Latitude Zero

by James Axler

  It took several minutes before the settlers got it together enough to rescue their leader and his overweight apostle from the creek. Vare was semiconscious, puking up a mix of water and bile, while John Ridley sat with his head in his hands, weeping copiously. The baptism was postponed indefinitely.

  The next morning, the young woman who was on watch near the engine house reported that she thought she could see smoke. The word was carried to Elder Vare. Doc and Mildred heard the commotion and went to join the excited group of settlers.

  "Smoke?" Mildred said. "Where?"

  "Hills. Seems to be in line with the rails. Is it that locomotive coming back?"

  There was so much fear in the air that you could taste it, slick and oily on the tongue, as bitter as a mouthful of aloes.

  Knowing how touchy Elder Vare was about his leadership, Mildred and Doc waited for him to make his mind up about what they should do. But he stood there, mouth opening and closing slowly, like a landed fish, his eyes darting nervously from side to side.

  "Tell us what to do, Elder," shouted an old man from the front of the jostling crowd.

  "Yeah! Lead us, Elder. Guide us with your wisdom, Elder Vare!"

  "We will… We will go and take a look at this smoke," he finally decided.

  "Good plan," Mildred said sarcastically.

  It was undoubtedly the locomotive, heading arrow-straight toward Salvation, trailing smoke behind it, moving at a bare walking pace and finally stopping, in a dip in the desert, about three miles off. The smoke faded away to nothing.

  "What do you figure, Doc?" Mildred asked. "They waiting to attack us, or are we waiting for them to go away, or are they waiting for us to attack them? I don't get it."

  "I confess that I am stricken with bewilderment myself," he replied. "If that is this legendary Skullface, then I fear that his intentions are hardly likely to be at all benevolent toward us. Would you not agree with that?"

  "Fuckin' ay, Doc. That's the way it looks to me, too."

  Vare was like a rabbit squatting on its butt in front of a weaving rattler. He gave no orders, simply staring out across the sandy waste where the loco wag was hidden.

  The day wore on and nothing happened. There was a single burst of dark smoke from the invisible engine, as though it were clearing its throat. Virtually the whole party was grouped on that side of the ville. Food was cooked and eaten around the middle of the day, but it was a skimped and hasty affair, with everyone wanting to get back to the old engine house and watch for the action.

  It was only when Doc and Mildred created a fuss with the council of preachers that the menfolk of the wag train armed themselves.

  "If that man is the coldheart that chilled those poor wretches you buried out yonder," Doc said, "I hope for all our sakes that you people are ready to defend this ville."

  Reluctantly everyone carried a blaster, but there was no attempt at organizing any defence if the party aboard the locomotive should launch an attack on Salvation.

  Toward the end of the afternoon, Doc came upon Mildred sitting alone on the shaded porch of one of the main-street houses. She was holding her head in her hands.

  "Migraine plaguing you?"

  She looked up, and the old man was taken aback at the look of worry on her face.

  "Got a bit of a headache, but that's not it, Doc. I'm concerned."

  "About the loco waiting out there?"

  "No. Well, that's part of it. But not the main thing."

  Knees cracking, Doc sat down by her. "Then share your concern, my dear Mildred. I am all ears."

  "That's likely Skullface out there?"

  "I would have thought that it was a touch more than just conceivable."

  She nodded. "We heard about what a danger he was. A force for evil. And we saw what's probably the remains of his sport with those bodies."

  "Indeed. But I confess I don't quite see where all this is leading?"

  "Look, the train appears and then sits and waits. So every mother's son is out that side watching it. Doesn't anything occur to you, Doc?"

  "Not really. Am I being very dense?"

  "As thick as a pair of house bricks, Doc. You've ridden with Ryan for a long while. Hasn't anything rubbed off on you?"

  "A little. I don't believe that I'm quite such a nice person as I once was."

  They both looked up at the sound of the locomotive whistle, three long blasts, followed by three short.

  "There," Mildred said.

  "Signal?"

  "If you were Skullface, and you knew that we could probably defend against a straight-on attack from the railroad, what might you do, Doc?"

  "I might— Ah…" His eyes widened. "I might well bring the locomotive in to draw everyone's attention and then… then send some of my men in a wide loop to the south and come in along the same blacktop that we did. And take everyone by surprise."

  "Right. Let's go talk to Elder Vare."

  She stood and brushed dust off her dark blue pants, then realized that Doc's attention had been caught by something behind her, farther up the street toward the blacktop. ,

  "Turn slow and easy," Doc urged. "Too late, I'm afraid."

  There were at least a dozen men in camouflage jackets and pants coming toward them, all carrying blasters.

  Chapter Twenty

  THERE WASN'T a single shot fired. The surprise attack, following precisely the pattern that Doc had imagined, took the settlers by surprise. Most of them were still gazing vacantly out across the flat land toward the locomotive. There were eighteen men and three women in the assault group, nearly all of them armed with M-16s, and they appeared from the hills behind the ville. A shouted command from a tall, slant-eyed man with a tiny mustache warned Elder Vare and his traveling congregation that they were prisoners. Blasters clattered in the dirt and hands were raised.

  Doc and Mildred had been able to hide their own weapons under the porch of the house where they'd been sitting before the attackers reached them and swallowed them up. It was a poor consolation in the face of such an overwhelming defeat. Doc was more worried about what Ryan would say.

  "He'll be so disappointed that I've let him down so badly," he whispered to Mildred.

  "Not sure 'disappointed' quite covers it," she replied.

  One of the gang was carrying a beat-up signal pistol, but it worked efficiently, discharging a star-burst of green and scarlet that hung for a few moments over the concealed train before vanishing.

  There was an answering toot from the loco wag whistle.

  Under armed guards the settlers were walked away and made to stand in silent rows on the cobbled stones in front of the engine house. From where they stood, they could quickly hear the noise of the engine and see the dark smoke that plumed from its stack. Less than five minutes later there was the hiss and metallic screech of brakes being applied, and the locomotive eased to a halt just a few yards short of the turntable in front of them.

  Doc strained to his full height to see how many were on the train, and to try to catch a glimpse of the legendary Skullface. But a woman guard, with a barely healed scar that ran from her left eye to the right side of her mouth, jabbed at him with the muzzle of her blaster. "Stand still, you old bastard, or you don't get to be no fucking older."

  "I really am most awfully sorry," he said, managing a half bow.

  Mildred had noticed that most of their captors had a swarthy complexion, as if they came from close to the Grandee, and they wore a sort of uniform, like sec men.

  Elder Vare stood a little to their left, his arm protectively around the shoulder of his blond daughter. Though he was trembling, the preacher was struggling to keep control of himself. He'd made one brief attempt to lead the others in a prayer, but the man with the mustache had stepped in close to him and touched him lightly on the cheek. Vare had recoiled as though it had been as adder's bite and since then had kept very quiet.

  The sun was almost gone, and the attackers had gone around the campsite, lighting the fires that lay t
here ready. Apart from a small boy who kept whimpering that he was hungry, there was little noise.

  Doc could feel growing pressure on his bladder, but he decided that it would be as well to keep quiet about it. The scar-faced woman didn't look as though a request to be excused would be well received.

  "Sec force, shun!" The command came from the apparent leader of the initial assault group, bringing everyone to attention. Doc glanced around, seeing that a group of men—and one woman—had appeared, presumably from the train.

  One of them was probably Skullface, but Doc couldn't make them out very clearly. The flickering light from the numerous fires competed with the rushing darkness of evening, throwing darting shadows across the buildings of the ville.

  For a moment the old man was reminded of a painting he'd seen when he and the world had been young. He couldn't recall where he'd seen it—perhaps in one of the great European museums and galleries that he and Emily had visited on their honeymoon—but he could remember that it had been medieval. A scene from hell, with imps and demons capering around their helpless victims, tormenting them with forks and spears. It had been firelit, and there had been a half-hidden figure at the back of the picture who had seemed like the ruler of this infernal principality of pain and blackness.

  "Must be Skullface," Mildred whispered. "Sweet Jesus, what a dreadful-looking man." One of their guards turned his brutish head toward her and she fell silent.

  The leader was standing directly behind one of the blazing fires, making it impossible for Doc to see him. Mildred, a little farther to the side, could see him clearly.

  During her childhood in the 1960s and 1970s, the black woman had seen more brutality than most people can imagine in their nightmares. But it had mostly been the animal cruelty of ignorance, overlaid with the unmistakable taint of fear, a fear that was sometimes hidden behind white hoods and sheets and was smothered in the safety of being part of a baying mob.

  Skullface didn't look like anyone she'd ever seen in her life.

  He was several inches over six feet tall, and she guessed his weight around two ten, a lean, gaunt figure, dressed entirely in black leather—tight pants and a loose jacket over a white shirt with ruffles at the neck. His high black boots were polished to a brilliant sheen that reflected the red glow of the fires.

  But it was the face!

  Thin.

  That was the word.

  A mouth like a steel trap; narrow eyes that didn't move yet saw everything; a carved nose that split the scoured cheekbones like an ax blade; a bald head, with a fringe of dark hair around the back, and a strip of black mustache that leaked down over both corners of his cruel mouth.

  Mildred's doctor's eyes picked up on two other things about Skullface. The mustache didn't quite conceal the twisted lip that looked as though it had once been hit a crushing blow, and the little finger on his right hand was missing.

  There was a blaster at his belt, and a rifle slung across his shoulders. Mildred recognized the pistol as a 9 mm Stechkin, but she couldn't make the long gun.

  If J.B. or Ryan had been there, they'd have immediately recognized the unusual weapon as a Russian sniper's rifle, the SVD PSO-1 with a sophisticated scope sight. It was a gun so rare that there were probably no more than two in all of Deathlands.

  The man moved to one side, hands on hips, a small whip dangling from his right wrist. And Doc Tanner saw his face. "God save us all," he said. "Cort Strasser."

  Chapter Twenty-One

  "STRASSER," said Ryan. Once he'd made the connections, he saw the skeletal figure, shining in its black leather carapace like an elegant and lethal beetle.

  Skullface because of the gaunt, bony face, leading a gang of cold-stone chillers.

  Ward was puzzled. "Who in tarnation's this Strasser feller?" he asked.

  As quickly as he could, Ryan outlined the bloody history of the man called Cort Strasser, now known as Skullface.

  A while back, Jordon Teague had been the baron of Mocsin, one of the worst pestholes on the entire gaudy-ridden frontier. But the ville had really been run by Teague's sec boss, Cort Strasser. Both Krysty and Doc had fallen into Strasser's hands, as had Ryan himself. His escape had been helped by smashing a pistol into the sec boss's mouth, crushing lips and teeth and leaving him permanently scarred.

  Then, months later, they'd crossed paths again with Strasser. He'd recruited a gang of killers and was masquerading as the reincarnation of General George Armstrong Custer. Jak had been a victim of the man's evil and perverted lusts and had barely escaped, snapping one of the ex-sec man's fingers as he did so. Strasser had managed to escape the final massacre on that occasion, and vanished into Deathlands.

  But now he was back, holding the lives of nearly a hundred men, women and children in the crook'd palm of his hand. Including Doc Tanner and Mildred Wyeth.

  "What'll we do?" the wag master asked. "I mean to say that even a real ice-heart bastard can't butcher a hundred folks. Can he?" Nobody said anything as he looked from face to face.

  Doc felt as though someone had filled his veins with Sierra meltwater. Seeing Strasser brought back the shuddering, mindless fear that the man had instilled during the time Doc had been in Mocsin, his heart broken, no willpower or hope. He hadn't even known who he was or where he was. And for much of the time, Doc's befuddled brain hadn't even known "when" he was.

  Mildred was only aware that the old man at her side had begun to shake as if he'd been stricken by the most virulent fever. She'd heard the name "Strasser." She thought she recognized the name from some fireside reminiscences with Ryan and the others. But she couldn't link it to any particular adventure. However, she had no doubt at all of the dreadful effect the sight of Skullface had induced in Doc.

  "Cool it," she said, not moving her lips, taking care not to look in the old man's direction.

  "Strasser." The word hovered in the dark air around them.

  "So?"

  "Death incarnate. Cort Strasser. If he recognizes me then…" Doc ran out of breath in his panic, and the sentence faded into stillness.

  "You know him, Doc?" Unconsciously, in surprise, Mildred had raised her voice, earning a warning glare from the nearest guard.

  "Long, bad story. Oh, bad, bad."

  If she'd been able to see Doc's face, Mildred would have been very concerned. His eyes were glazed, like mirrors sprayed in a dull oil, showing no sign of life or intelligence. His lower lip drooped and a thread of saliva looped down across his unshaven chin.

  THE ATTACKERS HAD made no attempt to secure a perimeter once they'd taken the ville. There wasn't any need. As far as they knew, everyone from Salvation was already a prisoner. The departure of Ryan, Krysty, Jak, J.B. and Major Ward had gone completely unnoticed by them.

  From such a distance, Ryan and the others couldn't make out what was happening. It was comparatively easy and safe to move quickly down the slope, keeping parallel to the blacktop, picking their way to less than two hundred yards from the edge of the ville. There was no guarantee that Strasser hadn't by now thought to put a couple of his men to patrol the outskirts of Salvation. To get caught now, or chilled by a lucky bullet from a nervous guard, would be utterly stupid.

  "What's going on?" Ward hissed, squinting toward the circle of fires. The bulk of the ox wags were on their side of the township, and it was hard to make out what was happening. "Looks like Strasser's strutting around telling everyone how clever he is," Krysty said. "Gaia! But he freezes my heart."

  Ryan had unslung his G-12 and resisted the momentary temptation to put it to his shoulder and peer through the laser scope, center it on the lean throat beneath the white ruffles of Strasser's shirt and pull the trigger, stop that evil heart forever. At that range it would be difficult to miss. But the cost in human life could be terrible. They only had a single long blaster between them, and there were almost thirty in the attacking party, all heavily armed. If their leader went down, neck-shot and fountaining blood, there would likely be a dreadful massacre.
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br />   "What do we do, son?" Ward asked.

  "Wait, Major. Watch and wait."

  "WAIT, DOC. Maybe he won't recognize you."

  "He knows me, Mildred." To her horror she caught the glitter of tears coursing down his lined cheeks. "Strasser made me…made me do things for him. Did things to me, made his sec men… Laughed at… laughed."

  "It's dark and there's a hundred folk here, Doc. He probably won't bother to—"

  "Shut your fucking mouth, bitch," one of the guards snarled, ramming the muzzle of his rifle so hard into her stomach that she gasped in pain and nearly threw up.

  Strasser paused in the center of the open space, looking around him with a proprietorial smile, the whip tapping gently against the side of the mirrored boots.

  "Very good. Stand at ease. Good."

  Mildred watched, trying to put into operation the things that she'd learned from Ryan and the others. Look for weakness, exploit it.

  She sighed. It was impossible. The surprise had been total, and she knew that there was nobody traveling with the wags who could lead a rising against their captors. Though Skullface's gang was outnumbered by roughly three to one, they still had complete control. They held all the blasters and with them went the initiative.

  A woman stood next to Strasser, and Mildred focused on her. She was dark skinned, looking Mex rather than Yanqui, and her long black hair was tied back in a ponytail with a bow of red velvet ribbon. She was only average height, dressed in a white blouse and a black, divided riding skirt, over knee-length boots, polished as highly as Strasser's own. She had a pistol at her hip and also carried a silver-tipped quirt. She was beautiful in a strangely blank way.

  "My name is Cort Strasser. You might know me by the name that the foolish and the superstitious use. Skullface."

  Nobody moved or spoke. Mildred was wondering whether Doc was slipping into a catatonic trance. And where was Ryan Cawdor?