by James Axler
He trotted up to the front door and pushed it open without a knock of warning, striding across the main room even as Ricky and Mildred looked up from the two chairs that furnished the room. They were just starting to eat breakfast. Each held a plate, two slices of toast dripping with honey.
“J.B.!” Mildred cried. “What are you doing h—?”
J.B. lashed out, knocking the plate from her hand. It sailed into the wall above the hearth, crockery shattering, uneaten bread strewed across the floor. “Stop eating,” J.B. said. “Both of you. Now!”
Ricky looked dumbstruck by the command and by the appearance of the Armorer after he had been branded a violator. “Y-you shouldn’t be here, J.B.,” he stuttered.
J.B. reached down and snatched the plate from Ricky’s lap, even as the lad went to take a bite from his toast.
“Drop it,” he said. “For both your sakes, listen to me.”
Mildred got to her feet, her hands clenching into fists. “The Regina told us that you tried to chill Phyllida,” she said. “I saw with my own eyes the state you left that woman in. It’s down to advanced medicine that she’s alive now.”
J.B. turned to her. “She’s still alive?” he asked. “Black dust!”
“So you did do it!” Mildred said with a shock.
Before J.B. could explain, Mildred’s right fist snapped at him, knocking him right in the nose. He staggered back, his left hand going to his face.
“Violator!” Mildred cried, and Ricky took up the chant.
With his free hand, J.B. reached into his waistband at the small of his back and pulled Jak’s blaster loose, aiming it at Mildred and Ricky. “You both had better settle down,” he instructed. “We’ve got a lot to get through and not much time to do it in. Now, why don’t you sit by the fireplace and I’ll tell you all about how mixed up and wrong you’ve got it.”
Reluctantly, Mildred and Ricky sagged into their chairs, their eyes locked on the blaster in J.B.’s hand.
“That’s more like it,” J.B. said once they were seated. “Now, let’s see if I can get this right...”
And with that, J.B. began to explain his tale of the irradiated honey with its psychoactive properties, of how the society of the Trai had become entangled in the thought processes of the honeybees, and how the companions had become brainwashed into accepting the hive mind as normal.
Once he was done, J.B. backed away from his one-time friends and sat on the lockbox where they had stored their weapons. He waited, uncertain of how his one-time allies would respond.
* * *
“WE ARE IN considerable danger here,” Doc explained as he stood with Ryan and Krysty in the kitchen of their simple shack. “The people of Heaven Falls are under the mental command of an insidious power, one which has begun to enslave us, too, and which, I suspect, plans to take over the whole of the Deathlands.”
Astonished, Ryan placed the plate and dishcloth he held on the countertop. “What are you saying? This sounds like the kind of crap you spouted back when we first found you.”
“I can assure you that this is not crap,” Doc stated firmly. “All of us have been feeding on a psychoactive agent that has blunted our capacity for reason. I have seen evidence of this, and while I know how hard it must be to accept what I am saying, I must ask that you try.”
“Doc,” Krysty said gently, “did J.B. come speak to you?”
Doc nodded. “I did not believe him, either, but then I saw something that profoundly changed my mind.”
“What changed?” Ryan demanded.
Doc looked around the kitchen, his eyes searching for a cupboard or storage larder. “Do you have honey here in the house?” he asked.
“We just finished up some on toast for breakfast,” Krysty confirmed, bemused by the old man’s question.
“Where?” Doc demanded. “Where do you store the honey?”
Ryan reached under the counter and brought out a familiar clay pot, the exact same style of pot that Doc’s honey had been stored in. “If you’re staying to eat, I really have to get to work,” Ryan insisted. “You’re welcome to help yourself to whatever—”
“Ryan, no! Concentrate!” Doc demanded. He understood Ryan’s yearning to be at work, could feel that same call in his mind where the Regina had assigned him a crucial task that would demonstrate his love for her. “Do you still have your rad counter?”
Ryan nodded, his brow furrowed in confusion.
“Get it!” Doc commanded.
Ryan looked at the old man blankly, and Krysty shook her head sorrowfully. “Are you sure you’re all right, Doc?” she asked gently, clearly concerned for his sanity.
“Just get the rad counter,” Doc insisted. “Now!”
Taken aback by the vehemence in the old man’s voice, Ryan strode past him and reached for his coat where it hung on a hook beside the front door. He plucked at the rad counter as he strode back, a skeptical expression on his face.
“Okay, Doc,” Ryan said. “Here it is.”
The old man removed the muslin lid of the honeypot and used a spoon to scoop out a small portion of the russet-gold contents. The honey glistened there on the spoon, shimmering like liquid sunlight. “Test it,” Doc told them.
“What do you mean?” Krysty asked.
“The radiation content,” Doc said. “Test it.”
Ryan looked uncertain, but he leaned in with the simple rad counter and held it close to the spoon. In a moment, the circular, button-like display had flicked from green to the rich red danger zone.
“What is it?” Ryan asked as he watched the display change.
“The honey is irradiated,” Doc said. “Maybe all the food here is. That is certainly not beyond the realm of possibility. The radiation has been affecting our minds—and not just us. All of the Trai are in its thrall.”
Krysty gasped incredulously. “This sounds—”
“I know how it sounds,” Doc interrupted. “I, too, am struggling to accept the evidence that has been clearly presented to me. And the only reason I can come up with regarding the conflict I feel is that this is the truth, and that my conflict is with the way that this satanic substance has toyed with my emotions and my capacity for rational thought.”
Ryan and Krysty stared at Doc, their mouths agape.
“I am so sorry,” Doc told them.
“Why?” Krysty asked.
“Because you thought that you had found the perfect retreat,” Doc said, “the one thing that you have strived for—and that you have dearly deserved—for so long. I am sorry that I had to come here today and take that away, and I hope, when all of this is over, that you see that I was right to do so and that you will find it in yourselves to forgive me.”
Ryan stared at the open pot of honey, and he ran the rad counter over its lid, watching as the indicator light changed color. “This is hard to take in,” he admitted. “When J.B. came here last night, I thought he was insane.” He looked up at Doc then, as the rad counter went from orange to red over the mouth of the pot.
“Is it the truth, Doc, or are you insane, just like him?”
“John Barrymore is your oldest friend,” Doc replied. “If he was insane and you were in your right mind, you would stand by him and do all you could to help him regain his senses. The fact that you have not should tell you more than anything I can say.”
* * *
MILDRED AND RICKY were struck dumb by J.B.’s speech. They sat there staring at him for more than a minute, not saying a word. J.B.’s gaze flickered to the windows, making sure no more Melissas were coming to restrain or chill him.
Finally, Mildred spoke up, her voice cracking over the first few words. “Is this true, J.B.? Is the honey really a drug that’s got into our system and made us think in a different way?”
“I believe so,” J.B. told her. “I don’t have any more evidence than what I’ve seen with my eyes, and the fact that it’s hot with radiation. But, Millie, if I’m right and I left you behind, then it wouldn’t have been worth
me being right.”
Mildred could not help but smile when she heard that. “That is the most romantic thing you have ever said to me,” she said. “Kind of makes me wonder if you might not be in your right mind even now.”
“I oiled your blaster while it was in storage,” J.B. told her. “That’s proper romance in my book. Something that keeps you alive.”
“There are no blasters in Heaven Falls, J.B.”
“We’re about to overturn that law,” J.B. replied. “And we’re going to do it together, I hope.”
Mildred looked ponderous as she weighed J.B.’s revelations, while Ricky seemed torn. He idolized J.B. and had followed him into that mutie nightmare out in California two weeks ago. Whatever life he had discovered here, whatever the Trai had offered or promised, would it ever compare to the life of adventure that the Armorer led? Ricky didn’t think so.
“I’m with you, J.B.,” Ricky said, a look of anguish on his striking features.
“Good lad,” J.B. said. “Millie?”
“My head’s telling me not to trust you,” Mildred admitted, “but my heart knows you’d never lead me astray. I’m with you, J.B., but for goodness’ sake watch me, because if what you’ve told us is true, then this shit is rewiring my brain and I might just shoot you in the back when you turn around.”
“Point accepted,” J.B. said. Then he moved from his seat atop the lockbox and, crouching beside it, opened it up and withdrew their weapons. In a moment, Mildred and Ricky were armed for the first time in two weeks, while J.B. had his miniarsenal back. To the Armorer, it felt a lot like another old friend had returned to the fold.
* * *
“MY INSTINCT IS to fight,” Ryan admitted, his lone eye fixed in challenge on Doc. “To fight you, to fight for what me and Krysty have built here. To fight for the Regina and for the love she spreads.”
“Ryan, please...” Doc began, reaching surreptitiously for the LeMat blaster beneath the tails of his frock coat.
“I have spent my whole life fighting,” Ryan continued, “and now, finally, I’ve found somewhere where that’s not a way of life. And you know what—you’ve come to us with this story about brain poison in the food, and you’ve asked me to believe you and all I want to do is fight. But the thing is, I haven’t wanted to do that for weeks, not since we got here. And that’s not me. I know that and I should have seen it. You’re right—I would stand by J.B. and do all I could for him if I thought he had gone crazy, just as I would stand by Krysty and Jak and all of you. Just as I have stood by you.”
“An old man should be excused his eccentricities,” Doc muttered with embarrassment.
“J.B. kept telling me about the bomber and I dismissed him,” Ryan said angrily.
“Ryan?” Krysty piped up when he fell to silence.
“They got us,” Ryan told her. “They got us good. Whatever is going on in this ville, it’s tried to change us and—fireblast!—it damn near succeeded. Krysty, we’ve gotta leave. We’ve got to get away from this madness because it’s a madness none of us can see happening, and that’s the kind that chills you.”
There were tears in Krysty’s eyes now, and her lip trembled. “The children,” she whispered. “They have been dosing their own children with this...this poison. I saw how it affected them, made them sick. But I didn’t realize what it meant.”
Reaching across the counter, Ryan stroked the side of Krysty’s face and neck gently. As he did so, he unclipped the band that held her hair in place, setting it free. “Now we’ll fix it,” he said. “All of it.”
Then Ryan popped the rad counter onto the lapel of his shirt and he began to give out instructions. “We’re going to need our blasters,” he said.
“I’m already ahead of you,” Doc admitted, flashing the LeMat at Ryan from its hiding place beneath his coat.
Ryan smiled.
And now the two were six.
Chapter Twenty-Nine
Ryan and Doc found Jak out in the eastern edge of Heaven Falls clearing the scrub to reclaim the land for farming.
“Best you stay here, Doc,” Ryan suggested.
Doc nodded. “Quite. I would not want to crowd the lad.”
So while Doc remained at the edge of the field, Ryan trudged across the dirt toward Jak where he worked with two other laborers. Jak looked up as Ryan’s shadow crossed him.
“We need to talk,” Ryan said, pitching his voice low.
“What ’bout?” Jak asked.
Ryan almost smiled at that. Jak had lost none of his rough edges from living with the Trai, and his speech style was as reticent as ever. “Away from here,” Ryan said, gesturing to an overgrown bank of grass at the edge of the cleared space.
The young man nodded once and followed Ryan.
“Jak, we got trouble,” Ryan said. “It takes a little figuring, but it’s nasty and it’s affecting us all.”
“Trouble?” Jak asked, canny eyes flicking to his companions still toiling in the field.
Ryan explained the whole story about the irradiated honey and how the caste system of Heaven Falls reflected that found in a beehive, how the Trai were following the behavioral patterns of honeybees and how J.B. suspected they intended to swarm and conquer the Deathlands.
When Ryan had finished, Jak stared at him in disbelief. “Charm chose me,” he said. “Trust me. We in love, Ryan.”
“She’s duped you,” Ryan said, shaking his head, “the same way they’ve duped us all. Mebbe she saw something in there that frightened her, or mebbe the Regina did. Mebbe they needed to keep you under control.”
Jak lunged at Ryan then, driving the knuckles of his left fist into the taller man’s jaw.
Watching from across the field, Doc winced and considered stepping in. But no, Ryan would have to deal with Jak his way. If Doc waded in now, it would seem that the two men were ganging up on him, and the argument would be lost.
Ryan grunted, and his hands came up to deflect the second blow that Jak attempted. The one-eyed man sidestepped, blocking Jak’s left fist with his right hand, meeting the wrist and pushing the blow up and forward, forcing Jak to compensate or lose his balance. Jak never lost his balance in a fight.
The anger was clear in Jak’s face, his usually sullen expression replaced by a fiery hatred. He took two quick steps back then charged at Ryan, growling like a beast as he came at him. The other men in the field had been alerted by the noise, and they hurried over to see what was going on.
Ryan stepped aside as Jak came at him, holding up both forearms to take the force of the albino’s charge. It was a powerful blow, and the power behind it knocked Ryan so that his boot heels slid on the freshly turned soil.
“Jak, listen to me,” he commanded. “This isn’t helping.”
But Jak was fired up now. “No help,” he snarled as he swiped at Ryan with his right fist.
Ryan moved swiftly, grabbing Jak’s arm as the fist connected with the top of his chest. “Ugh!”
Then Ryan pulled, stepping backward and dragging Jak off his feet. The albino youth seemed to skip along, his toes scraping the top of the soil before slipping down to his knees. Ryan let go then, breathing heavily, watching.
The two laborers could not believe it. They asked what was going on, who started it, why they were fighting—but Ryan ignored them, while Jak was as typically reticent as he had always been.
“Calm down and think,” Ryan told Jak. “We’ve been friends too long for this.”
Jak pulled himself up from the soil, crouching like a coiled cougar. He sprang without warning, driving toward Ryan like a dart from a blowgun, issuing a savage growl from his throat.
Ryan was forced on the defensive again, blocking Jak’s attack as best as he could but still taking a powerful blow to the chest. He grabbed Jak’s shirt as the albino slammed into him, using it like a handle to hoist Jak into the air and toss him aside.
“I helped you out in Louisiana when Baron Tourment tried to execute you and me both,” Ryan stated as Jak rolle
d over and over in the dirt.
Jak was up in an instant, running at Ryan once again. The one-eyed man braced himself, adopting a defensive stance.
Six feet from Ryan, Jak sprang into the air, kicking his right leg toward his former friend’s face. Ryan responded without thinking, bringing his right arm up to block the blow, taking the full impact there with bone-jarring force.
“And when Christina died,” Ryan said as he rolled with the blow, staggering backward.
Jak went hurtling in the opposite direction to Ryan, slammed into the ground and rolled over twice to bring himself back up to a fighting crouch. Ryan saw the knife blade glint in his hand where he had slipped it from its hiding place in his sleeve.
“And Jenny,” Ryan said. He saw something in Jak’s expression change as he said the name of the daughter Jak and Christina had had: a softening of the anger, a rush of sorrow. And then he knew what to say. “I lost Dean—my son. I know how it chills you inside, Jak. I know how that void must hurt even now. But if you turn your back on your family, the void only gets bigger. In the end, all we have is family.”
Jak’s scarlet eyes were fixed on Ryan, and for a long moment he did not move or speak. Then, as Ryan watched, Jak slipped his knife back into its hidden sheath and nodded fractionally. “Tell,” he said.
Ryan stepped forward and offered Jak his hand, helping the albino up from his crouch. They were both covered with dirt as they trekked across the field to where Doc was waiting. The two farmhands who had worked with Jak had a hundred questions to ask, but neither man offered any answers.
* * *
J.B. TOOK THE other companions to the redoubt without incident, following the same rocky pathway that he had taken to regain entry into Heaven Falls and keeping to the cover of the trees as much as they could. J.B. was accompanied by Ricky, Mildred and Krysty, and all of them stayed on high alert as they came within sight of the mound that housed the hidden redoubt.
J.B. had his minibinoculars up to his eyes as they came within sight of it and he scanned the doors, the bulky satchel he carried resting against his hip. “The doors are open,” he told the others. “Last time I came here they’d posted a Melissa on the door and there was a team inside working on the mat-trans. I can’t see any sign of... Wait, there she is. Cute little blonde.”
