by James Axler
“What the fuck were they doing?” Ryan whistled, looking at the churned-up earth and devastation left in their wake. “I’ve seen a shitload of stickies in my time, but I’ve never known them to act like this. And to stay and fight like they did to us. Usually they run…”
Horse grunted. “Your guess is as good as mine. They attacked some farmers on the edge of the ville and we set out after them. Expected an easy hunt, chill them, then go home. But I’ve never seen stickies move at that pace. Something spooked them.”
“Figured it might have been you,” Ryan said guardedly. “After all, you were at their rear.”
“Only ’cause we hadn’t yet caught up with them when they ran into you,” the sec chief replied.
“Yeah, guess so,” Ryan agreed, keeping the hint of doubt out of his voice. Why chase after them when they had already passed by the ville? There was something about the story that didn’t quite ring true, but that could wait until later, until Ryan had recce’d the situation a little better. What was important now was to get to the ville and to rest. As the horses trotted gently over the rough earth, the one-eyed man felt every little rut in the ground as a jarring pain. His eye was heavy and he felt his body begin to give in to the fatigue that had been staved off for so long by the adrenaline rush of combat and the need to keep alert.
On their own shared mounts, the other companions were finding that they, too, were falling prey to their tiredness. Krysty kept herself awake by sheer willpower, not trusting herself to so much as doze while she had to ride behind the fat man. For his part, Jonno was trying to make amends for his earlier attitude by keeping up a nonstop stream of banalities.
“Look, I’m really sorry about earlier. I just got carried away. I was only fooling, and I misjudged. You know what it’s like in the heat of battle, you kinda find it hard to switch off and get back to being normal. Whatever the fuck that is, y’know. But I don’t want us to have got off on the wrong foot. Ethan wouldn’t like that, and he’s not the kind of dude you screw with, y’know what I’m saying? It’s not that he’s a bad guy, and he’s a great baron, right, but you don’t want to get on the wrong side of him, y’know? That’s just bad news for everyone involved, right? Hey, are you listening?”
Krysty answered with a grunt, then added, “Look, apology accepted, and I don’t care about the rest right now. Just keep your eyes on the path ahead and keep riding, okay?”
Jonno pursed his lips. No one talked to him like that. They all tried but they paid. All the bitches who laughed at him for being fat and ugly and scarred. He would just bide his time and get her when she didn’t expect it.
J.B. and Mildred were seated behind riders who said nothing beyond initial hellos. They were glad of it; the last thing they needed was to have to concentrate on conversation after the battle. Particularly, Mildred, who was sure that she would throw up again if the ride was any more rocky.
Doc was behind a large, heavily muscled rider with an ebony skin that seemed to shine in the moonlight that lit the path cleared by the stickies. The old man could feel he was slipping. Nothing seemed real anymore. What was real? A man who had lived his life over three different centuries, with large chunks removed between them, Doc’s grasp of reality was always a little loose, and now he was sure that he had descended into madness. In the distance, riding toward him, he could see a Brougham driven by his beloved Emily, the wife he had left behind in the nineteenth century, and who would never have known what happened to him, just that he vanished one day, without trace and forever. Perhaps it was better that she didn’t know; that she could never see him as he was now, aged and beaten by the fates. God, but he missed her. And here she was, driving toward them. Seated beside her, he could see Rachel and young Jolyon, the children he had never seen grow to maturity, and who had been dead for longer than he could know—longer, indeed, than he had been alive. How could a father so outlive his children? It wasn’t natural. But then, what had happened to him hadn’t been natural.
They couldn’t see him like this. They couldn’t. He turned his head away from them as they approached, tears streaming down his face, his body shuddering in convulsive sobs.
“You okay, man?” the rider asked him, a worried note creeping into his voice.
Doc didn’t answer. It took all his effort not to turn to look at his wife and children as he heard the Brougham approach, gaining with every second. If he could only…if he could just…just wait until the sound was on the wane. If he could only keep his will intact for that long, then surely his sanity would also follow?
It was no good. As the Brougham approached, he felt compelled to turn. It was a force far greater than his meager willpower could cope with—the force of longing, despair and loneliness. Everything he had ever held dear to him had been snatched away—or else he had been snatched away from it. His wife, his children…
Doc gave in to his longing and turned to face the oncoming Brougham. His eyes were wide, tears coursing down his cheeks. As the vehicle passed him, he could see Emily, Rachel and Jolyon turn to look at him. They were the ages they had been when he had last seen them, but changed. Their eyes were empty and their skins were dry and mummified. They were husks. As he, himself, was now…
Doc looked away, crying out in pain and rage. The rider in front tried to keep his eyes fixed on the path ahead. He had heard nothing, seen nothing. There was nothing…
The other riders exchanged glances and shrugs. If they were expecting any of the companions riding with them to explain, they would wait in vain.
Jak had questions of his own. He was riding behind a wide, fat-bellied bald man whose apparent bulk wasn’t just due to excess weight. Underneath, there was a lot of muscle, as Jak had found when he had almost fallen from the horse early in the journey, the horse stumbling in a rut and throwing both riders forward. The bald man had moved with the motion, but Jak had been taken unawares and almost thrown. As he’d toppled, the man had shot out an arm and grabbed Jak. The albino youth had, in turn, taken grip of the arm. He had expected soft flesh. Instead he’d gripped muscles and tendons that were like barbed wire wrapped around brick.
“Thanks,” he had said simply as he clambered back.
“No problem—name’s Stark,” the man had replied with an equal simplicity.
Both were men of few words, but had found a respect for each other in that seemingly inconsequential moment. Jak had thought the man a blubber mountain and had found hidden depths. In return, Stark had been impressed by the albino’s lightning-quick reaction, and the wiry strength with which he’d flung himself back into the saddle; all the more remarkable after the firefight he had just been through.
Since that moment they had conducted a conversation that had been drawn out not by the lack of things to say, but by the natural manner of both. Jak would ask an elliptical question and Stark would pause for a long while, considering an answer that wasted no words. He would then phrase a question of his own and Jak would reply in kind.
Neither had passed comment on Doc, but Jak chose that moment to ask what he felt was an important question.
“Why you hunt stickies?”
Stark waited for some time, then said, “Like Ethan said.”
“So why follow so far when they move on? No sense if they not cause damage. Waste of energy and ammo.”
“Mebbe. But like I say, it’s as Ethan says.”
Jak pondered this. There was a coded message in there, if only he could unlock it. His keen senses were jangling with the rush he always felt when there was danger ahead. It wasn’t like Krysty’s mutie doomie sense, it was something altogether more instinctual, a preternatural development of his instincts that had been honed by years of survival, years of hunting.
“Ethan always tell how it is?” Jak asked finally.
A long pause. “Ethan always tells it how he sees it.”
Jak considered that. Stark picked his words very carefully and he hadn’t actually agreed with what Jak had said.
Thei
r conversation lapsed. The pauses lengthened into silence as they rode on through a night that was now approaching dawn. The other companions were having trouble keeping conscious as fatigue and lack of sleep tried to claim them. But Jak, who had spent so many hours in a state of inert awareness waiting for prey, was able to focus and to stay alert.
So it was that he noticed something very strange, something that made his instincts quiver more than ever.
As the mounted party traversed the trail ripped up by the stickies, the ville of Pleasantville became visible in the distance. A shattered metropolis lay beyond, remnants of old skyscrapers and buildings dimly visible in the early-morning haze. But the ville itself seemed to have been constructed in an old suburban area. It was still too dim for him to fully distinguish, even though his red albino eyes found the twilight of evening and dawn more conducive than the bright light of a daytime sun. However, there was something that made no sense if what Ethan had told them was the whole truth. For, to reach the ville, the riders now left the track that had been carved by the pack of stickies. A track that veered off to one side of the farthest outcrop of the ville, past the last buildings and signs of life that Jak could see.
Surely they had been told that the pack had attacked farms on the edge of the ville, which was why they had been chased. But the track, clearly visible because of the devastation it had caused, veered off way past the last sign of tilled land, cutting across an area that could only be described as a wilderness.
Why had Ethan lied? It looked as though the stickies had passed close to the ville, but hadn’t actually made contact. So why mount the chase at all?
Jak was sure that the answer to this question would also provide an answer to the churning sense of anxiety gnawing at his guts. They were riding into a danger of some kind, of that he was certain. What it was had to be determined, but as he cast a glance at the rest of the companions, tired and battered on the backs of their mounts, in no condition to fight, he was concerned that they were riding into trouble when they were least capable to deal with it.
The ground was now softer under hoof, less rutted and destroyed. The movement of the horses became more fluid, lulling the already exhausted companions into a stupor, with no bone-jarring ruts to shake them out of their torpor. Jak wondered if any of the others had noticed that they had left the stickies’ path, and that it deviated from the ville.
Why? Why had they been lied to? Why had the stickies been hunted so ruthlessly? Was that what had whipped them into a frenzy, or had something else happened to make them that way…perhaps so they could be hunted?
Jak felt the movement of the horse begin to lull him. A sense of fatigue and exhaustion swept over him, making it hard to concentrate.
Shit, whatever faced them, he needed to sleep first. He had no choice.
He jolted awake suddenly. What had caused him to stir? His head was pounding, his heart racing. The last thing he could remember was the ville coming into sight and feeling so, so tired.
Jak raised himself on one elbow and took a look around. First thing to strike him as weird was that he was lying down. How the fuck had that happened without his realizing it? His eyes adjusted easily to the gloom and he could see that the other companions were also in the room with him. There were two windows, with thick hangings that kept out the light, apart from at the very edges where they weren’t flush to the windowframe. Through these gaps, Jak could see that it was a bright light, but not the intensity of midday. Probably late afternoon, early evening.
The room itself was plastered and painted in a light color that trapped whatever could get through the hangings and magnified it. In this half light, Jak could see that the others, like himself, were in beds that were covered with blankets and quilts. Their weapons and supplies were by each bed, as though taken off individually and placed by the right bedside. He looked down: he was still fully dressed. He guessed that his friends were, too. The only other furniture in the room was a long wooden table, set against the far wall and bare apart from a pitcher and six cups.
It would seem that the companions had been lifted en masse from the horses when they had reached the ville, then put to bed like children. A gesture of this magnanimity was something that was unknown in the Deathlands, and Jak was curious as to why they had been afforded such respect. No one was that nice unless they expected something in return. But what? He couldn’t shake the memory of the track forged by the stickies, veering off away from the ville. It had been such a little, and such a stupid, lie. There was a connection of some kind, but he was too tired to work it out right now.
Jak stood, every muscle in his body aching as he did so, the rigors of the firefight and the ride not yet cured by his rest. He could feel every last blow that he had taken during the battle with the stickies, and was sure that the others would feel the same when they awoke. Tentatively he walked toward the table, testing his strength. He was sore, but still quite supple. His limbs hadn’t stiffened with injury as he feared they might. But he could tell that his speed was impaired. Movement was more…not difficult, but awkward. He reached the table and picked up the pitcher, sniffing at the contents. He could smell nothing but the faint aroma of the wood from which the pitcher was made. Jak dipped a finger into the clear liquid and then licked it. No taste other than what you’d expect from water—the faint coppery tang of earth and perhaps a hint of metal from whatever piping had carried it to an outlet.
Figuring it was safe to drink—or at least, as safe as any water—he poured some into one of the cups and drank deeply. His mouth felt as though someone had held a jolt party in there; it was thick and dry. The water eased it.
Jak put down the cup and turned as he heard stirring from behind him. Ryan was starting to come around, raising himself.
“What the fuck happened?” the one-eyed man asked slowly, looking around him and taking in his surroundings.
“Guess were more tired than thought.” Jak shrugged. “Water,” he added, pouring another cup.
Ryan got up from his bed and walked slowly to Jak, taking the cup from him. “Thanks,” he said after drinking deeply. “So this is Pleasantville. I see they’ve left us all our stuff,” he continued, indicating the packs that had been stowed by their bedsides. “Mighty nice of them. A bit too nice,” he added, exchanging a look with Jak. The albino youth nodded.
“Yeah. Triple-red on that,” he said simply.
By this time their lowered voices had penetrated the consciousness of the others and they were all beginning to stir. Krysty and J.B. were next up and they shared Jak and Ryan’s caution. Mildred pulled herself out of bed, but didn’t immediately go to the others. She knelt beside Doc’s bed and checked him.
“Old buzzard was hallucinating out there,” she said over her shoulder to the others. “Just want to see that he’s okay.”
Doc opened one eye and fixed her with a baleful glare. “My dear Dr. Wyeth, pray tell me what is hallucination and what is not, when all—either concrete or fancy—seems so tangible that you can reach out and touch it. Whether or not ’tis there, does that make the emotion it causes any the less real?”
“Yeah, you’re okay,” Mildred muttered. “Now get the hell up and drink something before you dehydrate.”
When all six companions were up and clustered around the table, the door on the far side of the room opened and Horse stepped through. The tall, gaunt sec chief eyed them, then nodded in some private satisfaction.
“So you’re all still here and all awake. Good. Ethan wants to see you. Now.”
* * *
Chapter Four
With some hesitation, the companions followed the sec chief, leaving their weapons and supplies by the sides of their beds. To attempt to retrieve any of them could easily be construed as hostile action and, until they knew what they were up against, it was best to maintain innocence. Besides, the sec party could easily have taken their weapons away while they’d been unconscious and not have treated them with such respect.
&nb
sp; It wasn’t as if they were exactly unarmed now. They might not have their blasters, but Ryan still had the panga sheathed at his thigh, and his scarf—a deadly weapon in experienced hands with the lead weights sewn into the ends that turned it into a bolo—around his neck. Doc carried his swordstick with the silver lion’s-head, and J.B. was equipped with his Tekna hunting knife. As for Jak, it would have been interesting to see if anyone could have found the number of leaf-bladed throwing knives secreted on his person.
So, if Ethan, baron of Pleasantville, and his sec chief trusted them enough not to do a body search, to take away Jak’s jacket and Doc’s cane, and to leave their weapons by their bedsides, then why should they feel any suspicion? Not for any reason that could be rationalized. Just their instincts telling them that people in the Deathlands—particularly barons—were never normally this friendly.
Horse led them along a maze of corridors lined with windows that showed that they were moving through more than one building. Some of the old suburban sprawl of houses that constituted part of Pleasantville had been joined together by stucco-and-brick corridors that made several houses and shacks into one single building. It would be possible to travel almost an entire circuit of the ville without actually setting foot outside into the elements.
It would also make finding the way around more difficult if you weren’t familiar with the ville. This was something that always set alarm bells ringing loudly in Ryan’s head, and they were certainly deafening right now.
“Why does Ethan want to see us?” he asked the sec chief in as neutral a tone as possible. It was the first time any of them had spoken since leaving their dormitory, and Ryan felt his voice sound unnatural and loud in the quiet corridor. They had passed no one on their journey, and although they could see people outside and through the windows of other buildings, it was almost as though they had been purposely isolated from the ville inhabitants until they had seen the baron. It didn’t help their sense of paranoia.