Neutron Solstice

by James Axler

  KRYSTY WAS REGAINING CONSCIOUSNESS. From the long years; of her mother's training, she knew how to control her body: keeping still, maintaining a steady breathing, keeping her eyelids from fluttering. Giving no clue at all that she was reawakening.

  It had been clear almost as soon as the swarnpwags came thundering in from every quarter that the three of them were in deep trouble. The fight had been short-lived, ending with the gray stun-grens sailing toward them. Now her wrists and ankles were tied, her body strained into a cross. Her hearing and sense of smell were extremely acute, and she lay very still, listening, trying to work out where she was and who was there.

  Lori had a distinctive smell, just as Ryan did, and Doc. Krysty knew that she was there, close by. Finn carried the characteristic smell of a fat man who sweated a lot. He wasn't in the room with them, but that didn't mean that he was safe. Maybe the baron's sec men had him somewhere else; maybe he was dead.

  There was a strange creaking sound, like metal and leather under stress. And another smell. Sweat. But it was hardly human. A sour, feral scent like an animal's, overlaid with some sort of perfume. Heavy breathing, like that of a ponderous old man laboring to climb steps.

  Krysty cautiously opened her eyes. She saw a giant black man who supported his bulk with a metal frame, leaning over the sleeping Lori at a table only a few feet away.

  The man wore a fine midnight-blue suit, clearly hand-sewn. A wide leather-and-silver belt around his stomach supported twin holsters, the flaps buttoned down; she couldn't tell if he were carrying blasters. His back was half turned, so all she could see was his short neatly-trimmed curly hair.

  The chamber was underground. All her wakening senses told her that; besides, it had no windows. There were white strips of light in the ceiling, and serpentine protrusions of different-colored pipes. The room was about forty feet square, Krysty judged. She closed her eyes again as she suddenly, overwhelmingly, caught the stench of fear that permeated the cellar. There was blood there, as well.

  Her heart sank.

  PRECISELY AT THE MOMENT that Krysty was recovering from the effects of the stun grens, Ryan Cawdor, J. B. Dix, Doc Tanner and Finnegan were staring at the peculiar apparition that suddenly stood before them, leaning against the frame of the door.

  "We ought talk."

  Ryan, like the others, had immediately swung his gun toward the stranger, who showed no awareness of his own vulnerability.

  He was the strangest person that Ryan had ever seen, even in ten years of traveling through the Death-lands, with its many nuke-ravaged muties.

  Around nineteen years old, Ryan guessed. Very short. Barely five three, weighing around 120 pounds. But "thin" wasn't the right word; "lean" was a lot better. The lad looked well-muscled and powerful. He wore pants and a vest of leather and canvas, dyed in irregular patches of brown, gray and green, giving a camouflage effect. Ryan had a keen eye for a fighting man, and he instinctively felt that, despite the boy's slight stature, he was someone to be reckoned with. He held himself well, leaning against the door, his body tensed like a steel spring. Ryan also noticed that the thick material of his clothes glittered here and there, and he guessed there were small pieces of keen-edged metal sewn in. There was no sign of a concealed blaster. But Ryan's intuition told him that the stranger would be aknife man.

  But above all it was the head and face that drew attention.

  The face was thin and pinched, like a starved rat's. The nose was narrow, with a crooked scar sliced across it. Another jagged, cicatrix seamed the left cheek, tugging the corner of the mouth upward in a crooked smile. The most startling feature of the face was the eyes. Set in caverns of wind-scoured white bone, they were a brilliant glowing red. Like twin rubies set in ivory. The lad's skin was pallid beyond belief, like some creature that had spent its existence beneath a damp stone. And the hair.

  A tumbling mane of purest white, fine as spun silk, dazzling in the dim light.

  "You're the snow wolf," said Ryan. "That question?"

  "No."

  "Yeah. That's what call me." He seemed more economical with words than even J. B. Dix.

  "Spray painter. Run West Lowellton."

  "Yeah."

  "And you are no friend to Baron Tourment?" asked Doc Tanner.

  There was the first sign of a smile. "If'n he was drowning, I'd piss in his face. That answer it?"

  "Why are you here? And what's your name?"

  "Jak Lauren. I'm here 'cause sec men taken women. See why you're here. See if you help us. We help you."

  "My name's Ryan Cawdor, Jak. This is J. B. Dix, Finnegan, and Doc Tanner."

  Each of the party got a long blank stare from the penetrating eyes and the briefest of nods.

  "Where from, Ryan?"

  The answer was a finger, pointed roughly north.

  "Going?"

  The finger swiveled and pointed roughly south. The gesture got a snatched grin.

  "Want help?"

  Ryan glanced at the others, seeing the faint gestures of agreement. "Could be, Jak. First we talk some."

  "Sure."

  LORI AWOKE, already struggling against the tight cords that bound her to the table. She realized immediately that it was useless. The monstrously tall figure of Baron Tourment loomed over her, his right hand between her spread legs.

  Before she could speak, the girl saw Krysty staring intently at her from the table at her right.

  "Try not to tell him anything," hissed the flame-haired girl.

  "No," replied Lori, her voice trembling as she fought against nausea from the hangover of the grens that had scrambled her brains.

  Tourment turned to look at Krysty, his voice calm and serene. "Open your mouth again, slut, and I'll rip your tongue out from its roots."

  She closed her eyes again, using all her self-control to maintain her breathing and not panic. Maybe Finnegan had escaped, she told herself, and Ryan would find some way of rescuing them,

  Krysty swallowed hard at the realization that she had never felt so frightened or so helpless in her entire life.

  RYAN AND THE OTHERS listened to the albino boy rattle off his account of life in West Lowellton. How Baron Tourment controlled the whole area, apart from a section of West Lowellton. Some of what he told them they already knew, or had guessed. The baron made his headquarters in another big abandoned motel, not far away. Jak Lauren's gang consisted of about forty fighters. Most of them men, was all he'd give out. He was also careful about his weapons.

  "Broke in armory year back. Baron knows what we got. Knows we got enough to stop him looking for firefight. Mebbe beat us, but take knocks that'd cripple him. So it's a standoff."

  Ryan was fascinated by the boy's talk about his plans for West Lowellton and Lafayette, once the tyrannical fist of Tourment was removed from the land.

  It revealed a spirit that somehow reinforced all the good things he and Krysty had talked about. Why it was important that they didn't give up. Why there was a point in going on. Because there was already a kind of future. All a man could do was strive to make it better. Move on through the land and leave it just a little cleansed.

  "Lafayette's got big library. Lotsa books. Old vids. Got the viewers working again. We got big plans, Ryan. Set up windmills to bring power. Got some gasoline, but not enough. Baron don't have that much gas. We can make 'lectrics with wind. There's ways using tides and all. We gotta try."

  "Sure," interrupted Doc. "What you say, young fellow, is feasible. Can be done. Only if you got peace."

  Jak nodded his head, the veil of fine white hair floating about his narrow face like a drift of snow.

  "Sure. That's it. But we can't beat Tourment. Less'n we got help."

  "From us?" asked J. B. Dix.

  "Yeah. We help get women back. You come in with us and wipe out the giant."

  "And set up your windmills?" The lad shook his head angrily. "That's not all. You outland stupe! Drain the bayous. Bring back good land for crops. Stop the way we live. Moving and b
lasting and eating and moving on."

  Doc Tanner coughed. "Classic piece of optimistic sociological growth, gentlemen. Boy wants his people to have time and freedom to make the quantum leap from being primitive hunter-gatherers to having a settled agrarian culture."

  "That's what we want, old man?" asked Jak. "You understand all them words. I read 'em. Taught myself. I heard them words. Yeah, that's what we want."

  Ryan sat quietly, listening and thinking. This raggedy kid, not yet twenty, had plans and ideals like nothing he'd heard before—not in all his time in Deathlands. If ever they had found a case, a reason to live, this could be it. He blinked his good eye as he realized that for a moment he'd forgotten about Krysty and Lori, so deeply had he been affected by this broad picture of purging the area of Baron Tourment and his evil.

  "You help us with the women, and we'll help you? That the deal?"

  "Sure. We got a base in an old vid-house a mile from here."

  "Kid?" said Finnegan.

  "Yeah?"

  "You run this pocket army? You run it?"

  "Me."

  Finn sucked at his teeth. "How come a kid like you is boss blaster?"

  "I killed more sec men than anyone else."

  WHEN BARON TOURMENT unzipped his pants and un-peeled his cock, holding it in his right hand, standing near the head of the table where Lori was tied, the girl screamed.

  Once.

  Krysty winced as the massive man slapped Lori across the face, the blow as sharp as thunder. The girl's cheek reddened, and blood trickled from her nose. Her eyes rolled in their sockets, and she moaned, knocked stupid by the force of the blow.

  "Keep it quiet, whore," he said, still showing no anger in. his voice. "I'll have every tooth in your jaw knocked out with a hammer. Then I'll fuck you in the mouth so hard you'll feel it in your fucking guts. It'll choke you to death if I don't drown you when I come. So why not be good?"

  Krysty started to flex her muscles, ready to draw on her secret power, knowing that she could snap the cords, and maybe even take the towering baron. And after that?

  After that, they'd be alive, and he'd maybe lie iced on the floor.

  But the baron stepped away, pushing his erection back out of sight. "Later. Right now it's questions and answers. Then it can be pleasure."

  Lori still sobbed quietly.

  JAK REFUSED FINN'S OFFER of a slug of thick, sweet brandy. "No. Best we go and meet others. Talk battle plan. Not much time. Baron has a way with women that's fast and ugly."

  Ryan stood up, stretching, holding the G-12. Jak Lauren glanced at it. "My eyes saw that. Said it wasn't like any normal blaster."

  Ryan held it out. "Fifty-shot automatic. Caseless bullets. Carry 'em in pockets." He didn't mention their reserves of ammo back with their clothes and supplies at the gateway. "Four point seven by twenty-one mil. No recoil, and it's real quiet. Single, triple burst or continuous. Night sight. Nice gun."

  The boy looked at it enviously. "Ten of those, and we wouldn't need your outland help."

  A question came to Ryan. "Jak? How do you know where we come from?"

  "Out the swamps. The old secret place. There's stories our fathers told that one day folks'd come from there and help us. Has to be you."

  Ryan nodded. "Let's go then. One other question?"

  "What?"

  "How old are you, Jak?"

  "Fourteen last midwinter."

  THE BARON SWAYED on the tensioned struts and webbing that enabled him to stand upright on his weak legs. His fingers on the aluminum handle of the door of the cellar, he looked back at the two women, helpless on the tables. "Later," he said.

  Lori's left eye was closed shut, purpled with a deep bruise. Her panties were around her knees, and her thighs were both scratched and bitten. The blouse was torn open, baring her breasts. Her pale skin showed bloody furrows, narrow as coffin nails. Krysty was untouched.

  As Baron Tourment had loomed over her, grinning, his hands working like steel traps, she had looked directly into his eyes. "I have the Earth power, and I swear by Gaia that if you harm me I'll kill you."

  He had straightened and left her, staggering clumsily on his steel-bound legs.

  "You threaten me!" He was unable to hide his shock, and also, she noticed with a grim satisfaction,, unable to conceal the touch of fear.

  As he paused on the threshold, he looked venomously at Krysty Wroth. "Later, firehead. You'll beg for death after… after you tell me."

  "Tell you what, cripple?"

  The taunt failed to rile him. He even managed a laugh that echoed hollowly. "Tell me all I want."

  Krysty had a little of the gift of doomseeing, and she realized that Tourment also had something of the gift. Or the curse. He must know about them. That was partly how he'd got to them. But if he had questions, then he had only some of the answers.

  "You know nothing," she mocked. "Nothing. You would torture women to pierce your own blindness." '"What?"

  "You fear the snow-wolf boy. And now you fear all of us."

  "No. I have you and her. Soon I will have the other four."

  So Finn had escaped. That in itself was a small victory for Krysty.

  "A mouthful of dirt and slime is all you'll have. A gift."

  Baron Tourment laughed. "Who makes me this gift, you gaudy slag?"

  "The one-eyed man," she replied.

  The door of the cellar slammed with such crazed violence that the lock splintered apart as the Baron burst out, away from the girl.

  Krysty and Lori were left alone to wait.

  Chapter Seventeen

  ONCE INSIDE THE DOORS, Doc Tanner closed his eyes, standing still, hands folded in front of him. Like a pilgrim reaching the shrine of a blessed saint, he seemed transfixed with a deep religious awe. "Lordy," was all he said. "What is it, Doc?" asked Finnegan. The old man smiled with an infinite gentleness so unlike his frequent grouchiness that Finn took a startled step backward, "Should have said to me, 'What's up, Doc?' That would have been right. But forgive me, Finn. I know I ramble on."

  "Tell us 'bout it, Doc," urged Ryan. "Something wrong with him?" asked Jak Lauren, who'd been leading the way.

  "Nothing's wrong, young man. Nothing. It's just that I can recall things you…" He shook his head, rubbing at his eyes. "Got a speck of dust in 'em. No, it's just walking in this establishment brings back such a flood of memories. Oh, my dear Emily! How she… Give me pause, gentlemen!"

  Ryan, J.B. and Finn looked away, embarrassed by the old man's weeping. Jak Lauren and several of his tatterdemalion gang looked on, bewildered.

  All around them, the dusty lobby of the Adeiphi Cinema, West Lowellton, silently waited.

  Doc pulled out his kerchief with the swallow's-eye design and raised it to his beaky nose to snort into it with a bellow of noise. Sniffing, he looked around at the others. "Your pardon, gentles all. You cannot possibly imagine how, after all this time… Oh, such an eternity! It still has that flavor. Warm velvet plush, overlaid with dust. A little sweat. Darkness and flickering lights. Laughter and tears. Popcorn and Babe Ruths. And magic. That above all. I can still savor the magic."

  "You remember vid-houses, Doc?" asked Ryan. "There hasn't been one open in Deathlands that I know of in a hundred years."

  "I heard of one up in Jersey," said Finn. "Then I heard it was a gaudy porn-place."

  The interruption gave Doc a moment to recover. He looked sideways at Ryan. "Very nearly, my dear Mr. Cawdor. But shall a butterfly be broken on a wheel or an old dog taught new tricks? No."

  "Time's wasting," interrupted Jak Lauren. "Blood's flowing and there's dying."

  He led the way into the interior of the building. As with the motel, Ryan was fascinated with this living artifact from the prenuke past. A pinhole glimpse of the dead America.

  Ryan had noticed a small plaque on the outside wall, telling the world that "The Adeiphi Cinema was opened officially on September 24, 1989, by Senator John J. McLaglen."

  It was a squat, rectangula
r building, with a faintly Spanish or Moorish look to it. Pale fawn stucco had weathered down to near white. A marquee awning, with vertical slit windows above it, had once held news of forthcoming attractions. On one side Ryan had seen a glass cubicle where he guessed tickets and food and cigarettes had once been sold. A peeling, faded notice warned, '"The Surgeon General has determined that the more you smoke, the faster you die."

  There were around thirty of the gang around the building. Ryan had been impressed with Jak's grasp of military security. They had been escorted back from the Holiday Inn, with guards ranged on either side of them, covering a couple of blocks in each direction. They carried a bewildering range of battered blasters, most of them either handguns or old hunting rifles that had their origins in Spain or Czechoslovakia. Pistols came in all shapes and sizes, virtually all showing signs of having been welded or having the bore enlarged. In the first couple of minutes Ryan spotted Colts, Pumas, Pythons, Brownings, Enfields, Webleys and Smith & Wessons, with a few Russian Stechkins and Makarovs. Predictably, because of the comparative ease of making ammo, there were some very old Colt Navys and Walkers.

  Lauren's renegade unit was comprised mainly of men and a lesser number of women, between the ages of fifteen and thirty, with some of them older. They all looked scruffy, in patched clothes. And all of them looked as though they never quite got enough to eat.

  The one characteristic that they shared, and that set them apart from most of the population of Deathlands— those that weren't muties, that is—was an alertness, a hair-trigger readiness; jumpy and sharp, their eyes were constantly on the watch. They were a bunch of ordinary people doing the best they could. Ryan thought then about what Jak had told them about his hopes and plans, and once again felt how much he wanted to help the snow-haired lad. Bat still at the core of his heart was Krysty Wroth. As he followed the slight boy through the swing doors into the auditorium, he was already calculating. How many men? Day or night? Frontal raid or try to sneak in? Whatever happened, there were men and women in the old cinema who would be dead within twenty-four hours. You didn't slice through someone's carotid artery without some of their blood splashing all over you.