Deathlands - The Twilight Children

by James Axler

  But there wasn't one.

  It was over.

  The smoke from the stickies' fire drifted up serenely between the branches of the overhanging trees. The children stopped their terrified keening, one by one.

  Nobody was shooting.

  At a quick glance there were at least half a dozen of the muties still alive, though all of them were sorely wounded. J.B. had unslung the Smith & Wesson M-4000 scattergun from his shoulders, the empty Uzi dangling from a strap on his belt. But the lethal flechettes weren't going to be needed.

  Krysty was on her knees, cutting away with her slim knife at the cords that tied Mildred's hands behind her. Dean was already up, rubbing furiously at his chafed wrists to try to restore the circulation to his fingers. His eyes darted through the carnage as he sought the mutie that had stolen his Browning Hi-Power. Doc sat still, his head turning slowly from side to side, as though he hadn't yet managed to take it all in.

  "That's it," Ryan said.

  By the time everyone was untied, only three of the entire pack of stickies were still on this side of the dark river. Ryan went round with his flensing knife and opened up their carotid arteries.

  And then there were none.

  The children were sent packing, pointed in the southerly direction, assured that they were no longer in any danger. Most of them still seemed to be sunk hi a trough of clinical shock, and they left without a word of thanks and without a backward glance.

  Doc, Mildred and Dean recovered their blasters from the dead stickies, and the seven friends, safely reunited, set off through the forest to where they'd hidden the boat.

  Chapter Thirty-Seven

  "Simple choice, friends." Ryan sat in the stem of the crowded little boat, his hand on the tiller. "Jump straight away or stop off at Quindley and let Michael speak with Dorothy. Let's hear what anyone has to say."

  They had made their way back to the concealed vessel without any trouble, pushing off and rowing a quarter mile out onto the still water of the lake, resting there, beyond the reach of any potential threat.

  Michael put up a hand. "Can I go first, Ryan?"

  "Course."

  "The way I see it, we have to pass close by the ville anyway. We rescued their children, so Moses and the rest are going to be real glad to see us and hear the news."

  Ryan nodded. "Probably right."

  "Probably?"

  "Not dealing with what you and I might think was a double-norm mind, Michael. Like watching a rabid fox and trying to decide who he's going to try and bite first. But I grant you that Quindley should be a touch grateful."

  "So, we can go in?"

  Ryan looked at the others. "Anyone have a problem with stopping off for a few minutes in Quindley?"

  Dean raised a hand. "Why can't we row around the ville and then let Michael go in on his own? If he wants to see Dorothy another time that much."

  "I don't mind," the teenager said.

  "No." J.B. shook his head. He took off the fedora and wiped sweat from his temples. "We all go or none of us goes. Only safe way."

  "Right." Ryan looked over his shoulder, toward the south and the ville. "We'll pull in on the lakeward side. Most of them'll be in the fields by now. Fair chance we can do this without shaking the trees."

  IT WAS A PLEASANT and easy row back along the lake toward Quindley. Ryan steered them in a straight line, moving away from the shore.

  "Nobody seen us yet," he said.

  At a word, everyone shipped their oars, sliding them into the bottom of the boat. While it coasted gently forward, the ripple of water under the prow slowly diminished.

  Dean was in the bow, ready to leap out and save it from jarring against the piling. He tied up the boat quickly.

  The moments as they approached the ville from the water were the real danger. If there had been an ambush planned, that would have been the time and the place. Even with their superior firepower, they could have been blasted out of the lake by a dozen or so concealed rifles.

  "Right. Triple red. Keep a skirmish line. Michael, where do you think Dorothy'll be now?"

  "She said last night that it was her turn to be on duty in the temple, waiting on Moses. Guess I'll find her there."

  "No. We'll find her there," Ryan said.

  THE STREETS WERE DESERTED, so quiet that Ryan began to feel like they were walking into a trap. But the chances to coldcock them had already been there. Why wait?

  He was out at point, with Krysty right behind him. The others were strung out, J.B. bringing up his usual rearguard position. The main gates were open, and they could see out along the causeway the neat allotments and tilled meadows. There was a scattering of the young people working there, but none of them noticed the intruders in their ville.

  "Moses's place." Ryan held up a hand to stop them, looking all around. But there was still not a sniff of betrayal.

  "Can I go first?" Michael asked. "I'd like to see her.. .sort of on my own. See if she still says she'll come... What she promised last night."

  "What did she promise?" Mildred asked, but the young man turned away and ignored her question.

  Ryan spit in the dirt. "We all go hi together. J.B., you and Mildred wait out here and keep watch. Wouldn't want to find us trapped inside there."

  "Sure."

  "Let's go in."

  It was cool as he pushed at the carved wooden door, feeling its ponderous weight as it swung silently open. The inner room was as luxurious and silent as ever, with torches blazing in iron sconces on the walls, their light dancing over the priceless old paintings that hung everywhere.

  "I had not thought you would return."

  The voice from behind the mirror was gentle and mildly amused, as though a bright little child had done something rather clever to entertain it.

  "We set your babies free, Moses," Ryan said, looking at his own reflection in the mirror. "They're on their way back through the forest. Mebbe you should get Jehu to send a party out to bring them in."

  "Perhaps. Perhaps not."

  A maroon velvet curtain moved at the side of the large, dark mirror, and a hidden door opened and closed. Out came Jehu and Dorothy.

  The blond youth had his hair loose. His deep blue eyes stared at Ryan. He was completely naked and his body was marked with crimson weals across his hairless chest, and down over his stomach and thighs.

  Dorothy was partly dressed, but she, too, had whip marks across her bare breasts, and what looked like the jagged bites from sharp teeth disfigured her thighs. She held her head down and wouldn't look up at any of them. Not even Michael, who called to her.

  "Dorothy! What the fuck's been happening?"

  "Looks like Moses has been taking some sporting with his apostles," Ryan said, almost choking on his own bitter rage. "That why you keep them young and tender, Moses?1'

  "He's the lord, outlander," Dorothy said, trying to fasten a blouse across her nakedness, still not looking up.

  "Some lord." Krysty glanced at Ryan. "We going to just leave this, lover?"

  Moses laughed. "Such foolishness. All you oldies with your prim and prudish morality! Jehu!"

  "Master?"

  "Fetch the others and we will have a ceremony tonight that will long be spoken of, as we dispose of these interfering old, old outlanders. Go now."

  "Yes, Master."

  "Stay where you are, son," Doc said, the Le Mat pointing at the young man's chest.

  "Do as I say, Jehu."

  "Of course, Master."

  Jehu turned, the golden down on his muscular buttocks gleaming in the light. Doc hesitated, unwilling to murder the naked young man by blowing him apart from behind. Jehu grabbed a torch and whirled it, so that flames streamed out, the fire hissing in the stillness.

  "Mine," Ryan said.

  The single bullet took Jehu below the breastbone, angling sideways and ripping out most of his lungs before tearing chunks of muscle from the pumping walls of his heart. His mouth opened in a gasp of

  shock and surprise,
and his arms flew wide. The burning torch landed at the foot of a dusty tapestry, which immediately caught fire.

  Jehu staggered a few clumsy steps, his eyes blank and blind, fingers clawing at the air. He slipped to his knees with blood frothing from his pale lips, dappling the wooden floor.

  Dorothy looked up at the shot, blinking in horror. Michael ran the few steps to her side and put an arm around her. For a moment she resisted, trying to pull away, then she collapsed and started to weep.

  "Good way to finish it," Krysty stated, not bothering to conceal her satisfaction.

  "Put out the fire, children," Moses called, sounding amazingly unconcerned at the desperate threat to his home. The flames had reached the ceiling and were devouring slender beams, already lapping at some of the oil paintings.

  "I have encountered varieties of evil and sickness in my long life," Doc said loud enough for the hidden godling to hear him. "But not, I think, anything to compare with the way you have corrupted and destroyed the innocents."

  He leveled the gold-plated Le Mat and pulled the trigger. The single ,65-caliber scattergun rou nd shattered the ornate Gothic splendor of the mirror into ten thousand silvered shards of dark glass. As it collapsed into itself, it revealed the room beyond.

  And it revealed Moses, lying on an antique sofa, its brocade material filthy and stained. He wore what looked like a bed sheet, which had once been virginal white and was now a disgusting mixture of different shades of dirt.

  Moses was roughly four feet tall, and had to have weighed close to three hundred pounds. He had the soft, plump body of a child, but the seamed face and veiled eyes of an old man. His teeth as he smiled at the watchers were crooked and yellow, and his fingernails were grotesquely long, so jagged and distorted that they almost curled back on themselves.

  "See my godhead," he giggled in that wonderful voice.

  "See his boasted pomp and show," Doc shouted. "Your pleasure's faded, Moses. Reckoning time's here."

  The fire was so hot that they all had to retreat toward the main entrance.

  Moses sat up, the cloth falling away, revealing the folds and creases of his gross nakedness. "I have taken my sport where I found it," he said, smiling at them through the shimmering curtain of flames. "Founded this place and sucked it dry for so many, many years. Now I will pay for my sport. But it was so good, out-landcrs, so good!"

  Moses disappeared behind the wall of fire, and they heard nothing more from him.

  His temple had become an inferno.

  "Nothing to keep us here," Ryan said, shouting to be heard above the noise of the fire. "Whole ville's likely to go."

  Michael shepherded Dorothy out, his arm still tight around her. Dean followed, glancing back wonderingly at the cascade of multicolored fire that poured down the walls. Krysty and Doc followed, with Ryan last to leave the doomed building.

  J.B. stood close by the door with Mildred, the Uzi in his hands. "You set the fire?" he asked Ryan. "Heard a couple of shots."

  "Took out Jehu. He dropped the flaming torch and up it went. Doc blasted the mirror."

  "Did you kill Moses?" Mildred asked.

  "Tell you about it later." Ryan looked behind them. For a few moments there was no sign that the building was irredeemably ablaze. Then there was a whoosh of noise and heat, and part of the thatched roof exploded into smoky fire. Sparks and burning reeds were scattered over the roofs of the rest of the ville, most of which immediately caught fire.

  Dorothy was sobbing noisily, her arms clasped around Michael. The rest of the young people of Quindley still hadn't noticed the fire, but it could only be a matter of seconds before they did and came running.

  It was time to move on.

  THE RAGING BLAZE, coupled with the death of their guru and leader, seemed to have totally destroyed the will of the young ones of the ville. Though they came dashing toward the column of smoke and flame, hesitating when they saw the heavily armed outlanders, not one of them made any attempt to stop Ryan and the others from leaving.

  They parted like the Red Sea to let them pass along the causeway and out through the cultivated fields and orchards into the welcoming shadows of the forest around.

  Dorothy paused at the fringe of the pines, dragging at Michael. "I can't leave like this," she said. "They need me at my home."

  Mildred patted her on the shoulder. "Not really anything much left that looks like a home, girl."

  The fire was unstoppable, leaping from wall to roof and back down to the next wall. One or two of the men and women were scooping up buckets of water from the lake, and throwing them at the ferocious wall of flame. But it was totally futile.

  THEY REACHED the hidden redoubt without any further incident, Ryan leading them immediately through its deserted corridors and down into the mat-trans unit.

  Dorothy shrank back as she saw the cold gleam of the tight purple annaglass walls of the chamber.

  "Be fine," Michael encouraged. "Trust me."

  Chapter Thirty-Eight

  It took the combined efforts of all of them to reassure the frightened young woman. Krysty stood behind her, stroking her long blond hair, trying to gentle her as though she were a terrified mare.

  "Be all right. We've done it dozens and dozens of times," she said.

  "But I can't leave my family and my brothers and all my sisters."

  "You'll have me." Michael was also crying, great gobbets of tears miming through the dirt on his cheeks. "And I need you, Dorothy."

  There was no real hurry, but Ryan was beginning to lose patience with the tender scene. "Best get on with the jump," he said. "You and the girl can sort this out later, Michael. Right now I'd like to get away from here."

  One by one they filed into the chamber, picking their places to sit down in a circle, backs against the walls. Michael led Dorothy, who seemed now to have recovered a little of her composure. Ryan waited, ready to close the armaglass door and trigger the mat-trans mechanism.

  He was aware that all of them carried the scent of wood smoke clinging to their clothes.

  "Everyone ready?" He looked around the circle.

  Doc had been fumbling with the reloading of the Le Mat, assisted by J.B. Now he smiled up at Ryan, showing his wonderful set of gleaming teeth. "Ready as we'll ever be, my dear fellow. Shipshape and Bristol fashion."

  J.B. simply nodded, allowing Mildred to take his hand. She also grinned at Ryan. "Ally ally oxen free," she said.

  "Let's go, Dad." Dean sat with his knees drawn up to his chin, picking at a splinter in his thumb with the sharp point of his turquoise-hilted knife.

  Krysty patted the space next to her. "Let's hope we have a better jump than the last time we tried."

  "It'll be fine," Ryan said.

  He looked last at Michael and Dorothy. "You two ready for this? It doesn't hurt, but it sort of scrambles your head and you kind of fall asleep for a few seconds. And you wake up somewhere else."

  "And I'll be here for you." Michael looked unbelievably tense and worried, gripping the young woman by the wrist. "And you for me."

  Dorothy said nothing. But she was trembling like an aspen in a hurricane, her teeth chattering, her eyes rolling in their sockets with fear.

  Ryan closed the door and sat down by Krysty, laying the Steyr at his side, making himself comfortable. The wound in his neck gave a twinge of pain, and he touched it with the tip of a forefinger. The disks in the floor and ceiling were starting to glow, and the familiar mist was appearing.

  He could hear a voice, a long way off, but he'd already closed his eye ready for the jump. It was a woman's, but Ryan didn't think that he recognized it.

  The darkness was swimming around him.

  "No... No... Can't..."

  The voices merged.

  Ryan reluctantly opened his eye again. Part of him saw what was happening, but a pan of him was already slipping away on the jump.

  Dorothy stood by the door, screaming, though she didn't seem to be making a sound.

  Michael was
on hands and knees, howling like a dog in pain, reaching out to her.

  "No," Ryan said, struggling to move, but there was a massive weight settled across his limbs and he was paralyzed.

  The door opened, and a vague figure stumbled through it-a woman, with hair like Kansas wheat.

  "No."