Dark Carnival

by James Axler

  "Sure. Redhead's called Krysty Wroth."

  For the next fifteen minutes or so Ryan talked on, giving a potted biography of each of the quartet of companions.

  The boy listened to him, only interrupting with an occasional question. He was particularly interested in what kind of weaponry they each carried. Ryan's own Heckler & Koch G-12 caseless assault rifle fascinated him.

  "I never saw anything like that in all Deathlands," he said.

  "Might not be anything much like it left now."

  Once Ryan's account was finished, they both sat silent, watching the bubbling wake of the wag. Occasionally a fish would break the surface, leaving a momentary ring on the water. Once something much bigger, long and coiled, followed them for a few minutes, a brutish, blunt head just visible.

  It seemed as if the boy wanted to talk, as though he had something that was strung up inside him. But the cork was firmly jammed into the bottle, and Ryan couldn't see any way clear to help Dean lever it out.

  "Ryan?"

  "What?"

  "Did you…?"

  "What?"

  "I mean, how did you find me? Did you come in after me or was it… sort of luck?"

  "No such thing as luck, son. Everyone makes their own luck. We only just missed you in that stinking cellar."

  "How come?"

  "Scalies had lifted you."

  "But what about Janya?"

  "Woman who was looking after you? Chilled."

  The young boy nodded, lifting a hand to brush a strand of hair from his eyes. "Figured she must be. Stupid, isn't it?"

  "What?"

  "Spends all that time searching for you. One-eyed man in Deathlands. Must've found fifty of them since I can remember. Then she gets chilled when she finally tracks you down."

  It was Ryan's turn to nod. "Nobody ever said anything to me about life being fair, Dean."

  "But didn't…" Yet again his nerve failed him, and he abandoned the question.

  Ryan let some time drift by. Now they were into the Harlem River, with its broken, jutting bridges and the rising buildings on either bank. Here the devastation was less severe than farther down the island. But the windowless shells stared down blankly on the empty streets.

  "What happened to your mother?" It was one of the questions that had been brewing at the back of his mind, ever since he first heard of Dean's existence.

  "Rona?"

  "I knew her when she was called Sharona Carson. Out in the deserts by the Christ's Blood Mountains. Back then."

  The boy shifted and, for the first time, stared directly into Ryan's face. "What she was like then? Was she beautiful?"

  The aching need was painful to see and to hear. Ryan, moved on impulse, put an arm across the skinny shoulders and hugged the boy.

  "Triple-lovely, son. Sharona was one of the most beautiful women I ever saw in my whole life. Fair and rare."

  Dean smiled, showing a good set of white teeth. "I knew she must've been. Time I can remember her first, she'd… been hard times and…"

  Ryan knew what he was saying. Deathlands was grindingly bleak for beautiful women, especially if they'd known wealth and power like Sharona Carson had. She'd been the wife of one of the most powerful barons in the whole Southwest. Then to become a wanderer, with a baby in tow… He closed off his mind to it.

  "She dressed like an angel, Dean. Had a lot of strength and will. An amazing woman."

  "Then why the fuck did you leave her? And me? Why d'you do that, Ryan?"

  He shrugged the arm from his shoulders and shuffled a couple of feet away.

  Now it was out in the open.

  Between them.

  Like Ryan knew it would be.

  "What did she tell you, son?"

  "Said that you left her."

  "Really? That was what she told you? Tell me the truth, Dean."

  "Sort of."

  "Fireblast! What's that mean?"

  The boy hawked and spit, watching the white blob of spittle trailing away behind them.

  "She sort of said that you left each other."

  "Listen, and listen good, Dean. I'll tell you this once. Your mother was a one-off. She and I had a sort of relationship for a few days, and then her husband, the baron, tried to coldcock Trader and all the men and women. He was a swift and evil son of a bitch. There was a lot of fighting, chilling. Last time I set eyes on Sharona she was astride a powerful two-wheel wag."

  "She used to speak about that. Like it was something she really loved."

  "Yeah. Well… Last time we saw each other we were ready to chill each other. She challenged me to back-shoot her. Knew I couldn't. Would've done with most people. Not Sharona."

  "You knew she was having me?"

  "Course not. Only knew her less than a week. No time. I swear to you, Dean, that the first I ever heard I had a son was right here in this ville. Couple of days ago."

  "How do you know I'm your son? Couldn't the baron have fathered me?"

  "Course he could. You're ten years old. Seen your face in enough pieces of glass and pools of water, haven't you?"

  "Yeah."

  "I look at you and I see me. Know what I mean? No doubt about it."

  "I guess so. Always dreamed about meeting you. Never thought…" His voice broke, and he lifted his hands to his face.

  "Tell me about Sharona. What happened to her. The woman, Janya, just said she was dead. Didn't give me any details."

  The boy battled for control, coughing and wiping his nose. Ryan had noticed earlier that they'd been following a great right-hand sweep of the river. Now he could see the huge tumbled ruins of a massive bridge not far ahead of them. To give Dean a little more time to recover his self-possession, he called forward.

  "Doc?"

  "What is it, my dear fellow?"

  "That bridge?"

  The wag dipped suddenly into the trough of a wave, and a great gout of freezing spray drifted over them all.

  J.B. called out a vague, muffled apology from the driver's seat.

  "The bridge? I think that it might have been the one named after our most honest of presidents."

  "Who?"

  "The one who chopped down the cherry tree and would not tell a lie, of course."

  "Who, Doc?"

  "Crossed the Delaware, wrapped proud and defiant in his cloak, the boat, not unlike our own study bark, tossed between the floes of ice."

  "He means the Washington Bridge," Mildred shouted, unable to bear the old man's prevarication any longer.

  "I was coming to that, madam. Coming to that."

  The boy leaned closer to Ryan. "Why's he talk double-strange like that? He a mutie?"

  "Not exactly, son. Have to find time to tell you a little more about Doc Tanner. You were going to tell me what happened to Sharona."

  "Yeah."

  "Well?"

  "I was only a young kid."

  Ryan suppressed a smile, sensing that it would upset his son. "How long ago?"

  "It was when I was about seven. Around then. Three years ago. Been on the road all my time, traveling. Remember places with snow and places with hot sand. Floods and droughts. Mountains and valleys. Been all over, looking for you, Ryan."

  The man risked the arm around the shoulder again, and the boy didn't pull away. "I wish I'd known, Dean."

  "Yeah. Been good if we could've got together before Rona went into the long quiet."

  "How did she die?"

  "Think it was a sort of rad sick. Jack was scarce, and she went with lots of men."

  "How d'you…?"

  The boy looked up at him, his eyes brimming with unshed tears. "Don't be a stupe, Ryan. Rona worked at fucking in gaudies in pesthole villes. Left me with Janya for weeks. Out west. Bad place for rad sickness. Came back with it."

  Ryan had seen plenty of cases of the lingering nuke-bred disease. He didn't want to think about the tall and beautiful blonde, riddled with the sickness, but his imagination was too powerful, too insistent. Images of pain filled his min
d: Sharona's strong teeth falling out of bleeding gums; the sweep of hair, like summer wheat, coming away in rotting clumps; her violet eyes turning pink and sinking into hollowed sockets; her thighs streaked with the crimson flux as control over bodily functions disappeared; her smooth skin pitted and cratered with septic scabs and bone-deep ulcers.

  That was how it would have been for the lady who had once been Sharona Carson.

  "Don't talk about that part of it, Dean."

  "She went away before the last of it. Left that picture with Janya, kissed me and walked away into the night. Out of the hut we lived in. Told me she was going to go outside and she might not be back for a while. I knew, Ryan. I was only a kid, but I knew where she was going. Knew I wouldn't ever see her again."

  The little body fretted and shuddered, and Ryan held him as close as he could, aware of the brittle bones beneath the taut skin, the heart bearing against his own chest.

  He knew that he could never, never tell his son that his mother had been a feral, rutting, murderous slut, immensely desirable and giving Ryan a sexual experience he'd never forget. But the woman had lacked any concept of morality that anyone might understand.

  The engine spluttered suddenly. The wag slowed, then picked up again.

  "Stay here, Dean," Ryan said, glad to get away from the welling spring of emotion that he'd released, knowing how difficult this new relationship was going to be.

  Mildred called back to him as he stood. "John says the fuel gauge is into the red."

  Ryan stared ahead. "Seem to recognize the stretch ahead. Tell him to steer to the left shore."

  Dean was at his elbow. "Can I ask you one more question?"

  "Sure. Many as you like, son."

  "Did you love Rona?"

  Ryan hated lies. He looked down into the young boy's face, meeting his eyes. "Yes. Course I did."

  Chapter Five

  KRYSTY HAD READ old books as a child, where amazing coincidences seemed to happen to all the heroines and their handsome paramours. So when they seemed to be running out of fuel at almost precisely the spot they were seeking, she wasn't that surprised.

  In some way she was more surprised when J.B. reported that the gauge was defective and they actually had enough diesel to keep going for several more hours.

  "Least Harry Stanton'll be pleased if he gets his wag back in one piece. Find he can still drive it," J.B. said as he clambered stiffly out of the front hatch.

  Dean stared intently at the Armorer. During the journey he'd met and spoken with Doc, Mildred and Krysty, but here was the other person in the team who'd actually met his mother. "You're not very tall, are you?" he said. "Next time I'll wear my stilts. And you're not very old, are you?"

  Dean grinned. "How d'you get that big scar on your face?"

  "He disagreed with something and it bit him," Mildred said.

  "No, something he disagreed with ate him," Doc insisted.

  "That's wrong, you dogmatic old fart. Comes from an old James Bond vid."

  "I know that. Felix the CIA agent. Think there's something awry with my memory, you doxologizing old windbag!"

  J.B. held up a hand to stop the argument. "Insect bite that turned bad."

  "Daylight's wasting," Ryan observed. "Let's get on to the gateway. Usual skirmish line. Dean, you stick with Krysty in the center."

  "I'll come with you."

  Ryan turned and bent down, grabbing the boy by the front of his ragged jacket and lifting him up onto his toes.

  "One rule, boy!" The man's voice grated and was tight with anger. "Do like I tell you. Argue afterward, not before. Remember that, and we all stay alive. Forget it, and you can get us all chilled. You understand me?"

  "Yeah. I understand. Sorry, Ryan. Won't do it again. I swear."

  "Good. Let's go. Everyone got their rope?"

  The coils of strong cord that they'd acquired in the ville were about to prove their worth.

  THE STREETS WERE deserted. A watery sun had broken through a band of high, pink-streaked cloud, bringing little warmth to the snow-dappled ville.

  "Don't know this part," Dean said to Krysty. "Never got this far north. This place close?"

  "Not too far. Listen, when we're in a skirmish line like we are now, it means everyone on maximum concentration, watching and listening."

  "And not talking, Krysty?"

  "You got it."

  Ryan led the way past the various signs of the street gangs' turfs, looking for the distinctive bird of prey— daubed in red paint, with yellow hooked beak and oversize claws—that marked off the Hawks' own part of the South Bronx.

  He began to spot them as he neared the ruined hulk of the old Yankee Stadium. But many of them had been covered with a white fist, showing where another gang had moved in on the territory of the leaderless Hawks.

  Someone shouted and a stone was thrown, skittering along the ice-covered pavement. Ryan swung the muzzle of the G-12 toward the call, but the avenue was deserted.

  "Keep moving," he ordered over his shoulder.

  For a moment he had an awful nagging doubt that he might not recognize the mansion that concealed the buried gateway.

  It was an odd fact that Ryan Cawdor could find his way through a featureless wilderness with unerring accuracy. Yet in these urban ruins he was uncomfortable. Every street seemed the same, every pile of twisted, scorched rubble like another.

  He was tempted to ask Krysty or one of the others for guidance, but that was to show doubt. And the leader who showed doubt wasn't really a leader. Yet another of the Trader's little homilies.

  There was a long street with a tumbled wall on one side and some stunted, diseased shrubs flanking the wreckage of the houses. Down to their left he could see the colossal shape of what had been Yankee Stadium.

  They were getting closer.

  "Ryan! "Mildred called.

  "What?" He lifted a hand to halt them.

  "Isn't that… ?" She started to point to a building that Ryan had already marked as a probable.

  "Sure it is. Just keep close."

  He knew that if he turned and caught Krysty's eye, she'd know that he hadn't been really sure. Some things a man liked to keep close.

  J.B. STAYED TOPSIDE while the rest of them picked their way slowly and carefully toward the entrance to the long-hidden elevator shaft.

  The huge sec doors, bent and twisted, remained slightly ajar, just as they'd left them. The large empty room didn't look any different. Ryan pushed his head through the gap, peering down into the cold, sighing darkness.

  "Don't think anyone's been here."

  From behind and above they all heard a faint whistle.

  "Stay here," Ryan snapped, running up toward the pale light of day.

  The Armorer was crouched, peering between the jagged ends of a broken pillar. He pointed to his right. "Company. Four."

  "Scalies?"

  J.B. shook his head. "Street gang. They must've been trailing us. The shaft open?"

  "Yeah. Doesn't look touched."

  The Armorer flashed him a rare smile. "Be a great place to get ambushed. Halfway down there, swinging on bits of rope."

  Ryan risked a glance out onto the street. At first he saw nothing, then his eye caught a flicker of movement across the way—a pale, feral face, with a headband of ragged white cloth. As soon as Ryan was spotted, the head bobbed down out of sight.

  "Better get to it. No profit trying to take them out. Bring more down on us."

  J.B. considered the options. "Guess so. Want me to stay here or come help?"

  "Need you with the ropes. I'll send the boy to watch."

  "Dark night, Ryan! You sure?"

  "Sure."

  "Kid of ten."

  "I know. Way he's lived, he should be fine." J.B. wasn't an arguing sort of a man. "Fine by me."

  DEAN WAS DELIGHTED to be trusted with such an important mission.

  "Give me a blaster, Ryan."

  "No. I don't want chilling. I want to know if the stupes up there m
ake a move. You shout and tell us, then you get your ass down here."

  "Sure." He reached out a skinny hand and slapped Ryan on the palm. "Oh my way, José!"

  His feet pattered up the filthy staircase.

  "I am inclined to the opinion that the young man might prove to be rather a handful, would you not agree, my dear Cawdor?"

  "I agree, Doc."

  "THREE HUNDRED FEET." J.B. had dropped a small, rough pebble down the shaft, Head to one side, he counted to himself, all of them silent as they waited. When the sound came, it was very small and far-off, swallowed by the shaft.

  Ryan nodded. "Yeah. I make it around three hundred. How much rope we got?"

  Everyone had uncoiled the loops of thin, strong cord from around their waists. J.B. ran them through his hands, measuring them against his own arms' span. "Each one's close to twenty feet. Call it a hundred feet, give or take a few."

  "Two hundred feet short," said Mildred. "Longish sort of a jump, John."

  "We aren't jumping," he replied, his voice showing his preoccupation.

  "It was a joke, John. Just a small joke."

  Doc laughed quietly. "A very small joke, if I may make so bold."

  She ignored him.

  "In stages," Ryan mused. "Need anchoring points on the way. Difficult."

  "Not impossible. Trouble is…" J.B. paused. "Trouble is, if it can't be done, we'll only find out when it's too late and we can't climb back up to the top again."

  Krysty patted Ryan on the arm. "Kind of trip I like, lover. Only one way and all downhill."

  WHILE THE OTHERS STARTED knotting the lengths of rope together, Ryan went back up the staircase again, calling to his son.

  "Anything, Dean?"

  "Double-creep street

  kids. I made around eight or nine. More joining up with them all the time."

  "Think they're going to come at us?"

  The boy considered the question. "Yeah. But they're all chicken-shit, and they probably seen the blasters we got."

  "Fine. We're nearly ready. Soon as I shout for you, come straight down."

  "Sure."

  The boy looked out again through a gap he'd made between two fallen piles of bricks. Ryan watched him for a moment, seeing the excited set of the shoulders, noticing the boy's hand was resting on the turquoise hilt of his slim knife.