by James Axler
“Said we’d be here at dawn,” Ryan reminded the man. “You’ll find me and my people keep our word, Croxton.”
“I am sure you do.” Croxton laughed. “Now, we got us five wags and there are six of you. How you see splitting this? I’m seeing a man on every wag.” He turned his gaze to Krysty for a moment. “No offense, ma’am.”
“None taken,” Krysty assured him, the rising wind catching her long hair and blowing it across her face for a moment before she swept it back with her hand.
“You have room for us scattered like that?” Ryan asked.
As Ryan spoke, J.B. sauntered over to join the discussion, the cigar wedged in his mouth. “He’s right,” J.B. added, talking around the stub of cigar. “Some of these wags look pretty worn.”
Croxton nodded favorably, smiling at the Armorer. “The wags’ll hold up, and we’ll make room,” he assured them. “We’ll be moving out in ten minutes. You okay with that?”
Ryan nodded. “The sooner the better.”
Croxton looked thoughtfully at Ryan, picking his words with care. “It’s mighty gen’rous of you to accompany us like this,” he said. “We’re just sod busters. No real money worth speaking of, nothing much of value. Can’t pay you for what you’re doing.”
Ryan remained emotionless as he listened to the man relieve his conscience.
“But mebbe you’ll find something you need in Baby, too, right, Mr. Cawdor?” the farmer continued. “I don’t rightly know what the healin’ properties of this spring are, but mebbe it’ll be able to fix your scars. Not so sure it can replace that there something what you have lost.”
Ryan realized that the round-faced farmer was looking not at him but at the leather eye patch he wore over the empty socket of his left eye. “I’m not much of a believer in miracles,” Ryan told Croxton shortly. “I’ve seen too much horror with the one eye I have.”
“Then what you are doing is that much more brave, sir,” Croxton said gratefully, before turning to organize his own people.
Shaking his head, J.B. turned to Ryan. “This whole setup stinks worse than a gaudy on threesome-special day,” he muttered.
Ryan agreed, but all he said was, “Doc’s been a good friend to all of us.” It served to remind J.B. of where their loyalties had to lie.
RYAN HAD CONSIDERED how to distribute his people the night before, lying in bed with Krysty sleeping in his arms, his lone eye staring at the ceiling. Like J.B., he was skeptical of the miracles that Babyville promised. However, he held a great deal of respect for Doc, and he could see that this was a dream that the old man needed to follow. Indeed, Ryan suspected that Doc would have gone alone with the travelers, rather than miss the incredible opportunity that Croxton had presented.
Before dawn, Ryan had taken Mildred quietly aside while Doc busied himself with his morning ablutions.
“I trust all of you,” Ryan had said firmly, his voice low. “Couldn’t ask for better companions for the long road. But I know that a man can get to thinking and obsessing if he’s left too long on his own with too heavy a weight on his mind, and I don’t want that to happen to Doc.”
Mildred had nodded, understanding what Ryan was getting at.
“You keep an eye on him for me,” Ryan continued. “Make sure his head stays in the here-and-now. Okay?”
Mildred nodded again.
Doc came striding out of the inn’s bathroom at that point, his hair combed and his chin shaved. “Are we all ready to experience a miracle?” he asked cheerfully.
“Count me in on that, Doc,” Mildred replied.
Ryan just turned away, fidgeting with an ammo cartridge as he awaited the dawn rendezvous. At least Mildred was open-minded to Doc’s dreams, he thought. She wouldn’t rattle the old man without due cause.
The other crucial choices for Ryan were who would sit up front and who would protect the rear.
The Armorer took backstop, well-armed and mean-tempered enough to ensure that any attack from the travelers themselves could be averted or swiftly curtailed. It was always a risk traveling with strangers; people played a lot of tricks to get what they wanted out there in the middle of the Deathlands, where trust was in short supply. Still, it appeared that the convoy was only lightly armed and was what it appeared to be—a group of elderly farmers looking for the miracle two youngsters were promising.
Ryan had asked Jak to guard the front vehicle, despite his urge to take the position himself. Jak’s keen eyes and preternatural senses made him an ideal scout; he would pick up on things quicker and spot indicators that others in Ryan’s team might miss.
Chapter Five
In silence Jak observed everything through the windows of the lead wag. It was a six-wheeler truck rig, preskydark technology, and it belched foul black smoke into the atmosphere as it trudged along the wreckage of the old roads. The ancient vehicle had been patched up using items from numerous sources, including metal drain pipes and bottle glass. The open drain hole from a bathtub could be seen in the right-side door, where Jak rested his knee. Sometime in the distant past, the engine had been retrofitted to run on moonshine, though it grumbled at the effort of pulling the monstrous weight of the rig up any significant incline, mostly managing a top speed of no more than twenty mph and howling like a banshee the whole bastard time.
The driver, Jeremiah Croxton, kept his eyes firmly on the shattered roadway as the wag bumped over ruined blacktop, and the worn suspension offered little comfort as the vehicle thundered over each pothole and crevice. Beside him, resting against the far door, Jak watched the dry landscape pass by through the dirt-smeared side window, frequently peering ahead to see what was coming. After a while, Jak drew his blaster—a .357 Colt Python—and began taking it apart so as to oil its inner works using a finger-size bottle of oil he carried in his jacket.
From behind Jak, sitting in the cubbyhole in the rear of the cab, surrounded by what amounted to all of Croxton’s negligible belongings, the blond-haired Daisy peered over the back of Jak’s seat. She was watching Jak’s practiced, economical movements as he field-stripped his weapon.
“What ya doing?” Daisy asked, her languid voice close to his ear.
Jak ignored her, glancing ahead at the low rise that the broken road poured over, past the last of the emaciated wheat fields.
A half minute passed in silence before Daisy spoke again. “Hey, mister,” she drawled, “I asked what ya doing? You deaf as well as weird-looking? Don’t see much point in a deaf sec man.”
Jak turned to face her, his ruby eyes boring into hers. “Here guard, not jabber,” he told her.
At the steering wheel, Croxton guffawed. “Boy’s got a point, Daisy,” he said, not bothering to look behind him.
“I was just trying to make nice,” Daisy whined. “Thought a weirdo like him would ’preciate that.”
Oiling his blaster, Jak ignored her. But his mind was considering Daisy’s words carefully—not because they hurt, Jak was above such petty concerns, but because of the way in which she phrased them. It nagged at him that the girl had called him “mister.”
THE SECOND WAG IN THE convoy was similar to the first, a rusty old truck rig that had been converted to run on moonshine. Krysty had taken the shotgun seat next to a dark-skinned woman called Nisha Adams, who looked permanently tired. Nisha’s husband, Barry, a man in his midforties, with the tanned, leathery skin of someone used to working outside, drove the rig with an easygoing nonchalance, remarking on things that caught his attention at the roadside, keeping his hands in a four- and eight-o’clock grip on the rig’s large wheel.
Three other people shared the cab, sitting in the sleeping compartment behind the main seats—another older couple called Julius and Joanna Dougal, and the old farmer who had been attacked by one of the hounds outside the trading post and now wore a bandage across his wounded arm. The five of them seemed to get along well—they were old friends, full of anecdotes and not above teasing one another in a lighthearted way.
Krysty sat
quietly, her green eyes watching the cracked strip of road and the surrounding landscape as they lumbered along, following Croxton’s rig at a steady pace.
“So, where are you from, long and tall?” Julius asked from the back of the cab.
Krysty turned and gave the man a brief smile. He was about fifty, dark-skinned and carrying a few extra pounds around his middle and on his jowls. Whatever he had farmed before he’d downed tools to go on this crazy quest for eternal youth, it had kept him strong and well-fed. “Name’s Krysty,” she began. “I come from a ville called Harmony. Have you heard of that?”
Julius looked thoughtful for a moment, then shook his head. “Can’t say I have, Krysty.”
“It’s in the past,” Krysty said with a shrug. “You folks come from a long way?”
“Couple of days on the road so far,” Joanna explained. Like Julius, she was a dark-skinned woman carrying a few extra pounds. She wore a machete at her hip, its blade notched here and there from use.
“Worth it though,” Julius added. “Imagine, being young again. You live in this hellhole so long and suddenly someone offers you a chance to be young all over again. Strong and healthy again. Can’t even imagine it, I’ll bet, young’un like you.”
Krysty laughed. “I grew up fine and strong, Julius,” she said, “but I still miss some of the things I used to be able to do.”
“Like what, child?” Joanna asked, encouraging Krysty to continue.
Krysty glanced back at the road through the windshield, her eyes scanning the back of the wag ahead and peering at the dead terrain all around. “Dreams,” she said wistfully. “I miss being able to dream the way I did when I was a little girl. That feeling of security that lets you dream just about anything.”
From the back of the rig, the old farmer, Paul Witterson, loosed a loud, braying laugh. “Ha. You’re still a little girl, sweetie,” he said. “Having curves in all the right places don’t change that.”
Krysty smiled, flattered by the old man’s observation. “Thanks for the kind compliment.”
“Compliment nothing,” Witterson stated. “Facts is facts, Red. Facts is facts.”
Gazing through the window to her right, Krysty wondered what the facts were about the spring of eternal life.
THE THIRD VEHICLE in the convoy was a broken-down, American-made four-wheel drive that had survived the nukecaust but not much else. It was patched together with mismatched doors and sheets of metal, and the roof wore the acne-scar evidence of acid raid erosion. The engine had been removed, and that space was used for additional storage, containing almost all of the occupants’ possessions. Despite displaying mutie musculature, the two weary horses that pulled the vehicle looked to be struggling with the weight.
Doc had taken the passenger seat beside the driver, a man in his middle fifties called Charles Torino, whose face was more scarred than the roof of his automobile. Mildred sat in the back, across from Doc, beside Mary Foster, checking the bandage that had been applied to the wound where her shoulder met her neck. A dark-haired woman in her late thirties, Mary was the woman who, along with her baby, had been snagged by the mutie wolf when the companions had first intervened. She was rocking the baby in her arms as Mildred dressed her wound, replacing the bandage.
“Ryan and J.B. think I am crazy, do they not?” Doc said, breaking the silence inside the vehicle.
Mildred looked up from her gentle work on the woman’s wounded neck. “No,” she replied, “don’t be silly.”
Doc’s smile was genuine as he answered. “Do not try to kid an old man, Mildred. I have known you too long. And I know what I saw in their eyes. They think I am out of my mind.”
“Well,” Mildred admitted, “no more than normal, I’m sure.”
Doc looked ponderously out of the missing windshield for a moment before he continued. “How about you, Doctor?” he prompted. “Do you think this old fool is crazy?”
Mildred cast a significant look at the other people in the automobile before she spoke. “Doc, I hardly think now’s the time to…” she began.
“It may be false hope,” he told her, “but you understand what would happen if I did not pursue it. I would not have been able to live with myself knowing that this opportunity may be out there.”
Mildred leaned forward and touched Doc’s shoulder reassuringly. “I know, Doc,” she said, “we all do. No one thinks you’re wrong or loopy. We just worry about you.”
The driver, Charles Torino, spoke in his hoarse, strained voice then, looking over his shoulder through the headrests to take in Mildred as well as Doc. “You folks think this is a wild-goose chase?” he asked.
Mildred shrugged. “I don’t know. It sounds pretty amazing. I guess we have doubts.”
Charles nodded, peering back at his mutie horses to see that they were still on the right track. “I seen it happen,” he said. “Old guy come through our ville two months ago, decrepit, looked like Old Father Time hisself limping along on that bad foot of his. He come and told us about this young-making spring he heard about out east. Said he was going looking for it. Six weeks later he came back.”
Mildred and Doc looked at the man, hanging on his every word.
“He was just a kid,” Charles said in his strained voice. “I mean, mebbe twenty years old, I dunno. Still had the limp he come to the ville with all them weeks before, but he looked young. Real young.”
“And it was the same man?” Mildred asked.
Charles nodded. “I’d swear to you it was. Mary?”
The younger woman holding the baby nodded solemnly. “Same eyes, same jawline,” she said. “S’funny, he looked kinda handsome as a young man.”
“Yet he still had his limp,” Doc wondered.
“Oh, the spring cured that, too,” Charles said with a throaty laugh. “Idiot was so busy dancing with joy he trod on a nail, went right through his boot. Put him pretty much back where he started at, I guess.”
Doc and Mildred both laughed at that, too, feeling a curious sense of relief.
“Me,” Charles continued, his eyes glazing over as he considered his words, “I’m hoping it can cure something a bit meaner than a broken foot.”
Mildred peered at the man and gently asked what he meant.
“I got me the black lung, miss,” Charles said with that throaty voice of his. “The big black crab inside me, making it a blamed chore to breathe.”
Cancer, Mildred realized. The man was looking for a cure for cancer.
RYAN WAS ACTING AS SEC MAN on the fourth vehicle in the convoy—a canvas-covered wooden wag with large wheels, pulled by four weary-looking horses. He sat at the front of the wag, his 9 mm SIG-Sauer P-226 ready at his hip, the Steyr rifle resting at his side. In silence he mentally reviewed his concerns. The whole quest seemed foolish, and yet he felt loyalty to Doc. The man deserved this chance, however unlikely it seemed.
And there was something else. There was a part of Ryan that, blast it all, wanted it to be true. The whole world, it seemed, had been turned against humankind, making every day a battle of desperate survival against astonishing odds. The plants, the wildlife, mutations and even the weather patterns had become poisonous, dangerous or downright lethal to man, and that was before considering the brutality that people inflicted on one another. To discover one bright hope, one good thing in the landscape of badness—that would be nothing short of a miracle.
Ryan and his companions had trekked a long time hoping for a miracle, seeking somewhere to settle, to call home. Babyville wasn’t it, Ryan was sure of that, but it just might rejuvenate the sense of hope that was sorely ebbing deep inside him.
Ryan’s companions in the wag were a family of three—the Cliffords—whose youngest was forty-three years old. A much younger man called Alec shared the back of the horse-drawn wag with the family, apparently shifting across from Croxton’s own wag. Alec was the blond-haired young man Ryan had noticed at the table in the trading post the night before. Alec looked similar to Daisy, the miracle girl who
claimed to be over seventy years old, and Ryan suspected that they were brother and sister, or perhaps cousins. Their physical similarity nagged at him. Despite the layers of clothing that Alec wore for the trip, Ryan could see that the lad was rake-thin. Where Daisy still had puppy fat, Alec’s face was slender and bony, sharp planes and narrow, predatory eyes. He had the wispy beginnings of a beard on his chin, which he had clearly cultivated, though its ash-blond color made it seem insubstantial.
While the Clifford family members argued with one another in that way that families will, Alec remained silent, observing everything without comment. In that, Ryan saw something of Jak Lauren in the young man. Jak was a fine man to have on side, Ryan reminded himself, but he was a dangerous foe to turn one’s back on. Ryan wouldn’t be letting his guard down around this blond-haired young man.
J.B. HAD BEEN POSTED as sec man in the final wag in the train. This wag was a converted farm tractor, belching thick, tarry black smoke into the air behind it from two exhaust pipes as it gobbled up a sweet-smelling fuel made from sugar solution. A canvas shelter had been strung across the engine, and a boxed-in trailer had been tagged onto the rear. The Armorer sat in the trailer, watching the road behind them through the aft half-door. Sitting beside him, working his way through an illustrated instruction manual, was Vincent White. Vincent was a man in his midfifties, and he left his wife, Maude, to drive the sputtering vehicle. A naked lightbulb had been wired up into the side of the trailer, and was running off the engine to cast a dim, yellow light inside the box on wheels. He used a magnifying glass to read the print in the booklet he held. The man was desperately farsighted.
The road behind them bumped along, trailing off into the distance, the tragic fields with their skeletal plants sweeping away toward the horizon. J.B. watched the skies where a peppering of carrion birds followed the wag train. Were they simply being hopeful, he wondered, or did the convoy and its passengers have the mark of death upon them?
