James Axler - Deathlands 27 - Ground Zero

by Ground Zero [lit]

  "That brought." he began, when he realized that there was no longer any need for the kindly lie.

  Her eyes were still open, but they stared sightlessly up into the bright light.

  Ryan stood slowly and looked down at the empty husk of the woman that he'd held and loved so many times. So many years ago. He reached up and turned off the lamp.

  "So long, Jenny," he said, his voice alone in the darkness. "And thanks. For everything."

  As Ryan left the infirmary and started back toward the main house, his eyes were brimming with the lost and lonely tears of memory.

  Chapter Twenty-Five

  Krysty was still awake, lying in bed with the lamp turned off, the window open. Cool night air filled the room, the ragged clouds filtering the moonlight.

  "All right, lover?" she asked as soon as she'd opened the bolted door for him, moving quickly back to bed, allowing him only a silvered flash of her breasts, back and thighs.

  "I knew her. From the war wags. She died in my arms of rad cancer."

  "Oh. Did." But no question followed.

  "Two things she said. Both we partly knew or partly guessed. Emma's act is all around Washington Hole. I'll only be a matter of time before it gets back to Sharpe. And Jenny confirmed that he has human muties in the back part of that building. Collects all non-norm oddities."

  "Gaia! Bad news. We go now or wait until the morning?"

  Ryan was quickly getting undressed, his face turned away, surreptitiously wiping his tears on his sleeve. "Have to talk to the others before first food tomorrow."

  "Sure. You all right, lover?"

  "Fine." He climbed into bed alongside her, putting out a hand and finding Krysty's, holding it tight.

  She felt the tension riding him. "Lover? Do you want to?"

  "Yes," he whispered. "I'd like that very much."

  WHEN RYAN WENT to all the other rooms, just as the first glow of dawn was lightening the eastern sky, he wasn't all that surprised to find that Emma was sharing her bed with Jak. It was the young albino who came to the door in response to the gentle knock.

  The teenager wore only a shirt, his pale legs sticking out under it like white fence posts.

  "Yeah?"

  "Leaving."

  "Why?"

  "Sharpe definitely collects human muties. It's common knowledge that Emma's a triple-good doomie."

  "Baron know it?"

  Ryan shook his head. "No. But he could find out at any moment. Sooner we get away the better."

  "I'll tell her."

  "Sure."

  By five-thirty, everyone was dressed, packed and armed, and assembled in Ryan and Krysty's room.

  THEY PASSED a few sleepy sec men, none of whom took any notice of them, knowing that they were the legitimate guests of Baron Sean Sharpe.

  The ville was only just coming awake, with maids appearing at the corners of corridors, carrying wood for fires and fresh linen for beds.

  Ryan thought they were actually going to be able to get away free and unchallenged. They were moving quietly and fast on condition red, without taking the final precaution of drawing blasters, though they were all ready to draw at a word from Ryan. To walk through a baron's ville with blasters in hand would only trigger a full-out firefight.

  They were passing the gloomy dining room, places already laid for breakfast, when the grizzled figure of Joaquin appeared by the main doors. His green jacket and blue pants looked as though they were fresh from the laundry and the ironing board. His hair was neatly parted, and he was holding a rebuilt percussion revolver in his right hand.

  "Early to leave, outlanders," he said quietly.

  "Don't want to outstay our welcome here." Ryan was trying to measure the man, seeing how far he might go to stop them from leaving the ville.

  "Baron might be offended."

  "Make our apologies," J.B. said.

  Doc made a half bow. "Pray do us the favor of explaining to him that we suddenly discovered that we had a subsequent engagement, elsewhere."

  "Could be he'll be pissed about it."

  "Could be it doesn't bother us all that much." Ryan allowed his hand to move, quite openly, to rest on the butt of the powerful SIG-Sauer.

  "Don't like being threatened," Joaquin said, showing no sign of concern at being massively outgunned.

  "Thought you were the one doing the threatening." Ryan took three steps closer to the sec sergeant. "We don't seek trouble with you, Joaquin. But we're leaving, like it or not. Easy or hard. Clean or bloody. We're leaving."

  Joaquin looked at him, not shifting his eyes. "If we both push this, then it won't be easy and there'll be some cleaning to do afterward."

  "Agreed." Ryan moved two steps closer. The revolver came up, almost imperceptibly, pointing at his groin. "You see a way around this one?"

  Joaquin nodded. "Sure. Stay and eat. Tell the baron you've decided to move on. Probably he won't give a small-jack shit about it. That way it's all open."

  Ryan considered the offer, trying to think all around it and see whether there was something lying coiled behind it. But he couldn't see it.

  "Fine."

  He turned to the others. "We eat first."

  "Can't we go?" Emma's face was pinched with worry. "Please, let's go now."

  Joaquin's eyes opened wider with interest. "What's the problem, little lady?"

  "Nothing. I can't cope with being inside buildings for too long. Panic sort of feeling."

  "Surely another hour won't fret you too much, will it? Unless there's another reason."

  Jak had his arm around Emma. "Be all right," he said. "Stop eat, then go."

  "Just that I have a feeling about-"

  "That's enough," Ryan snapped, deliberately stern to shut her up from blabbing out something that might risk all their lives. "I'm hungry. We're all hungry. So let's cut out all the talk and sit down to it."

  As they sat down, the young woman passed close behind Ryan's chair, dipping her head to mutter to him. "Stone and water, but this is a dark day."

  BARON SHARPS APPEARED before the first food was brought to the long table. He was wearing a black silk shirt, unbuttoned, over a pair of ancient stone-washed jeans, tucked into low-heeled Western boots of dark maroon gator skin.

  His cold, milky eyes turned first to Ryan. "Dressed for a trip outside into the Hole?"

  "If it's all right with you, Baron, we figure you've been hospitable to us, and we'd like to move on."

  The eyes turned to his sec man. "Have we repaid the debt we owed for their saving of that clumsy fool, Morgan? What do you say, Joaquin?"

  "Done enough, Baron."

  Sharpe helped himself from a black iron caldron filled almost to the brim with cooling, leathery, unsalted scrambled egg, piling some salsa on the side and taking two rashers of fatback bacon and half a dozen links of pork sausage.

  "Weather'll be bad," he said, as though the subject of their leaving the ville had been settled.

  "Air feels heavy," Ryan agreed.

  "Real bad."

  "How do you know?"

  The baron paused with a forkful of egg halfway to his mouth. "Got a tank of mutie prairie dogs. Midgets. Go ape-shit when bad weather's in the way, or a quake. Visited them this morning and they were tearing each other apart. Fur and skin and blood everywhere. So it'll either be a big quake or a triple-evil storm."

  Emma, trying to cover her fear, had become preoccupied with the meal, eyes never leaving her plate of grits, fried tomatoes and a pair of sunny-side eggs. But a part of her mind had been listening to what was being said.

  "Tornado," she said suddenly.

  Ryan's heart sank and he reached toward the SIG-Sauer, seeing that J.B., Jak and Krysty had also picked up on the flaring danger signal, seeing that Joaquin had also noticed what Emma had said. He put his knife down and stared at her.

  Baron glanced across at the woman. "I'm sorry?" he said quietly.

  "Said that it would be a big tornado."

  "Really?"

&
nbsp; "Sure."

  "Not a quake."

  Ryan stepped in, aware that he was probably too late. "Yeah, it could be a quake, couldn't it, Emma?"

  The sharpness in his voice penetrated to the doomie, and she dropped her mug of coffee spilling it all over the cloth. "By stone! I wasn't thinking, Ryan. Sorry."

  Now Sharpe was becoming seriously interested. "What are you sorry about, lady?"

  "Spilling my coffee and making such a stupe mess."

  "But you said you were sorry to Ryan, rather than to me. Were you upset by the lady ruining my cloth, Cawdor?"

  Ryan for once couldn't come up with a quick answer. The light of suspicion was riding high in the baron's eyes, and he knew that this was one of those razor-edge moments.

  Dean helped the tension to pass. "Your prairie dogs figure it for a big quake, Baron? That would be a hot pipe. Never been in a big shaker."

  Sean Sharpe, distracted, slipped into one of his odd changes of mood. "Well, well. Quakes bore me. So do storms. If you all want to go and get yourselves torn apart by the ravening forces of Nature, then who am I to try and stop you?" He went on with his meal, then paused a moment. "Best you leave quickly, but tell Joaquin where you're going in case it becomes our turn to rescue you."

  "Sure thing, Baron," Ryan said.

  KRYSTY WANTED to get as close as they could to the actual center of Washington Hole, where the nukecaust had its unholy spawning.

  Joaquin was insistent on knowing their plans. "You heard Baron Sharpe. The Hole's one of the toughest places in all Deathlands. Shanties and ruined suburbs of the old superville. All kinds of muties hanging around underneath the stones. And most of the norms'll slit your gizzard, soon as look at you. Whole family got butchered the other day, just because the old man was carrying a Randall knife on his belt."

  Ryan nodded. "Trouble is, we don't really know what our plans are. Just take a look around."

  The sec sergeant sniffed. "Not good enough. Sharpie might send me out with an armed patrol to make sure you all do like he said. He wouldn't want any of you to get hurt. No way, Jose!"

  "We'll likely skirt the Potomac Lake. See how near we can get to the centre of the old ville of Washington-"

  "Before your rad counters go screaming off the top end of the scale." Joaquin grinned. "I'd say that the heat of the crater, most of which is like rippled, jagged black glass, is probably the hottest hot spot you'll ever see."

  "How long?" Ryan asked.

  "Much over a half hour and you get sick. Teeth drop out and gums bleed and hair falls and. Shit, Ryan, I don't have to tell you, do I?"

  "No. Guess you don't."

  "So, take care out there."

  Ryan turned away, then faced Joaquin again. "Baron's goin' to have us tracked anyway, isn't he?"

  The grizzled veteran sec man laughed. "You might say that, outlander, but you can't expect me to comment on it, now, can you?"

  RYAN LED HIS FRIENDS, and Emma, out of the ville a little after eight in the morning.

  Josh Morgan shook hands with all of them, embracing Ryan in a bear hug, using the chance to whisper in his ear.

  "Women in kitchen say Emma spilled her guts. Tornado, she said. Loud and clear, she's likely a doomie. Lit Sharpie's fuse, good and proper. You'll be followed at a distance by Joaquin."

  "Grief?"

  The beard was scratching Ryan's cheek. "Baron likes to be sure. Day passes without a tornado, then you walk safe away. Otherwise.watch your backs."

  "Appreciate it," Ryan said.

  "You remember it." Morgan moved back to join the other sec men on guard by the main gates to the ville complex, waving a hand as they walked away.

  Ryan didn't mention what the man had told him. Time enough for that if the weather took the turn that Emma had predicted for them at breakfast.

  THE WEATHER WAS an odd mix of a chill breeze and overpoweringly humid air.

  The early-morning sky was a strange sulfurous color, the deep yellow overlaid with high streaks of crimson. The wind was constantly veering, coming in gusts from the north at one moment then driving in from the southeast.

  Emma's mouth was twitching with nerves, but she didn't say anything until they were a good quarter mile away from the ville. "Sorry, Ryan. I'm so sorry."

  He grinned and put his arm around her, feeling her trembling. "Don't worry, Emma. It'll be fine."

  Chapter Twenty-Six

  Joaquin stayed three hundred yards behind them, riding his stallion at a slow walk, reins trailing. He had three sec men with him.

  "Getting to be like itch can't scratch," Jak moaned. "Why not call them close and use Steyr? They only got muskets. Chill easy."

  Ryan shook his head. "No reason for that. Visibility's good enough. We can see them just as well as they can see us. Take the broad view, Jak."

  "What?"

  "Two possibilities. No tornado, they'll finally let it be and ride away."

  "If there is tornado?"

  Ryan looked up at the darkening sky. "Well, if there is, and it looks like it might just happen, then you have to ask yourself what do they plan to do."

  "Ride in and take Emma away," J.B. said. "No, I don't think so."

  "Nor me," Ryan agreed. "We got them outnumbered and outgunned. They can wait and watch. That's all."

  THEY ENTERED A PLACE where the nuke-blasting had been less severe. From a hillside it had been possible to look out toward the center of the Washington Hole, the square miles that had been the throbbing and vibrant heart of the great capital metropolis of the United States, the center of the most powerful democratic country in all the world.

  It was as people had described it.

  "Wasteland," Mildred said, taking a deep breath. "Can't believe that something can be wiped away so thoroughly that it's just a huge crater of barren blackness."

  Doc tapped the ground with his sword stick. "In olden days they would have pulled down every wall, stone by stone, plowed the ground and seeded it with salt so that nothing would ever grow there again."

  "Rad counter's showing orange into red," J.B. warned. "Not a place to linger."

  Ryan looked up at the sky, which seemed to be growing more menacing every minute. "Might start thinking about getting some cover. Could be that Emma's right."

  "Can't we go back to the redoubt and jump out of here again, Dad?"

  "Soon, son."

  Emma looked across at the boy. "You'll be miserable through most of the long separation, Dean," she said in the flat toneless voice that indicated she was way beyond control. "But it won't last forever."

  Jak tapped her on the arm. "Dean and Ryan already been separated," he said. "Seeing past, Emma."

  Her eyes stared at him, struggling to focus. "No. Definitely future."

  THE SUBURB of old Washington was relatively untouched. Usually such places would have been turned into the epicenter of shantytowns and pestholes. But it was immediately obvious why this place was shunned by norms.

  During the quakes, rivers and streams were often diverted. Here, in outer Washington, they had run together, breaking through shattered storm drains and sewers, until the whole region was underlaid by a swamp of brackish, slow-moving sludge that filled the cellars and basements and oozed out into the first floors of many of the buildings.

  The sky had become like pewter, dull gray, menacing, with banks of black clouds that swirled around as though propelled by some life of their own.

  Ryan glanced behind, trying to spot Joaquin and the sec patrol, but they had vanished into the maze of tumbled ruins.

  "Nothing here," Krysty said. "Why don't we cut and run, lover? Wasting time in this sinkhole."

  "Not worth going in, is it?" he agreed. "There's not likely to be anything worth the looking."

  "Horrible stink," Dean commented, pinching his nose and pulling a face.

  Mildred smiled. "Right on, boy. I reckon you'd find just about every disease ever invented in this place, and quite a few others beside."

  "Wind is rising,
my friends." Doc's mane of silvery hair was blowing around his face.

  "Tornado," Emma stated, her black skirt tugging at her ankles. "Getting close. No way of avoiding it now. We're in way too deep."

  "Could be." Ryan blinked as dust peppered them from the wind swirling around the ravaged buildings.