by James Axler
J.B. raised the empty Uzi. “Stay back!” he shouted, bringing the muzzle around in an arc to encompass the circling muties. “Help me!” The cry was sharp and sudden, a child’s voice.
J.B. turned, locating the source in an instant. Out in the dark water, twenty feet from the shore, he could see a figure waving its arms in fear. He knew who it was right away.
“Ricky!”
“J.B., help me!” Ricky cried. His hair was stuck to his head and his arms were waving, splashing the dark water as they batted against it.
J.B. stomped determinedly toward the water, the useless Uzi still in his right hand. He tossed the blaster aside as he stepped into the rippling, oil-dark mass of the ocean, striding out into the water as the scalies closed in behind him. Up ahead he saw Ricky splashing fearfully, and then he saw hands grasping at Ricky from below, callused hands reaching up the lad’s chest, pulling him down.
“Hold on, kid!” J.B. shouted. “I’m coming!”
One arm over the other, J.B. began to swim, great strokes eating up the distance. Up ahead, Ricky was struggling to stay afloat as the scaled hands dragged him beneath the surface. And then he was gone, and J.B. was swimming in empty water.
“Ricky?” J.B. shouted, spitting out a mouthful of salt water. “Ricky?”
A shadow moved beneath the surface where Ricky had been, like a dark balloon bobbing against the ceiling that was the ocean surface. Knowing that it was Ricky, J.B. swam.
J.B.’s jacket was heavy with water now; he could feel its weight increase with every stroke. Ricky’s head crowned the water surface ahead, just the top of his head like the first push of a baby being born, but J.B. couldn’t reach him—he was struggling to stay afloat himself.
J.B. dropped beneath the dark surface for a moment, a second under the water, two seconds, three, and then he was up again and gasping for air.
“Rick—” J.B. began, but the current caught him and dragged him under a second time.
It was cold beneath the surface, and everything was cast in a gray the shade of a rainstorm cloud in those seconds before a downpour. J.B. could see Ricky’s legs waggling in the water, his body struggling as long arms dragged him down. He wasn’t far ahead, maybe six or seven feet.
J.B. struggled to surface once again. His shoulders ached from the weight of his jacket, and he could barely pull himself away from the almost magnetic drag of the ocean bed. He did it, one arm plunging ahead after the other, cupping at the water and almost physically pulling himself up and out of it.
J.B. emerged with lungs aching and muscles burning. Ricky’s face appeared inches in front of his, eyes closed and water pouring from his mouth. Then his lips pulled back in a snarl that mocked his charming smile, and his eyes opened to show silvery, mirrorlike orbs. J.B. saw then that the kid’s face was scarred and callused like a burn victim’s, and he realized that he was too late—that Ricky was one of them now, a scalie like the others.
Ricky’s hands reached toward him, grabbed the top of J.B.’s head and shoved him under the water once more.
Bubbles. Darkness.
* * *
HE AWOKE REACHING for his blaster and swore harshly when his hands grasped nothing where the gun should have been.
“J.B.?” Mildred asked, looking across at him where he was huddled in a chair in the main room of the shack.
The long day had caught up with J.B. awhile back and, almost as soon as he and Mildred had returned to their cabin, the Armorer had reclined in the chair and dropped straight off to sleep. Now rich orange sunlight filtered through the window behind Mildred as afternoon turned to evening.
Staring at Mildred and the window and the bare wood walls of the cottage, it took J.B. a few seconds to remember where he was.
“J.B.?” Mildred asked again, padding across the room from where she had been standing staring out the window. There was a mug of water in her hand, and she offered it to him as he recovered himself. “You okay?”
The Armorer nodded, brushing the mug aside, not quite feeling awake. The dream had been vivid and cruel, like the hallucinatory jump dreams that were sometimes initiated when they used a mat-trans.
He struggled to move, looked down and saw how his jacket had tangled around him. “Damn it,” he cursed, extricating himself from the coat and standing. His head swam a little when he did, and he tottered in place for a moment.
Mildred grabbed his arm, steadying him. “Bad dream?”
“Long day,” J.B. answered, sitting again. He looked from Mildred to the sealed wooden box in the corner of the room and nodded. “Don’t feel right, not having a blaster, Millie,” he said. “Makes me edgy.”
Mildred shrugged. “Rules of the game in these parts,” she said. “Either we go along with it or we get out.”
“Yeah,” J.B. said, reaching for his battered fedora where it had dropped on the floor as he’d slept. “Doesn’t mean I’ve got to feel happy about it.”
“Come on,” she said after a moment. “We ought to get ready. We promised Doc we’d attend this dance he got us all invited to.”
J.B. sighed. A dance. In less than a day his life had gone from blasting scalies to hell to kicking up his heels.
Chapter Ten
As the sun disappeared below the mountains, Ryan and his companions made their way back into the center of Heaven Falls. People were already gathering and making their way toward the cluster of towers. From the size of the milling crowd, it appeared that everyone had come, including children, who were running around the dirt street, giggling and playing.
“It feels like Christmas,” Mildred said, astonished.
Doc agreed. “There’s something rejuvenating about the sound of children’s laughter,” he said, striding purposefully toward the towers.
The towers had been lit by freestanding sconces that stood seven feet high like streetlamps, with flames burning at their top. One of the seven towers was assigned solely for ville meetings, and it had been given over this night to recreation.
The companions traipsed after Doc as he led the way to the tower, following the crowds. Some of them, like Mildred and Krysty, were excited to see what was happening here—the sounds of laughter and happiness spoke to them of the lives they had led prior to becoming nomads on the Deathlands’ roads.
Ryan was more wary, but he felt a sense of familiarity to the event. He had grown up the son of a wealthy baron and had attended social gatherings from an early age.
Jak looked less pleased to be there, and he hung back as the companions crossed beneath the towering arch that led inside. Jak was naturally an outsider, and he could be uncomfortable around big crowds such as this, with too many variables involved, too many people to watch.
At the back of the group, J.B. noticed Jak’s trepidation and he hung back to speak with him. “Dancing isn’t really my bag, either, Jak, but we do what’s expected of us at times like this, same as we chill animals so we can eat.”
Jak understood, and he paced through the arch with J.B., hurrying to catch up to their friends.
They found themselves in a grand hall with equidistant wooden columns that held an impressive bowed ceiling aloft. The ceiling featured an elaborately carved crisscross pattern that captured the light of the flaming lamps and candles in its angles, flickering almost as if it was aflame itself.
The room was filling with people, and it was warm from their body heat and from the burning flames that had been used to illuminate it. The room could hold two hundred people comfortably, and Ryan assumed it had been built with the foresight that the ville’s population would expand.
A raised stage was located to one side of the room, where a quintet made up of men and women was using homemade stringed and wind instruments to create ambient music.
At the opposite side to the band, a long table had been set u
p over which a cover had been placed.
Looking around, Mildred noticed how young everyone looked, with most people in their twenties or younger, and no one much over forty. That in itself was unremarkable—the Deathlands life was a harsh one, the average lifespan had dropped considerably since the days of civilization. But what struck Mildred was not simply the youthfulness of the crowd, but how healthy they all appeared. The men were tanned and muscular, the women strong and poised, with the undeniable beauty that youth granted and age stole slowly but relentlessly away. It reminded her of high school in that way—all those bright eyes and quick smiles.
Here is a population that lives well, Mildred thought as her eyes roved over the pretty faces in the crowd.
There were some familiar faces there, too. Four of the Melissas who had met the companions at the redoubt were present, wearing vibrantly colored dresses that swept the floor, their hair simply but gracefully styled.
Still standing by the door, Ryan took a step back and spoke in a low voice to J.B. “Your assessment?”
“First impression—friendly enough,” the Armorer replied. “You?”
Ryan inclined his head in agreement. “Odd, though,” he said quietly, “seeing this many people and not a blaster in sight.”
J.B. nodded. “Yeah, that takes a little getting used to.”
Then Krysty hooked an arm through Ryan’s, pulling him away from J.B. and deeper into the room. “Come on, lover,” she insisted joyfully, “this is no place for a war council.”
Taking Krysty and Ryan’s lead, Doc and Mildred filtered into the crowd to speak with people they knew. Mildred gravitated toward Petra while Charm spotted Doc and found her way toward him accompanied by another beautiful young woman whom Doc didn’t recognize. Charm had dressed in a long, floaty dress dyed violet, and she offered Doc a huge smile as she caught up with him.
J.B. watched his companions fitting in, and he looked back toward the doorway where Jak was hovering uncomfortably. “Come on, Jak,” he called, “let’s see if there’s anything to eat at this social.”
As they strode across the room, the music came to a halt and a hush ran through the crowd. All attention turned to the raised platform where the band was set up, and after a half minute of silence a figure strode through the crowd toward the stage surrounded by four women, all of them dressed in the same white robes the Melissas had worn when they’d first met Ryan’s team. The woman in the center was the Regina. She had changed her appearance and now wore a long, silky dress, sleeveless and with a train that followed five feet behind her on the floor, ending in a point. The dress was a vibrant yellow and had been accented with black-belted accessories that swirled around it like stripes.
Gracefully, the Regina stepped onto the raised stage, taking up a position in front of the band while the other members of her entourage took up places to either side of the stage at floor level. The Melissas surveyed the crowd with watchful eyes as the Regina raised both arms.
The Regina held her arms outstretched for a moment, her hands open to silence the crowd, though she need not have bothered—a deathly hush had already fallen on the hall as the people of Heaven Falls awaited their leader’s words.
“People of the Trai,” the Regina announced, a broad smile materializing on her face, “it brings us all great pleasure to come together like this.
“Within us lie the seeds of tomorrow. And it is a glorious tomorrow—one that will be free from the blight of the past, and the darkness that wrought across this once beautiful land. By working together we shall bring hope, we shall illuminate the darkest corners and drive back the fear that grips this land. We shall bring change and prosperity and life.”
The Regina lowered her arms then and spontaneous applause rippled through the audience. Doc joined in, too, as did Mildred, used to obeying social convention. A moment after that, Ryan and Krysty began to clap, too, though Ryan watched the crowd, studying their faces surreptitiously.
J.B. remained a little farther back from the stage with Jak, and put his hands together as if applauding, holding them there as he studied the crowd.
“S’pose clap?” Jak asked quietly.
“I didn’t hear an order,” J.B. whispered in reply. While it may have sounded flippant, he realized there was something to his statement. Too many times in similar situations, force would be used to get an unwilling audience to kowtow to a baron’s ego when they gave a speech like that. While the Regina didn’t call herself a baron, the Armorer recognized that that was just what she was—a leader of a walled ville that kept itself protected from outlanders. The fact that the Trai had welcomed J.B. and the others didn’t guarantee that they trusted them, or that they would extend that same hand of friendship to the next group of travelers who happened upon this hidden enclave.
Gradually, the applause began to peter out. The Regina remained on stage, smiling broadly and clearly enjoying the adulation. “Continue to build togetherness,” she said, raising her voice over the last smattering of applause, “for in togetherness we shall build the new world.”
A second round of applause took the room, during which the Regina turned to say something to the band before stepping down from the stage. Then she made her way back through the crowd, accompanied by her four guards.
Ryan was deep in thought as he watched the woman walk to the covered table on the far side of the room. He and his companions had witnessed similar rallies like this before, where occupants of a walled ville were gathered to pledge fealty to a baron. If anything, this one seemed remarkable only in how benign it was. These people seemed to genuinely believe in a better tomorrow, one they could build for themselves. It was a refreshing discovery.
The covers on the long table were removed to reveal an impressive spread of food and drink. Two huge barrels lay at either end of the spread with tap nozzles protruding from their sides. One of the Melissas—this one a redhead—took a golden goblet from the side of the table and handed it to the Regina, bowing at the waist and lowering her head in supplication.
The Regina took the goblet and held it up to the watching crowd who waited in anticipation. Then she stepped across to the barrel at the far right of the table and worked the tap, pouring amber liquid into the goblet. Once filled, she raised the goblet in a toast to the crowd before drinking—just a little.
“All love!” the Regina announced.
The phrase “All love” was repeated by the room’s participants, and Ryan and his allies joined in, too. This was clearly the signal for the party to begin, and the band struck up the first chords of a punchy tune.
People offered Ryan and his companions drinks and food, and within a few minutes the center of the hall had filled with dancing bodies as more than half of the attendees took up the dance.
Standing to the side of the dance floor, Krysty turned to Ryan and showed a bright smile that illuminated her whole face. “When was the last time we went dancing?” she asked.
“If I remember correctly, would it get me out of doing it again now?” Ryan teased.
Krysty laughed, putting her empty plate down on a clear patch of the food table. “No,” she said, grabbing Ryan’s hand and tugging him toward the dance floor.
Ryan had been taught to dance as a child, though it was a talent he rarely had cause to call upon. The last time, he remembered now, had been during their adventure in Canada.
This night, with Krysty’s body close to his, he was happy to revisit those old steps once more.
* * *
AS THE NIGHT wore on, Doc, too, joined in the dance, taking pains to imitate the steps that Charm and her friend showed him. He was clearly delighted by the whole event, and looked as if a great burden had been removed from his soul, especially in those moments when he made a wrong step and his partners simply laughed.
At some point in the evening Charm left Doc in the company
of her friend—a young woman called Bella—and made her way to the food table. When she got there she recognized Jak piling cured meats onto a small plate—indeed, it was hard to miss his striking albino appearance.
“It’s Jak, isn’t it?” Charm said, stepping close behind him. “The healer’s friend.”
Jak turned warily and looked at her through narrowed eyes.
“I’m Charm,” the woman said, extending her hand toward him. “We met at the bunker.”
Charm smiled as the pale-faced young man took her hand and shook it. “You have a strong grip,” she said. “Would you care to dance?”
Jak shook his head. “No.”
“Come on, it’ll be fun,” Charm insisted.
Jak looked the woman up and down uncertainly, and, under his inquiring gaze, Charm brushed a stray lock of honey-gold hair from her eyes, blushing a furious shade of red.
“What? Aren’t you able to have fun,” Charm challenged Jak, “because of your color?”
J.B. stepped in and introduced himself to the woman with a tip of his hat before speaking with Jak. “I figure the lady isn’t the type to take no for an answer,” he said, “so why don’t you go have a bit of fun out there with the other lunatics?”
“No,” Jak said, shaking his head. “Check Ricky.”
J.B. held up a hand. “I’ll check on Ricky,” he insisted. “You go on and be young with this pretty woman.”
Reluctantly, Jak put down his plate—gobbling up another slice of honeyed ham as he did so—and followed Charm to the edge of the dance area.
As the music played on, J.B. maneuvered and excuse-me’d his way through the crowd to the hall’s exit. He had kind of promised Jak that he would check on Ricky, and with Mildred busy chatting to her new friends and no danger of a pretty girl asking a worn-out old bastard like him to dance, he figured there was no time like the present. Besides, he wanted to look around the ville without being disturbed, and doing so now, while most everyone in town was attending the social, made a lot of sense.
