed on what’s going on. And if we tell the people you have left with you, then at least you can get them prepared to put up some kind of defense if the attack does come.”

  Beausoleil sighed. “It ain’t perfect, but I guess it’ll have to do,” he said. “C’mon, follow me—and I mean follow. I’m taking you on a short cut.”

  The companions followed the old man across the swamp. Having seen the speed with which the mud had claimed the rock the old man had tossed into it, they made sure that they followed his footsteps with extreme caution. He was following no path they had ever seen before, and it was a matter of minutes before they found themselves on the outskirts of the settlement. Word of their arrival spread quickly, and the old and children—the only ones left—gathered to hear what they had to say.

  Considering they were down to the bare bones, and they were facing annihilation unless the companions could reach Jak’s force and assist them in achieving their goal, the few remaining settlement dwellers took the news with considerable fortitude and stoicism. Under Beausoleil’s command, they immediately began to make plans for the defense of their settlement, should it come to that. The old weren’t afraid to buy the farm, and the young were perhaps too young to really comprehend what might happen, but the phlegmatic manner in which they began to work said everything about why they had stuck out against Jean’s regime for so long.

  In the meantime, Beausoleil left his people to their tasks and took the companions to the point were the rebel force had begun its journey to Lafayette. He led them some way into the swamp and away from the settlement.

  “They came this way. They were gonna cut across the usual trails and make a more direct route. The idea was that by moving during the day they wouldn’t have to worry about the sec patrols until they were actually into West Lowellton. Moving quick enough, they should do that by sundown.”

  Having identified the trail taken by the rebel force, the old man left them to it, opting to return quickly to the settlement and assist in mounting a defense in case of the attack taking place.

  With no words other than a swift farewell, he was gone, leaving them to take the trail on their own. It soon became apparent why he felt that his tracking skills weren’t necessary—the trail was easy to follow. On his own, Jak would have left no trace, and they would have had no chance of following in his wake. Even with the swamp dwellers, they would have expected things to be difficult.
Those who acted as sec, like LaRue and Prideaux, were adept at leaving little trace of the trails and paths that they used. But the force that had set out for Lafayette had left a trail that was obvious. It was as though Jak had opted for speed over stealth.

  That wasn’t like him. It suggested the speed was as much to keep the force together as to surprise the enemy. That he hadn’t bothered about the trail they left in their wake suggested that he was having enough trouble controlling a force that was undisciplined and moving in many different directions.

  An army like that was never going to be easy to control.

  Much less to direct successfully.

  It looked like Jak was having problems.

  HIS TACTIC HAD BEEN simple. They had to move swiftly and attack with an equal speed. That would prevent the members of the army arguing among themselves. And yet he couldn’t afford to risk splitting them up into small groups that could travel without being detected. With the fighters out of his earshot, there was no knowing what kind of arguments they might fall into. If the plan had any chance of working at all, then he had to keep them together.

  To move such a mass of people without leaving a trace was an immense risk, and one that he wouldn’t have wished to undertake in the normal course of things. But he couldn’t see that he had any choice. It rankled that they were leaving an easily traceable trail in their wake, but he could see no other way of getting them into position without any more internal factions forming.

  Jak didn’t realize that the only people following his trail were the companions. Even if he had, he wouldn’t have had the time to stop and wait. His plan—such as it was—demanded swift movement with no time to rest or for the fighters to stop and think…and worry—about what they were doing.

  By the time the sun had begun to sink, they had spent all day trekking through the swamp. The army marched in an almost silence, only a few daring to voice any thoughts, and these being almost whispers that died quickly for being ignored by the others.