by James Axler
"Sure. So, we'll meet up in the ville?"
"Yeah, outlander. We'll do that. And you better walk right or we'll bust your asses. Blasters or not. Right?"
"Hey!" said Riddler, the fattest and oldest of the gang.
"What?"
"How'd they get through the rattlers? They was lucky, Zombie."
"True, Riddler, true." He stared at Ryan. "You see any real big mutie snakes back in the brush there?"
Before anyone else could butt in, Ryan answered him quickly. "Snakes? No. Would've run a mile if we had."
The president of the chapter nodded solemnly. "Been your best bet. Touch one of those beauties and you count living in seconds."
"How come?"
"Baron runs the ville, right? He thinks he does. But Snakefish is built on religion. Snake religion and old-time religion. When you get to the ville you'll meet up with the Motes. Marianne and Norman and their boy, Joshua. That's where the power is in Snakefish. You know that and you walk right. Right?"
Ryan and his companions nodded dutifully. Having butchered one of the ville's favorite pets wasn't likely to endear them to the folk who ran Snakefish.
At a signal from Zombie, the bike engines coughed into life, spitting great clouds of blue-gray smoke into the cool morning air.
As the Angels vanished into the distance, weaving from side to side of the blacktop, Rick sat down on the verge, whistling his surprise and relief. "Those are heavy dudes," he said. "You hear the way they talked? Like actors in some B-grade movie. Like they learned all that crap about Hell's Angels. But those bikes!"
Doc coughed again. "I have seen and read a little about these gangs of hoodlums. If they are the sec force, andif there are some religious leaders running the show, perhaps we should seriously consider returning immediately to the redoubt."
"Those bikes," Rick continued, ignoring Doc's suggestion, "are worth an arm and a leg. Well, back in my time they would have been." Zombie had the big Harley-Davidson, the Electra Glide. And some of the others had true classics, as well: a couple of British Nortons and a Triumph; an Indian Chief and a BMW 1000. Rick saw a 650 Yamaha, and the little guy with the scar on his arm had a beauty. It looked rusted and battered, through the chrome, but was still Bultaco Metralla. "You guys can't believe what some of those... I mean..." He shook his head in amazed disbelief.
Ryan was still thinking about what Doc had said. His own experience had been that the worst kind of ville was one where some sort of freak religion ran the place. Some cults had all kinds of taboos, and a man never knew he'd crossed one of them until he felt the knife opening his stomach.
"Thought about asking who ran the air wag," J.B. said. "Then I figured it could be best to keep zipped. Like on the snakes."
"Sure. You think we should head for the ville or back to the redoubt? If we didn't have the freezie in tow I'd say move back over the desert and into the gateway."
The Armorer took off his glasses and squinted through them, wiping away specks of orange dust. "Freezie'd never make it back up. Take two, three days. Guess those sec boys could be to the ville and here again in an hour. With more guys with blasters. Like you said, Ryan. Be some blood spilled." He perched the glasses back on his pale, sharp nose.
Krysty hooked her arm through Ryan's. "My vote's for the ville. Not that I reckon we've got all that much choice. Do we, lover?"
"No. Snakefish, here we come."
* * *
"What's this park place the biker was talking about?"
Rick considered Ryan's question as they walked together toward the distant ville. "Sierra Sunrise Park? I'm no authority on places like that. I only visited a few. I liked the white-knuckler rides, roller coasters and stuff, loops and spirals. Montezuma's Revenge. Demon's Triple. White-water rapids, flumes. Colossus. Giganticus. There was a ride at Sierra, but I can't quite... No. The name's gone. Sorry, Ryan."
"Gas stinks," Jak exclaimed, hawking and spitting on the worn roadway.
"Ville must be rich," Lori said. She'd been oddly silent since the Angels had left them, walking on her own in long, swinging strides. Doc was panting, trying to keep up with her.
"I got me the feeling that those long-haired sec bastards don't much take to their baron," J.B. observed. "Place where we all have to walk soft and careful." He looked at Lori. "All of us."
Zombie and his gang were waiting for them when they finally reached the end of the main street of Snakefish, California.
Chapter Sixteen
"Baron wants to see you. We told him you came from the outlands. He asked if any of you was muties. Told him you didn't look like it, apart from that Jak Lauren. The kid with the snow hair and fire eyes. Never seen any norm like him."
"Don't call me 'kid,' you..."
"No, Jak," Ryan said with a biting voice of authority. "He's not a mutie. Comes from a family out east where they all had white hair. Nothing unusual about it."
Zombie shrugged. "Couldn't care a flying fuck, myself. Seven of you aren't going t'take over Snakefish, so where's the harm?"
They walked a little way into the ville, down a wide street. J.B. nudged Ryan and whispered, "Neutron."
"Gotta be."
The buildings looked like pix in old magazines, books and films. Since half of the old state now lay somewhere beneath the lapping waters of the Pacific Ocean, the nuking must have been both spectacular and total. The shops and houses looked to be in remarkably good condition. That meant the region had received neutron bombs, which effectively took out all human and animal life but left most structures standing.
There weren't many people around, and quite a few of the buildings were empty and boarded up. But Zombie hurried them along, the rest of the chapter flanking them, making it difficult to see too much of the ville.
In some villes the sight of a group of outlanders would have produced far more curiosity. And, often, hostility. But here there was a feeling of relaxation. Despite the bizarre escort on the polished and gleaming old two-wheel wags, Ryan felt reasonably secure. There were smiles and nods. Curtains twitched in some windows. It was weirdly like entering a time slip, back before sky-dark.
Rick had begun to mutter to himself again, looking around, stumbling in the ruts in the road. He shook his head in disbelief and confusion.
"Snakefish, California. John Doe, Main Street, Anytown, United States. Ice-cream parlor over there. Sixty-four flavors. Drug store. Book shop. Flagpole down the way, outside the town hall. Whoops, I nearly... I've gotta complain to the highways department. Too many potholes... too many to fill the Albert Hall. This is then, but that was now. Or now is then. Todays are the tomorrows that I worried about a hundred years ago." He turned to Ryan with a look of desperate, strained intensity. "I'm not crazy, am I, old friend? New friend? All this is like it was. Not like it is. Is it? Is it like this now?"
"Some places. Not many. This is one of the neatest, cleanest villes I've ever seen. Doesn't mean it's safe, though."
The freezie wiped sweat from his forehead, calming himself. "I know. A man may sit at meat and feel the cold in his groin."
"Sure."
"Beware the smiler with the knife beneath his cloak, Ryan."
"Oh, I always do, Rick. I always do."
Zombie slowed his hog in front of the building with the white-painted flagpole, from which a faded Stars and Stripes fluttered proudly in the pallid sunshine. The rest of the bikers ranged themselves alongside him in what looked like a carefully rehearsed maneuver.
"Baron's hall. He knows you're coming in with us. Just go on in."
A carved wooden sign told them that the building was Snakefish Town Hall, built in 1967 and reconstituted in about the Seventieth Year after the Great Madness.
"I like that," Doc said. "Great Madness. I couldn't have put it any better myself."
They stepped across the sidewalk, up a path that ran between two beds of flowers. Pale yellow rosebushes. The grass had the regular green that came from steady watering. The smell of the roses did valian
t battle with the sickly odor of the gas-processing plant they had glimpsed beyond the far end of the main street of the ville.
"This is crazy," Rick mumbled. "I feel like I'm a kid and I'm going to register at the town hall. This is crazy."
Double doors, painted white, swung open at the head of the flight of eight steps and a woman appeared. She was a little over average height, around thirty years old. Black hair bobbed at her shoulders, held in place with a dark purple comb. She wore a black jacket over a cream blouse, and pale fawn riding breeches were tucked into a pair of highly polished, knee-length black leather boots. She smiled at the ragged band.
"Welcome to Snakefish," she pronounced. "Baron Brennan's expecting you. Do come in."
"Who are you, lady?" J.B. asked.
"I'm Carla Petersen. You must be Mr. Dix, from Zombie's description."
Ryan glanced across at the Armorer. It must have been the reflected glow of the soaring sun, but he had the momentary illusion that his old friend was blushing!
They walked through the doors into the coolness of a wide hall with a sweeping staircase that curled up to the second floor. An elderly man in a dark blue uniform with gilt buttons was dozing at a desk near the door.
The woman led the way, heels clacking on the mosaic picture that showed, as far as Ryan could make it out, a girl carrying a sheaf of wheat, rising from the sea with a smile of simpering idiocy on her rosy, dimpled cheeks.
"You lost your wag, I believe, Mr. Cawdor?" Carla Petersen said, pausing on the wide landing for them to catch up. Rick trailed at the rear, panting with the effort of climbing.
"That's right. Three days, up in the hills."
"Where were you coming from?"
"South."
"And you were going?.."
"North."
She smiled with a touch of frost. "Not a man to give too much away, are you, Mr. Cawdor?"
"Man who gives everything away finds he has nothing left for himself."
"True. Very true. Now, just along here. The third door."
Every now and again, throughout the Deathlands, Ryan had stumbled on places where neutron bombs had left buildings virtually untouched. The town hall of Snakefish was like that. Cold stone. Benches padded with worn green leather. Doors that had frosted glass in their top halves. And names painted in almost illegible gold leaf, with their jobs.
"Milius Haldeman, Registrar. Rowena Southwell, School Inspectorate. Crawford Fargo, Highways. Angus Wellson, Divorce Counselor."
She heard him reading the doors. "So many names and civic appointments, Mr. Cawdor. All dead these hundred years. The baron only uses a small part of the hall now. With around two thousand spuls in the ville, the administration is kind of low-key."
She paused in front of a door, much like the others. Except that the gold paint was fresher. Edgar Brennan, Baron.
A voice responded to her brisk knock. "Come in, come in, said the mayor looking bigger and bigger and in did walk..."
Doc caught the wary look of bewilderment on everyone's faces. "Quoting an old poem," he whispered, "not mad."
The office of the baron was huge, with floor-to-ceiling windows on one side that opened onto a balcony and overlooked the desert. There was a threadbare strip of carpet covering a floor of wooden tiles. A massive bookcase ran the length of the wall on the left. But the glass doors were cracked and the shelves only held a half-dozen tattered and spineless volumes. There was a variety of unmatching chairs and a sagging sofa. The room was totally dominated by an enormous mahogany desk, which was buried with piles of paper, folders and files. It was just possible to make out the shadowy figure of Baron Edgar Brennan of Snakefish, lurking behind them.
"Greetings, gentlemen. And ladies. Come in, come in and sit down. Down."
Carla Petersen ran rapidly through the introductions. As with Zombie, Ryan was impressed with the way she remembered all of their names. The only one that she seemed to falter over was J.B. Dix.
They sat down, finding places among the chairs. Miss Petersen perched on the edge of a small table near the window, next to J.B.
"I would sit down as well, but I think I would vanish," Brennan said. "I'm a little deficient in the department of leg length."
Ryan had thought that the baron was already sitting down.
"Lost their wag three days, Edgar. Looking for food and lodging for two or three days before they move on."
"Lost their wag!" Brennan toddled around the desk and leaned against it. "To find a wag is lucky. To lose one smacks of carelessness. How come you lost your wag? Your wag?"
Ryan was so fascinated by the strange appearance of the Snakefish baron that his mind wandered off the question. "Lost?.. Oh, a fire. Lectric short. Fire in the night. Burned out. In the hills."
"Didn't hurt any snakes, did you?"
"No. No, we didn't."
"Good, good, good."
Edgar Brennan was around four feet ten inches tall, a rotund and yet oddly dignified figure. He wore a shirt of dazzling white and a paisley cravat knotted around the throat. He looked to be somewhere in his late sixties. His pants were neatly pressed, his shoes polished to a mirroring gleam. As far as Ryan could see, Brennan wasn't carrying any kind of blaster, which made him kind of unique among barons of Ryan's acquaintanceship.
"We have a few rules hereabouts. Nothing too strict, I hope. Do you have a supply of jack? If you are outlanders here, I expect not. Expect not."
"Trade ammo," J.B. said. "Or mebbe we could work off a trade."
Miss Petersen leaped in. "That would be fine, Mr. Dix, just fine. This ville runs mainly on its supplies of gas. We are not a poor ville. Somewhat the reverse."
"Generous, I would hope. Yes, generous." Brennan's round little face creased into a smile. He gave a throaty chuckle. "We will lend a hand to any weary traveler, will we not, Carla?"
"We will, Edgar, though..."
A small cloud sailed into view and settled itself in a tiny furrow between the baron's eyes. "Yes, there is... Mustn't upset the... But a token of food and lodging for Mr. Cawdor and his comrades? Surely no objection to that." A sudden thought struck him. "Not mercies, are you? Mercies?"
"No," Ryan said simply.
"Where is Layton?" He turned to his visitors. "Layton is my nephew. My heir. I have never married, and he is now my only living relative. A series of accidents have... Accidents. Yes."
"Layton's out having lunch at the Qiksnak, Edgar."
"Course. Thanks, Carla. I didn't realize how time was passing. Passing. Lunch. Three eggs over easy with a double ham and hashies. Double slice of Mom's apple pie to follow. My nephew is a well-grown lad, folks. But kindly and brave. Only person in Snakefish who'd take up the air wag when it was found. Uses too much precious gas, but..." He smiled the smile of an indulgent uncle.
"Perhaps our visitors would care for something to eat?" the woman suggested, standing and moving toward the door of the office.
"Course, course, course. That's a three coursemeal, you see." He waited for the ripple of polite laughter at his small joke. "Give them each enough jack for a couple of days, Carla, my dear. They can stay at the Rentaroom. Have it charged to the civic friendliness fund."
His assistant hesitated. "There'll be a service, tomorrow, won't there? Might be best if they all turn up. Otherwise..."
"Otherwise the Motes could name them undesirable and then it would be a short walk into the sagebrush and a short encounter with Azrael and his brothers and sisters. Yes, they must attend. Tell them about it, Carla, there's a dear."
Outside the building everyone heard the angry whining of the two-wheel wags racing past. As the sound began to fade, a cloud of dust rose toward the window, pressing against the glass as though it sought admission.
"Come this way, folks," Carla directed brusquely.
"Thanks for the meeting, Baron," Ryan said. "And thanks for the kindness."
"Welcome, welcome, welcome." He beamed broadly.
* * *
Outside the co
olness of the shadowy building, the sun struck like the slap of a glove. Doc coughed, doubling over, eyes popping like the stops on a mission harmonium. They waited for him to recover his breath a little.
"Sorry, my dear friends. A small piece of California dust found its way down into my aged windpipe, I fear. I'm better now."
"Breaking down, Doc," Lori said, but it was said affectionately, and she took his arm and kissed him on the cheek.
Carla attached herself to Ryan, glancing around to make sure that J.B. was also close to them.
"Rentaroom's cheap and clean. Not many visitors come to Snakefish. You'll have to check in any blasters, but not handguns. Never seen anything like that rifle, Mr. Cawdor."
"It's a G-12 Heckler & Koch. Fires caseless rounds. Saves a lot of weight and waste."
"Leave it at the desk. And that cannon of yours, Mr. Dix."
"Sure thing, Miss Petersen."
"Carla, please."
This time Ryan was absolutely certain. They were in the shade, but J.B.'s face definitely flushed.
"I'm J.B., short for John Barrymore. You can call me John, if you like, Carla."
"John!" Jak exploded, overhearing the conversation.
"Yeah, John! You want to make something out of this, kid?"
The Armorer stood, braced, his whole body fighting tense as he faced the boy. Ryan knew better than to interfere with J.B. on a matter of blood.
"You don't call me that," Jak said quietly, his right hand slithering toward the back of his belt, where he kept one of his throwing knives.
"Then button up about my name, Jak. Take my meaning? Just..."
The teenager grinned suddenly. "Sure, J.B., I understand. Real good."
"My goodness," Carla said. "That seemed to be rather a nasty moment."
"Just play," Krysty replied. "You get used to their ways."
* * *
Carla left them in the lobby of their small hotel, having made sure the rifles were checked in safely. Before going she'd called the seven friends around her for a last, urgent word.
