James Axler - Deathlands 27 - Ground Zero

by Ground Zero [lit]

"Anything," Krysty corrected automatically. "The dogs didn't do anything."

  "Precisely." Doc grinned, looking self-satisfied. Mildred wagged a finger at him. "I know what you're talking about, this time, Doc. Just for once. It's a sort of quote from that detective. Sherlock Holmes."

  "Oh, I had hardly anticipated anyone recognizing. I had the privilege of meeting with the author, Arthur Conan Doyle, during my visit to London. A striking and intelligent young man. I felt he would go far." Doc smiled, shaking his head reminiscently. "It was my belief that Artie modeled his greatest creation on your humble servant."

  Mildred laughed. "Only person I know that might have been modeled on you was Baron Munchausen, the greatest liar in all history."

  Joshua Morgan was up and about, looking pale and frail in his borrowed stickie rags. "Did you say something about dogs in the night?" he asked.

  "Just a small jest, friend," Doc replied. "In point of established fact, I did hear the dogs in the night. Perhaps wolves or unusually large and fierce coyotes. From the munching and crunching I would doubt if there is much remaining of the bodies we dragged out into the brush."

  He was right. When they all went out into bright sunshine, there was only some black, dried blood and a few gnawed and splintered bones. A track through the dense undergrowth showed where the predators had dragged away the raggled corpses to mangle them at their leisure.

  "I wish we could have carried the bodies of my two colleagues back to the village," Morgan said.

  "They were past caring about it." Ryan looked at the sec man. "We could have tried to bury them, then your baron night have sent out another hunting party to retrieve them and have them interred in the ville."

  Morgan sniffed, his fingers brushing over the myriad small scars on his face. "No." He sighed. "My lord, the baron, isn't a man given to warmth and caring. But he is a good man for all that," he hastily added.

  "For all that, and all that," Doc chanted. "He's a good man, for all that."

  "You honing my blade, Doc?"

  "Am I teasing you? My dear fellow, nothing was further from my mind."

  "You know where we are now?" Ryan asked, pointing to the glint of water through a grove of elms.

  Morgan nodded. "It must be Lake Potomac. Think so. They brought us some way south and east."

  "How far to the ville?"

  "Eight or nine miles is my guess."

  "Then we'll get started. Everyone about ready?"

  Dean tugged his father's sleeve. "Can I keep the Uzi for a while, Dad?"

  Emma had given back the handblaster, to the boy's disappointment.

  "No. Hi-Power's real good for you. You're used to it by now, Dean."

  "Oh." He shuffled his feet in the dirt.

  "And don't whine."

  "Sorry, Dad."

  Ryan looked up at the sky. There were a few wispy clouds riding high, over toward the distant Lantic. The air was fresher and cooler than it had been.

  He had told Joshua Morgan a little about themselves, falling back on the usual story that they were travelers whose wag had suffered terminal breakdown a couple of days earlier. Ryan mentioned the fracas in the Lincoln Inn, though he chose to play down their part in the mayhem. And he kept Emma's mutie gifts totally to himself.

  He also managed to have a quiet word with the woman before Morgan had awakened.

  "From what we learned back in Green Hill, Baron Sharpe has some sort of zoo. Mutie animals. Strong possibility also two-legged muties."

  "Like me?"

  "Anyone who looks or acts different. Might mean Krysty and Jak, as well. Watch our backs."

  "Morgan isn't essentially a bad man," she said.

  "You get any feelings about the baron yet?"

  "No. Have to meet him. Then I still mightn't feel anything from him."

  BARON SHARPE'S MEN found them before they reached the village, mounted patrol, on good-quality horses. There were twelve men, all in a uniform of dark green jackets and rich blue pants, all armed with identical single-shot muskets.

  They reined in a hundred yards or so ahead of Ryan and the others, forming a loose skirmish line, every man bringing his blaster to the present at a single word of command.

  "Efficient," J.B. said. "Good to see someone who cares about security and decent order."

  Morgan nodded. "Sean Sharpe's not a man to allow sloppiness."

  "Stay there, outlanders, and don't move your hands to your weapons if you wish to see another dawn."

  "Sounds like Clint Eastwood writes his script," Mildred muttered. "Sorry, didn't think. Probably none of you has ever heard of him."

  "We going wait?" Jak whispered. "Could be best chance take them now."

  Ryan remembered, as he knew J.B. would be doing, that Trader always used to claim that the best time for successful aggression against an unknown enemy was in the first five seconds of the encounter.

  "Wait," he said. "No reason to think we're in any danger here."

  "How about the story he collects muties and puts them in a zoo?" Krysty asked.

  She was interrupted by another shout from the leader of the sec men. "You hear me, strangers?"

  Emma closed her eyes for a few moments, looking as if she were counting the beats of her own heart. She opened them again. "It's safe, for now," she said.

  "Hi, there, Joaquin!" Morgan yelled. "They're friends. Saved me from stickies."

  "Who the fuck're you, calling me by. Is that Morgan? Josh Morgan?"

  "Yeah."

  "Where's your uniform?"

  "Stickies stripped me. These people chilled them all and saved me. Clothes came off of a dead stickie."

  There was a gust of wind, rustling the leaves on the elms, carrying the first part of the next shout. But they all heard the ending of it. ". all the others?"

  Morgan turned down both of this thumbs in the universal sign of death.

  "All?"

  "Yeah."

  "Sure these people are ace?"

  Morgan started to walk toward his colleagues, beckoning for Ryan and the others to follow him toward the line of waiting horsemen.

  "Stay on red," the one-eyed man hissed, his own right hand resting on the butt of the SIG-Sauer.

  But there was no problem.

  The sec patrol was far more interested in the return of their lost prodigal, gathering around Morgan, firing questions at him, though Ryan noticed that some of the men's eyes kept sliding uneasily to Krysty and to Jak. But none of them were taking any notice of Emma.

  Finally the sergeant, the grizzled veteran called Joaquin, slapped his gelding on the side of the neck. "Enough of this. Time for talk later." He searched out Ryan.

  "Baron'll want to thank you. Thank you all. We found the scene of the ambush." He coughed into his gauntlet. "Not a lot left of the poor devils. There'd been no warning of stickies in the baron's lands. No bastard warning at all."

  Ryan had removed his threatening hand from the blaster. "No man would have ridden around that," he said.

  Morgan went on tiptoe to say something to Joaquin, who nodded. "'Course," he said. "Josh says there hasn't been much in the line of food for a day or so. On behalf of Baron Sean Sharpe I invite you to come with us to the ville and be our guests and enjoy both bed and board."

  "Glad to," Ryan said. "Real glad to."

  THE SEC SERGEANT'S generous invitation didn't extend to ordering any of his men off their mounts, offering them to the outlanders. Though he did, hesitantly, ask if Krysty, Mildred and Emma wished to ride or walk.

  "Walk, thanks," said Krysty.

  "Me, too. Thanks all the same. Never been that great on the back of a horse." Mildred smiled at Joaquin.

  Only Emma hesitated.

  "Yes, little lady?"

  "By stone and water! No, you won't!" she said angrily, taking a few steps away from the mounted man.

  "What?" He looked at Josh Morgan for an explanation. "She a stupe?"

  Krysty answered him, speaking quickly, addressing her words more to the v
isibly disturbed Emma. "Had a bad time in Green Hill. Lot of men tried to rape her. Lot of chilling went on. Then, a day later, the fight with the stickies. She was very quiet seeing the way that the last of your men died."

  "How was that?" His curiosity made him forget the outburst from the golden-eyed young woman.

  Krysty moved closer, putting herself physically between Joaquin and the distressed Emma, seeing out of the corner of her eye that Jak had stepped in again to comfort her.

  "They had him tied, his jaws forced open. Stickies tipped in black powder and set light to it. Poor devil's head practically exploded."

  The sec sergeant looked at Joshua Morgan. "Who was it? Who was last?"

  "Didn't know at the time. They had me stripped and tied in the shadows. I couldn't see." He swallowed hard. "It was only after, when I looked, that I recognized Harry."

  "Harry Nodes?"

  "Yeah."

  Joaquin tugged at the reins, stopping his horse from moving sideways. "If. Woman said that his head was practically. How could you be sure?"

  "Had that tattoo of two pigs fucking across his back, between the shoulders."

  "Oh, yeah. Right."

  The sun still shone down brightly, but there were banks of snowy clouds, fluffy-topped, gathering toward the north of the region, characteristic thunder-heads with the promise of plenty more rain to come.

  Joaquin suddenly recalled Emma and her strange reaction. "Lady with the yellow eyes. She doesn't want to ride double-up with me or one of the men?"

  By now she'd recovered most of her self-control, even hanging out a watery smile to dry. "Thanks a lot, but I think I'll be better if I walk with the others."

  "As you like. Looks as if there's a big old chem storm on the way. Best move on to the ville and report to Baron Sharpe. Never keep a baron waiting is what I always say."

  He offered a hand to Joshua Morgan, who swung up onto the horse's back. He locked his hands around the sergeant's waist, giving a half wave to Ryan and the others.

  The horses moved on. Ryan noticed that Joaquin sent two men ahead as scouts, confirming the professional skill they'd already noticed.

  The seven friends, with Emma, strolled along the weed-strewed blacktop after the sec patrol. Ryan dropped back a little to walk alongside the doomie, who had Jak in close attendance on the other side.

  "What did you see?" he asked her.

  She shook her head, still keeping the smile in place. "Stupe of me. Can't get used to it. Many of them in the group wanted to bed me. The one called Joaquin most of all. He was planning to try and get me in the stables. No. I guess 'planning' isn't the right word. Too strong. More a sort of fantasy for him. But it made me feel choked and sick."

  Jak looked across at Ryan, his white hair dazzling in the sunshine, his ruby eyes screwed up against the painfully bright light.

  "This good move?" he asked.

  Ryan shrugged. It was a question that was nagging at him. But they needed food and shelter. And Baron Sharpe, whatever his faults, should welcome them as helpers of his sec man.

  "I don't know," he said.

  Emma patted Jak on the arm, looking at Ryan. "Can't feel real danger."

  It didn't console Ryan all that much, remembering how often the doomie had protested that her mutie skills were often variable and unreliable.

  Chapter Nineteen

  The ville had once been a huge rambling country mansion, built around 1885 in the classic Victorian Gothic style-towers, turrets, winding corridors and stained glass. It seemed that there had once been a number of multistory buildings surrounding it that had taken most of the nuke impact during skydark, preserving it, though there had been some minor damage to the roof where modern repairs stood out like a sore thumb.

  A number of outbuildings and barns and courtyards were set among spreading woodlands. But the high wall, set with spikes and electrified wires-powered by a big water generator-was the main defensive feature that struck Ryan's eye as they trudged the last hundred yards toward the spread.

  Joaquin had reined back to walk his horse alongside the outlanders.

  "Impressive, huh?"

  "Can't argue with that," Ryan said. "You get a lot of trouble here?"

  The sec sergeant laughed. "Josh, you tell him."

  "What happened yesterday was the first serious incident we had for about a year."

  Joaquin corrected him. "Closer to eighteen months. Mob of Hole ghoulies, stoned on the jolt they bought from the man with steel eyes."

  "Steel eyes?" said Ryan.

  "You heard of him? Called the Magus."

  "Also known as the Warlock."

  "And the Sorcerer," J.B. added. "Used to pick up stickies and sell them on to Gert Wolfram. Fat bastard used to use them in his traveling freak show. So the Magus is still around peddling his dirt?"

  Joaquin clicked his tongue, setting spurs into his gelding's flanks, moving it on again. "Yeah. Controls most of the jolt in Deathlands."

  "And this mob attacked your ville?" Ryan asked.

  Morgan replied. "Came out of the night. Raving and screaming. Stormed the wall. Plenty got chilled on the wire. Until their corpses blew all of the main fuses. Few of them managed to get through and we took some losses. More than an hour to clear the scum away."

  "The ghoulies tend to stick in the heart of the old ruins, do they?" Krysty asked.

  Again it was Morgan who replied. "Not really ruins. I been around and seen the black canyons of Newyork. Those are what I call ruins. Washington Hole isn't much more than what the name says. Big hole. Ash and fused lava glass. Biggest crater in the world some say. High rad count. Get some triple-serious muties there, which is good news for Baron Sharpe with his-"

  "Enough, Josh," Joaquin said sharply. "Don't let your tongue taste so much air."

  He pushed the horse ahead at a faster walk, leaving Ryan and the others behind him.

  BARON SEAN SHARPE was waiting for his returning sec men as soon as the heavy gates swung open. He stood in the main courtyard, hands locked behind his back, wearing nondescript shirt and pants of dull beige with worn knee boots.

  Ryan's first glance went automatically to see how the man was armed, that being one of the most important things to check out in Deathlands.

  It was a satin-finish Ruger revolver, stuck in a workmanlike holster on the left side of the belt.

  "The GP-160," J.B. said at his side. "Double-action, six-round,.357 Magnum. Live rubber stocks. Handy blaster."

  The man himself stood a little over six feet, broad shouldered and deep-seated, with the easy stance of someone who kept himself in top shape. Ryan's guess put Sharpe at around thirty years old. His blond hair was cropped, and his eyes were the chilling milky blue of Sierra meltwater. He was strikingly good-looking.

  The horsemen reined in around him, but nobody spoke a word. Ryan led his party in a few yards behind, stopping and waiting. The silence was broken only by the shuffling of the animals, the jingle of harness and by the rising wind that carried a few spots of rain in its teeth.

  Sharpe looked around, his eyes taking in everything, lingering on Jak and then on Krysty.

  "Well," he finally said. "Well, I see you alone, Joshua, with marks on your face that tell me we have stickies on our lands. Best hear your initial report, Sergeant." He turned slowly to look at Joaquin.

  Sitting stiffly upright in his saddle, the man gave a concise account of what had happened: the ambush and the slaughter of the other members of the first scouting party, the rescue by the outlanders that had resulted in the deaths of all of the muties and the freeing of Joshua Morgan.

  The baron stood very still, listening. When Joaquin fell silent, he still didn't speak. Out of the corner of his eye, Ryan could see that Emma was trembling. It could have been exhaustion.

  Could have been.

  "Well. Good report, Joaquin. Thank you. Gives me the things I need to know and didn't waste words. Glad to see you back alive, Morgan. Go and have a bath and get out of those filthy, bloody
rags. Then we will be very pleased to hear your dark story in your own words."

  "Aye, Baron." He slipped down and walked quickly toward the main building.

  "Dismiss the men, Sergeant, and then come and see me in a half hour."

  Ryan and his companions moved out of the way as the horses clattered across the cobbled yard, through an archway that presumably led to the stables, leaving them waiting alone with Baron Sean Sharpe.