by James Axler
The ritual went on.
All the parts clicked, one from another, and were laid on the bed, on the cloths, in their ordered positions. Springs, catches and gleaming muzzles. J.B. started to whistle once again. Happiness wasn't a concept that preyed much on the mind of John Barrymore Dix from Cripple Creek, but if he'd thought about it, times like this would have been equated with happiness.
His strong, capable fingers rubbed, oiled and cleaned, sliding the various machined parts of the Heckler & Koch MP-7 SD-8 together. It was warm in the room, and the steam from the bowl of water began to condense on his spectacles, fogging them. J.B. took the glasses off and began to wipe at them with a corner of one of Mrs. Rainer's old bed sheets.
The knock on the door of his room was soft and hesitant.
J.B. didn't reply. He drew the knife and stuck it into his belt. Hefting the automatic rifle from the bed, he moved, light-footed, to flatten himself against the wall by the door.
The knock was repeated.
He still kept silent.
"John? John Dix? You in there? It's me. It's Carla."
His expression unchanged, almost, the Armorer threw the blaster on the bed and slid back the bolt on the door.
"Come in."
"You're a careful man, John Dix," she said as she walked across the threshold. He closed the door behind her and locked it again.
"I try to be."
"And you succeed. I saw Ryan and Krysty out walking a few minutes ago."
"Yeah."
There was an awkward silence.
The room wasn't large — around ten feet by ten feet. A small pie-crust table with a broken leg was at the head of the bed; a bureau with three drawers stood alongside the window, next to another small chest with a water jug and bowl on top of it. The carpet was faded and worn near the door. The only attempt at any kind of decoration was an attractive watercolor painting on the side wall, showing some trees and an expanse of grass.
There was also an armchair in a patched, loose cover. J.B.'s jacket was flung over the back of the chair; his stripped handblaster covered the bedspread.
He looked at the woman. Carla was dressed much as she'd been at the morning service in the snake temple: polished boots, trim skirt, crisp white blouse fastened at the neck with a sapphire clip. A jacket of dark brown corduroy had been draped over her shoulders against the night air.
"Well," she said, trying to defuse the sudden tension that she felt between them. "Looks like you're busy."
"Busy?"
"The blaster." She gestured toward the bed.
"Oh, yeah. Cleaning it... them. Cleaning them while I got the chance."
He was aware that Carla was still standing uncomfortably by the locked door, her arms folded defensively across her chest.
"You want to sit down? I mean, I'll clear off some space for you. The chair or the bed? Which would you?.."
"Sure. Bed'd be fine, John. Can I give you a hand to move anything?"
"No!" he answered sharply. "Sorry, Carla. Just that I don't like..."
"Anyone to touch your blasters," she finished, smiling at him. "I should have guessed, John. You go ahead."
His hands were almost a blur of movement as he reassembled the Steyr pistol, slotting the parts together in a series of soft, greased clicks, whipping away the stained rags with the flourish of a magician performing his greatest trick.
"There," he said, patting the bed. "Sit down, Carla. Can I ask Mrs. Rainer to bring you up anything?"
She sat down primly, crossing her legs with a whisper of rustling sound. "Thanks, John. If Ruby brought me anything it'd probably be cyanide."
J.B. laughed and sat down at the far end of the bed, licking his lips and blinking behind his glasses. It seemed odd to him how the room had become so very much smaller in the past few minutes, and how the bowl of hot water had made the bedroom feel uncomfortably humid. He ran his finger around the inside of his shirt collar.
"Want me to open a window, Carla?" he asked. "Seems kind of stuffy."
"That would be nice, John."
He stood and slipped the catch across, levering the top half of the casement upward a few inches, which brought a breath of cool evening air into the room. Before he could turn around, J.B. felt the woman's hand touch his shoulder, her breath against his neck. Suddenly she was in his arms, and the soft caress of her lips was against his. After a split second's shock, he found himself responding to her warmth.
A moment later she broke away from him, carefully adjusting the curtains across the window. "Don't want the whole ville to see us, do we, John?"
"Guess not," he replied hoarsely.
Her hand still rested on his shoulder, fingers teasing at the short hairs curling onto his neck. She was smiling into his eyes. "I really wouldn't want you thinking I did this all the time, John," she whispered.
"Me neither."
"Truth is, I haven't actually done this, anything like this, for a very long time."
"Me neither, Carla."
"Would you like to... you know, John?"
J.B. kissed her on the mouth. "Yeah, Carla. I would."
* * *
Doc had been dozing, fully clothed, his battered knee boots standing crookedly by the side of the bed. He'd been dreaming, but he couldn't remember what about. There had been a horse and a river, flowing fast and clean over white stones. He thought that his long-dead wife, Emily, had been in the dream, but he couldn't be certain. All he knew was that he'd been crying in his sleep.
He couldn't be certain, either, what it was that had woken him. A door closing or a shutter banging loose?
"What was it, Lori?" he whispered into the darkness of the room. Ruby Rainer had given them two single beds, pushed side by side.
There was no answer. He sat up, grunting at stiffness in the small of his back. Peering across, he saw that the other bed was empty.
"Lori?" Where in thunderation had the girl gone off to?
With a weary groan Doc swung his legs over the edge of the bed and tugged on his boots. He glanced at the small silver chron on his left wrist and saw that it was just past ten o'clock. Through the window he could see that the main street of the ville was quiet and deserted.
Not quite deserted.
A tall figure was striding along on the far side of the road, in a general direction of the Motes' temple. The ghostly illumination of the streetlights danced off the long blond hair. In his imagination Doc could almost hear the tinkling sound of Lori's spurs.
Doc was about to leave the room when an afterthought struck him. He went back and buckled on the heavy Le Mat pistol and picked up his swordstick. He made his way quietly down the stairs, through the sleeping building and out onto the porch that ran the length of the frontage. An elderly swing-seat creaked as the night wind moved it gently to and fro. Doc stood a moment, wrinkling his nostrils at the pungent odor of gasoline that permeated the ville.
Lori had vanished and the old man set off after her, keeping to the shadows. Doc found it difficult to maintain a grip on his memory and his sanity. Walking through the slumbering ville brought back a tumbling flood of images from his long-gone past. Most of the buildings on that end of Main Street dated from the late 1890s, the period during which he had last seen his wife and his two young children. Before the white-coated, faceless men and women of Project Cerberus had trawled him into the future.
With a great effort of will he succeeded in suppressing the memories, concentrating instead on trying to work out where Lori would have gone. Since she knew nobody in Snakefish, it seemed logical that she had walked out into the night.
But why?
Doc very nearly went on by the temple, heading into the wilderness of desert beyond. But a flicker of pale light caught his eye, somewhere around the back of the building — a narrow vertical strip of gold, as though a door had been left open.
Looking around him cautiously, praying that his knee joints wouldn't creak, Doc made his way around the path at the side. Very slowly
and carefully he eased his way inside, catching the odd smell of stale sweat and makeup, which dredged up memories of the vaudeville theaters of New York, back when... Once again a black curtain descended, cutting off the trickling memories.
He could hear voices talking quietly and a sudden giggle.
"Lori," he said.
On an impulse he drew the Le Mat from its ornate Mexican holster, thumbing back the hammer on the antique piece as he walked past a table and some shelves. The voices came louder. Another muffled, sniggering laugh made him grip the butt of the pistol more tightly.
Doc could see them now, together near the front row of pews. There was a sailing moon outside, and it cast enough light in through the windows of the reptilian temple for the old man to be able to see them quite clearly.
"I am most dreadfully sorry to interrupt," he called, marveling inwardly at how calm he'd kept his voice. "But I don't think Lori should be out this late on her own."
"What the skin-shedding fuck is that?" The male voice was high and reedy. His blond curls glinted in the moonlight. Doc could see a black Stetson near the altar.
"It's Doc Tanner. And you are Joshua Mote. Do your parents know that you profane the tabernacle with your lusts?"
Lori broke away, nervously smoothing down the front of her coveralls. "Hi, Doc," she greeted. "Josh said to come see this place at night and I thought it be no harms."
"I should kill you! You interfering old fuck-pig!" Joshua Mote shouted, facing Doc across the aisle.
"If you attempt to draw out whatever blaster you have concealed about your person, I shall pull this trigger and blow a hole in you big enough to drive a horse and buggy through."
Mote let his hands drop to his side. "Sure. This time you get your way, Doc. But there's things happening in this ville soon and you'll be on the wrong scaling side of 'em."
"Very possibly. Come on, Lori, my dear. Time to go home."
The girl didn't argue at all. She took Doc's arm and walked quietly with him back to their hotel. Neither said a word.
* * *
Just after sunup everyone was awakened by the throbbing roar of the powerful engines of the two-wheel wags. All eight of the Last Heroes rode past in formation, heading down Main Street toward the Motes' temple. Zombie, at the head, shouted something to Ruby Rainer, who was busily sweeping dust off the front porch, but Ryan couldn't hear what was said.
"Going down to find out," he said tersely to Krysty, pulling on his pants and knotting the laces of his combat boots.
The landlady was in the lobby, adjusting a scarf around her throat. She turned as she heard Ryan's feet on the stairs.
"Oh, Mr. Cawdor!" she exclaimed. "Such dreadful, dreadful news!"
Ryan felt the short hairs at the nape prickle in anticipation. Keeping his voice calm, he asked, "What? What's the news?"
Chapter Twenty-Four
"Slaughtered, my friends. That very deity that has watched over the fortunes of this ville for so many, many years! Butchered out there among the sagebrush and the prickly cactus. Food only for the rending beaks of the hawk and the buzzard. Oh, now shall we share our lamentations for poor, poor Azrael Twelve."
Norman Mote was well into his harangue. As he lifted his arms to exhort the packed church to greater heights of emotion, he revealed great patches of dark perspiration. His silver-gray hair was matted and disheveled. Marianne sat next to him, hands folded in her lap. There was a silver ring on the little finger of her right hand, designed like a cobra, coiled and hooded and ready to strike. While her husband was ranting at the good folk of Snakefish, Marianne nodded her agreement and rolled the ring around with the fingers of her other hand.
"Our brothers, the Angels, were out before dawn, at my orders, to search for Azrael. I knew that something was grievously wrong. And I was right, brothers and sisters! Oh, was I ever right!"
There was a muffled chorus of "Amens" from the benches.
Ryan sat cramped in next to Krysty. Then came Jak, J.B., Lori and Doc. Rick had found himself squeezed out, into the row behind. The news of the discovery of the giant mutie rattler hadn't been much of a shock. It had been bound to happen quite soon. The best of it was that Zombie had told everyone that the eternal wind had wiped away any tracks from near the carcass.
"What shall we do?"
It was a rhetorical question and Norman Mote was obviously angered when someone near the back called out, "Try and find out who done it, Brother Mote. That's my idea."
"Yes, yes, of course we'll try and find out who did it, Brother Thaxted. But there's more. Much more. How about the stickies suddenly appearing in our beloved vine? Talcing away those three good, good boys from our hearts. And now Azrael! Something is rotten, my friends. Rotten and bad and wicked. The demons are abroad in Snakefish!"
"Let me go and drop some gas bombs on them stickies from my plane," Layton Brennan shouted. "I could burn them out."
"We aren't sure where they come from, nephew," Baron Edgar said testily.
John Dern, the dealer in blasters, raised his voice. "Then let's all go after them. Do it 'fore the stickies come into the ville!"
This time the chorus of agreement was much louder and more positive.
Mote held his hands up for silence. "Peace be among us, my friends. What we must ask ourselves is who could have done this bloody thing? Who would have shot Azrael to pieces? Who would have blasters capable of that?"
The words were addressed to the balcony, and to the people ranged around the three walls of the temple. But Mote's eyes raked the pew where Ryan sat with the others. It couldn't have been more obvious where his suspicions lay if he'd thrown a bucket all over them.
The muttering and whispering that filled the sudden stillness confirmed that Mote was simply saying what others thought.
It wasn't time for a sitting on your hands and waiting for the stones to begin flying in your direction. Ryan stood.
"Hope you don't mind an outlander like me speaking out in your service, Reverend Mote." The man, looking surprised, nodded. "Thanks. I've been around plenty of frontier villes in my life. I know that trouble always gets laid at the doors of any outlanders. Way of the world. That's what could happen here if you aren't kind of careful about being fair. Know what I mean? Accusations sometimes bounce right on back against... well, the person who made them. We just heard about the death of your snake. Anyone got any proof we had something to do with it, Reverend? Nobody? I'm glad to hear it."
And he sat down again.
The whispering swelled for a moment, then faded away. Mote looked around at his wife, who waved her hand at him, as if to tell him to get on with the service.
"We're all pleased to hear from Ryan Cawdor that any suspicions... uh, what he said. But none of that changes anything. Three of the Last Heroes and Azrael. Only one thing to be done, brothers and sisters. Only one thing!"
Once again the preacher flashed his sweat-soaked armpits at the faithful.
"A feeding!" he shouted at the top of his voice.
In the bedlam that followed, the congregation was on its feet, yelling and clapping in a crazed fervor.
Right at the front, Ryan could make out the diminutive baron, facing the congregation-turned-mob, trying to shout something. Carla Petersen stood at his side, face pale and anguished. J.B. had pushed his way through the crowd, to take Carla by the arm, pulling her with him and towing Edgar Brennan in his wake, heading toward the main doors of the temple.
Ryan saw something else — the anger and hatred that was etched deep on the face of Marianne Mote.
* * *
By the time Ryan had led the others to their rooms, J.B. had calmed down the baron, who sat in the armchair, his legs not quite reaching the floor. Carla was perched on the bed, long legs folded under her, leaning back against the pillow.
Rick had become tired, and it had been a struggle to help him along the street, through the throng of Snakefish citizens that had poured out of the temple, their eyes alight as if they'd witnesse
d the coming of some great miracle. And the word that was on everyone's lips was "feeding."
"Want to go lie down, Rick?" Krysty asked, concerned.
"Yeah, but I'll stay if you don't mind. Looks like this could be some sort of council. I wouldn't want to miss out on that. But couldn't we move to a bigger room? Then I could lie on the bed and rest."
After a brief discussion they adjourned one door along the corridor to Doc and Lori's light and airy room.
Rick, forehead beaded with perspiration, lay back, unable to stifle a groan. He glanced around at the worried faces and managed a half smile. "Don't worry. I'm not going to invest in six feet of earth yet. It's just that my muscles ache and get real tired. But I'm fine now. Really."
The other friends ranged themselves around the room, finding somewhere to sit or lean. Jak squatted cross-legged with his back against the door, an ear listening for eavesdroppers. Carla stood with J.B., close by the open front window. Edgar Brennan had the wicker chair alongside the bed.
"So," Doc began. "They got their way. As easily as winking. One dead snake and they can swing most of the ville behind them."
Carla shook her head. "You don't understand. Outlanders often don't understand. If you argue against the Motes when it comes to a feeding, then it somehow seems that the fingers point at you. And it's you out there in the brush waiting for the forked tongue and the hollow tooth."
"It's true, my friends." Edgar Brennan sighed. "And I call you 'friends' because I see that you are not the hired mercies that we feared. The appearance of the stickies and that big pet of Norman and Marianne's being chilled... It's all rushed events too fast. I'd hoped that I could, somehow, persuade some of the decent folk of my ville to follow my lead and stand up against the Motes."
"It was impossible," Carla said ruefully. "I explained to John how the Motes rule through fear and through their backing of the bikers. Edgar was too kind for too long."