First his ebullient tone and then the rest of his presence vanished. As he disappeared, the southern Frontier’s greatest warrior, guardian, and overseer, General Gaskell, spat, “Filthy little pedophile.”
THE PLAGUE VILLAGE
CHAPTER 4
—
I
—
What’s this? A roadblock?” Juke said from the driver’s seat, seeing men on the road about sixty feet ahead.
The men were most definitely armed, and there was a barricade behind them, made of wood and wire fencing, that crossed the road.
The group had left the waterfall behind them, and it was now late in the afternoon. The road they were on would bring them to their next destination—the village of Hardue—in about twenty minutes.
The sky bore clouds even heavier than those of the day before. Not a beam of sunlight deigned to grace the road.
Once the transporters had stopped about thirty feet away, two of the five men came over to them. They carried pneumatic guns pointed toward the sky. Of course, if the situation called for it, they were ready to point them at the group and open fire in a heartbeat, so it hardly proved them harmless. Bandit groups would use every trick in the book.
The men gave the names of two different villages about twenty miles south and told them the reason the road had been blockaded.
“An epidemic?”
“Yep. It’s the fountain plague.”
Both Juke and Gordo, who was on the roof, were speechless.
It was one of the worst diseases of all the contagions on the Frontier, and it’d wiped out more villages than anyone could count. Whenever even a single person came down with it, surrounding villages would join forces to seal off the infected village and wait for the disease to pass. In most cases, that would be when the entire population had died out.
“If it’s fountain plague, we can fix them,” Juke said, but his words only put a grimmer look in the men’s eyes. “Seriously. See, a hospital in the Capital has developed a special medicine for it. And we’re scheduled to deliver it to Hardue. They’re signed up for any new medicines.”
What villages on the Frontier needed more than anything was new drugs from the Capital. Ageless and immortal, the Nobility weren’t particularly intent on developing new medical treatments for themselves, but for the humans on whom they subsisted, they used their scientific prowess to develop drugs and build hospitals. It was something like the love an owner shows for his pet dog, only a bit more twisted. Even after the Nobility had vanished into obscurity, humans were left to run the medical facilities they’d left behind, and though they couldn’t comprehend some of the equipment or the theories behind it, they somehow managed to produce results. Frontier villages that were especially rich made arrangements with transport services like Juke’s so that new drugs and medical equipment would be delivered as soon as they were developed, no questions asked. And the village of Hardue was one such place.
“We can’t trust these guys,” one of the men said to the other in a doubtful tone. Tension raced through the group by the barricade. “Fountain plague breaks out in the village, and the very next day someone comes along with a special medicine for it. It’s all a little too neat.”
“What would we stand to gain by lying? If the symptoms showed up yesterday, there’s still time to treat them. The victims could get better.”
“And what happens if they don’t get better?” the other man asked. “What are you gonna do if all of you come down with it, too? We don’t want any more trouble than we’ve already got here. So either turn back or take a detour.”
“Don’t you get it? We’ve got medicine. If we inject them with this, it’ll cure them of the fountain plague.”
The two men looked at each other. With a despicable smile on his face, the first one to address them said, “And if that special medicine doesn’t work, we’ll have to keep you locked in Hardue. But there’s no way we could stop this big ol’ wagon of yours from busting through our barricade. We couldn’t have you bringing any more weapons into Hardue with you, either. Leave your wagon here and go in unarmed, and we’ll allow it.”
“That’s complete bullshit!” Juke said, his eyes bulging. “It’d take another twenty minutes to reach Hardue in this wagon. On foot, that’d be six hours. You think we could spend that long walking a road crawling with monsters without a single weapon?”
“In that case, we can’t let you go.”
The two men took a step back, and the group at the barricade leveled their guns at the transporters. At the same time, Sergei was up on the roof taking aim at the two men with a gunpowder firearm.
Grinning thinly, the second man pointed toward the barricade and said, “Give it a rest. That thing over there’s a portable missile launcher. Seems folks in the Capital call it ‘Rodan.’ You can shoot us, but that wagon of yours will get blown to smithereens. That the sort of thing a transporter would want?”
A pained expression stole onto Juke’s face. A transporter’s cargo was as important as his life or his honor.
The two men laughed mockingly, and then one of them said, “Now, about the toll—what do you say we make it half your merchandise?”
A shadow fell across the men, for another figure had come into view—the shadowy form of a guard who’d been behind the wagon and out of their sight until now.
“D,” Juke murmured.
“D?”
Whatever that name called to mind, the pair looked up at the rider with fear on their faces as the figure in black grabbed them both by the collar and lifted them into the air, before they could say another word. Even Juke and the other transporters found it strange how the two men were as motionless as corpses.
“Stop it. We’ll do whatever you say!” said one.
“Please don’t kill us,” the other pleaded feebly. They seemed quite terrified of D.
“Set the two of them down!” a man at the barricade shouted, one hand cupped by the side of his mouth. To his left, “Rodan” was taking aim. Its base was huge, but the tube housing its black missile was long and thin.
“What do you want to do?” D asked Juke.
“Go, of course. That’s our job.”
“Stick with me,” D told them, and then he started to ride toward the barricade.
The men manning it were shaken as well. D and his compatriots were traveling in the path of their missile. But what disturbed them more than anything was the beauty of the young rider. It was unearthly.
“Halt!” someone shouted. “Halt. If you don’t, we’ll blow you away!”
But they knew they couldn’t. He was too close, and one of those missiles cost as much as fifty head of cattle; they couldn’t very well use it to settle their own personal quarrels.
The air whistled, and the person manning the launcher felt a slight tremor coming down the tube that discharged the missile.
D returned his blade to its sheath.
The men stood stock still and forgot all about shooting them, probably robbed of their souls more by D’s looks than by his unearthly air. D passed them without uttering a word. He was followed by the wagon carrying Juke and Gordo, both of whom were grinning as if to say, This time, it’s our turn to laugh.
As they started to disappear down the road, someone far behind them growled, “Dirty bastards!”
But when the missile was brought to bear on the transport party, the man on the launcher learned what that earlier tremor had been. The front half of the firing tube had just fallen to the ground noisily. The tube was made of an alloy that was said to be able to withstand a one-ton impact. In the faint gloom, the piece rolling across the ground showed a nice, smooth cut.
—
As they approached the entrance to the village, the pair of men the Hunter held up in the air began to display a different kind of fear.
“Please, just set us down already. If we get any closer, we’ll get infected!”
“For the love of heaven, spare us, please. I don’t wanna catch the stinkin’ f
ountain plague!”
The two men moved their arms and legs frantically. Even though D was holding up around three hundred fifty pounds with that one arm, it didn’t move in the least.
But even Juke seemed to feel sorry for the pair, saying, “You can let ’em go now.”
“They’ll just do the same thing again,” D replied, silencing the transporter. After all, these men had demanded half their merchandise. “They’ve probably made similar demands of those trying to get out of the village. That way, they could just take their money and finish them off.”
Judging from the way the pair stopped struggling and averted their gazes, the Hunter’s remarks were probably right on the mark.
“You sons of bitches . . . You didn’t!” Gordo groaned angrily up on the roof, but just then Juke’s form tensed in the driver’s seat.
“Someone’s coming!” he cried, pointing straight ahead.
About a hundred feet away, a couple had appeared where the road detoured to the right: a boy and girl who looked to be around ten years old. They seemed to be a couple because the hands at the end of their wire-thin arms were clasped. For some reason, they were as red as if they’d been brushed with paint from the tops of their heads to the tips of their sandaled toes.
The pair the Hunter held aloft screamed.
“It’s the fountain plague,” said Juke. “Sergei, get that medicine ready.”
Halting the wagon, Juke climbed down from the driver’s seat. Along with Sergei, who came out of the vehicle carrying a paper parcel, he hurried over to the boy and girl. However, before they got to them, the two youthful figures fell to the ground.
On reaching them, Juke and Sergei held their breath and froze in their tracks. Neither of them had ever seen a victim of fountain plague in the flesh before.
The boy and girl were both covered with blood, but they weren’t injured. The men knew that. Even now, fresh blood continued to ooze from the children’s faces, necks, arms, and legs. It came from every pore in their bodies.
According to The Complete Book of Frontier Medicine, which was distributed to every village on the Frontier, this strain of bacteria was carried by an as-yet unidentified species of supernatural beast, and when it infected humans, they would experience intense vertigo, malaise, and fatigue. What’s more, within three hours they would begin to bleed from their pores starting in the area near the lungs, and if no effective steps were taken to treat them, they would be dead within twelve hours after the bleeding started. Although the immediate cause of death was blood loss, the process by which the bacteria inside the body caused this reaction was still being investigated, and no effective treatment had been discovered. The sight of an infected person staggering around covered with blood was chilling, and the relentless manner in which the lifeblood pumped from her body led to the sickness being dubbed “fountain plague.”
Though the sight was so horrible it had made the transporters stop in spite of themselves, their human emotions soon returned to them. Tearing open the package, Sergei took out a pair of painless disposable syringes loaded with medicine and handed one of them to Juke. The drug was injected directly into a vein. The children were so emaciated there was no trouble locating a vein, so that part was easy enough.
“I wonder if we’re in time?” Sergei inquired, a grave look on his face, but Juke could only tilt his head to one side with an even graver expression. It certainly looked like they were too late.
The boy and girl had fallen still holding hands, and their eyes opened simultaneously.
“Holy!” Sergei whooped with joy.
“Get ready to do a transfusion,” Juke ordered him before leaning over the children to ask, “Are you in pain?”
“Yeah.” The boy probably lacked even the strength to lie. He inquired feebly, “What about Ann?”
Juke replied gently, “She’s right beside you. Holding your hand.”
“Good. I didn’t want her to go alone. I’ll go right along with her.”
“Don’t talk. You’ll feel better soon.”
But once he’d said that, Juke realized the gravity of the situation, and he made a wretched face.
“I’m glad. This sickness really, really hurts.”
“I know. You’ve held up so well,” Juke said, taking his hand and wiping the boy’s red face. There was a chance of catching it through epidermal contact, but that didn’t bother him. The skin that appeared had a waxy hue.
“Mister . . . have you got medicine with you? Can you cure this?”
“Yeah.”
“Then . . . save everyone in the village.”
Juke suddenly looked next to the boy—at the girl.
“My father . . . and my mother are suffering . . . The two of us . . . came to get help,” she continued. “But . . . those men shot at us . . .”
The two men averted their eyes from Juke and Sergei.
“She—she’s lying!”
“They’re horrible!” the girl said. Her cute little face was stained red up to her hair. “They told us to go get money . . . from the villagers. Said they’d let us go if we did. But all they did . . . was take the money . . .”
“You fucking bastards,” Sergei said, rising to his feet.
He drew his gun. Pressing it against the forehead of one, then the other, he said, “I know you couldn’t let them out. But stealing money from them when they’re just trying to buy their own survival is something even the damned Nobility wouldn’t stoop to!”
And while he was saying that, the emotion within him grew stronger and stronger, until he was ready to explode.
“Die!”
A second later, the pair vanished from in front of his quaking gun barrel. D had hoisted them up.
“Stay out of this!” the transporter told him.
“These two will get the death they deserve,” the Hunter replied in a voice that called to mind the stillness of a wintry night, and it chilled not only the pair, but Sergei as well.
“That’s right,” Juke said in a low tone. “Right now I don’t feel like seeing any more death. These two kids just passed on.”
—
II
—
Sergei’s shoulders drooped, and he gazed down at the red faces of the dead.
“You know, it kinda looks like they’re smiling.”
“They probably felt relieved because they ran into us. Even if I wind up going to hell, that’s bound to make my punishment a little lighter,” Juke said, gently stroking the cheeks of the two children.
“Shouldn’t we bury them?”
“Later. Let’s get the medicine to the village.”
“Okay.” Putting his gun away, Sergei spat at the two men, then went back to the children and folded his hands.
A beautiful shadow fell beside him.
“D?”
Setting the two men he held down on the ground, the gorgeous Hunter pushed their faces toward the innocent faces of the dead. Although the men kicked against the ground and tried to flee, his iron grip would never allow them to escape.
“Stop it!”
“Help! You’ll get us infected.”
Their pleas gave way to screams as he pressed the men’s lips against the cheeks of the boy and the girl, as if to kiss them goodbye.
The pair collapsed on the spot—D’s spell over them had finally broken. They didn’t move a muscle. They’d fainted.
“They got what they deserved . . . but you can still be pretty harsh,” Juke said as he gave D a fearful look. “They’ve lost their minds! Of course, where the Frontier’s concerned, that’s probably all for the best.”
As he was about to walk back to the wagon, he gasped and stopped in his tracks. In front of him stood the other girl named Ann.
“He said her name was Ann, didn’t he?”
Eyes as sharp and clear as glass reflected the face of the girl on the ground.
“Yeah, he did.”
“Why do human beings die? From sicknesses and things like that, I mean.”
“Because we’re human!” Juke answered.
“Hmm. Are you crying?”
“I suppose I am.”
“But you know human beings die, don’t you?”
“Yeah.”
“Then why does this sadden you? It’s the natural outcome.”
“I’ll murder you, you little monster!” Sergei shouted in the distance.
“Knock it off,” Juke told him, and then he said to Lady Ann, “Don’t you feel anything at all about that other Ann dying?”
“Not a thing.”
Juke nodded. His expression suggested he’d just confirmed something.
“Good enough. Now, get back to the wagon. We’re going into the village.”
—
At just about the same time that D and his group were having their confrontation at the blockade, Grand Duke Mehmet was in the northern forest. An enormous figure leaned against a tremendous languia tree that looked to be thirty feet in diameter, while beside that figure there was a second that looked exactly like it but smaller—a normal, human-sized figure that was also the grand duke. Now his actual form and his surrogate were finally face to face. The strange thing was, when the real grand duke put his hands behind his head, the oversized impostor struck the same pose.
“That D is a monster,” said the Noble, who, from the human perspective, was considered nothing short of a monster himself. “I saw the Duke of Xenon’s remains. Dr. Gretchen, too, has been destroyed. It doesn’t seem there’s a chance in the world of me triumphing over him all alone. I think perhaps it would be best if I made a stealthy retreat from the front lines.”
Taking his hands from behind his head, he ran them over his upper body.
“I was cut here . . . here . . . and here,” he said, staring at the same spots on his gigantic doppelgänger.
As long as his true form was unharmed, his copy couldn’t be defeated, and as long as the copy remained functioning, his true form needn’t fear a mortal injury. But somewhere along the line the laws of physics had to be respected, and when the copy was damaged, the same spot had trouble healing on the real Nobleman.
Vampire Hunter D: Dark Road Part Three Page 7
