by James Axler
She looked down into her cup. Not much enlightenment was to be found. The problem with trying to read tea leaves, she’d always found, was that in the end all it did was remind her she was drinking boiled weeds.
“You have a point. I can’t deny that, and it’s something to work for,” she said.
“That’s what I was hoping for,” he said. He stood. “You have a lot to offer us, Mildred. I want you to be able to do so with a clear conscience.”
“Well, you’ve given me a lot to think about, Marc,” she said. “I can give you that much.”
He smiled and left.
Chapter Fifteen
“Next stop, Tucumcari,” the ponytailed Rail Ghost sang out. “Thanks for traveling by Paul Yawl.”
Despite herself, Krysty smiled. Paul’s eccentricities could be exasperating, or unnerving, but sometimes they were sweet and funny.
She turned her head and looked. So cheerful had Paul sounded that she was almost disappointed to see that Tucumcari was just another small town that had been burned out and fallen down ages ago. Paul said no bombs had fallen nearby, but somebody, mebbe even the inhabitants, had thoroughly trashed the ville in a more personal, one-on-one sort of way.
She had to look back again quickly because her stomach got queasy. She was unused to riding backward like this. Less still used to pedaling in that position.
For all its size, or lack thereof, the craft called the Paul Yawl contained many surprises. The first had come when they set forth from the half-ruined shed the morning after their first encounter. The wind was blowing briskly from the north-northeast. Paul had unstrapped objects from beneath the platform and assembled them into masts and a triangular sail. He had then unfolded from the platform a second seat at the front end, identical to his own, for her to sit in as they traveled.
That had been the point at which she had, mostly, accepted that Paul had told the truth when he explained why he was willing to help her follow MAGOG: that he had been a hermit for years, and now badly wanted someone just to talk to. She sensed that there was more to it than that; but after even the briefest acquaintance, she just found it impossible to believe he harbored any sinister intent. It didn’t mean she trusted him without restraint—few people had ever accused Krysty Wroth of being a fool, and not that big of one. She just doubted to the point of dismissal that he was actively planning to do her harm.
And anyway, as he himself pointed out, she could snap his neck without much effort.
The next surprise had come when the wind veered in early afternoon, as they were crossing a trestle bridge over a sandy wash that was too broad and flat to be called an arroyo. The sail emptied and they lost way. Paul had pedaled them to the far side, then got out, took down the sail, unstepped the mast, and stowed them back away. Then he unfolded a second set of pedals and gears mounted by Krysty’s seat and rigged a drive chain to a complicated mechanism below the platform itself. That translated the motion of the passenger’s pedaling into backward impetus.
It had also been a surprise to Krysty how sore her legs got so quickly. She assumed she was in rugged good shape from the fact she had walked thousands of miles and could run as long as necessary. It turned out that pedaling made use of a different set of muscles. Paul had veered erratically between sympathy and badly concealed amusement. He had been genuinely impressed when she whipped up a poultice of herbs she found when they sheltered for the night in an abandoned farmhouse near the tracks, that soothed the ache in her muscles enough to let her sleep.
The most recent surprise the Yawl had contained was when approaching the mountains east of the Grandee. When the going got too much even for Paul’s work-hardened muscles, he had produced a little two-stroke gasoline engine and attached that to the drive train. It had propelled them up and over the pass at a slow but steady speed. It was better than trying to make the journey by muscle power, but Krysty found herself having to fight impatience and the ever-looming dread that she would never catch the fleet, fusion-powered monstrosity of a train.
Today had been mostly pedaling against a mild head wind, and occasional coasting on downhill grades. Her muscles were still sore, but she was quickly getting in shape. Her own Gaia-given self-healing gifts were helping.
“It seems strange, somehow,” she said as they began to pass the ruins of Old Tucumcari. “It’s like it’s part of another world.” She had never felt the same detachment traveling the roads, even by wag.
Paul nodded. “It might as well be,” he said. “It’s a world that’s forgotten the rails. It was already happening long ago, long before the big war.”
“Don’t people notice when they see you riding along them?”
He cackled. “Not so many do. It’s not for nothing they call me the Rail Ghost.”
It occurred to her to wonder, if nobody ever saw him, just who it was who called him that. It seemed unsporting to ask, so she didn’t.
“And besides,” he said, “once I’m gone, I’m gone, and it’s as if I never was. Was I real or just a mirage? People aren’t used to thinking about the rails, or noticing the rails, so when they see someone like me riding on the rails… Well, it just doesn’t fit with what they’ve thought all their lives. So they put me out of their minds as soon as they can. Kinda like digging a goathead out of your foot. It’s forgotten as soon as you can’t feel it anymore. You just walk on.”
“What if they see MAGOG? That’s a little large to just put out of your head.”
He got an odd look—then, faraway, pensive and sad at once. “Well, that’s a question, there, missy. It is indeed.”
They passed the ruins and approached the new ville. The two tall T-shapes that had been apparent at a distance resolved themselves into crosses carrying grisly, twisted burdens. Crows and ravens swarmed about the corpses.
“Is this a good idea, Paul?” Krysty asked. Since Tucumcari was a rail junction, their intention was to stop and ask the townsfolk which way MAGOG had gone, and if the occupants had let slip a hint as to final destination.
“Hard as it may be to believe, it’s even possible to wrong a baron,” Paul said. “And I reckon most folks will do all they can to pay back a slight. Just happens baron’s got more wherewithal to do it.”
He squinted up at the crucified shapes. “Got sec man boy haircuts. Baron Mike’s pretty easygoing, baron or not, it wouldn’t be easy to piss him off this much. Looks to me like this is on your pal, the General.”
Krysty gritted her teeth at the characterization, even though she knew it was ironic. “Something else he has to answer for.”
“Mebbe so. Just as like, they had it comin’. In these parts, missy, the wonder is how bad things manage to happen to them as don’t deserve it, given the statistical unlikelihood of it an’ all, if you catch my meaning.”
Krysty started to fire back that neither Ryan nor the women, children and oldies slaughtered by the Big Ditch had remotely deserved any such fate. She bit it savagely down. Arguing with Paul, she had learned already, was like trying to reason Doc out of one of his fugues. The kind of thing an old Latino rancher from outside Harmony, up in the high Rocks where she was born, compared to fighting a swarm of bees with your hat.
Paul took pressure off the pedals and began to spin down, backing off the intense exertion gradually so as to minimize the risk of cramps. “We’re about to find out, one way or t’other. This here’s our stop.”
Following his example, slowing her own pedaling gradually so that she stayed just short of pushing, Krysty frowned at the ville. It was generally well kept, which argued for a relative measure of prosperity, which in turn argued for relative peace. At the same time, while the land surrounding was slightly greener and more thickly vegetated than the desert farther west, her experienced eye saw signs they were heading into the true Deathlands. For example, the way all the roofs in sight were kept studiously intact, even if they consisted mostly of ad hoc patching, and the way every window had some kind of covering, if not glass then a hinged shutter of
gray-weathered plywood. They got chem storms here. Fortunately the sky showed no threat of one, and even the odd glimpse of blue here and there.
So it struck her as odd that there was nobody out and about and all the shutters were down. This was early spring in the high Plains, and midday heat not yet an issue.
“Where is everybody?” she asked.
Paul unfolded himself from his seat and stretched, then smoothed down his coat. He pulled off the goggles he wore to spare his eyes from windburn and bug strikes and stuffed them in a pocket. In their place, he put his heavy-framed glasses with the taped bridge. “Dunno. Let’s head on down and find out.”
The embankment here was low, just enough to allow for drainage when it rained. He stepped down to level ground. Krysty followed, longblaster unlimbered. She didn’t like this setup a bit. If carrying the M-16 openly made the locals nervous, too bad for them; if they didn’t understand caution, they were triple stupe.
But then, if they didn’t understand caution, they’d be triple dead.
The new ville had been laid down without apparent regard for the tracks, nor for their separation, which lay a couple hundred yards beyond the last hut of the settlement proper. It seemed more to have nucleated around the baron’s mansion a few blocks away, with the tracks forming a southern boundary of sorts, although a few structures lay outside it. They made their way between the buildings, Krysty wary, Paul all but skipping, giddy with the adventure or maybe the prospect of additional human contact.
Just before reaching the mansion, Paul stopped to stoop and peer intently at a patch of adobe wall. Krysty glanced over his shoulder. She couldn’t see anything but some scratches in the mud coating that might have been fresh and might have been some kind of symbol. Or just random scrapes. Paul straightened again. Humming low in his throat, he covered the open ground in front of the mansion in several swinging strides, trotted up the porch steps and rapped on the door before Krysty could suggest he might hold off for a bit so she could at least do a little reconnoitering.
It wasn’t going to do to greet the baron blaster in hand. Angrily, she slung the M-16.
The door opened. A stout woman in a flowered apron, her gray hair piled in a bun, stood blinking through a pair of round-lensed spectacles at them. “May I help you?”
Though it was a cool day, and likely cooler inside, Krysty saw fine sweat beading around the woman’s hairline. “Good morning, ma’am. We’ve come to see Baron Mike.”
She glanced back over her shoulder. Then she looked back at them and smiled. “Of course. Come in. I’ll take you to him.”
“Baron Mike doesn’t stand much on ceremony,” Paul said over his shoulder as they stepped into the gloom of the foyer.
“What’s that smell?” Krysty asked. Right ahead of them was the foot of the stairs. The polished-wood globe on the banister’s end-pedestal was covered with a dark stain that suggested dried blood. That might account for the undertone of stench. What accounted for the dried blood was another question.
The woman led them to the left, back through a kind of parlor. In front of them a curtain that seemed to be made out of a comforter with incongruous marine life—angelfish, sea horses—printed on it in bright colors covered a round-topped doorway. The housekeeper stopped and waved them on with quick nervous gestures.
Paul cruised right on through. Krysty followed him tight. All her internal alarms were going off at once.
“Shit,” she said, beginning to unsling her rifle.
Paul had stopped short on the other side. “That doesn’t seem to half cover it,” he said.
It had been a dining room. There was a huge sturdy oval table in the middle of it. On the table lay the nude body of a man. He was pretty portly and probably middle-aged. It was impossible to tell for sure because the parts of him that hadn’t been cut off or opened were covered in blood. One blue eye stared out of red tracery at the chandelier hanging from the high ceiling above. Krysty realized her feet were sticking to the floor. Blood was congealing everywhere. The charnel-house stench was gagging.
She brought her rifle around. A hand covered in weeping sores grabbed its flash suppressor from her left and wrenched the weapon out of her hands.
She pivoted on her left leg, ramming her right up into the scabbie’s balls. All the breath exploded out of his body. He folded like a bad poker hand, all the way to the floor.
Krysty was preparing to stomp him good and proper when strong stinking arms wrapped around her from behind. She shifted her hips left, then rammed her right elbow straight back, pushing hard with left hand folded over right fist for emphasis. It was the turn of the mutie who’d grabbed her to lose his lungful and double over. She whipped both arms up in front of her, completing her breakaway, and turned clockwise into him.
He had withered skin and a nose like a brown cancerous carrot, she saw before she smashed a forward elbow slam into the side of his face. That stood him up again, opening him for an uppercut into the stomach, delivered with a widdershins twist of the hips that lifted his sneakers out of the blood-muck with a sucking sound.
He fell. Even as she started to turn back to her first assailant, he came at her again from behind, dropping the M-16, held by buttstock and barrel, right over her head, pinning her arms to her sides. The mutie with the rotten-carrot nose wrapped her ankles in his arms and clung to her like a baby opossum. She was immobilized.
“Paul!” she screamed. “Help me!”
He just stood there between her and the table, shoulders hunched, staring at her with moist cow eyes.
“Don’t hurt her!” commanded a thin voice that went into the eardrum like a drill. “Hole says he’s been cheated once already. Hole says he wants woman unharmed.”
Two figures had appeared through the kitchen door, on the far side of the table with its gory burden. The voice was coming from a weird round mutie who had to crane his head to see past the ex-baron’s split-open paunch. He scarcely came to the waist of the monstrous figure with a fistula for a face that stood behind him.
Struggling against the grip of the scabbie who held her from behind, Krysty emitted a scream of pure fury.
Hole emitted a hissing gurgle. The weird little round mutie at his side emitted a lewd cackle. His eyes were grotesquely mismatched.
“You’re so lucky,” he said in his piercing hiss. “Hole like. You’re better than black-hair cunny. Hole never had red-furred cooze before.”
The little mutie rubbed clawlike hands. “Skeeze, neither.”
The giant mutie bubbled excitedly through the hole in his face. Words could have been no clearer. A huge misshapen hand began to knead a growing stiffness below the sacklike black garment.
Krysty ground her teeth in frustration. She would soon have to summon the power of Gaia to enter her body and increase her strength to superhuman levels. It took a horrific toll on her, risked incapacitating her. But she wouldn’t allow herself to be violated by this monster with the oozing gap for a face.
“Get ready—” Skeeze said.
Something thumped on the floor of the kitchen right behind Hole and rolled forward, almost between his boots. The giant and his rotund interpreter ignored it.
“Hole give you plenty of what a woman really want—”
Something went crump. A shimmer, like shock waves made visible, passed upward and outward over Hole and Skeeze, radiating in semicircles from the floor.
Chapter Sixteen
Hole roared, a sound so horrible and huge it seemed as if it would crush Krysty’s skull. His vast booted feet seemed to have shrunk to a cone point, as if he were being transformed into a giant blacktop. He raised his tree trunk arms over his head. His hands were great claws of intolerable agony. His bellow went on and on.
Skeeze’s eyes bulged. As the distortion waves emanating from the floor seemed to intensify, as if the air itself were somehow becoming solid, his squat little body began to distort, to be drawn back and down toward the point from which the waves originated. Hole was hal
f swallowed, arms flailing now, screaming as if he had no need to inhale.
“What—what’s happening?” Skeeze’s words soared in volume and velocity, as if played on a tape that suddenly speeded up. As they ended in a hideous shriek, his body seemed to shred and be sucked toward the point in rags of black and red. His larger eyeball stretched and distorted into a banana shape before it popped like a water balloon.
Implo gren! Krysty thought. They were as rare as their effects were horrible, but she’d seen them before. The comforter over the door whipped the legs of the scabbie, who held her pinned as air whistled toward the tiny singularity created by the gren. Watching his leader’s unimaginable painful demise in horrified incomprehension, the scabbie had slackened his grip. Krysty managed to grab the M-16 with both hands and pull down hard as she whipped her upper body forward and down.
The scabbie went flying, leaving the longblaster in her hands, and cartwheeled over the late unzipped Baron Mike into the gren’s distortion ripples, which were already subsiding. He shrieked fit to bust glass as his very atoms were stripped one from another and sucked in a maelstrom, right out of this world.
With a final pop of air rushing to replace vanished matter, the gren’s implo effect died away.
The moldy mutie on the floor had also lost his grip on the redheaded woman. She kicked a boot backward to free it up, then snapped it forward as if to launch all the terror and fury that filled her right out of her silver-chased toe. The mutie’s neck snapped with a sound like a broomstick breaking.
Paul rose slowly from the crouch he’d folded himself into at some point in the proceedings. He goggled at the doorway to the kitchen, which was now a rough semicircle. “What on earth did that?”
“Implo gren. Don’t ask me how, because I don’t know.”
