Deathlands 071: Ritual Chill

by James Axler

  Krysty, by now trying desperately to cling to the knowledge that she had been drugged in the hope that it would help her fight against the effects, marveled at his words. Anointing them with oil and seemingly making up his address as he spoke, his words were a bizarre mix of the mundane, something taken from old religious texts. But it was as nothing compared to his next action.

  Lifting her head as much as she could to get a better view of what was occurring, Krysty was astounded to see the old man begin to whirl and dance to a rhythm only he could hear. As he did so, he began to chant words and syllables that were in a language she didn’t understand. He moved slowly because of his age, yet at the same time there was an undeniable grace to his ritual dance. The words continued as long as he moved, until he suddenly stopped, lifting his head and his arms toward the heavens in supplication, finishing his ceremony in English.

  “For thine is the kingdom, the power and the glory. Forever and ever. Amen.”

  The Inuit all chanted the single word “Amen” before the medicine man dropped his arms and moved out of the tarpaulined area.

  The ceremony was now obviously at a close, as the Inuit swarmed into the area, buzzing around the tables. The drugged meat was beginning to take a greater effect and Krysty felt her head become heavy, her hearing and vision blurring at the edges. She felt her bonds being untied and she was lifted from the table. Furs and skins were wrapped around her and she shivered not from the cold, but from the sudden realization that she had been almost frozen as the skins and furs warmed her, the feeling beginning to seep back into her bones beside the artificial heat of the drug.

  She tried to look around, but her head was slow to react to the signals from her brain, her neck twisting slowly. She could see the bland faces of the Inuit all around her, coming in and out of focus as she was passed over their heads, bobbing up and down on a sea of hands. She caught glimpses of the others as the same happened to them.

  She was moved out from under the tarpaulin, the darkening skies above her betraying the passing of time. She could feel the Inuit swarming beneath her, but it became harder to keep a grasp on reality. The swarm beneath her was like a sea of flesh that swept her along. The tide carried her toward three huts, all of which were fenced off from the rest of the ville in a way that she hadn’t seen before. Each had wire and wooden fence posts to isolate it from the other dwellings. But surely they did not expect anyone to try to escape? That was what the drugs were for…unless it was to keep the Inuit out?

  She couldn’t tell, and thinking was becoming harder. Her head lolled on her shoulders and, with no support beneath her for her skull, she kept dropping her head so that the world turned upside down.

  But she could keep herself alert enough to see that they were being taken to the huts: two per dwelling. Mildred was being carried ahead of her, taken into the hut that Krysty felt herself being swept to by the tide of the Inuit. How come she was being swept while Mildred was carried? Or was it just a trick of perception, caused by the drugs?

  It became harder to tell what was real and what wasn’t. She could see the others being paired off into the other two huts. They were carried one moment, moving on a tide the next.

  Krysty saw the black maw of the hut doorway closing in on her. It caught her on the head, her reactions too slow to duck in time, and the world went blissfully black.

  * * *

  Chapter Eleven

  They lay in the huts, the drugged meat making them sluggish and torpid. Stripped of their clothes, stripped of their weapons and, more importantly, stripped of the will to fight back, each of them began to warm through in the log cabins, the tallow and wood-burning stoves filling the air with the thick, sweet smell of wood smoke. Most was funneled efficiently through the chimney stacks attached to the stove that ascended through the roof, but as with all such ageing dwellings, there was enough give in the stack to allow a little of the smoke to escape.

  It was a soothing odor, overpowering the sour smells of their own sweat and the stench of fear. Because each of them was now afraid.

  Fear wasn’t a terrible thing. If it wasn’t kept in check, it could overpower a fighter, prevent him or her from performing to his or her full capacity, ruin timing. It could stop a person attacking at the right moment, from defending successfully. But in essence, fear was a good thing. A healthy dose of it was a remarkably efficient early warning system. Fear was that nagging in the gut that forced a person to act, that put a person on the defensive when danger was near.

  For each of them, individually, fear was something that they lived with every day and that they welcomed as a friend. It had kept them alive and ahead of the game this far, and there had been no reason to suppose that it would continue doing so for some time to come…until now.

  The lack of clothes and the lack of weapons was a problem, but hardly an insurmountable one. They had faced such obstacles many times before. At least they were warm, and were given a day’s grace in which to rest and recover. In previous experience, that had been enough for them to formulate some kind of plan, either as a group or individually. And at least they were two to a hut, meaning that some kind of team work could be used.

  But not this time. This time they lacked something that worked in conjunction with the fear to drive them on, spur them to action. This time, they were lacking the will to act.

  They knew this. Their fear knew this. And instead of nagging them to action, it did little other than gnaw at their vitals. A kind of hopeless despair started to seep through the velvet blanket of torpor, invading the darker recesses of the mind. This perfidious drug that they had been fed in the meat had now left them without the will to survive.

  And without that, they would surely buy the farm.

  KRYSTY AND MILDRED were in one hut, Jak and J.B. in another, with the third containing Doc and Ryan. It was to this hut that Thompson and McPhee, the medicine man, went first.

  Ryan huddled into the blankets and furs that covered him as the door to the hut swung open briefly, admitting the two Inuit before slamming behind them. Open only for a brief moment, but enough for him to note that the huts were guarded, a dour Inuit with a Sharps standing by.

  Thompson said nothing, indicating with the briefest movement of his head that McPhee should conduct an examination. It would seem that the old man was part-doctor, part-priest, for he moved forward and began to check Ryan in a business-like, brisk manner. The one-eyed warrior wanted to push him away, to assert himself against the shaman, yet he found that the will to do so was sapped, and he meekly let the old man push him around. Although he wanted to bridle with anger at the way in which he was being treated, he could muster nothing more than apathy.

  McPhee grunted to himself as he prodded at the superficial wounds on the muscled torso, probing for breaks in the skin, pressuring bruises to assess their depth. He moved down to Ryan’s legs, the iron-hard pressure of his grip causing the one-eyed man’s muscles to cramp. He winced, and the shaman could feel the tightening of the muscle. The degree of pressure changed and he soothed the cramp from the limbs.

  Ryan hated himself at that moment. He felt gratitude toward the old man wash through him at the release from pain, and at the same moment he felt contempt for the gratitude. How could he be feeling this way toward a man who had drugged him and would most likely be the one to chill him on the morrow?

  McPhee had, by this time, worked his way on to Doc. The old man lay among the huddle of blankets and furs, and hadn’t spoken since they had been taken into the hut. Ryan had crawled across to him, but had been alarmed to see Doc staring ahead, unblinking, unresponsive to any stimulus—speech, touch, all had proved fruitless. Ryan wanted to tell Thompson and the shaman about this, but found he could not even muster the will to speak.

  McPhee examined Doc thoroughly, standing back with a flicker of puzzlement passing across his stoic, bland countenance.

  “Well?” Thompson asked.

  McPhee shrugged. “He’s okay,” he began, indicatin
g Ryan. “But he worries me,” he added, gesturing toward Doc.

  “Is he whole?”

  “Depends what you mean.” McPhee shrugged again. Anywhere else, such limited and minimal means of expression would have brought an explosive response, but all it elicited from Thompson was a grunt.

  There was a long silence before the Inuit chief spoke again.

  “Is there any damage to his body that would prevent him from being one of the offerings? It’s vital we do not anger the Almighty.”

  “Hell, his body’s fine,” McPhee said off-handedly. “That’s not the problem.”

  “Then what is?” Thompson prompted after it was clear that the medicine man had once more lapsed into silence.

  “Not his body. Don’t know what’s going on in his head, though. Seems like he’s just shut down. Burning up, too. Guess the initiation was too much for him. Should burn out the fever for tomorrow, but…”

  “But what?” Thompson asked, for the first time a hint of worry cracking his otherwise impassive tone.

  McPhee shook his head slowly, as if to emphasize each word. “His head. If he’s gone… I mean, got the snow blindness and no longer sees us as we see him, then I’m not sure how the Lord stands on the mad. He’s whole in body, but would the madness be an insult?”

  Ryan couldn’t quite believe what he was hearing. Doc had always been flaky, but this trip seemed to have been the thing that had finally severed whatever links the old man could claim with sanity. Somehow, that wasn’t really surprising. There had been something about the whole expedition that had seemed doomed. Landing in the redoubt that held so many memories had been the trigger, and since then it had been one disaster after another, a series of blows that had left them reeling and from which it had been hard to regain equilibrium, so that each successive blow had been another hit to drive them further and further into the dirt.

  No wonder Doc had finally decided to cut loose that last tie to the real world. In some ways, Ryan envied him as he lay here, unable to muster the fight to even make a token show of resistance. If the herbs coursing through his blood did not subside before the morrow—and given the intelligence of Thompson and McPhee, that was unlikely—then he would go meekly to his demise, as would they all. At least Doc would be spared the humiliation.

  Meanwhile, Thompson had been carefully mulling over McPhee’s words.

  “What do the teachings tell us? As I was told, it has to be whole in body. There’s nothing about the mind of the offering.”

  “Just my point,” McPhee concurred. “Nothing against it, but nothing for it, either. What if the Lord gets real pissed at us sending a loony to him? He’ll think it was an insult, and then where will we be?”

  Thompson said nothing for what seemed to be an eternity. The oppressive heat and smoke seemed to overwhelm Ryan as he strained to hear what the Inuit chief would say.

  Finally the chief spoke. “Hell, it doesn’t say no, does it? The way I see it, the teachings are about offering whole bodies for their strength. What they think and feel don’t come into it. If anything, the fact that they’re offering themselves, going willingly with the help of the herbs, makes them acceptable to the Almighty.”

  McPhee shrugged once more. His stock response to any problem about which he wished to remain noncommittal, it seemed.

  “You’re the chief,” he said simply.

  The two men left without any ceremony and without another glance at either Doc or Ryan.

  The one-eyed man was gratified that he had managed to catch so much of their conversation. He had been right to assume that the feeling of torpor and helplessness was caused by the drugged meat. The lassitude that swept over him was from an outside agency and not from himself. That scrap of knowledge was something he could use to battle against what was now in him.

  Maybe they had been doomed, maybe not. What had seemed helpless a short while before now had a glimmering of hope. It wasn’t Ryan’s own despair. It was thrust on him by an outside agency. There was, deep within, the rumbling of an anger that his fight had been taken from him. And that may just be the thorn with which he could nag at himself and bring back that fight that would enable him to, at the very least, go down fighting rather than go placidly to his demise.

  But as he looked at the blank staring eyes of Doc, bulging out from beneath a sweat-spangled brow, he wondered if he would be alone in his fight.

  HE STANDS OVER ME and talks as though I were insensible. I feel insulted by his ignorance, and yet at the same time I know that he is doing well by me. Treat me as a simpleton, you old fool. Underestimate me, and allow me the opportunity to beat you by your own stupidity.

  So hot in this room. But soon the time will come when I will rise again. Perhaps the heat is like a simple incubation chamber, allowing me to shed my old skin like the snake, hatch from the egg, emerge from the chrysalis. Transformation. Reconfiguration.

  This ceremony of which the old fool speaks shall be a sacrifice of sorts. But it shall not be myself that is sent to their false god. It will be the last vestiges of the old me traveling on to the next plane, while the new me shall rise triumphant to lead them on to glory. I shall be the God on Earth, the saviour… They are my destiny, whether they are real or some illusory analogy. Even if this is nothing more than a play, it is a play in which I must act my part. Ritual that shall lead to eventual enlightenment.

  Now I feel my limbs rigid, burning. Poisons drain into my muscles before being dispersed. The moment of crisis, the moment of truth. Soon I shall know.

  I, always I. Ego. Ego sum. I am. But am I? I wonder if I shall know me after the changes are complete? Shall I have an inkling of who or what I was, or will that all be wiped from my mind? If the “me” who I know now is not the real me, but only he who stands in wait of the true arrival, then will I retain any semblance of that he?

  I do not know. I will find out. And if it is not so, then I will have no recollection of these times before. So it will not, I suppose, matter very much. Nonetheless, I shall be sad to lose me…

  THOMPSON AND McPhee proceeded, little knowing the turmoil in which they had left both Ryan and Doc. Blissfully unaware, they next turned to the hut where Krysty and Mildred were huddled, slowly thawing. Krysty still felt concussed from the blow she had taken on the head when being carried into the hut. She sat by the stove, her head still clouded, her vision blurred. She saw two doors open, four men enter. She wanted to shake her head to clear it, but knew that if she did, the pain would be greater.

  Thus she was compliant when the medicine man walked over to her and pulled the furs from around her body, running his hands over her to check her contusions. He took her chin between thumb and forefinger, tilting her head so that he could get a good view of her eyes.

  “She took a hell of a knock on the head, but it should clear by morning,” he told the chief, rummaging in a pouch he kept secure in his clothing. He produced something between his other finger and thumb. Moving her head toward him, he pressured gently on her chin as an indication for her to open wide. She complied, without even knowing why. He popped the object into her mouth with the command, “Chew.” Krysty did so, only a very dim part of her—past the drug and past the concussion—marveling at how malleable she was. Her mouth went numb as whatever was contained within the bitter leaf she tasted began to seep out. Her woolly head began to clear and her vision sharpened.

  “Good, yes?” McPhee asked. She could do little more than nod like a stupe. A rare smile cracked the stoic face of the shaman. “She’ll be fine,” he said to his chief.

  “Okay. But what about her?” Thompson asked.

  The medicine man turned to find Mildred huddled under a pile of blankets and furs. She had backed herself up into a corner of the hut and, although the fury in her eyes was dulled by the drug she had been fed, there was enough fire to make the medicine man pause.

  “Well? Aren’t you going to make the examination?” Thompson asked in a tone of voice that suggested he did not want to be
the first to approach Mildred.

  The medicine man said nothing, but approached Mildred with caution. She backed up against the wall so far that she was driving herself up into a standing position. Her nostrils flared and her teeth bared like a frightened animal. It was obvious that the drug had affected her adversely. McPhee rummaged around in his pouch and came up with another leaf-wrapped package, which he held out to her.

  “Eat. It will make you feel better,” he said in soothing tones, trusting that there would be enough of the drug in her system to make her comply with his softly spoken command.

  Mildred watched his hand as it came toward her, palm up, the leaf capsule on display. She snatched at it, crammed it in her mouth. It tasted bitter from the leaf, then sweet and minty from within. A warmth encircled her brain and she sank back toward the floor.

  Tranquilized sufficiently not to care if she was man-handled, it was simple enough for McPhee to carry out his examination.

  “She’s the fittest yet—her and the one-eyed man are the strongest.”

  “Good. Are you sure he’s all right to use?” Thompson asked in tones that suggested this had been worrying him for some time.

  McPhee sighed. “Once again, think back to your teachings. Someone is not whole when they have a limb missing, or are injured in such a way that they will chill without the need for sacrifice. Fingers, toes, senses such as hearing and blindness—these are not major enough. They have to be fit enough to be of service. You can do that without a toe, but not without a leg. Without an eye, but not without a head.”

  Thompson chewed on his lip. True, there were few among those living in these times that were completely whole, without some kind of minor loss. But it did worry the chief that whole meant whole, meant without any kind of loss. Having all your arms and legs, and not having blaster holes in your chest leaking your life away were obvious insults to the Almighty. But how did he stand on eyes, fingers and not being able to hear the prayers before you were chilled?