Latitude Zero

by James Axler

  "We post a watch. Look out there. Anyone could see him coming the moment he leaves the foothills. Must be twenty or thirty miles off. Get a reception party for him."

  "Don't know his firepower."

  "Yeah, but we can hold the ville easy. Ring the railroad with blasters."

  It made sense, and Ryan was occupied with the magical idea of an untouched mall, one with brand-new wags untouched for a hundred years.

  "Okay. But I'll leave Jak, Doc and Mildred here. Me, Krysty and J.B.'ll come along."

  "Just four of us," said Ward. "Be one hell of a scouting party. Start at dawn tomorrow. Just the four of us."

  It turned out to be five. Jak flat refused to be left for two days among the settlers in Salvation. Particularly he refused to be left with the hungry daughter of Elder Vare.

  THE JOURNEY TOOK the better part of the day. They kept their horses at a steady walk, occasionally heeling them into a canter. They stopped around noon for some jerky and a few mouthfuls of warm water, keeping on through the heat of the day.

  The map showed the supposed shopping mall at the junction of two highways. They paralleled one of the blacktops that cut out from Salvation, angling away from the railroad, leading to a low range of hills, dull colored, like sand after a rainstorm. The junction was about eight miles beyond the point where the road reached those hills.

  They'd seen the tumbling clouds, long miles ahead of them, that told of some heavy rain. Ryan thought back to the flash flood, but the terrain they were crossing was completely different—no deep draws to channel the bubbling, rushing water and mud.

  As the sun sank and the light began to slither away toward dusk, Jak said he thought he'd seen something moving among the slopes ahead of them— something or someone.

  But they saw no signs of life.

  "We going to camp before we reach this place, Major?" Krysty asked.

  "Safer out here than in among the arroyos, young lady. What does everyone else think?"

  There was a general agreement with Major Ward's judgment.

  With five of them they were able to split into ninety-minute watches.

  With nothing to cook and no obvious threat from wildlife, there was no point in bothering with a fire. It wouldn't do anything to protect them, and it could lead any potential enemies toward them as easily as a billboard.

  The night passed uneventfully. Ryan took the middle watch and was relieved by Jak. It was a virtually moonless night but the boy's parchment hair still glowed like a nuke halo.

  "Nothing moving," Ryan said, readying himself to slide under his blanket, next to where Krysty lay asleep.

  But Jak stopped him.

  "Ryan?"

  "What is it?"

  "Can talk?"

  "Sure." He squatted alongside the teenager, who sat cross-legged, cradling his huge Magnum blaster in his lap. Jak didn't say anything until Ryan prodded him. "You wanna talk, then let's do it."

  "Yeah."

  Another long silence. Far, far off they both heard the haunting sound of a hunting coyote.

  "Come on, Jak," Ryan urged.

  "Sharon Vare."

  "What about her?"

  "Likes me."

  Ryan laughed quietly. "Like saying water's wet or red rad count chills. What about it? She hasn't been baring her… her soul to you again, has she?"

  "No. But keeps talking. When nobody else hears. Every day."

  "Talking? How d'you mean?"

  Jak sighed and picked up a handful of fine sand, allowing it to trickle through his fingers.

  "Says will fuck her. Will give kids. Will marry. Will fuck. Mostly will fuck."

  "Why not? Oh, I know that her old man won't likely fall on his knees and thank his maker if he finds out, but I don't think he'll reach for his scattergun, either. So?"

  "Don't want her."

  "Hey, come on, Jak. Sharon's real pretty. Doesn't have the brains of a shithouse door…grant you that. But pretty."

  "Wants marry."

  "But you've been saying you wanted to leave us and this kind of life. Settle down." Ryan looked up as something fluttered overhead. From the erratic movement he guessed it was a bat. "And you know that we've all agreed with that. Fireblast, Jak! This isn't a real life for a young man."

  "Like it. Like being with you, Krysty, Doc, even J.B. and now Mildred. Good. Friends. Not outcast. Like that."

  "Sure, sure. But it's a today life and it's bastard short on tomorrows, Jak. One day we'll all get tickets on the last train to the coast, and what do we have to show for it? A lotta corpses, Jak. That's all we got to show."

  The boy shook his head. "Not true, Ryan. You leave places an' people better."

  "Well, that's a nice way of putting it, Jak. But that's not enough. You want to settle down and have kids with a good woman."

  "Like you and Krysty?"

  "Fuck you, Jak!" He raised his voice without realizing it. "Fuck you! What we do is—" He took a deep breath and calmed his flare of anger."All right. Guess I got it coming. Don't preach if you don't do it yourself. But we will, Jak. One day we'll find the right place and the right time and we'll do it."

  "Soon?"

  "Sooner, not later."

  Jak nodded. "Me same. Soon. But not Sharon Vare. Not her. Want to leave Salvation, Ryan. And leave wag train. Soon."

  "Okay, Jak. If we can find this mall and its wags. Either way, we'll get out in the next two days. That fair?"

  "Yeah, fair. Thanks talk. Go sleep, Ryan. Thanks talk."

  Ryan lay down next to Krysty and pulled the blanket over him, checking automatically that both his hand blaster and the G-12 were within easy reach.

  He closed his eyes and then heard Krysty's voice, barely a whisper. "Yeah, lover. Sooner and not later."

  Eventually Ryan fell asleep.

  Chapter Eighteen

  THE FOUR SAT on their mounts, reins slack, looking at the place that the map had marked. It was a good ten miles farther into the foothills, but it had certainly once been a major crossing of roads. The pass to the west was closed by a huge earth slip, looking like half of a mountain had come crashing down. But the shopping mall wasn't there anymore.

  "Least it was here once," Major Ward said defensively, wiping sweat off his forehead. "Sign there says so, don't it?"

  "It does," J.B. agreed.

  Rubicon Pass Mall

  Twenty store units under one roof.

  Air-conditioned throughout.

  Loads of parking. Open early, open late.

  Ryan eased himself in the saddle. He wasn't particularly surprised or disappointed. It would have been a miracle if the myth had turned out to be true, and Deathlands was generally low on miracles.

  It was impossible now to try and deduce the history of the Rubicon Pass Mall. The main outline of the walls was plain enough, so were the piles of rubble that had been the individual stores. Nothing else remained.

  "Best be heading back to Salvation," Krysty suggested.

  Ryan had known the woman long enough to be sensitive to shades of meaning in her voice. There was something there that really meant she thought they should head back to Salvation.

  "Feeling?" he asked quietly.

  Krysty nodded, looking tired. "Might be nothing to it," she said. "Just a feeling."

  THEIR HORSES WERE tired, making it hard to move along as fast as they all wanted. The nearer they got to Salvation, the more Krysty became worried, constantly standing in her stirrups to try and look on ahead. Originally the plan had been to get to the mythical mall on the first day and then return easily the following day, back to Salvation before sunset on the second day.

  Now that was shot.

  The eastern sky was already darkening as the sun began to sink on the opposite horizon. The shadows had lengthened, and they were still a good fifteen miles from the ville, with the descent to the plateau to come and then the ride across the open desert to reach Salvation.

  Krysty held up a hand, bringing them to a halt. "No good," she said, her
face lined with tension, coated in sweat and dust, making her look like a carving of an Aztec goddess.

  "Something wrong?" Major Ward asked, irritably waving flies away from his face.

  "I've got a seriously bad feeling," Krysty replied. "The ville's under threat. I'm sure of it." She looked to Ryan for reassurance.

  "Skullface?" he asked.

  "I don't know. I can't see that kind of detail, lover. You know that."

  The wag master stared at her. "You one of them doomies, I heard tell of, missy?"

  "No, but I can sometimes feel danger. That's what I feel now."

  Ward looked at the others. "Then I guess we best press on at the best speed we can make." He squinted up at the cloudless sky. "Looks like we could have us a good moon to travel by. That seem like a good plan to you, son?"

  Ryan.shook his head. "No. We could get caught in the jaws of a trap if we try that."

  J.B. agreed. "If there's no moon, we can't risk riding on. If there is a moon, we'll stand out on that flat desert like cow chips on a girl's belly. Heads they win and tails we lose."

  "Then what…" Ward began.

  Jak interrupted him. "Fucking easy. Go round. Slower. Come in back."

  The wag master looked at Ryan, who smiled. "Jak's right, Major. Only way. We circle to the left, and it'll lead us to cross the blacktop we came in on. That way there's cover all the way to the edge of the ville."

  "But how long'll that take? If the little lady's right, then mebbe we should dig the spurs in."

  Ryan looked at his wrist chron. "Be there around midnight. Best that way. Knife in the groin chills just as good as a sawed-off in the mouth, Major. We'll do it our way."

  THEY MOVED ON cautiously. During the detour they could just see the hazy shape of Salvation. Krysty thought she could just make out a speckle of lights that could be campfires being lighted for the evening meal. But that didn't mean a thing.

  Ryan rode in silence, locked into his own thoughts, worrying about the mysterious Skullface and his band of killers. There had been something familiar about the way the inhabitants of Salvation had been mutilated and tortured before enjoying the mercy of death, something that yelped of a swift and evil nature.

  It reminded Ryan of something from the past, but his mind wouldn't allow the memory to come forward and be recognized.

  "Skullface?" he whispered to himself, shaking his head. "Skullface?"

  WARD HAD BEEN right about the sky. As the last crimson glow of the dying sun disappeared over the western rim of the world, a cold moon appeared, giving a sharp-edged reality to the landscape.

  Ryan had been wrong about how long it would take them. The trail that cut up from the plateau to-ward the road was steeper and rougher than he'd hoped, and the animals were now pushed toward utter exhaustion. J.B.'s mount stumbled and fell, sliding fifty yards down the slope in a tangle of legs, sending rocks and pebbles cascading to the valley floor. The Armorer managed to kick his boots clear of the stirrups and step off as the horse went down, avoiding any kind of injury.

  But it slowed them.

  It was nearly midnight before they reached the blacktop, at a point less than three miles from the ville. An added complication was the sky clouding over, shrouding the moon, reducing visibility from a couple of miles down to barely a hundred paces.

  Ryan called a halt. "These horses are totally done. Better we leave them here. Stops the risks of another fall, or one of them making a noise when it scents the other animals."

  They all dismounted and tied the animals to a lone mesquite bush.

  "If there'd been trouble, wouldn't we have heard something?" Krysty asked, rubbing the small of her back and trying to stretch the stiffness away.

  "Not the way the wind's been blowing. Most of the time we were way too far off from the ville to hear anything short of a nuke gren going off."

  As they left the horses, one of them started to nicker, tossing its head back, showing its teeth. For a moment Ryan thought he was going to have to put a bullet through its head, using the built-in baffle silencer in his hand blaster.

  But Jak went and gentled the animal, standing in close and blowing into its nostrils. Ryan bolstered the SIG-Sauer.

  "Good trick, Jak."

  "Christina told it."

  "The Ballinger woman?" Krysty asked.

  "Yeah."

  They started walking toward Salvation.

  Ryan was regretting the way he'd ridden off on this fool's errand without giving enough thought to the defence of the ville. Doc had the stoutest heart of any man Ryan had ever met, but that didn't mean that he was a great tactician in a firefight. Similarly everything Ryan had seen of Mildred made him trust both her intellect and her courage. But to have her trying to hold off this Skullface and his band was too much to hope. He should have stayed himself, or at least he should have asked J.B. to remain behind.

  The Armorer was at his side. "Know what you're thinking, Ryan."

  "What?"

  "I should have stayed. Or you."

  "Yeah. Damned right."

  "Mebbe not. If they'd come at us in a big firefight, we could still have gone under. If Krysty's right and there's been real trouble, then it could be that you and me outside are a better bet."

  It was true, and it reassured Ryan until they breasted the rise and looked down into Salvation. The moon had reappeared, and they could see the ville clearly, see everything—the armed men, the train standing quietly on the edge of town.

  Then, the memory clicked. "Fireblast!" Ryan said. "Skullface! I know who he is!"

  Chapter Nineteen

  THE FIRST DAY that Ryan and the others were away from Salvation was fairly uneventful. The liveliest moment had been a baptizing in the narrow creek that flowed past the edge of the ville. The oldest son of one of the coterie of preachers, named John Ridley, was in his early twenties and weighed in around three-twenty pounds. It had been obvious to everyone on the train that he lusted after Sharon Vare, following her like an overheated dog looking for a patch of shade.

  During the morning he'd gone into convulsions and begun to speak in tongues. At least that's what his father claimed the garbled jabbering was.

  Mildred, pointing out loudly that she was a qualified doctor, knelt by the thrashing, sweating hulk and slapped him across the face, sharply enough to snap his head to the side. Ridley immediately opened his eyes, flushing in anger at seeing who'd hit him.

  "The bitch slapped me, Pa!" he moaned.

  "Think the-fit's over," she said dryly, standing up and walking calmly away.

  But the settlers took it as a sign, and the young man was put down for an evening baptism.

  It was all that Doc could do to persuade Elder Vare that they should still keep a watch out during the ceremony. One of the younger children had claimed to have seen a man standing on a ridge of rock behind the ville during the late afternoon. She said she'd seen the shine of the fading sun off something that glittered. Like field glasses, Doc thought.

  OTHER THAN THREE reluctant sentries, every single member of the wag train, from youngest to oldest, lined the banks of the river. John Ridley was dressed in a long white shirt that came down almost as far as his knees. He was visibly embarrassed at being the center of attention, and his eyes kept turning toward Sharon Vare, who studiously ignored him.

  Elder Vare stood by the side of the vast young man.

  Mildred whispered to Doc, "Looks like that bit in Shakespeare, about the sow that hath o'erwhelmed all her litter but one."

  By looking over toward the setting sun, Doc was able to maintain control over his face and not disfigure the religious occasion with a burst of raucous laughter.

  "Dearly beloved," Vare began in his reedy voice, "we are gathered here in this wilderness ville to witness this young man, John Ridley, proclaiming his desire to join our Church."

  He walked a few paces into the dark waters, which barely reached to his knees, holding the youth's hand in his. A battered Bible was gripped firmly in the
Elder's left fist.

  The creek was only fifteen feet across at its widest point, though it was flowing fast, with numerous eddies and swirling pools. But where Elder Vare was carrying out his baptism, it seemed calm and gentle.

  The preacher led the congregation through a hurried version of the Lord's Prayer, then took two more steps into the river, bringing the water halfway between his knees and waist. Now the current was strong enough to make him stumble a little, hanging on to John Ridley's meaty hand to steady himself.

  "Do you, John, refute the devil, Beelzebub and all of the minions and imps of Satan? Holding only to the true path of virtue and righteousness?"

  "Yeah, I do!" the young man bellowed, closing his eyes and turning his sweating face toward the sky, where he imagined the Almighty resided.

  "I will baptise you by immersion, as we did the apostles of old."

  Vare, not looking behind him, took two more steps backward, leading John Ridley with him, the young man still staring blindly upward.

  The watching settlers were transfixed by the ritual and its protagonists. Doc was staring at the surface of the water just behind the scrawny legs of the preacher.

  He leaned down to whisper in Mildred's ear. "Truly doth it say that pride cometh before a fall."

  "What?"

  "Watch," he said, baring his gleaming, perfect teeth in an anticipatory grin.

  "Prepare for the beauty and blessing, John Ridley, as I—Oh, fuck!"

  There was a flurry of spray and both men completely disappeared.

  "Told you!" Doc said, as proud as if he'd arranged the vanishing act himself.

  He'd spotted the slightly oily swirl and darker color of the river, indicating a deep, scoured hole in its bed, one that Elder Vare had stepped into, dragging the shocked young man with him.

  Neither man could swim, and John Ridley's bulk had flopped on top of Vare, pinning him below the surface of the creek.

  For several seconds, nobody moved. One of the women screamed out that Satan had plucked their leader away to Hades. At that moment the long goatlike head of Elder Vare broke the surface, mouth open in a strangled yelp for aid. Then an arm came out of the water, clad in white samite, and dragged hun under again. Ridley's face appeared next, purple with terror, screaming for help. His voice so high and thin it sounded like a newborn baby's.