by James Axler
The android was going into appalling convulsions, as if it were suffering a high-tech fit. Sparks showered from its open mouth, and a trickle of molten metal burst through the dead eye.
Its right arm bent backward at an impossible angle and snapped off, the jagged stump revolving like a sickle harvester.
It fell again, and rose for a second time, mud and water streaming from its surface.
Dean moved to stand by his father, the Browning dangling, forgotten, from his hand.
The red eye blinked, and the android started to move toward Ryan on dancing, jerking legs. But the lines were going inexorably down, and it fell a third time, rising more slowly. Then the eye went dark.
Its good arm rose above its head in what looked almost like a macabre salute. Then it vanished forever beneath the dark waters. The pool became placid once more.
Chapter Ten
THE RABBIT WAS burned, though they managed to break open the charred outer surface and pick off some dried meat that wasn't too scorched. Dean scuffed at the shattered remains of the young deer, but the flesh was spoiled with hundreds of fragments of splintered bones, all tainted with the pulped and ruptured intestines.
"Soon get us something else to eat," Ryan promised, sitting stripped off by the fire, drying himself and his clothes.
His shoulder and back showed two deep bruises, purplish black, red around the edges, where the sec hunter had come close to chilling him.
But he'd bathed them in the cold lake, taking great care to pick a section a good distance away from where the android had gone down for the third and final time.
Now the warmth of the sun and the heat of the fire were drawing out the pain and tenderness.
"We going on soon, Dad?"
"Hell, why not?"
After the horrific early morning, the rest of the day unwound with a serene, untroubled beauty. They followed the river endlessly northward, along a valley with sides that grew ever more steep.
Birds flew around them, dipping the tips of their beaks into the fast-running water. Their wings and breasts shone with a dazzling range of iridescent greens, reds and golds.
Across the far side of the valley Ryan spotted a dozen or more curve-horned goats, picking their way along a high, invisible trail.
The sun was just past its zenith and they were taking a brief rest. The cliffs had closed right in on either side, the water flowing with muted thunder over shelves of glistening boulders.
"Look," Dean said, pointing at a steep drop of eight or ten feet, the river tumbling like a solid curtain of dark green.
"Fish. Salmon? Trout? Not very good on names of things I'm going to eat."
"Can I go and try to catch us one?"
Ryan nodded lazily. "Sure. They look good and big. But watch you don't go in off the top there. Be double slippery."
He watched the sight that had attracted his son's eyes—flashes of bright silver scales, gleaming like rainbows among the rushing falls. The river seemed to be teeming with fish, all of them battling their way upstream, presumably propelled by some atavistic spawning urge.
The boy scrambled down the side of the ravine, picking his way with a surefooted ease. His father lay back in the warm sunshine, feeling a paternal pride in his son's skill and courage.
It was a good moment in a Deathlands afternoon.
Dean showed his extraordinary speed and hand-eye coordination by using his small turquoise-hilted knife to catch a large fish. He waited patiently, lying flat on his stomach, his head and chest overhanging the waterfall.
Again and again there was the dazzling display as the fish made their leaps, and Dean lay and stared, working out where most of them were going, where the current was a little weaker than in other places, where the shelf was less high.
When he struck, it was so quick that Ryan almost missed it.
A breath of steel flickered in the golden sunlight, and Dean had a fish struggling on his blade. He heaved it upward and clubbed its head on the rock in front of him. Holding it up, tail flapping in its death throes, he beamed up at his father.
FOR THE SECOND TIME in seven hours, a column of thin smoke wound its way between the high walls of rock, vanishing almost instantly as it broke free into the windy heights above.
The cleaned fish, which was neither trout nor salmon, was cooking merrily on the spit. Ryan's guess had put it at about a seven-pounder, plenty for a decent meal for both of them. Enough would remain to sustain them on their northward journey.
"Think they're far away now?" Dean asked, patiently honing his knife on a flat stone.
"Don't know. Never quite work out what happens to time when we make a jump. Occasionally it seems like we come out at about the same time of day, month and year as when we went in. Then, there's other jumps when things feel sort of different."
"But when you came after me…"
"Who knows? Didn't keep a real careful count, did you? No? Nor me. But it looked like we came back around a day or so after the massacre at the homestead back there."
"Rocks like this don't carry much of a trail, do they?"
"No."
"Will Krysty feel us getting closer to her?"
"Mebbe."
"Why hasn't she left us another message to tell us we're on the right track?"
"She warned about stickies in the region. Could be on account of them."
"Stickies can't read, Dad!"
"You don't know that."
"But they don't."
"Could do."
"Couldn't."
"Turn the fish again, Dean."
RYAN PICKED at his teeth with one of the long, flexible rib bones of the big fish. In the end, he and the boy had easily managed to eat it all. With nothing left over.
"That was soooo good," he said.
"What was the best meal you ever had?" Dean asked him, trying to smother a belch.
"Difficult."
"Bet you had some triple-rare banquets. That the proper word? Banquets?"
"Right word. Yeah, I guess I have. Remember when Trader had done a big favor for a baron up in the Cascades. Him, me and the Armorer got an invite. Best of everything."
"Tell me."
"Gold plates and silver forks."
"Wow!"
"Didn't make the food taste any better, though. Crystal goblets. Some wines he said were about a hundred and fifty years old."
"What were they like?"
Ryan grinned. "Tell you the truth… they were terrific. And we had some sort of fish and cheese to start. Said it was lobster from way north and some special kind of goat's cheese. It was okay, but it stank like a gaudy…" He changed his mind about the image he was about to use to the ten-year-old.
"What kind of meat?"
"There was some crab cooked in brandy, then a sort of white fish, poached with herbs. Wild boar in a ginger and honey sauce. That was real good. With glazed potatoes and greens. Ice cream of all sorts of fruit flavors finished off the meal. The banquet."
"And that was the best meal you ever had? Sounds real mouth-filling."
"No. That was a memorable meal all right. But not the best I ever had."
"What was?"
"Kick out the fire before we go, and I'll tell you about it."
The afternoon was wearing on, the sun beginning to sink slowly toward the west. They were out on a rocky platform, above the steep falls, with the thunderous sound of the tumbling water as a permanent backdrop.
Dean stood and started to push around the smoldering ashes, knocking them over the edge into the racing water. The last trickle of smoke died away to nothing.
"Tell me, then."
"Best meal ever? I was sixteen, mebbee seventeen. Got taken by a sec patrol, halfway along the Big Miss. kicked me off a sinking boat along with seven dead men and a woman priest. Took me back. Baron was a runt-assed bastard with no nose. Tried to…you know, use me. Told him I'd chill him. Threw me in a cell that filled with muddy water and shit twice a day up to a
few inches from the ceiling. Got bread thrown in, but it was always covered in the filth. Came close to starving."
"How long?"
"In there? Lost count. I remember throttling a rat and eating it raw, but it made me puke. I reckon around ten days. Each time he came and asked me to suck his cock, and I refused."
"What happened? And how's this tie up with a great meal?"
"Patience." Ryan grinned. "Guard came in on about the eleventh day. I took his knife and gutted him, then went and found the baron in his room, jolted to the eyes. Woke him. Cut his throat open."
Ryan had first severed the man's genitals and jammed them into his gaping mouth. But he chose not to mention this to his son.
"Yeah!" the boy whooped.
"There was a bowl of water at the side of his bed. Don't forget I was this naked skeleton, covered in layers of stinking ooze. I washed my hands in this bowl. Remember it had a blue-and-white picture of a little bridge and a kind of temple on it. I wiped my hands on the sheets of the bed."
He thought he'd heard the sound of cautious movement. But he looked around, and he and Dean were still alone.
"Goon."
"By the bowl was a porcelain plate. Real thin and delicate. On it was a single peach. Fresh and ripe, and juicy and tender. I ate it. And that was the best damned meal I ever had in my entire life!"
From a few paces behind him, Krysty Wroth laughed. "Last time I heard you tell that story, lover, it was a pigeon, not a rat. And an orange, not a peach."
Chapter Eleven
"AWAKE?"
"No. I'm fast asleep."
"Can't stand the pace?"
Ryan rolled on his side, seeing Krysty propped up on one elbow, her tumbling fiery hair seeming almost black in the stark moonlight. The blanket had slipped down, uncovering her breasts, shadowed and splendid. She was smiling at him.
"Twice is enough for starters," he responded.
"I call that big talk for a one-eyed old man. Been too long without you to be satisfied with a couple of quickies."
"Quickies!"
She touched her finger to his lips. "Shh. You'll wake the others. Don't want them all to know about your incessant demands on my body."
Ryan ran his hand through her hair, seeing the dancing sparks of pure fire burning in the still, warm air. They were lying a little distance from the others, at the center of a grove of tall sycamores whose branches stirred softly.
"I think I can feel another of those incessant demands creeping up on me," he said.
Her hand moved under the blankets, across the flat, muscular planes of his stomach, lower into the curling tendrils of wiry hair. She cupped him in the palm of her hand, squeezing, sighing as he stirred into hard life again.
"I can feel it as well, lover. Let's do something about it."
She eased him onto his back, straddling him, gripping his body with her powerful thighs, guiding him with her fingers, gasping with pleasure as he thrusted into her. Krysty lowered her head toward him, her hair falling into place like a sentient veil.
"So good to have you back safe with me, lover," she whispered.
"Good to be back."
"I love you, Ryan."
"Yeah. Love you, too."
KRYSTY HAD SEEN the thin column of pale smoke, following it back south for a couple of miles, eventually finding father and son relaxing after the meal of fresh-caught fish.
The camp was a little distance from the river, on the banks of a narrow, fast-running stream. There'd been an earth slide some months ago that had brought down twenty or thirty trees in a tangle of splintered timber, which meant a plentiful supply of firewood of all sizes.
There was plenty of game in the forested hills, and already they'd smoked and dried a brace of goat, as well as three small deer. And there was ample fish in a shaded pool a quarter mile upstream.
Some of the stock had found its way along the same trail. J.B. and Mildred had gone to stay in a box canyon about four miles east, in order to tend them.
When Krysty led Ryan and Dean back into the camp, Doc was shaving with the honed blade of a knife, using a second knife as a mirror. He nearly cut himself as he spun around, and he rushed to embrace both of them. Jak and Christina were playing pinochle on a red-edged horse blanket.
Considering the cruel blow that fate had dealt them with the arrival of the infected travelers, and the subsequent destruction of their home, both were in surprisingly good spirits.
Most of the first couple of hours was taken up with mutual telling of stories, filling in the gaps left in Krysty's notes and recounting what had happened in and around the sulfur mines during the rescue of Dean from the talons of Gregori Zimyanin.
While Ryan was telling them about the last battle, with occasional interruptions from his son, Doc kept punching his left hand into his right palm, exclaiming, "Oh, marvelous! Yes, that's where the corn is cut, my friends! Not to be gainsaid, Ryan! Oh, the rogue and peasant slave!"
The sun was sinking out of sight, and Ryan agreed that it would be foolish to risk getting caught by nightfall halfway to the canyon where the Armorer and Mildred were camped.
AFTER THEIR THIRD ROUND of lovemaking, Ryan lay with his arm resting across Krysty's shoulder.
"Might get up and have a drink of that spring water in a minute," he said. "Warm night."
"Been hotter. It's cooler up where Mildred and J.B. are settled."
"Things still okay between them?"
Krysty nodded. "Sure are. Better than okay. Seems to be a real solid relationship going on between those two."
"Think they want to settle down together someplace?"
"Doesn't everybody, lover?"
There was a long stillness between them. Ryan didn't move, and eventually Krysty's hand found his and clasped it firmly.
"Seeing Jak and Christina together…" she began, allowing the sentence to trail into the quiet darkness around them.
"I know."
"Good places around here. Plenty of land for the taking."
"Sure. Clean water. Climate's great. No nuke hot spots."
Krysty sighed. "But there's always something around the next corner, Ryan. Something to keep moving on for. Dragons to be slaughtered and innocent maidens to be rescued."
He let go of her hand. "Don't get that."
"Never mind, lover. Most times I push it way back. Then it comes creeping forward again, like a sore place you can't stop yourself from picking at."
Ryan deliberately changed the subject, taking it to safer grounds.
"Any sign of stickies?"
"Rather talk about muties than us settling down, eh, lover? Stickies? Jak reckons they're around in these hills."
"What proof?"
"Some old miners' shacks burned out."
Ryan wiped sweat from his forehead and sat up. "Got to get some water." He looked around the clearing. "These shacks…"
"Yeah?"
"Couldn't they have been fired a hundred years ago? Or any time in between?"
"Jak says not. Very recent. Even before we arrived here he'd been finding tracks of stickies. Says there could be as many as fifty up in the high country to the east and north."
Ryan stood, stretching. He pushed his hands onto his hips and arched his back to try to ease an old stiffness from the middle vertebrae. A pinched disk had been Mildred's diagnosis, sometimes squeezing a nerve and putting a muscle into spasm on the right side of his spine.
"You mean up where J.B. and Mildred are staying?"
He saw the blur of movement as Krysty nodded her answer. "But Jak doesn't seem to think that they'd be much of a threat to J.B., not with all of his experience."
"I guess not. But fifty's a shit lot of stickies to have hiding someplace around you. Sneaky bastards. Might be a better idea if we all kept in the same camp."
He walked and knelt by the stream, cupping his hands and drinking a copious draft from the cold stream. The more he thought about it, the less happy he was at the
idea of the Armorer being alone in an isolated box canyon, even with Mildred's sharp-shooting to help him.
The good thing about stickies was that they generally didn't function well in groups. They were too uncontrollable and triple crazy for that. But fifty of them…
THE NEXT MORNING brought another wonderfully bright and sunny day. In the early hours, just before the hesitant light of the false dawn, Ryan had woken to hear the distant rumbling of a chem storm, the southern horizon a dazzling display of pink and purple spears of lightning. But it was moving toward the far west and faded away within the hour.
Dean and Doc cooked breakfast, heating some venison in a small iron caldron, while eggs spit and chattered in a shallow skillet. Krysty saw Ryan looking questioningly at the eggs.
"Mildred said eggs were safe, long as they'd already been laid before the sickies arrived. We got quite a few sealed jars of preserve and jellies. And some bottled plums and apples."
Christina came limping across from the stream, carrying a bucket of water in her right hand, leaning over to balance it. Ryan was about to leap up and help her with it when he caught the warning in Jak's ruby eyes, and he sat again.
"Going to meet with J.B. and Mildred today?" she asked, recovering her breath, wiping her hands on her checked cotton skirt.
"Yeah. Dean best stay here and stock up on his strength."
"Oh, Dad, you—"
"Dean!"
"All right, Dad."
"I'll come along," Krysty said.
Ryan nodded. "Be good."
Jak cleared his throat and everyone turned to look at him, but he glanced ostentatiously toward the stream and didn't speak.
Christina laughed. "Course you can."
"Sure?" His white face was bright with anticipation, then clouded. "Ryan? Mind if…"
"Glad to have you along, Jak. You know that. Doc?"
"At your service, my dear fellow. What can I do for you?"
"You can stay here with Christina and the boy. All right?"
The old man shook his head. "Oh, calamity! And I was so looking forward to clambering four miles across a landscape not unlike the devil's hindquarters, in scorching heat. Now I'll just have to remain here with this whining brat and this ineffably boring housewife, here in the shade, stretched out, snoozing gently by a bubbling brook. You ask much of your friends, Ryan Cawdor."