Deathlands 074: Strontium Swamp

by James Axler

  With the extra blasters, the relays of fire began to take effect. The increase in pellets peppering their flesh began to make the swampies think twice, and the remaining muties began to retreat, some desultory rifle fire from them marking their retreat.

  When they had vanished into the swamp, there was carnage laying before the assembled fighters. The mud was littered with corpses, the waters awash with blood.

  Ryan turned to the woman. “Who the hell are you?”

  Her eyes flashed and she snapped, “Some way to greet those who stopped you being stew for those fuckers.” Then her eyes settled on Jak. “As for you—never thought see you again.”

  “Not know you,” Jak replied, which was true. He didn’t recognize her personally, but he knew where she and the two men accompanying her had come from. One of the men was small, with a barrel chest and a shaved head, a wispy beard tied in a knot hanging from his chin. The other was also short, but was whip-thin like Jak, with tattoos on his bare chest and arms. He was clean-shaved, but had a long ponytail flowing down his back. The woman was shorter than the men, with full breasts that strained at her shirt. Long black hair in ringlets framed a face that had full lips and flashing dark eyes. Flashing with anger.

  Because these three people lived in West Lowellton—the ones Jak had left behind.

  “So you come back when we’re in shit, expect a welcome?” The barrel-chested man spit. “Lucky we didn’t leave you to it, Jak fuckin’ Lauren.”

  The woman held up a hand. “Shut fuck up, LaRue. No one gets eaten by swampies, no matter who.”

  “Lady, I don’t want to interrupt this little family reunion, but can someone tell me what’s going on here?” Mildred cut in.

  The woman looked at her and smiled. “Hey, Blackie, don’t remember you, Know One-eye, Red, Four-eyes and the old man. Where the others? Buy the farm somewhere? Don’t matter,” she added quickly. “What matters is that Jak go with you, leave us after chilling Baron Tourment. Only work not done. Someone else come and stir shit up—and where the man then? Gone.”

  “How supposed to know that?” Jak asked.

  “Supposed to stay, help us,” LaRue spat back.

  “Leave it!” the woman snapped. “Mebbe this mean something, yeah? We pray for miracle, the Lord send Jak Lauren back. Mebbe to settle old score, mebbe to put things right. C’mon,” she added, turning to go, “we go get dry, eat. Then stir some shit up ourselves.”

  The companions fell in behind the trio of fighters.

  “So what do we call you—other than big mouth,” Mildred questioned.

  The woman laughed. “Like it… Marissa. Him LaRue,” she added, indicating the barrel-chested man. “And him Prideaux,” she continued, indicating the ponytailed man. Both glared at the companions. Marissa laughed again. “And guess what—they don’t like you. Me? I ain’t made my mind up yet.”

  * * *

  Chapter Eight

  The three swamp dwellers took them farther and farther into the heart of the bayou, and farther away from both West Lowellton and the area that housed the swampie settlement. The path was labyrinthine, snaking between deep pools of stagnant water, covered with weeds and swamp plants that emitted an even more foul stench than the waters themselves. They crossed tracks of relatively hard earth, covered in moss and grass, and squelched through mud puddles that sucked at the soles of the boots.

  Overhead, the sun was beginning to fade into the dusk of early evening, and as they traversed deeper into the swamps, so the thick cover of the trees made the light less and less amenable to ease of travel. They had to stay close on the heels of the three natives in order not to fall into the treacherous quicksand that surrounded them on all sides, ready to claim another victim.

  The foliage on the drier sections of the swamp was tightly packed with lobster grass that caught at their ankles, and taller plants that loomed over them, making it hard to cut through the path forged by the natives. It was a path that had been used before. There was enough of the foliage cut back to make it possible for the smaller members of the party to make a rapid progress, but not enough for it to be immediately obvious to the naked eye.

  Marissa, LaRue and Prideaux moved quickly and with ease. The companions, exhausted and having to cope with a path that they didn’t know, in darkness, found it hard to match their speed. Only Jak was able to keep pace, and even the albino was finding that it stretched his energy level.

  There was no discussion but they were all thinking the same thought: could they trust these three, and whoever else was waiting back at their settlement? True, they had stepped in and helped them drive back the swampies. But they had been ambivalent about Jak’s presence, and even Marissa’s comments about him being sent to them in a time of trial had an edge of suspicion about them…almost as if she couldn’t tell whether this was a good thing.

  But in the final analysis, there was little else they could do. If they wanted to move on, they might have had to fight the three and risk being hunted by their compatriots from the settlement; and even if they did manage to part amicably, there was still the matter of having no idea where they could safely camp for the night. If nothing else, these people offered them food, bed and rest.

  And right now, that was important—more so than anything else.

  Still they continued. It seemed to most of the companions that they were going in circles, seemingly passing the same stagnant pools several times. But Jak knew differently. His childhood and youth had been spent hunting in the swamps, and there were few who knew the land as well as he; right now, he could see that they were headed for a section that was almost dead center. It was the most treacherous area of the swamps, and one that had no settlements of old predark villes anywhere near it. It was a dangerous place to live, but a perfect place to hide.

  So what—or who—were these people hiding from?

  They arrived at the settlement before they even knew it: a collection of huts and tree houses that clustered around a pool that was about 150 yards in diameter. The pool was fed by a small river that ran in a trickle, and supplied the settlement with as much fresh water as it needed—or, at least, water that they could boil and purify. As they closed in on the settlement, they could see that there were some lamps and small fires going, but these were shielded by opaque materials to make detection from outside almost impossible. Unless you were on top of the settlement, all you would see was darkness by the pool.

  There was some noise—voices, some singing, a few babies cries—but it, too, was masked, this time by the natural screen of foliage in which the huts and tree houses were nestled, acting as a natural cushion to soak up the sounds.

  “It’s Marissa,” Jak heard one voice announce a little more loudly than the others. It came from off to the left, and as the albino looked around to its source he saw a potbellied man of about fifty step forward. He was holding a Sharps rifle, and it looked highly polished and cared for. He held it casually, barrel pointing down, with both hands. It seemed to be careless, but from the set of his hands Jak could tell that it would take him a fraction of a second to bring it up ready to fire. And his eyes were slits, taking in the procession carefully, assessing any danger that might be present.

  “Hey, okay, you put weapons away,” Melissa said to the assembled throng. “They okay—found ’em blasting swampies, gave ’em some help. Fuck, man, they tired and pissed off, and so would you be. Give ’em some slack, let ’em rest up. ’Sides, seen who they got with ’em?”

  The companions were now by the side of the pool—lake would be a better description, as its depths were dark and unimaginable, and even though it wasn’t fully dark the far side was now lost in gloom—and it didn’t escape their notice that LaRue and Prideaux had moved surreptitiously into position so that they now flanked the group. With Marissa in front, and the lake behind, that left them fully surrounded.

  Not that it would matter too much. The dwellers who were still descending from their tree houses and coming out of their huts were
clustering around, and they were all armed. A rough estimate showed that there were around a hundred of them, and all looked less than friendly, if not outright hostile.

  “Shit, recognize that little fucker,” one of them said, coming out of the throng. She was a woman a little older than Marissa, and perhaps an inch or two taller, with perhaps an inch or two more on the hips. Other than that, the women looked very similar. Jak recognized her, though it took a second for her name to come back. Luella, that was it. She had been the wife of one of his old hunting companions—Luke, a man he couldn’t see among the others.

  “Recognize you,” Jak said blankly. “Where Luke?”

  “Bought the farm ’bout two years back. Same as most around here. Not many of us left didn’t get the big chill or go over to the old ways.”

  “Old ways?”

  “Voodoo, sweetie, or something like it,” she said with a bitter laugh.

  “Only ain’t really voodoo, not like we learn it used to be,” Marissa cut in quickly. There was something in her tone that suggested this wasn’t just for Jak’s benefit. “Ain’t no such thing as the old ways, just ways of making the new look like it.”

  “Don’t matter whatever you call it, still works,” Prideaux growled.

  Marissa shot him a black look. “Only ’cause he feeds them full of shit so they don’t know what they’re thinking,” she snapped back impatiently. “How many times have to tell you that?”

  Ryan held up his hands, partly to stop them and partly to show to the twitchy settlement dwellers that he was unarmed. “Hey, c’mon… Listen, we don’t even know why we’re here, let alone what you’re talking about. Mebbe if you started at the beginning, then—”

  “Ask Jak,” Luella butted in, “ask him what. But he won’t be able to tell you ’cause he don’t know. Don’t know ‘cause he fucked off with you and left us to it,” she spit out angrily. There was a mumble of agreement from the crowd.

  “Shit, you people so stupe,” Marissa said in an exasperated tone. “Don’t you see that him coming back is a sign?”

  “Two things that are bothering me, John,” Mildred whispered to J.B. as Marissa spoke. “First is that I don’t know what they’re so wound up about, and the second is that Jak isn’t exactly Mr. Popularity around here.”

  Before the Armorer had a chance to reply, Marissa’s voice cut across everything.

  “Listen—least we can do is give ’em food and shelter, then tell ’em what’s happened. Mebbe Jak’ll want to help.”

  “Yeah and mebbe he’ll fuck off like before,” Prideaux growled, glowering at the albino.

  But the tattooed man’s warning was ignored by the people. After a brief discussion among those who were the elders of the settlement, including the man with the Sharps who had first spotted their arrival, they were shown to one of the tree houses, which was vacated by the woman and child who were living there. Before they were taken to their billet, they were stripped of their blasters by LaRue and Prideaux. They also took J.B.’s canvas bags with the ammo and plas ex, his Tekna and Ryan’s panga. They overlooked the scarf wrapped around his neck, which was weighted at the ends to form a garotte if wielded correctly. They also left Jak with his patched jacket, failing to remember or to recognize that it contained his leaf-bladed throwing knives.

  “You stay here. Zena and Kyle will stay with me,” Marissa said as she led them up the rope ladder and into the rickety construction. Inside, there were a few sticks of furniture, but the house—only fourteen by fourteen—was sparse, with only the doorway, covered by an old screen door taken from a suburban house, and a small chimney hole in the ceiling for ventilation and light. The light itself was provided by a small tallow lamp in one corner, which cast long shadows over the far wall and ceiling.

  It was going to be a tight squeeze to fit all six of them in, and as the tree house was really only built for three or four at most, all of the companions were worried about the structure taking their weight. Mildred voiced this.

  Marissa response was to laugh. “Shit, you lucky if that’s all you get. Some of ’em down there want to chill you now, in case you come from him. So you lucky you got somewhere. Don’t argue ’bout it. Up here, you easy to guard. Wait now, and I get you when it’s time to eat.”

  “One thing, my dear,” Doc said hurriedly as she turned to go. “You keep talking about ‘him’ as though it should be someone we know. But I, for one, have no idea what you mean by this.”

  “I believe you,” she said softly, “and mebbe a lot of others. But hard to trust anyone from outside since it started. Long, long story. You hear it when you eat, okay?”

  “Great. Why do I get the feeling it might just give me heartburn?” Mildred muttered as Marissa disappeared out the tree house door and down the rope ladder. “And another thing—what the hell do they have against Jak?”

  The albino smiled wryly. He knew only too well why he was resented by many of these people, and while they waited he told Mildred about his previous life in the bayou, and how he had met Ryan, J.B., Krysty and Doc. He continued by detailing how his father, who had led the resistance against Baron Tourment, had been tortured and chilled before they’d had a chance to eradicate the sick baron and his regime. He also told her why he felt they resented him. With his father gone, in many ways he was the next natural leader: certainly, he had the necessary combat and hunt-honed skills to be a baron. But instead of taking the reins, he had opted to leave the bayou and travel.

  Without him, this—whatever it may be—had happened. Maybe it would have with him still around. Who knew? But obviously some of the residents of the settlement felt that he could have made a difference, and that he had betrayed them by leaving.

  “Well, that’s gonna make dinner a whole lot of fun, isn’t it?” Mildred said dryly when he had finished.

  They didn’t have to wait long to find out. Just long enough for them to begin to settle and for Doc to fall off to sleep. They were discussing what options they had open to them—whichever way they looked at it, it always added up to wait and see—when LaRue pulled his barrel-chested frame over the lip of the doorway.

  “Hey, stop making stupe plans you got no hope of carrying out and come down,” he said roughly. “Marissa made sure you get to eat, and get to hear what’s going down. Then you get to decide.”

  “Decide what?” Ryan bristled, having already decided that he and LaRue would come to blows—regardless of the rest of the settlement—if the sec man continued in this way. Even as he thought it, Ryan realized that it wasn’t like him to be so hair-trigger. Had to be the fatigue. He’d have to watch that carefully.

  Oblivious to Ryan’s train of thought, LaRue continued. “You gotta decide whether you with us, or we find some way of getting rid of you.” He leered at them then disappeared from view.

  “Guess we’d better make our way down. Pity we couldn’t dress for dinner,” Mildred remarked, continuing her own private joke, even if it was lost on the others.

  Except perhaps for Doc. “Hardly the right standard for white tie and tails, I would have said,” he murmured, tapping on the floor with his silver lion’s-head cane. As with Jak’s patched jacket and Ryan’s scarf, he had been left with the seemingly innocuous cane, the settlement dwellers not realizing that nestling within was a blade of the finest honed Toledo steel. Therefore, they could muster some blades between them, and maybe the scarf would be useful for swiftly and silently eliminating a guard whose blaster could be taken. But in truth, they didn’t have enough weapons to really mount an escape.

  Not a feasible one, not until they were sure it was necessary.

  One after the other they descended the rope ladder until they were all under the watchful eye of LaRue, Prideaux and another pair of sec men. One of these had one eye, like Ryan, except that his scar ran across the bridge of his nose and down, dragging his lip into a permanent sneer beneath his eyepatch. At least it distracted from his protruding gut and drooping chest, which were covered in thick, coarse blac
k hair.

  The other guard looked a little like Prideaux. He, too, had tattoos and a ponytail, except that he was less lithe, more muscular across the chest and shoulders. Both men were carrying remade Sharps rifles, and both in that deceptive manner, with the blaster pointing down but the grip right for a quick aim and fire.

  “C’mon, let’s go,” Prideaux grunted, leading them across the shore of the lake, past a couple of huts, until they came to one that was larger than the others. Sounds of discussion crept out through the half-open door, a thin sliver of light cast across the shore toward the water.

  “In,” Prideaux snapped, moving around them, keeping his blaster down and pulling the door open to allow them entry.

  Inside, the room was hot, lit by tallow lamps and filled with steam rising from the wooden platters that were lined up on the table that centered the room. Fillets gumbo, black-eyed peas, some kind of pumpkin that had a strange pink tint to it, sweet potatoes, and hunks of meat that looked like it might be pork were piled high on the platters. Despite the severity and uncertainty of their situation, the smell of the food reminded them that they had eaten little else but self-heats for several days, and it was all they could do, in this relatively relaxed situation, to concentrate on what was about to happen.

  Because, much to their surprise, the atmosphere from the people within the shack was far more congenial than they had expected. Certainly, it was a giant leap on from the hostility they had encountered on their first arrival.

  Marissa was there, as was the man Jak had seen on their way in. He was reserved when he was introduced, but certainly less hostile. His name was Beausoleil, which Jak recognized. The man had known his father back in West Lowellton, and they had worked together to try to build the resistance. Jak could see why Beausoleil would see his leaving as a betrayal, no matter what his true reasons.