Crater Lake

by James Axler

  They'd been watching the patrols from the dormitory, timing them and checking their frequency. Around eight in the evening, they'd heard wags come lumbering back into the ville, spilling out loads of excited men and tired young lads, exhausted from the day's ritual of exposing female infants. Since then, Ginnsburg Falls had become quiet. The pairs and triads of sec men had come down the main street, Sissy, making a left along Fourth in front of the dormitory. They had returned once every hour, at ten minutes to eleven, and again at ten to twelve.

  "Clear," Finn whispered, trotting out of the main door and leaving it to Ryan to slide it quietly shut behind them. There was a sharp-edged section of moon sailing low across the mountains over the lake.

  Ryan took the lead, moving quickly through the back-lots and yards of stores and large houses. It was a cold night, but not with the same dreadful bite that set cheekbones aching with the sharpness. They passed a house with a row of laurels along its back border. From an open attic window came the unmistakable sound of a woman weeping. A man was shouting. Then there came a flat crack, like the palm of a hand across a face.

  And then silence.

  Doc Tanner paused. "If there was an amplitude of time, my friends, I vow that it would be a fine cleansing to burn this ville to the foundations. A place of more nugatory worth I never did see."

  "I'd be happy to fucking chill it, Doc."

  "No, Finn," Ryan warned. "What we want best is to get away quick and quiet and easy. If'n we need to ice some sec men, then we do it. J.B., I reckon it's time you went down and got the Kenworth ready. Start her up the moment you see us coming. We'll be moving fast and low."

  "Sure. Shoot to kill, you guys," the Armorer said, grinning as he ran toward the wag park, his fedora at a jaunty angle on his head.

  The other three kept on toward the oblong shape of the old workhouse.

  RYAN SAW THE SEC MEN before they had a chance to see him in the darkness. He flattened himself against the chipped brick wall of a warehouse. There were two jeeps there, with a half-dozen men lounging around them. The way they stood made him suspect no officer was with them. They looked as if they didn't expect to be needed for some time.

  "There's a back entrance," Ryan said. "Saw it this afternoon. Goes along the waterfront. There's an old pier. Runs the whole length and connects with another jetty. Cuts right in by where the wag's waiting for us."

  The back door was open. Several low-watt bulbs were strung along the pale green corridor. A painted board directed visitors to the main entrance and reception areas, but a gilt arrow pointed to the Arthur Sissy wing, and Ryan and the others took this direction.

  They passed many open doors to empty rooms that contained iron bedsteads. On each was a pile of gray blankets, folded with edges so sharp it looked as if they'd cut bread. The corridor turned left. The arrows led them up a short flight of stairs and through a pair of swinging doors along another corridor to a closed door on their right.

  Ryan had seen old police vids where the heroes kicked open doors and leaped through. That often wasn't the way. Better to turn the handle and walk in slow and quiet, as if you had the right to be there, but with your finger on the trigger of your blaster.

  He glanced at Finn and Doc. They nodded, the old man forcing a thin smile.

  "Now," Ryan said.

  There were five people in the room, which looked around twenty feet square. Two beds were pushed back against the far wall, and a window, barred and curtained, was on the left.

  Standing just inside the door, a sec man glanced around as the three men casually entered.

  Krysty Wroth sat on the nearest bed, face pale as death, eyes closed, lips pressed together. From the painful tension, Ryan spotted immediately that she was in the process of calling on her Earth Mother, Gaia, to give her the strange power and unnatural strength to perform some almost supernatural feat.

  A second sec man was standing in the middle of the room, holding his carbine, its muzzle pressed against the back of Lori Quint's neck.

  She was kneeling, hands supporting her on either side of her spread thighs. Her long yellow hair dangled around her face, hiding what she was doing. But the bobbing of her head made it unmistakable.

  She was naked, with bruises across her shoulders and ribs.

  Ryan heard the sharp intake of breath from Doc Tanner by his side.

  The fifth person in the room was Mayor Theodore Sissy, sitting squatly in his wheelchair, eyes tightly shut, a sickly smile hugging his lips. From where Ryan stood, he could just see that the front of the cripple's trousers was unzipped. Lori's blond tresses brushed against the frail, dangling, stunted legs.

  "Don't do it, Doc," Ryan said quickly, not wanting to have the building explode with the boom of the big Le Mat.

  Finn didn't need telling what to do.

  The Heckler & Koch was set on triple burst. He touched the light trigger just once, opening up the throat of the guard at the door. In the confined space, the silencer was surprisingly effective, no louder than fingers rapping on a table.

  The man's body jerked back and hit the wall, sliding down and leaving a great smear of bright scarlet blood across the clean paint. The other guard turned, the barrel of his carbine jerking away from Lori's skull. His mouth dropped open in shock, eyes widening as he saw his death a pulse away.

  Ryan took a chance, firing a single round from his pistol. At less than fifteen feet, the nine-millimeter bullet hit the sec man through the bridge of the nose. The impact lifted him off his feet, then his boots came clattering down, kicking and flailing for balance. The bullet exited out through the back of his head, slightly behind the right ear, taking a chunk of bone with it. Blood and brain splattered under pressure, dappling the whitewashed ceiling with a pink-gray mist.

  "Close the door, Doc," Ryan ordered. "And keep watch. If we're lucky, the guards out front won't have heard anything. Too many doors and corridors between us. But listen for 'em." Turning to the women, he asked, "You all right, Lori, Krysty?"

  "What the fuck are you outworlders doing? You are all fucking dead meat," Theodore Sissy squeaked, hands frantically trying to shove his fast-softening cock back inside his pants.

  "You putrescent scum," Doc Tanner said, thumbing back the hammer of the Le Mat.

  "The door, Doc."

  Lori rose, her eyes locked on the seated man, her hands hanging loose at her sides, making no effort to cover her nakedness. Krysty shuddered, as if she'd just come from a deep, drugged sleep. She opened her eyes and looked across the room at Ryan, taking in the two blood-sodden corpses of the sec men.

  "Hi, lover," she said. "You showed just in time. I was going to try and waste them myself. Just drawing on the power of Gaia."

  "Get Lori dressed. Where are your blasters?"

  "Under the bed in the corner. The sec men kicked them there out of the way, when the mayor arrived for his fucking sickness boost."

  "If I scream, you're all dead. The whole fucking militia'll be here in seconds. There's nowhere to go. Nowhere you can run." The great soft face rippled as Mayor Sissy licked his thick pink lips.

  "I'm all right," Lori said, shaking her head. "I'll get dressed. Won't take a moment."

  Finnegan leaned on the back of the wheelchair, the warm muzzle of the submachine gun resting casually against Sissy's neck.

  Krysty joined Ryan near the door. "The sec goons beat her when she refused to blow him. She gave in. I was going t'be next. He'd decided to get a guard to ass-fuck me while I sucked him. That was when I was going to kill him and try for the other two. The carbine wouldn't have stopped me."

  In his wheelchair the diminutive mayor of the ville was wriggling from side to side, looking around at the dead guards. He turned to Ryan Cawdor and asked, "You hope to use me to get you safe away?"

  "No."

  "You hope I'll spare you?"

  "No."

  Lori was almost dressed. She pulled her soft leather boots up over her muscular thighs, the spurs jingling with a cold, frosty so
und, then stood up from the bed and buckled on the belt and holster for her pearl-handled Walther PPK .22. Brushing her hair away from her face, she moved to stand in front of Sissy.

  "Not a lot of time," Ryan said. "Got to pick up the wag. J.B.'ll be wondering where the fuck we are."

  "Won't take long, this won't," the girl replied, her voice flat and hard.

  Doc stuck his head back into the room. "All quiet out here." Seeing Lori looking at the crippled Sissy, he said, "Let me, honey."

  "No," the girl replied.

  "Let me go and I'll let you all go free," the mayor pleaded. His face jerked and twitched. He gripped the wheels of the chair, trying to roll away from the icy stare of the tall blond girl. She jammed one foot hard between his legs, making him squeal in pain, her heel holding him still.

  "You fuck. You miserable little fuckhead bastard. Making me… Open your mouth, Mayor." Sissy opened his lips as wide as he could, and she drew her pistol, ramming the barrel into his mouth and breaking off one of his front teeth so that blood trickled over his chin and down his elegant suit.

  Ryan lurched forward, but Krysty restrained him, shaking her head. "Let her," she said.

  "Suck on this, Mayor," Lori said, blowing a kiss to the helpless man. Her own lips peeled back off her strong white teeth in a feral grin as she added, "Suck it good."

  The small-caliber pistol jerked in her hand, the noise almost completely muffled in the the man's mouth. Sissy's head snapped back, his whole body convulsing. Lori kicked the chair, sending it spinning into the wall to one side of the window. It tipped over, spilling the dying man on the floor, where he thrashed, arms trembling violently. Blood spilled from his open mouth and his nose. His eyes stared blankly at the ceiling.

  "The fucker ate it good, didn't he?" Lori said, holstering the blaster.

  "Sure did," Ryan said. "Now let's get out of here."

  A MILE OUT OF TOWN Krysty wanted to stop at another of the population markers. "Want to go and knock one off for the late Mayor Sissy," she said.

  "Late and unlamented," Doc Tanner added.

  "Best keep moving," Ryan said.

  J.B. hugged the wheel of the big Kenworth truck, gunning the motor, pedal to the metal, twin lights blazing a path along the old blacktop. About ten miles out of town they picked up the bedraggled figure of Jak Lauren.

  For the rest of the night, the seven drove on, away from Ginnsburg Falls, following the northward trail, tugged on by the radio message.

  With its mysterious words of hope.

  Of hope?

  Chapter Twelve

  IN THE PALE LIGHT of dawn, they passed a bullet-riddled sign, leaning drunkenly to one side, telling them they were on State Highway 62.

  J.B. had found a creased and taped map of the district in the glove compartment of the big truck. He opened it carefully, knowing from previous experience how delicate very old documents could be. The light in the crowded cab was a faint, flickering, uncovered light bulb, and he angled the map beneath it, trying to hold it steady against the lurching of the big vehicle.

  "Watch the damned bumps," he snarled at Finnegan, who was at the wheel.

  "What the fucking bumps yourself!" The Kenworth hadn't taken kindly to being pushed along at a speed beyond what its age could handle. In the first hour a couple of the forward gears had stopped functioning, and the shift was becoming uncomfortably hot to touch.

  "See where we're heading, J.B.?" Ryan Cawdor asked, blinking his good eye at the hills that towered up on either side of the blacktop. "There's a big mountain, called Mazama. Old volcano, with a round lake in its crater."

  "Crater Lake," Doc Tanner said, yawning, trying to stretch himself awake and finding that there wasn't enough room for his spindly legs with Lori asleep in his arms.

  "Know anything about that?" Ryan asked, hoping that the old man's precarious memory might be triggered off to give them some useful information.

  "Some."

  "Yeah? Go on."

  Doc shook his head, his stringy hair dangling across his shoulders. "Cerberus and the other projects were intensely secret. But there were others. I was not privy to many of them."

  Everyone in the party, except the albino boy, was awake. Krysty was puzzled. "What does 'privy' mean, Doc?"

  "At one time, dear lady, it had the meaning of a place for one's bowel movements and bladder evacuations."

  "What is that?" Lori asked, opening her eyes.

  "Means where you piss and shit," Ryan said. "Don't it?"

  The old man nodded, the pearly light from the east illuminating his oddly perfect teeth. "But in this case, my dear Ryan, it means there were doors closed to me. I was allowed certain knowledge on a need-to-know basis. I do recall that Crater Lake was… what was it?"

  Finn applied the brakes and cursed his way down through the gears, fighting the truck to a slowing halt. "Road's blocked," he said, pulling the hand brake on with a hiss of compressed air.

  Ryan ignored him, concentrating on clinging to Doc's elusive memory. "Crater Lake was what?"

  "In truth it was. A man might trudge along, noting every passing phenomenon…" He hesitated, savoring the word, rolling it around his mouth as if he were trying to identify an exotic herb on his tongue. "Phenomenon. Truly said, my boy. It was that and more."

  It was too late.

  The frail highways that linked brain and memory had fallen asunder again. Gradually, Ryan thought, Doctor Theophilus Tanner was returning to some kind of normal.

  "Is someone going to get off their ass and move that fucking pile of wood?" Finn said, winding down the window of the truck and spitting out into the freezing morning. Though the engine was beat-up, at least the heater worked. Outside, the temperature was way down past freezing. Ryan almost expected to hear Finnegan's spittle turn to ice in the air and tinkle on the road.

  Ryan peered through the windshield. Ahead he could see the blacktop rolling higher between the banks of dark conifers. Above them, to the left, there'd been an earth-slide, bringing down a jumble of debris, including the snapped branches and fallen trunks of pines. By the look of it, the blockage had been there for a while, confirming their suspicion that the good folk of Ginnsburg Falls didn't travel north very often.

  The driving easterly wind blew a flurry of snow against the glass, blinding him for a moment. As it cleared, Ryan thought he spotted movement among the stunted young trees at the side of the highway. But when he stared, there was nothing to see.

  "Come on," he said. "Let the kid sleep. Rest of you out and start shifting that mess."

  He was glad they'd all equipped themselves with warm coats. The gale was like a whetted knife, making his eye water, the ice particles it carried ripping at the tender flesh of his cheeks. He huddled into the collar of his trusty suede coat, happy to have a moment to admire Krysty's looks. Her fiery hair whisked about her shoulders as she stood tall in her knee-length black fur, its hue so dark it seemed almost blue in the strengthening light.

  There was a dusting of snow on the road, and it swirled around his boots. The truck stood tall, its crimson flanks streaked with mud. The long exhaust had retained its original chrome and now reflected the pink glow of the distant sun. Ryan looked at the hubcaps and saw the stunted, distorted image of himself and the others. Then the memory of the flicker of movement in the scrub gave him pause.

  "J.B., watch our backs."

  "You smell muties, Ryan?"

  "No. Thought I saw something out there."

  The Armorer nodded. Ryan didn't need to explain any more than that. In the Deathlands, if you thought you saw something, then that was enough. The man who waited to be sure he'd seen something would eventually end up feeding the maggots.

  It was even colder here than it had been up in the far north, in the part of the land once known as Alaska. Here it was a bitter, dry cold, a chill so intense that Ryan felt the hairs beginning to freeze in his nostrils. His skin felt a size too small, and if he opened his mouth it made the gaps in his teeth sing w
ith the icy shock.

  Finnegan kept the engine of the Kenworth ticking over, occasionally gunning it when it began to falter. He knew, as they all did, that if the truck failed them here, their chances would be a whole lot less than good. The smoke from the exhaust hung blue in the morning until the wind snapped at it and dragged it back along the valley.

  The road was blocked for about twenty feet, and Ryan considered asking Finn to gun the engine and drive the rig slowly forward hoping to shift the tangled mess. That might be a whole lot easier than trying to move it by hand. If it didn't work, then it was a long walk to Ginnsburg Falls, and they certainly wouldn't get the red carpet treatment if they went back there.

  "Let's get it done," he told the others.

  IT WASN'T THAT HARD. The wood was bone-dry, snapping easily as they pulled and wrenched at it, clearing a path wide enough for the Kenworth. As they toiled, the snow grew thicker, blinding them, settling on their coats, covering the tangled branches and making it difficult to see what they were doing. It took them about fifteen minutes, working together, the sweat steaming off them.

  "That'll do it," Ryan called, waving to Finn, who had the side window partly down so that he could see what was happening.

  The throaty sound of the powerful engine deepened, and Ryan heard the gears grinding as Finn fought his way up through the box. The wheels began to turn slowly, and the rig eased forward, crunching the remains of the debris into the icy road.

  "Climb on!" Ryan called to the others, watching as Lori jumped up, pushed from behind by Doc Tanner, who used the opportunity to snatch a quick feel, his gloved hands sliding between the girl's thighs before he climbed into the Kenworth himself.

  "Go on, Krysty," J.B. said, walking along the side of the rig, eyes flicking to the dark shadows in the undergrowth at the edges of the blacktop.

  She scrambled up and was pulled into the cab by the pale hands of Jak Lauren, now fully awake, his white foxy face peering into the ghost-dancing snow. Ryan motioned for the Armorer to go next, readying himself to swing up off the highway.