by James Axler
As the conversations continued, Daisy and the young man she had entered with made their way across to where the companions sat. When they got up to join the trip to the pool, Daisy stepped close to Jak, smiling up into his sharp, hard face.
“Hi…Jak,” Daisy said, clearly feeling uncomfortable under his eerie gaze, “I was on the wag train coming in, you remember?” Jak nodded.
“I guess you didn’t really come here to use the pool,” Daisy said.
Jak smiled, shaking his head. “Come with friends,” he told her, his explanation typically brief and to the point.
Daisy brushed a hand through her blond locks and glanced at the doorway where the rest of the group was exiting. “There’s lots of other stuff to do ’round here,” she told Jak. “I could introduce you to people, mebbe find something for you to do. Or someone,” she added, giving him a wink.
Jak sidestepped Daisy, making his way to the doorway after his retreating companions.
“Don’t run away,” she called. “I’m sure we can make up our own fun.”
Jak looked back over his shoulder to reject her offer, but instead he saw the blur of the nightstick sweeping down toward him. He leaped aside, fast enough to avoid the full blow of the weapon, catching it on his left shoulder. His arm went dead.
Jak turned to face his attacker. It was the young man who had entered with Daisy, a grim expression on his face. Jak recognized him—one of the sec men he had seen the day before, one of the group who had patrolled the fields. He didn’t know it, but this was Jamie, the sec man whose team he had dispatched with such efficiency by the huts.
Jamie snarled, swinging the baton a second time as Daisy cheered him on. Behind him, Jak realized, the doors had been silently closed, his companions urged on. Ryan wouldn’t leave him for long, but in the minutes it took for him to get back, Jak could be dead.
The albino teen leaped aside as the nightstick swung toward him again. The weapon smashed against the breakfast table, and the dirty plates and cutlery bounced in place.
Jak’s hand reached out, grabbing a plate and flinging it at his attacker. The man ducked the projectile, but when he looked up Jak was on him, his hand slamming into his nose in a straight-armed blow.
There wasn’t even any blood. The young sec man, Jamie, just staggered backward and collapsed to the floor. His nose had broken under Jak’s swift attack, the cartilage driven up into his brain, chilling him instantly. Daisy stood watching, her face draining of color. The whole nasty business had taken less than thirty seconds.
Jak turned back toward the doors, heading out to tell Ryan and stop this madness once and for all. He slid the door aside and stepped through the doorway, only to find himself staring at Alec, standing there, an arrow nocked in his bow, pointing the weapon at Jak’s throat.
Dismayed, Jak halted in his tracks. He hadn’t heard Alec approach; the youth had to have been hidden just out of sight around the doorway.
“You don’t move,” Alec advised Jak, the string of the bow taut, “and you sure as hell don’t cry out.”
Jak’s eyes locked on Alec’s, considering his options. He could throw a knife at the young man, but the movement would be too slow. The arrow would be released and would likely strike him either in the neck or face. He could shout, but what good would that do him if the youth chilled him straight after? The locals could cover that up in a minute, say he had been caught somewhere he shouldn’t, which wasn’t that far from the truth given his excursions the previous day. Or he could wait, bide his time and use this turn of events to his advantage.
“Jamie’s dead,” Daisy was muttering from somewhere in the room. She sounded distraught.
Silently, his hands out where Alec and Daisy could see them, Jak lowered his eyes in a clear acknowledgment of his defeat. But already, his mind was working at how to elude his captors.
OUT IN THE COURTYARD, the visitors suddenly found themselves surrounded by sec men.
“What’s going on?” Julius Dougal asked, shocked by the sudden turn of events.
“Everyone is to return to their rooms,” Eddie instructed. And then he walked over to Ryan’s group and pointed at each in turn, including Jeremiah Croxton. “It seems we have a traitor in our midst, someone trying to steal the secret of the spring for their own use, make sure no one else gets it.”
Croxton looked affronted. “You can’t think it’s me,” he said, startled.
Ryan watched. What was the old man playing at now? He was a part of this, wasn’t he?
Obediently, the visitors returned to the accommodation building, suddenly scared by this turn of events—trouble in paradise. Ryan, Doc, Mildred, J.B., Krysty and Croxton were led away, off in the direction of the spring.
Surrounded and outnumbered, the companions were marched past the bridge, the mill working on the other side of the stream there. They marched farther, into the area opposite the pool where Jak had found the bodies. Ryan did a quick head count, there were twenty sec men and women there, young and inexperienced, perhaps, but all of them were armed. The others had remained with the visitors, making sure everyone behaved themselves. And then there was Croxton and another person joined him on the walk, a woman in her late forties by the look of it, probably the mother to some of this little gang of crooks.
They made their way along the dirt track and on into the seemingly fallow field that Jak had described. The soil was marshy beneath their feet and they saw a cart waiting, with several lifeless figures lying atop it, including the naked body of Paul Witterson.
Croxton held his hand up to halt the party and the sec team surrounded Ryan and his five companions, watching them warily. “Let’s stop this pretense, shall we?” he snarled and the sec men pulled away and turned their weapons solely on the companions. “You know what this is about, don’t you, Ryan?”
As the man spoke four new figures entered the field—Alec, Daisy and another teenage girl the companions hadn’t seen before, and Jak, tangled in a net like a fisherman’s catch. Ryan watched emotionlessly as the netted Jak was tossed at the feet of Jeremiah Croxton. The albino teen had been wrapped in a large net, like something a fishing trawler might use, cinching his arms and legs tight to his body. Blond-haired Alec wore his quiver and had his bow resting behind his neck, over his shoulders. Daisy and the other girl looked to be unarmed, and, to Ryan’s eyes, unprepared, like a lot of what passed for sec in Baby.
“This is as far as we go,” Croxton announced, his expression dark as his eyes met with Ryan’s.
Ryan surveyed the field before turning to meet Croxton’s gaze. “Nice place you have here,” he said. “Smells of something though.”
“Death, I should think,” Croxton said, with no trace of irony in his voice.
Which confirmed it, Ryan realized—this was the field of buried corpses that Jak had told them about.
Leaning on his lion’s-head cane with apparent weariness, Doc looked around at the sec men, addressing no one in particular. “What now, pray tell?”
Croxton was already busy giving instructions to his people, and two of the teenagers came rapidly forward holding five spades between them. The teenagers handed out one spade each to the companions.
“Now, you start diggin’,” Croxton ordered, pointing at the soil. “Find yourselves a nice spot, and one for the white-haired freak here, too, while you’re at it. You’re all going to be spending a long time here. A long, long time. And all of it dead.”
Chapter Seventeen
The companions stood in the field of death as the stark, winter sun stared down with its blind white eye. Under the watchful eyes of Croxton and his sec detail, Ryan and the companions dug at the soil with the spades they had been handed. All except for Jak, who remained caught up in the net, lying against the ground.
“So, why the big ruse?” Ryan asked as he dug at the soil. “Getting picked up by your own men, I mean.”
Croxton laughed. “You think I wasn’t looking for an excuse not to bathe with those ugly old folk
s again?” he challenged. “When I came up with the idea of the spring, I should have said it only worked on pretty virgins, I swear to you. Hindsight is a pain in the ass, ain’t it?”
Ryan said nothing.
“Guess I don’t have to tell you folks that though,” Croxton said. “Not now, anyway. Welcome to Babyville, the greatest little carnie show on Earth.”
Krysty yelped in surprise as her spade struck something, and she turned the soil carefully to uncover a human skull, tattered remains of flesh still clinging to the yellowing bones.
Croxton laughed when he saw. “Looks like you found yourself a bunk mate there, Red,” he said.
Krysty’s emerald eyes burned with hate as she glared at him.
His foot on the horizontal edge, Doc shoved the end of his spade into the soil, feeling the anger welling within him. “You have quite the scam going here, Mr. Croxton,” he said. “I very nearly believed it.”
“Very nearly?” Croxton challenged.
The trace of a smile crossed Doc’s lips. “For a while,” he admitted.
“I worked in the carnie for a long while,” Croxton said, “going hither and yon. Saw a lot of this country, up and down like that, and I always saw the same thing. People looking for dreams to believe in. Just like you, Doc Tanner.
“Keep digging,” he added after a moment. “My story ain’t that long and, even if it were, I can still reminisce after you all have been chilled.”
Doc and the others continued to dig while, over in the netting, Jak watched with his fiery red eyes. While everyone else’s attention was on Croxton, Jak worked a blade from his sleeve and set to work on the netting.
“The thing about the carnie,” Croxton continued, “is people—marks—love a good scam. Can’t get e-freaking-nough. Bearded ladies, elephant men, this and that and mutie something or other. Look at this idiot dance, look at this old robot speak, look at this mule count on his clip-clopping hooves. Doesn’t even need to be believable. In fact, most people love the unbelievable shit more, because they want to believe that mebbe it could be. You come up with a good scam, and I am talking about a real good scam, and people’ll do all the work for you. They don’t even know they’re doing it, they just fill in all the blanks themselves. A bubbling pool that makes folk young again? You have to be a fucking moron to buy in to that. But people want to believe, you see? Like you wanted to believe, Doc.”
“The placebo effect,” Mildred muttered as she dug her grave.
Two feet into digging his own, Doc looked up at the man, checking the surrounding sec men from the corner of his eye. He knew the others would be doing likewise, waiting for an opening, one last chance. The longer they could keep Croxton talking, the better chance that he and his people would be distracted, that Ryan’s group might make their bid for freedom.
“And where,” Doc asked, “did you find all these people to staff your…whatever you call this?”
“Theme park,” Mildred proposed bitterly. She could see now how the whole place was organized like some perverse holiday camp. A ghastly holiday camp where every visitor ended up dead.
“These folks?” Croxton asked, his gaze taking in the sec men and women who stood beside him, watching the diggers. “My kids, mostly, or kids from the traveling show that I picked up over the past couple of years. Good kids, they know how a scam works, know how to play their parts, how to hustle. Put the pretty ones out front, ’cause everybody likes a little shine on the surface. They had you, didn’t they? For a while?”
Doc nodded begrudgingly. “For a while,” he acknowledged.
Ryan didn’t bother to look up from his digging as he addressed Croxton. “But why did you choose us?”
“When I saw you folks take on those wolf hounds,” Croxton stated, “I thought you were something real special, something I could use. The way your team fought, like some well-oiled machine. That took my darn breath away. I need people like that, people like you, to make this ville strong. People who can lead.”
Croxton took a step closer to Ryan, addressing his speech to the one-eyed leader of the group. “But I watched you and your redhead there and I came to realize that you are one of the rarest of things in the Deathlands—a man with principles. When I watched you two bury that baby, I knew it was over. Should have left you there and then, but I hoped I was wrong. Then your white-faced freak boy goes snooping around—” as he said it, Croxton took a step toward Jak and kicked him hard in the side “—and ends up chilling two of my people who got close to him. My own kids. That’s just plain unfriendly.”
Jak snarled as he rolled in on himself, stifling the pain in his side where Croxton’s boot had connected.
Croxton looked regretful as he spoke now. Ryan continued working at the soil, digging his own grave, now almost two feet down into the ground. As he dug with the spade, he felt its weight, judged its heft in his hands.
“So,” Croxton continued, watching Ryan shovel aside another clump of soil, “if it makes a whole crap of difference, you have earned my respect, Ryan, you and your companions here. I am real sorry I got to chill you now. This here is the future, and you could have been a part of it.”
Ryan tossed soil aside with the spade, glancing up at Croxton. “Well, for what it’s worth, Croxton,” he said, “I thought you were a pretty stand-up guy, the way you herded those people, led them here, took care of them and kept their spirits up. Reminded me of my father, and he was a great man. I’m not half of what he was. I guess you, too, could have been something truly great if you had tried. Turns out, like most everything else around these parts, you’re rotten to the core.” As he spoke, Ryan stepped out of the grave and swung the heavy steel blade of the spade at Croxton’s form.
Croxton leaped back, and the spade swung just short of his legs, missing him by two inches. “Ha-ha,” he mocked. “You have got to be just a little quicker and a little less obvious than that, Ryan, my boy.”
The sec men turned their weapons at Ryan, every one of them watching him, daring him to continue. But Ryan ignored them, his lone eye focused on the spot where Croxton now stood.
“Less obvious,” Ryan repeated. “I’ll remember that.”
Assured that he had the upper hand, Croxton chuckled at Ryan’s bravado. Abruptly, his laughter turned to an agonized scream and, as everyone in the field turned to see what had happened, Croxton fell to the ground, howling in agony. Beside him, still bundled in the netting, Jak turned the knife in his hand, twisting the razor-sharp blade into the old man’s leg, ripping a bloody line through his Achilles tendon.
“Fuck!” Croxton shrieked as blood spurted from the wound. “My leg! My fucking leg!”
Inexperienced, the teenage sec force reacted in confusion. Many of them just watched, dumbstruck, as Croxton rolled on the ground. Some had the presence of mind to turn their weapons on the culprit of the vicious attack as he lay within the net. It didn’t matter, the scene had been set for the endgame, and none of the sec team had kept their attention on the main threat.
Twisting the top of his sword stick, Doc pulled out the hidden rapier blade from within its black sheath, lunging at a sec man who was now firing his blaster at Jak. The man’s blaster spit bullets uselessly into the soil as he was pinioned on Doc’s blade thrusting into his back.
Realising the threat behind them, the others in the sec force began to turn, blasters and clubs ready, but the companions were already on them.
Ryan held the spade in a two-handed grip, wielding it like a bo staff. He jabbed the spade’s handle at the gut of a young woman to his right and, as she crumpled, he swung the other end high, sweeping the edge of the blade across the face of a young sec man, splitting his mouth open in a spume of blood. Beside Ryan, Mildred swung her spade like a club, working its weight and length to knock a sec man in the head, and his companion across the arm, knocking one man to the floor and forcing the second to drop his blaster as he fell reeling sideways.
J.B.’s attention was on the blasters, and he swung h
is spade at a sec man holding a remade Heckler & Koch MP-5 machine pistol, rapping the man across the legs so that he lost his balance. J.B. stepped forward, grabbing the foot-long muzzle of the machine pistol as the sec man tumbled backward, kicking the man in the chest and wrenching the weapon from his grip before he could depress the trigger. An instant later, the Armorer turned the blaster on the fallen sec man, flipping the safety to single shot and pumping two bullets into the man’s prone form before turning the weapon on another enemy target.
Tossing her spade aside, Krysty dived to the churned-up ground as two sec men turned handblasters on her. Her vibrant red hair had made her the most eye-catching target in the grim field, and it was simple bad luck that two of the sec team had both selected her as their target of choice. Krysty rolled across the ground as bullets dug into the soil all around her. Then, one of the sec men fell under a swift burst of fire from J.B., and the other—confused—turned his weapon in the direction of J.B.’s attack. In that moment, Krysty sprang from the ground like a panther, her right arm reaching around the sec man’s throat and pulling his head back. His blaster fired twice before Krysty broke his neck, both shots flying wide of their intended victim.
After running his rapier blade through the first gunman, Doc had found himself fending off three attackers at once. Two were armed with knives, one a vicious-looking machete, while the other swung a nightstick with wild abandon. Doc thrust and parried, finally drilling his blade through the torso of the attacker with the smaller of the two knives. As the knifeman danced at the end of Doc’s blade, the other two piled upon him, forcing him to the ground.
“Come on, you old bastard,” the man with the machete goaded as Doc fell. “Let’s see how tough you are without your sword.”
Doc cried out as the nightstick thrashed against his ribs, and he thrust a sharp elbow into his attacker’s face. The nightstick man’s nose exploded in a shower of blood, and he seemed to forget his attack for a moment as he reached for his ruined face. Doc ignored him, turning his attention to the other attacker, the one with the machete. The curved blade whizzed through the air, and Doc rolled out of its path, hearing the rush of the blade as it cleaved the air just a fraction of an inch from his left ear. The sec man crouched before him, raising the cruel blade over his head in readiness for another swing at the old man. On his knees now, Doc clenched his fist and swung it at the machete wielder’s face, connecting with the man’s jaw in a solid crack. Machete man fell backward, and Doc scampered over the ground to deliver another solid punch to the man’s face, followed by a third.
