by James Axler
Ryan hid the extra auto-blaster under a dead man’s cloak for later retrieval and hefted the remaining one. He took a moment in the gloom to familiarize himself with the selector and mag eject. He tucked the two spare mags away. They were as ready to mount a rescue as they were going to get. “Let’s go.”
Ryan and his team moved past the gate and into the inner perimeter. All the lights were on. He stalked up the steps. His tiny squad of revolutionaries looked at one another fearfully at their own temerity. The door was locked. Ryan quietly tried keys and the second one fit. If it was bolted they were going to have to start climbing. He turned the key, swung open the spiked, oaken door and swept into the foyer.
The baron’s expansive living room had been turned into a field surgery. Three dead men lay in the corner shrouded in purple-soaked sheets. The sec men Ryan had attacked lay on pallets moaning with broken bones. The old man he had clotheslined in the hall sat on a couch nursing a broken collarbone in a sling. Two sec men with slung, bolt-action blasters stood nearby grimacing. Two old and bent servants were mixing and passing out jiggers of the wine, Blood of the Lotus and blood mixture. The sec men Ryan had given the powder charge to the face lay on the table snarling while a balding man applied dressings. One of the most hauntingly beautiful women Ryan had ever seen held the injured man’s hand. Her arms were purple up to her elbows from surgery. She murmured soothingly to Ryan’s victim.
Ryan spoke softly. “Nobody move.”
Cafu, Leto and Luis filed in behind Ryan. The woman and the healer stared in shock. The two sec men shouted in open outrage and Ryan’s cohorts cringed. The click of Ryan flicking his blaster’s selector switch to full-auto was unnaturally loud and the shouting stopped. Ryan pointed his blaster at the woman. “Lady Barat.”
The woman stared down Ryan’s blaster imperiously and shouted in Portuguese. Her voice rang with the unmistakable tone of command. Luis and Leto began to lower their weapons in long-conditioned subservience. Ryan brought his blaster to his shoulder. “Lady, I’m gonna—”
Cafu stepped forward. A plaster bust of Baron Barat stood in prominence by the entrance of the room. Cafu swung his club with a roar and the baron’s effigy shattered like shrapnel. Cafu shook with rage as he pointed the club at the woman. “Fook Barat!”
Cafu had had enough.
Lady Zorime shook her head in cold anger. “You are no gentleman.”
“No,” Ryan agreed. “I’m not a gentle man. I want Doc. I want Mildred, and I want our blasters. Now.”
“Maybe—”
“No, mebbe. Now.”
The pale beauty lifted her chin in defiance. “And should I refuse?”
Everyone in the Barat barony seemed to have a fondness for rhetorical questions of defiance. Ryan’s blue eye burned into Zorime’s dark gaze. He knew she was willing to die for her family. “I won’t hurt you. You’re valuable.” Ryan cast his gaze over the injured men triaged on pallets on the floor. “I’ll kill your people. One at a time. Until you give me what I want.”
“I believe you would.”
“Tell your men to drop their blasters.”
Zorime nodded at her men. Their longblasters clunked to the floor.
Ryan jerked the muzzle of his blaster. “Swords.” The swords clattered to the wood. “Luis, Leto.” The two men gathered up the weapons beneath the scathing glares of their former masters. “Your men,” Ryan prompted. “On the floor.”
Zorime’s fists clenched. Her men understood. They were equally enraged but they grabbed floor under Ryan’s baleful blue eye and the black muzzle of his blaster.
“Now our blasters,” Ryan ordered.
Zorime went to a locked cabinet. She opened it with a key from a ring on her waist. Inside the gun cabinet were a number of blasters of old and new manufacture, including his and Doc’s. Ryan slung his Steyr over his shoulder and hung the familiar weight of his SIG-Sauer on his belt. He stuffed his coat with spare mags and ammo.
Zorime and her people stared on frostily.
Ryan shoved Doc’s LeMat under his belt and handed his sword cane to Luis. Ryan glanced at the man tending the sec man’s face. “He’s your healer?”
“Dr. Goncalves.” Zorime nodded. “What of it?”
Ryan examined the lady’s bloody hands and nightshirt. “He trained you?”
“Yes.”
“Here’s the deal. You go up. You get Doc. You bring him down. You come alone. If you don’t, no matter what, I blow your healer’s head off. Understand?”
Zorime’s fists clenched. “I understand.”
“Hope you do. Get Doc.”
Zorime marched stiff-legged up the stairs.
Other than the occasional moan of the drugged and injured men the silence in the room grew uncomfortable. Dr. Goncalves gestured at Ryan. “Your injuries. Are—”
“Just fine,” Ryan finished. He looked toward the ceiling as he heard Doc’s voice. He shook his head. Doc was apologizing to Lady Zorime for the inconvenience. Doc looked a little wobbly and he was favoring his side as he came down the stairs. He smiled happily at Ryan. “You came for me.”
“Twice,” Ryan admitted.
“I knew you would.”
Ryan shrugged.
Doc looked Ryan up and down. “Your injuries?”
“I tussled with some of their nightwalkers.” Ryan glanced at Zorime. “Killed four of them.”
Zorime gasped.
Ryan didn’t even want to think about the swathes of his flesh that had been blasted into bruised and bloody ground meat. “Got rock-salted a few times.”
“Yes.” Doc winced and put an empathetic hand to his side where the baron had given him both barrels. “They saw fit to season me, as well.”
“You all right?”
“I have been well dosed with their Blood of the Lotus.”
“And?”
“To be honest, I believe it is doing me some good.”
It hurt his face, but Ryan gave Doc one of his rare smiles. “Saw you put your mark on the baron and his boy.”
“I wish you had been there, my friend.” Doc grinned exultantly in memory. “It was something to see.”
Ryan handed Doc his LeMat, cane and backpack. “We gotta go.”
Doc checked the loads. “How shall we proceed?”
“I got the baron’s wag.”
“Capital!”
Zorime scoffed. “You have nowhere to go.”
“Mebbe. Could stay here,” Ryan countered. “Wait for your kin to come back.”
Zorime’s eyes flared in sudden fear. Ryan looked at her long and hard. She was easy on the eyes. Ryan had a very serious distaste for hostage taking, but it was almost dawn. The people of the ville and their rad-blasted monster brethren were both hunting him. He had a rendezvous to make with Jak, and if they were right about the timer on the mat-trans, then Krysty and J.B. would be coming through come morning. Lady Zorime was an edge he needed. “Best put on your traveling clothes.”
Zorime flushed with anger. “I will not!”
Ryan’s voice dropped. “You can come along or you can be carried.”
Zorime took a frightened step back. The two sec men on the floor started to push themselves up, but Cafu and Luis stepped on them. Zorime looked about herself helplessly. “I will come.”
Chapter Seventeen
Mildred huddled miserably on the beach. The storm clouds had been replaced by dreary overcast devoid of warmth as the sun rose. At some point exhaustion had overtaken fear and she had fallen asleep for a few hours. Raul was gone when she awoke. Mildred reread his message. The gargantuan son of a bitch had walked right up to her as she slept and written in the sand with his whale-butchering blade: You sleep like an angel.
She shuddered as she read his postscript.
Soon…
His sasquatch-size footprints went down to the water’s edge and disappeared so she couldn’t tell which way he had gone. If he had gone at all. Mildred clutched her driftwood club tighter. Like it was going
to do her a lick of good. She jumped as a rope flopped down the side of the cliff beside her. “Dr. Wyeth, I presume!”
Mildred glanced up to see another gigantic son of a bitch staring down at her. This one was dressed all in black rather than a loincloth. The man leaned jauntily on his sword and doffed his hat. He was huge, but he wasn’t a deformed monstrosity like Raul. He replaced his hat and smiled down past his smoked lenses. “Will you join us?”
Mildred hung her head. She had nowhere to go unless she wanted to start swimming. One look at the heaving gray mush of the sea and the dim shadows of the other island in the distance told her she would never make it. She once again considered swimming out to one of the buoys and waiting for Jak there, but she was already chilled to the bone. She didn’t think she could make it, much less hold on long enough. “Fuck you,” she managed.
It sounded lame even to her.
“Come now, Dr. Wyeth. You truly have nowhere else to go. Unless you would prefer to sit there and wait for night to fall once more…?”
Mildred shook her head and felt like crying again.
“There is no reason for you to be miserable while we await your friends. Come, we have blankets, freshly baked bread and mulled wine. As long as you behave, I give you the word of Sylvano Barbosa Barat that you shall have my hospitality and protection. None shall molest you.”
Mildred stifled a sob as she took the rope.
“Please be so kind as to leave the lumber below,” Sylvano cautioned.
Mildred dropped her club to the sand. She shook with the sense of betraying her friends and herself. She stood on the knot and twisted against the cliff as the big man and two of his friends hauled her up. She couldn’t meet their shaded gaze as they lifted her to the cliff edge. Someone draped a shaggy wool blanket over her shoulders. Sylvano himself pressed a cup of hot, spiced wine into her hands. Mildred nearly sagged as the hot wine bloomed its warmth in her stomach. Another man pulled a biscuit the size of her fist from a covered basket. It was still warm from the bakery. Mildred tore into the bread knowing that she looked like a starving, homeless wretch who had surrendered. “Listen, I…”
Mildred gasped as she looked around her. She counted about two dozen men. Except that everyone was dressed in black, it looked like a civil war reenactment from her time. Long-barreled, single-shot blasters with bayonets fixed stood in tripods ready for instant use. The men all wore swords on white leather cross-belts and had put jaunty feathers in the bands of their wide-brimmed hats. A pair of men with optics scanned the sea. The cannons were the most disturbing development. Four of them sat on spoked wheels facing the channel. Plungers, powder kegs and pallets of ugly iron spheres the size of croquet balls were all at the ready. Mildred eyed a pair of ancient, highly modified Unimog flatbed wags.
Sylvano gazed upon the cannon proudly. “My father’s innovation. I was but a boy, but we nearly lost our last battle with invaders. They came with predark weaponry. We were routed. Indeed it was Raul and the nightwalkers who turned the tide. We simply do not have the wherewithal to manufacture machine guns or other heavy armament. So my father looked backward rather than forward. Even predark our island had a blacksmith and a forge. My father has several books in his library about the Napoleanic Wars, some included specifications of rifled muskets and cannon.” Sylvano smiled bemusedly. “There was some initial trial and error, I admit, but in the end we perfected the ancient craft of artillerymen. Do you see the buoys? They ring the island, and serve another purpose besides guiding boats through the rocks of the channel.”
Mildred shoulders sagged wearily. “They’re range markers.”
“Yes!” Sylvano was delighted. “Did you know my father has made me master of the cannon?”
Mildred was too depressed to come up with a snappy comeback. “Good for you.”
Sylvano was too happy with his artillery pieces to be bothered with Mildred’s sarcasm. “I tell you, when the self-styled Vikings came some years ago, they sailed into the harbor, firing their blasters in the air, waving their axes and howling like the berserkers of old to Odin.” Mildred flinched as Sylvano made a huge triumphant, black-gloved fist. “We blasted them into matchsticks with our shore batteries!”
Mildred sighed despairingly. “Like you’re going to do to my friends here.”
“Yes.” Sylvano lowered his hand. “I can see how these are no glad tidings for you. Let me offer you what silver lining I may.”
“And what would that be?”
“You are a medical doctor?”
Mildred didn’t bother denying it.
“Then I suspect you well know you are far too valuable a commodity to be wasted. My father has authorized me to offer you terms. Both you, Dr. Wyeth, and Dr. Tanner would be considered assets to the community.”
“You know something, Sylvano? I’ve heard this speech before.”
“I’m sure you have. So consider wisely. Here you would be treasured and respected, working at your chosen profession with Dr. Goncalves, my sister, our interns, nurses and midwives. Think of Dr. Tanner. Would he not be more comfortable here? He could live out his remaining years, surrounded by books, a respected teacher of science and the sword. Like you, he might initially reject my proposal, but I suspect he would settle in quickly enough.”
“And you’d trust me to just settle in?”
“You would initially be on parole.” Sylvano shrugged. “However, once you had children I suspect you would become invested in our community.”
Mildred recoiled. “Yeah, right.”
Sylvano gestured out at the sea. “We have occasional visitors to our isles as you know. We know of your Deathlands, Dr. Wyeth. Is there any place there you truly wish to return to? Do you truly wish to continue randomly hurling your body through the void, from mat-trans to mat-trans until your luck runs out?”
“No offense, but this island wouldn’t exactly be my first choice.”
“None taken, I am sure you have seen many. However, in our defense, here everyone is well fed. The air is clean. We have survived, and thrived in our own way. Sometimes in this world compromise equals survival.” Sylvano gazed down at Mildred from his great height. “And in the end? You really have no choice.”
“What about the rest of my friends?”
“Tell me about them,” Sylvano suggested.
She remained silent.
“Then, I can only speak for the fate of Ryan and the albino. They have proved themselves very dangerous men. Even hobbled, I do not believe they could be trusted among us.”
“So you’re going to slaughter them. Just like you always planned.” Mildred shook her head bitterly. “Not much of a bargain there, Sylvie.”
“There is more. I give you my word on this, and I have the authority to speak for my father, the baron, as well.”
Mildred couldn’t think of any other plan than to keep him talking. “Do tell.”
“The fact is, no one in living memory who has gone through the mat-trans on the escarpment has ever returned. Whether this means that it hurls them to some terrible fate or the machinery has been programmed to prevent it, we do not know. If you help negotiate the surrender of your companions, the male warriors among your party? They will be sent through.”
“Just like that?”
“We will keep their blasters, and any valuable tech they have, of course.”
“Great, a blind jump with jack shit for the other side.”
“They will have each other, Dr. Wyeth, and they will be sent through alive. Along with food, water, kit to make fire, and I will give each a sword in hand to face whatever awaits them.” Sylvano’s face grew hard. “This is the limit of my generosity. Should you refuse, you will next deal with my father, the baron, and you will find him a far harder bargainer.”
Mildred already knew everyone’s answer. Ryan and Krysty would both rather die than be parted. When the islanders found out J.B. was an armorer, they would hobble him and put him to work. Jak had come up the very hardest way in the
Deathlands. There was nothing more important to him than loyalty. Mildred knew he would never willingly leave her or Krysty behind. Doc might agree to the bargain if he thought it would save his friends, but he abhorred human iniquity in all its forms. In the face of the slavery and the blood harvesting, it wouldn’t be long before he tried something stupid. As for herself? Mildred had to admit she loved J.B., but she wasn’t quite ready to settle down. Particularly here on goddamn vampire island.
Sylvano waited for an answer.
A lookout’s cry gave Mildred a moment’s reprieve. “Sylvano!”
Sylvano ushered Mildred firmly toward the cliff edge. He took the offered binoculars and scanned the gray sea. He handed the optics to Mildred and pointed obligingly. “Dr. Wyeth?”
Mildred’s spirits sank as she looked out to where Sylvano pointed. An open boat was cutting across the strait. Three men and a woman in the local peasant garb clutched the sides as well as staves. A man in black sat among them. It was hard to tell at this distance, but it looked like his hands were bound. A smaller man sat in the back with his hand on the outboard. He was dressed in the local ville black, but white hair fluttered beneath his hat and Mildred would recognize Jak’s silhouette anywhere. A dog stood at the prow with his paws on a tiny cannon and his snout lifted to the breeze.
“It seems your friend has done some recruiting, and, as suspected, he has Father Joao.”
Mildred felt a glimmer of hope. “You want to talk a trade, Sylvie?”
“You?” Sylvano snorted. “For Father Joao?”
“Why not?”
Mildred’s stomach sank as Sylvano and the lookout both laughed. “I fear you are far more valuable than the good Father. I also fear that Sister Isle’s society and spirituality have been corrupted, first by the Russians and now irretrievably by your friends. I fear a far stricter social order will have to be put in place. I fear…” A cold smile crossed Sylvano’s face. It was pretty clear he had very little use for the good Father. “Father Joao may need to be martyred in the name of the island.”