Crucible of Time

by James Axler

  Mildred watched it out of the corner of her eyes, also watching the eyes of the panther, seeing that the beast was fascinated by the light brown, spinning leaf.

  Somehow, she knew that the falling dead leaf was going to spark the charge, so she readied herself for the fastest draw of her life.

  But the panther was quicker, moving from its crouch, powering toward her with a deafening roar of hatred and rage. Mildred screamed and finished drawing the revolver, thumbing and firing in a single fluid action.

  The short-fall thumb-cocking hammer fell on the chambered .38 round, and the boom of the powerful handgun filled the rest room.

  Mildred was aware of the shudder of the explosion running clear up to her elbow, then the leaping panther hit her, chest high, and knocked her flat on her back.

  J.B. WAS QUICKEST, the Uzi gripped in his right hand as he sprinted the few steps toward the rest room, crashing into the door and sending it spinning off broken hinges. Ryan was at his heels, both of them freezing at what they saw inside.

  Mildred lay still, sprawled on her back, knees drawn up, one hand gripping the gleaming revolver, pressing the muzzle against the side of the skull of an enormous black panther. It was huddled on top of her, snarling, jaws open, bright crimson blood dribbling over its curved teeth. There was more blood splashed on its chest, toward the right shoulder.

  "No," the woman panted, her eyes wide, staring at the two men, her voice forced through gritted teeth. "Mine."

  Ryan was ready to ignore Mildred and chance a shot at the panther, but events moved past him.

  The animal was recovering from the first snapped shot. A rumbling deep in its chest threatened another attack. Mildred, shaken by the attack and the fall, squeezed the trigger of the ZKR 551 a second time, the noise of the .38 round muffled by the barrel being jammed against the creature's head.

  The bullet smashed through the dense wall of the skull, puddling the brains, exiting on the far side, a chunk of bone and scalp exploding across the room, splattering against the far wall.

  The panther screamed, thrashing away from Mildred, legs kicking, clawing at itself. She rolled free, scrambling to the opposite wall of the rest room, holding the revolver ahead of her, gripping the butt in both hands to keep it steady.

  "It's done for, Mildred," J.B. said quietly.

  Krysty, Doc, Dean and Jak had come inside, past the smashed door, watching the slaughter of the big animal.

  "Let me give you a hand, Mildred," Krysty offered.

  "Thanks," the woman replied, holstering the warm blaster at a second attempt. She reached to take the proffered hand, pulling herself upright, whistling between her teeth at the nearness of the escape. "Real close call there."

  "How did it get in?" Dean asked. He turned his gaze upward to the hole in the roof. "Oh, yeah. That way."

  "Might be a good idea to move on." Ryan holstered his own blaster. "Sound of those two shots might travel a long way through a silent forest."

  "WE LOOKING FORWARD to hole up for a day or so?" Ryan asked. "Or keep moving?"

  "A rolling stone gathers no bullets, so it is said. Perhaps we might find a decent roof to protect us for the night." Doc stooped and rubbed at his knee. "Upon my soul, but I think that I have wrenched my leg."

  Ryan looked around the circle of faces, seeing exhaustion and nervous strain on all of them, but no sign that any of them was frightened. "Can you walk all right, Doc?"

  "Oh, I trust so, my dear fellow. Just a spasm in the tendon behind the right knee. No, nothing to concern yourself about. Personally I would rather like to leave this rest area behind. As you so rightly commented, the noise of the bullets might attract unwelcome company. The sun is already sinking, but the animal inside there will not smell any sweeter. Perhaps a fresh campsite for the night? What think the others?"

  Krysty glanced at Ryan, answering first. "Leave this place of death and blood and find a good camp for the night. The smell of the corpse could attract other predators, and there isn't much shelter with the roof and door gone." She shooed a fly away from her face. "Kind of pretty site, but it's tainted, lover."

  Mildred nodded. "I agree."

  "And me," added Jak Lauren, who'd been quietly honing the blade of one of his taped throwing knives on a convenient stone held in his lap.

  "I'm up for moving on, Dad," Dean piped up.

  J.B. had been checking over Mildred's blaster, carefully cleaning it and reloading the two spent rounds. "Move on," he said gently.

  Ryan grinned. "I'll make it unanimous, friends. Let's go along the blacktop."

  THERE WAS ANOTHER road sign, broken in two, three miles down the highway. It looked like it had once given the distance to Sequoia National Park. Someone had painted something across it, but the weather had faded it so far that it had become illegible.

  But there was fresher graffiti, neatly done in capital and lowercase letters, painted in gold, with no spelling errors:

  Entering the Land of the Children of the Rock. Come in Peace and be Loved. Come with Anger and encounter Eternity.

  "Ring any bells?" Ryan asked.

  "No," the Armorer replied, while the others shook their heads in silence.

  "Quite recent." Ryan rubbed at it with his right hand, almost expecting it to smear. "Must be some kind of ville or group, I guess."

  They saw two more hand-painted signs for the mysterious Children of the Rock: Come with open arms and the Children of the Rock will make you welcome. Come with a closed fist and we will break you.

  And: The Children of the Rock will bear witness for the Blessed Savior, but first we will bear arms against followers of Shaitan.

  "Bible-punchers," Mildred said. "Used to be a lot of them around, in the tense years before skydark. Part religious crazies and part racists and part redneck rifle carriers. Fundamentalist paramilitaries."

  J.B. moved his fedora, driving off some persistent insects with bright green bodies and purple, multi-eyed heads. "Read of them. Some of them got triple paranoid and became bitterly antigovemment. Some of them turned to bombers."

  "Best keep a good watch," Ryan said. "Mebbe we should walk along in a skirmish line, on condition orange."

  "I have the feeling we're being watched," Krysty murmured, looking at Ryan, keeping her eyes fixed on him. "Don't look now, but there's someone up on the ridge to the south of us. Horseman. Take a casual glance."

  "Nobody else look," Ryan snapped, rubbing at the back of his neck, spitting in the dirt. He turned slowly with his good eye to look up where Krysty had pointed.

  For a moment he saw nothing, just the ridge, lined with the tops of pines. Then he caught the glimmer of movement and focused on the horseman, astride a pinto pony. The distance was too great to be sure, but he thought the man was riding bare back in shirt and pants of light-colored cotton, with long hair and a bandanna tied across his forehead.

  "Native American," he guessed. "Looks like an Apache, but he's sure a long way from home."

  Mildred turned and looked at the figure, blurred on the hogback ridge. "You got better seeing with your one eye than most folks with two good eyes, Ryan. I can make out a man on a horse, but he could be the Emperor Napoleon for all I can see."

  Doc laughed. "At least you can see the rider, Dr. Wyeth. I can see some tall green trees and that is all. No more."

  The sun was beginning to slide down behind the western slopes, giving the sort of light where Jak with his albino eyes came into his own.

  "Apache," he said. "Carrying long gun. Sharps .50. Looks to be in twenties. Dressed like Mescalero. Seen us watching him. Riding off."

  Sure enough, the horseman had kicked his heels into the flanks of the pinto, moving it off toward the north, away from the friends, and disappeared from sight in a handful of seconds.

  "You feel any others, Krysty?" J.B. asked. "Anywhere around?"

  "No. Just the one man, going away. Can't hardly feel him at all now."

  Ryan turned back to the buckled, weed-strewed highway, followin
g it with his eye as it twisted and turned before vanishing among the pines. "Let's go find a place to camp," he said.

  IT LOOKED LIKE it might have been another picnic area back before the long winters. But there was no building, or notices; no barbecue pits and just the stumps remaining from what might have been scattered tables and seats, and no messages from the mysterious Children of the Rock.

  A narrow river ran along its back, which Ryan and Jak checked for spoor, concluding that no animals, or humans, had been there for several days.

  "Looks good to me," Ryan said. "After the run-in with that panther, and our friend on the pony, we'd best keep a careful double watch. Doc, Dean and Jak, do ten through one. Mildred and J.B., watch from one to four. Krysty and me—and I— will keep guard from four until dawn."

  "We hunting?" Jak asked. Ryan shook his head. "Think not. Light's going fast. Remember the size of the panther Mildred chilled. Wouldn't like meeting that on a dark trail. We had plenty to eat back in the redoubt. There's what seems like good, clean water over yonder. We can think about food tomorrow."

  RYAN AND KRYSTY LAY under a tall live oak, pulling the lightweight blankets over both of them.

  "You feel like some lovemaking, lover?" she whispered.

  Ryan hesitated a long, meaningful moment before starting to reply. "Well…"

  Krysty laughed and kissed him very gently on the cheek. "Me neither, lover."

  "Tomorrow?"

  "Mebbe."

  Ryan grinned. "And mebbe not. Been a long day. Bit of excitement with Mildred's panther."

  Krysty held his hand, running her thumb in a soft circle around the center of his palm. "Not many women could've done that," she said.

  Ryan nodded. "True enough. Tomorrow we could think about doing some hunting."

  "Don't feel very hungry. Not at the moment, anyway. Thing I feel most like is getting some shut-eye."

  Ryan squeezed her hand and rolled over onto his back. Unlike in the redoubt, they were both fully dressed, having just kicked off their boots. Their weapons lay on the ground at their side.

  "Sleep well, dearest," he said.

  "And you."

  THEY WALKED along the steep-sided gorge, gradually moving higher.

  The cloudless sky was a deep, rich blue, and a refreshing breeze shifted the tall branches. The night had passed without incident, though Ryan had thought at one point that someone was moving stealthily in the dark woods. But he had looked carefully in among the shadows cast by the hunter's moon and seen absolutely nothing.

  He'd checked with Krysty, who hadn't been able to feel any nearby presence.

  They were following a narrow game trail that cut up the gradient, away from the rumbling of the water at the bottom of the valley. The higher they climbed, the taller the pines seemed to become.

  A little before noon, Krysty laid her hand on Ryan's arm. "Something quite close," she said quietly. "Feels like a number of men."

  "Which direction?"

  "Ahead of us. Somewhere about where the trail levels out onto a kind of plateau."

  The others waited while Ryan crept ahead on hands and knees, the SIG-Sauer drawn, moving as silent as a whisper in a midnight graveyard.

  There was some thick brush just where the trail flattened out, and he was able to reach it unobserved. Parting the leaves with his fingers, he peered through.

  Krysty's mutie sense had been right.

  Chapter Seven

  There were five of them, instantly recognizable as Mescalero Apaches, sitting around a small, totally smokeless fire with a pair of skinned rabbits roasting over a pit. They were all short, muscular men, between twenty and twenty-five years old. Their restless ponies were tethered at the far side of the clearing.

  Ryan watched them for several long seconds. They were lying down, two of them passing a soapstone pipe backward and forward. It was obvious that they had no idea there was anyone close by, watching them.

  The wind shifted a little, bringing the smell of roasting meat to Ryan's nostrils, making him realize that he was feeling kind of hungry. There were two more rabbits, unskinned, tossed on the ground on the far side of the fire.

  "Sharing time," he whispered to himself, wriggling back down the slope to rejoin the others.

  Jak looked up, his mouth open, ready to call out to the returning figure of Ryan, who lifted a finger to his lips to silence the teenager. He waited until he was among the others to tell them what he'd seen up the hill.

  "Five, all warriors, armed with hunting bows and arrows. Three have rifles of some kind. Couldn't make out the detail. Four of them got pistols stuck in their belts. They weren't especially on the alert." J.B. stood up, slinging the Uzi across his shoulder. "And you said they got food?"

  "Rabbits. Two cooking, two skinned ready. I don't reckon they'd put up a fight if we took the uncooked pair. Let's go see."

  Ryan crawled on hands and knees back up the steep slope, the others spread out on either side of him. The bushes gave them all cover until they were ready to make their move on the fringe of the clearing.

  The one-eyed man waited a moment, checking that none of the five Apaches was aware of their presence, less than a dozen yards away. But they all seemed completely relaxed and confident, three of them now sharing the pipe.

  He glanced across at the others, all of them waiting for the signal to move forward, all of them with their blasters drawn and cocked.

  Ryan nodded. "Now," he said quietly, pushing through the brush, SIG-Sauer leveled at the nearest of the Native Americans.

  "Nobody moves and nobody gets hurt," he commanded, gesturing with the muzzle of the handblaster.

  For a moment the Apaches sat quite still, shocked at the sudden threatening appearance of the companions, all of them well armed.

  "We're kind of short on food, so we'd appreciate the loan of those two rabbits in the grass there." A pause. "You agree? Well, you don't disagree."

  The tallest of the group narrowed his eyes, saying very clearly, "Children of Rock, my brothers."

  And he drew the revolver from his belt.

  Ryan couldn't believe what he was seeing.

  The Mescalero were all covered by cocked weapons, and had absolutely no chance of defending themselves. And all that Ryan had asked for was a couple of rabbits.

  It wasn't something men would normally be willing to give up their lives for.

  "Don't!" J.B. yelled, as stunned as Ryan, loath to gun down helpless men.

  But the event was inexorably set.

  The Apaches were going for their blasters, some slower than others, as if they couldn't believe what was happening to them, either.

  It was Jak who fired first, squeezing the trigger on his enormous .357 Colt Python.

  You couldn't possibly have called it a firefight. Perhaps massacre was the only appropriate word for what happened in the next four seconds.

  J.B. fired six rounds of 9 mm ammo from the Uzi. Krysty got off two rounds from her double-action Smith & Wesson. Ryan shot down the two nearest Mescalero Apaches with the SIG-Sauer. Mildred only fired once, but the bullet took away the lower jaw of the youngest of the Native Americans, opening up his throat in a welter of gushing blood. Jak had fired once, hitting the leader of the group in the right thigh. Doc leveled the big Le Mat, ready to use the single shotgun round. But he saw that he was already too slow and he held fire. Dean, as well, was unable to get off a shot. It was done.

  The Apaches managed a single shot in retaliation. That came from a rusting, rebuilt Colt .45 and exploded into the dirt and leaf mold as the man's trigger finger tightened in his death spasm.

  "Hold it," Ryan said unnecessarily.

  The warriors were all down, all dead, though a couple still had twitching legs, or scrabbling fingers as the lines of communications went down between limbs and brain.

  The air in the clearing was heavy with the smell of cordite, a haze of smoke gradually dissipating. On the spits, over the small fire, the pair of rabbits was cooking nicely.r />
  Ryan holstered the warm blaster, looking across at his oldest friend. "Now, why the fuck did they want to do that?" he asked J.B.

  The Armorer shook his head. "Dark night! I couldn't even begin to guess. We had them coldcocked. Could've blasted them from cover if we'd been minded."

  "All for a couple of undersized rabbits," Doc said. "Why? Why on earth did they make us slay them?" His voice was hoarse with emotion.

  Krysty looked down at the tangled corpses. "Only kids, some of them," she said quietly. All around them, the forest was still and silent after the burst of gunfire. "You hear him say the name we've seen on graffiti?"

  "Children of Rock?" Dean said.

  "Yeah. Their chief just said that name, then they all went for their blasters. Must've known that they didn't have a hope of Hades of making it against seven blasters."

  She turned to Ryan. "What do you make of it, lover?"

  "Children of the Rock? Never heard of them. Not anyone we came across during the time we rode with Trader. All kinds of weird groups… But not the Children of the Rock. I'm sure I'd have remembered."

  J.B. had been quickly checking the corpses, waving away the clouds of green-winged blowflies that were already gathering, drawn by the acrid pools of spilled salt blood. "Mescalero all right," he said. "Long way from their usual hunting grounds, south and east of here."

  "We eating rabbits?" Jak asked.

  Ryan grinned. Trust the albino teenager to strike at the heart of the business. It hadn't turned out the way they'd wanted, but at least they'd gotten themselves a good meal out of the savage encounter.

  "Keep a sharp look and listen out in case they've got companions who might've heard the shots."

  THEY TIPPED THE BODIES into the fast-falling river, watching as the foaming water carried them southward toward the distant Cific Ocean.

  Then they ate, polishing off the two cooked rabbits, replacing them on the spits with the now skinned animals, moving them as the pink flesh darkened.

  They lay back in the filtered sunlight, weapons at their sides, sucking the tender meat off the fragile bones, wiping the grease from their chins. Conversation was held in abeyance until they had all finished eating.