Baptism of Rage

by James Axler

  Ryan nodded, saying nothing.

  Croxton pressed the issue. “You look a little out of sorts, is all. If you don’t mind my saying.”

  “I don’t mind,” Ryan said, his voice low. He didn’t look at the old farmer. His single eye was scanning the top of the high wall, searching for other sec men. The operation seemed heavily fortified, and Ryan would bet his last clip of ammo that there were more guards watching them from hidden positions all around. The place was unnerving, disquieting. It was so well-fortified, in some ways it seemed like a prison.

  “Lighten up,” Croxton urged Ryan in his rich, friendly voice. “We’re here now. The worst of it’s over.”

  “The worst of it’s never over,” Ryan replied, still scanning the battlements above them. “You’re old enough to know that better than me.”

  Croxton shook his head, laughing just a little, albeit uncomfortably. “Yeah, mebbe you’re right at that,” he admitted. “It’s a mad world and we all do what we got to to survive. Those folks we met back in Tazewell—they mebbe were just trying to survive, too.”

  Ryan’s eye fixed on Croxton, and it seemed to skewer the old farmer as he tried to meet it. “You sound like a man with something on his conscience,” he said.

  Croxton visibly flinched, swallowing hard and taking a half step back before he spoke. “They were nothing to do with me,” he said. “You can’t think for a moment…”

  “I didn’t say that,” Ryan said. “But they were psychotic. They starved their kid, left her to die. There’s no excuse for that.”

  Still uncomfortable, Croxton looked away, watching the people in the sentry booth as they discussed their needs and answered the sec men’s questions. Ryan continued to watch the man, his single, piercing eye fixed on Croxton’s shifting gaze.

  A LITTLE WAY DOWN the dirt track road, Mildred leaned against the hood of Charles Torino’s four-wheel drive, watching the proceedings up ahead at the main gate. Beside her, leaning on his ebony cane with the silver lion’s head, Doc watched the sentry booth with rapt attention.

  “They’re going inside now,” the old man said, not turning from the scene.

  Mildred peered across to him. He was a curious figure, strangely incongruous when placed beside the other companions in Ryan Cawdor’s group. An old man with an inquisitive, scientific mind, who, if his true nature were ever allowed to surface, most probably abhorred the violence that he saw all about him every day of his life. “How are you doing, Doc?” Mildred asked.

  After a moment, he turned to her, bemused. “I’m sorry, my dear Dr. Wyeth?” he inquired.

  Mildred smiled. “I know this means a lot to you, coming here,” she said. “I mean, I’m interested in the sense that I’m a medical professional—a scientist, like yourself. But you…you need this to happen, don’t you?”

  “Need is a very strong word,” Doc responded. “What I need is in the hands of a higher power than you or I or the people of Babyville. What I want, on the other hand—well, that is still open to interpretation.” With that, he turned back and continued to watch the proceedings at the sentry booth.

  “I hope it’s true, Doc,” Mildred told him. “I hope that you find what you’re looking for here.”

  “And if I do find it,” Doc said, his eyes still on the sentry booth by the ville’s main gate, “do you suspect that would be the end of my quest? Or would it be just another step on the long road we all travel?”

  Despite herself, Mildred felt her lips rise into a smile. “You sound like a fortune cookie,” she said.

  Doc shook his head. “If I knew what that was,” he said, “I’m sure I’d be insulted.”

  But Mildred could see that the old man was smiling, too.

  FINALLY, RYAN AND Jeremiah were encouraged to enter the sentry booth. Within, the two sec men looked them over with open disdain.

  The male was perhaps twenty years old, with dirty blond hair cropped close to his scalp. There were scabs in his hair, and his face showed acne scars. He stepped out from behind his desk and strode across the little booth, making it clear this was his domain, stopping before Ryan and the old farmer and looking from one to the other. Behind him, the female sec officer chewed on something as she watched, her hand resting on the butt of a blaster that was clipped to her belt. Her hair, like the young man’s, was a dirty blond color, but she wore it longer, so that it brushed her shoulders.

  “Let’s hear it then,” the man said, sounding bored. “What have you heard and what do you want?”

  Taller than either sec man, Ryan looked down at the lad before him, his face betraying no emotion.

  “Well?” the young man prompted, looking from Ryan to Croxton.

  “We’re here for the spring,” the old farmer finally said, a tremor in his voice. “The miracle spring we heard so much about.”

  “This true?” the youth asked, placing his pointed index finger on Ryan’s chest.

  Ryan nodded. “I’m just the sec man,” he explained.

  The pumped-up, light-haired man turned to Croxton, waiting for confirmation.

  Croxton nodded. “This man and his crew brought us here,” he said. “Kept us all alive.”

  The young woman spoke up then, stepping out from behind the desk. “How many in your party?” she asked. To Ryan’s ears, her voice still sounded like that of a little girl.

  “We have, um…” Croxton stuttered, trying to count the people in his head.

  “Twenty-two,” Ryan said, “including six sec men and one baby.”

  “Fifteen then,” the young woman said after a long pause of thought, clearly struggling to calculate the numbers in her head.

  “Two of them have been here before,” Croxton stated.

  The young woman nodded, smiling. “You have to hand over any weapons you’re carrying,” she explained. “We don’t allow blasters in Babyville.” Then she called to the sec men outside. “Check over their wags and let these fine people through the gate,” she instructed.

  Ryan glanced back at the pair in the sentry booth before following Croxton to the wags, where the sec team was beginning their inspection. “What happens if we’d answered their questions wrong?” he asked.

  “I guess it’s a screening process,” Croxton admitted. “Keep the bad folks out.”

  Ryan wasn’t convinced. “Seems pointless,” he said. “I could have broken that little twerp’s hand in a second when he shoved it at me like that.”

  Croxton smiled. “That mightn’t have endeared us to them.”

  “Mebbe not,” Ryan agreed.

  They walked past a waiting wag and to the converted harvester that Ryan had driven here from the Tazewell farmhouse, the three sec men keeping pace with them. Croxton took charge, showing the sec men the battered wag and pointing to the other wags in their convoy, leading them to the next in line.

  As Croxton led the sec men to the moonshine-powered truck rig, Ryan’s attention was distracted by a noise coming from the wag waiting by the gates. He watched as a mean-faced sec man grabbed the driver—a gray-haired man in his fifties—from behind the steering column of a patched-together VW Bug and tossed him to the ground. Up ahead, the main gate had been raised, but the portcullis that covered it was still in place. As Ryan watched, another sec man, this one a young woman, maybe eighteen years old, rushed over and, to Ryan’s surprise, kicked the driver in the ribs as he lay in the dirt. She leaned down and punched the man in the face with a gloved hand, knocking his head hard into the ground as he struggled to get away. Then, the male sec officer reached down and pulled a stub-nosed revolver, a Brazilian rip-off of a Smith & Wesson, from the man’s belt.

  The woman stopped pounding on the gray-haired man then, standing back as he lay before her. Then, the sec man turned the blaster on the man, pulling the trigger twice, firing two successive bullets close to the man’s head. The gray-haired man rolled this way and that in the dirt, trying to fend off the shots as they tore up the soil beside him. From the back of the VW Bug came screamin
g, two voices howling to make it stop. Emotionless, the sec man ignored them, holding the blaster on the man in the dirt, barking instructions.

  “You were told to hand over all blasters,” the sec man growled angrily.

  The gray-haired man held up his hands in defense, and the sec team stood there, listening to his pleas. There was a brief negotiation, and the man pulled off his wristwatch and handed it to the first man. The sec man shoved the shining watch in his pocket along with the blaster. After that, they shot him in the head, leaving him to die where he lay. Terrified, one of the passengers took over the driving, starting the rumbling, shuddering engine and drove the Bug through the gate as the portcullis was raised. In the back, Ryan saw a child of perhaps ten years old along with an elderly woman. Heck of a family outing, he thought with grim humor.

  Ryan took that moment to study what lay beyond the gates. There were buildings in there, solid structures that had lent their fingerlike towers to the sky. There were people, too—not many, but a few, scurrying back and forth, going about their tasks, as well as chickens and geese and other farmyard animals roaming wild in the main thoroughfare. In the farther distance, Ryan spotted a squarish structure sitting on the banks of a stream—a water mill.

  As the gate came down and settled back in place, Ryan turned away.

  The sec men walked with Croxton as he showed them the other wags. The passengers were checked over for any obvious diseases, and their vehicles were appraised.

  After a few minutes, Croxton came waddling back to where Ryan waited between the lead two wags, the three sec men following. “They’ve asked that you hand over your blasters,” the old farmer explained.

  “That’s an interesting request,” Ryan said noncommittally. He didn’t cherish the idea of him and his team being disarmed, but at the same time he could understand the reasoning behind it.

  “Well?” one of the sec men prompted, his eyes locking with Ryan’s. The man looked to be about sixteen, a downy blond mustache on his top lip.

  “We’re here in the role of sec men,” Ryan said. “Which means we’re here to protect Mr. Croxton and his people.”

  The sec officer smiled and his smile was a hideous thing, like something rabid. “You won’t need your blasters inside,” he said. “No one’s shooting no one in Baby.”

  Ryan considered this for a moment, his lone eye flicking to Croxton, then along the line of wags that waited to gain access to Baby. Behind the five wags in their train, another two were pulling up, one of them piled high with belongings. Ryan had been tasked to bring Croxton here safely, that was the deal, but there had been no mention that his people would have to hand over their weapons. But then, there had been no guarantee from Croxton that they would gain admittance, only that he would ask and pay their fees if the locals proved agreeable.

  Ryan’s gut instinct was to walk away. The assignment was completed, the contract fulfilled. But he thought of Doc, who wanted this piece of mumbo jumbo to be true so much.

  “If my people are agreeable,” Ryan told the sec man, “then we’ll disarm here, on promise of the return of our weapons when we depart. Otherwise…”

  The sec man’s harsh laugh cut across Ryan’s words. “There’s no ‘otherwise,’ you dimmie,” he said through smiling teeth. “This is the only way inside.”

  Ryan nodded. “Let me speak with my people,” he said. “Tell them to stand down.”

  Croxton gave him a single nod of affirmation as Ryan made his way back along the wags to explain the situation to his team. The sec men followed at a leisurely distance.

  Ryan passed the other wags until he reached J.B. Ryan had known the Armorer longer than any of the other companions, and he trusted the man’s judgment implicitly. Plus, he knew that, of all of them, J.B. was the most likely to rebel against the notion of trusting their weapons to these strangers and entering the unknown ville unarmed.

  “They want us to hand over our blasters, J.B.,” Ryan explained. “They say Baby is a peaceful place and they don’t want any trouble. I can see where they’re coming from, at that.”

  A sly grin appeared on J.B.’s lips, as he saw the sec men walking steadily toward Ryan. “You think this is a good idea?” he said, sotto voce.

  Beside the leather eye patch, Ryan’s single eye closed in a slow blink. “I think we don’t have any choice.”

  J.B. unslung the M-4000, then reached into his coat, producing his Uzi, removing the clip and stashing the ammo back in his pocket. “Doc really dropped us in something this time,” he muttered.

  At that point, the sec men joined J.B. and Ryan, producing a carryall in which they encouraged the men to stash their weapons. “You have anything else?” the lead sec man asked.

  J.B. looked the man up and down. “Nothing I don’t need,” he said. “You allow people to use knives in your peaceful ville?”

  The sec man nodded. “Not on each other,” he said with a laugh.

  “I’ll try to restrain myself then,” J.B. assured him.

  With J.B. watching carefully, Ryan led the sec men to the other members of his crew. Krysty and Doc did as they were asked without complaint; Doc even tried to place his walking cane with the hidden sword blade into the carryall until Ryan held out his hand to stop him.

  “You may still need to walk, Doc,” Ryan said, holding the old man’s confused stare. “You keep hold of that in case you need it.”

  “Caught up in the moment.” He laughed, realization dawning on him as he withdrew his sword stick. “Like some old fool who forgets his hat when it is raining out.”

  Besides the weapons that the companions handed over, Charles Torino produced his blaster from the glove box of his 4WD. It was a handy little Taurus, a little scratched but Charles had obviously kept it in very good shape. He seemed reluctant to part with it.

  “You’ll get it back when you leave the ville,” a sec man assured him.

  “Hope I don’t need it before then,” Charles muttered.

  Alec was allowed to keep his bow, although the quiver of arrows was taken and slung over the shoulder of one of the sec men. Mildred was made to hand over her medical supplies however.

  “What happens if one of us gets sick?” she protested.

  “Nobody gets sick in Babyville,” a sec officer told her, a mean-spirited grin on his face. “Unless you’re the sort that likes to play rough.”

  Mildred glared at him. “Put it back in your pants, soldier boy, you couldn’t handle me.”

  Ryan stifled a chuckle as the young sec man blushed and moved to the next wag.

  Finally, the party came to Jak, at the rearmost wag of the convoy. Jak sat cross-legged on the crossbar of the tractor carriage, with Maude and Vince watching the sec men from their perches by the steering column.

  “They need your blaster,” Ryan explained, “for safekeeping. It’s standard procedure.”

  Jak nodded and began unclipping the holster that was attached to his leg, pulling the whole piece away, including the sheathed Colt Python, and dropping it in the carryall that the sec man held out ready. Ryan’s comment was clear enough. Jak carried more than a half-dozen throwing blades about his person, and it was a weapon he much preferred to the brutal barbarity of the blaster. While the other companions were going in compromised, their main weapons lost to them, Jak was armed enough for any eventuality. Ryan knew that, and was trusting the albino youth to provide any backup that might be required.

  Once everyone had handed over their blasters, the sec men waved the five wags on toward the gate. Ryan sat in the driving seat of the harvester, urging it slowly forward as the gate rose before him, then the portcullis. A moment later, the wags were lumbering through the gateway.

  The ville was huge. A vast tract of land that had been walled in, hidden from view, protected from the outside world. There were buildings here, solid constructs made of brick and wood. These were not the scrappy remnants of preskydark dwellings, nor were they the ramshackle structures that had begun to spring up all over
the Deathlands, the humble abodes that had been forged from the leftovers of civilization. No, here was something new. Here was something that Ryan knew just one name for: the future. A whole ville had been built—was still being built—where people could live and do more than simply survive. Like the walled cities of Ancient China, here was a place where people could grow, a place where they could expand their knowledge, increase their learning. Here was the new society.

  As the wags trundled forward along a shining, cobbled road paved with shells and stones, a sec man—maybe twenty or twenty-five—directed Ryan to a spot off to the right. The sec man smiled happily, a proud member of the new world.

  Chickens and geese ran across the road as Ryan turned, and a yapping, black-and-white dog came hurrying after them a moment later, his salivating tongue hanging from his mouth.

  As he drove closer, Ryan saw the buildings were still being constructed, big wooden beams and struts sticking out here and there where they were being slotted slowly together. There were other places, too, where foundations had been laid but nothing else yet, just a grid, a square where a building would be placed. Some squares were even being laid as Ryan watched, crews of young workers, some just children, working hard to get the pieces in place, to dig holes in the ground. It looked labor-intensive.

  Everyone in the ville was young. Everyone. Ryan looked this way and that, trying to find anyone over thirty, and could see no one. Baby was a young ville full of healthy, hard-working young bodies, because, of course, it had the secret right there—the secret to eternal youth. Maybe it shouldn’t surprise Ryan that the place was so spectacular, that the people here had actual plans, real ambitions. If this fabled spring worked then these people would never grow old, never become tired or suffer rheumatism or arthritis or just that feeling of weariness that old muscles get from too much stress where young muscles simply yearn for more.