by James Axler
Here was the true business of Pleasantville…
* * *
Chapter Five
“Remarkable, truly remarkable.” Mildred looked up from the stethoscope at the keen-faced woman who stood, hovering, on the opposite side of the bench. She smiled, and it was returned. “So tell me,” Mildred continued, “how the hell did you come by this?”
Michaela shrugged. She was small, just over five feet, and had a crop of gingery-brown hair that had been razored so that the long spikes stood on end. Her oval face was open, her brown eyes keen. She looked more like a teenager in a school than an experienced healer.
“That’s the weirdest thing,” she said in a voice that was as young as her face. “I think that there must be an old hospital in the remains of the predark ville that still has some old tech working in it. One of the hunting parties that was out in there came across it, and brought all this stuff back. It took them a couple of journeys, and to be honest it didn’t make much sense to me at first. But Bones has so much stuff, all I had to do was root around until I found books that explained it all.”
“Bones?” Mildred queried.
“Yeah. He’s the guy your friend Doc is staying with. I hope you don’t mind me saying this,” she added cautiously, “but they seem well matched.”
Mildred bit her cheek to stifle a laugh. “In what way would that be, then?” she asked ingenuously.
Michaela shuffled. She was a heavy-set woman, but light on her feet, and the movement of her feet on the floor of the building used as a hospital was like a light scratching. “Well, it’s just that Bones has a reputation for being a bit crazy. Nothing wrong with that, I guess it’s a kind of occupational hazard, a bit like me risking getting sick dealing with sick people, what with him having to deal with all that information and try and work out what it means. It’s bound to make you a bit strange compared to everyone else.”
Mildred couldn’t contain herself any longer. She laughed, a hearty belly laugh that made Michaela look at her strangely. “No, maybe I’ll explain it to you sometime,” Mildred gasped, viewing the healer’s baffled expression, “but for different reasons, you couldn’t be more right. It’s not an insult at all, I just think you’ve hit it right on the nose. Guess this means that Ethan is pretty slick when it comes to putting people together. Very good at character judgment.”
Michaela’s pretty face clouded for a moment—only a second, but enough to make Mildred notice. “Yeah,” the woman murmured, “he is kinda good at that sort of thing.”
It had been so brief that Mildred could almost have assured herself that it was her own imagination at work. But it had been there. She decided to press the matter. “Ethan has it all worked out—getting someone to take on all that old knowledge that you found and try to make sense of it, getting this stuff shipped out here so you can study it. And hell, this is the richest ville that I’ve seen for a long, long time. Seems like he wants to drag you all out of the dark ages and into a new age.”
Michaela chewed her lip. “In some ways I guess you could say that,” she muttered. “In some ways…But let’s get back to this. You say you’ve seen things like this before?”
Mildred scanned the child-woman’s face. There was something that she didn’t want to let slip right now, that was for sure. But then again, how could Mildred hide her own excitement and not reveal how she had knowledge of what was in front of her: something that she thought she would never see again. Vaccines against smallpox, chicken pox and rubella. Three slides taken from three vials and examined under the ’scope. Viruses and vaccines in a refrigerated cabinet that she had not seen since the days before skydark, when she had been a working hospital doctor.
“I guess I’m kind of like this Bones guy,” she said cautiously. “I find something interesting on our travels, and I like to find out more.”
“So this has survived elsewhere? We’re not alone?” Michaela said with an anxious eagerness.
“Yeah, I’ve seen it,” Mildred said carefully, “but not for a very long time.”
“YOU ASK ME, there ain’t a finer armory anywhere on this craphole planet,” Scar said proudly, chambering a round into a pump-action 12-gauge and taking aim at a distant target. He squeezed and the blaster roared, the target—a wooden representation of a man—splintering under the impact. The recoil had to have been heavy, but there wasn’t even the slightest tremor in the man’s shoulder muscles. J.B. noted this: Scar Longthorne, the armorer for Pleasantville, was three hundred pounds of muscle, standing at six-two. He made the wiry J.B. look like a scrawny dwarf beside him. And he had an ego to match his size.
All that J.B. had heard about since he’d been dropped off at the armory was how big, how well-equipped, how well-maintained it was. And it was true that the ville had amassed—either through trade, scavenge or plunder—a formidable range of weaponry. They had knives, swords and spears of all descriptions, immaculately oiled and polished. There was a wide range of handblasters, rifles, SMGs, and also a few heavy-duty grenade launchers. All of these crated and oiled, stored in oiled paper and rags to protect them until they were required. Grens and plas ex for a wide variety of uses, all stored at the optimum for their maintenance, be it damp, dry, cool or warm. Yes, Scar had done a good job. It was just that J.B. wished he would shut up for once. He hadn’t stopped boasting since J.B. had arrived.
Why? He didn’t have to: the Armorer would admit that it was a good armory, well-kept. But he had seen better—both bigger and of wider range—during his days with Trader and after. And, much as he admired a man who had a pride in his work, and shared J.B.’s love of inventory, there was something about Scar that didn’t ring true. The nonstop barrage of boasting wasn’t purely about his work.
The man looked as though he had been a warrior, and a good one. His name came from the multitude of white, crisscrossed lines that covered his otherwise tanned torso. But there was hint of fat around the gut that didn’t sit with the muscles on his chest, arms and neck; a slight drag in one leg as he walked. J.B. suspected that Scar felt some kind of resentment at being retired from the fight, felt belittled at being put in charge of the inventory instead of being a user; and this belligerent display was his way of proving that he was still of some use.
Which would make him prickly and possibly dangerous. J.B. would have to tread carefully if he was to learn anything from this man. And learn he had to: if the companions were to work out what Ethan’s aim may be and what their chances were of walking away without having to stand and fight.
“Yeah, I must say, it looks pretty impressive. And I doubt if I’ve ever seen anything kept in a better condition,” J.B. said carefully when the echo of the shotgun discharge had blown away on the breeze. “I guess that the baron is pretty keen on amassing a good armory, else you wouldn’t have anything like this. Am I right?”
“Sure as shit,” Scar replied. He was warming to the stranger who had been thrust upon him. He had the right amount of respect. “But see,” he added, gesturing at J.B. with the 12-gauge, which he held loosely in one hand, “it’s not just the size of the armory that counts, it’s how you keep it. Ethan’s keen on getting together a shitload of weapons, but if he didn’t have me to look after it…”
“Exactly. It’d just be a pile of junk. And that would be no good to anyone,” J.B. said, massaging the big man’s ego and watching him visibly preen at his words.
“You got that right. See, I was a fighter and hunter for a long time, but I always had the best weapons, ’cause I looked after them. Then I got hurt—” he went silent, as though the memory were still painful “—and it took a while to heal. Started looking after all this while I was waiting, and when I was fit enough to get back into the fray, Ethan begged me to stay doing this. Said he’d never seen an armory like it, and that it would make the ville stronger. Shit, when your baron makes you an offer like that, how can you say no?”
You can’t because he’d have you chilled, J.B. thought, that’s how it works. But he s
aid something completely different: “The thing I don’t get is, what’s Ethan afraid of? We didn’t see any other villes in striking distance, and it doesn’t seem like you have much trouble—you do too much trade, from what I’ve seen, to be at war with anyone. Who the fuck do you fight with all this?”
Scar eyed J.B. up and down. The Armorer kept his face blank, not betraying his intense curiosity, making it seem like an innocent question.
Finally, the heavily scarred man said, “Mebbe we don’t fight so much as do a lot of hunting. And that’s all I can say to you. If Ethan wants us to talk about it, then he’ll say. That’s all.”
The big man turned on his heel and strode off toward the armory building, the 12-gauge over his shoulder. He was suddenly, and obviously, silent, which gave J.B. something to think about as he followed on his heels.
KRYSTY WAS in a house filled with color. From room to room, the air was thick with the musk of scented cloth, the natural smells of the cotton and wool, freshly washed, sun and woven, mingling with the oils and perfumes used to make the cloth more attractive as it was cut into clothing. The scent and the colors were almost overpowering, taking the woman back to her days as a child, with Mother Sonja in the ville of Harmony, where everything was fresh, clean, good and filled with sensations, many of which had been dulled by the grind of survival in the Deathlands.
This entire house was nothing more or less than a warehouse for the cloth sold and traded by Angelika, the woman with whom Krysty had been billeted. She was a tall, thin woman of indeterminate age. Her hair was piled high on her head and interwoven with strands of her own cloth in a multitude of colors that seemed to do nothing less than turn her into a walking rainbow—or a good advertisement of her own wares. And when she spoke, she had a strange accent that Krysty couldn’t place.
“How did you come to be here?” Krysty asked her as they moved bales of cloth.
“I trade and I travel.” The woman shrugged. “I traverse the seas in boats that are almost sinking…Many the time I could have been chilled, never to see dry land once more. But the fates, they look after me, more than so many others. So I land, and I travel once more, buy and sell, buy and sell. Then I come here with traders and Ethan makes me offer.”
“Which was? I mean, it must have been something to stop you after all that travel,” Krysty asked, trying to draw the woman out.
“The journeys, they become all as one after a while. Mebbe is time for a change. Mebbe time to stay, make roots. And why not here? Ethan tells me…” She paused, weighing her words. “Well, he give me chance to build finest stock of cloth in the land. Make the best trade. Become first in this, as in all else. This ville become rich, and get richer. Has something few others have.”
“What’s that?” Krysty tried to make it seem an offhand question, but her curiosity was definitely piqued.
Angelika smiled. “Ambition. Old word. And something—shit, what is word…” She clicked her fingers impatiently. “Ah, unique. Yes, that is it—unique.”
Krysty frowned. She wasn’t getting the whole story. But before she had a chance to frame a further question, Angelika hurried her with a little gesture.
“Now come, we still have much to do, not to gossip around fire like old women in the evening.”
“IS THIS ALL YOU DO? Sit around?” Jak was bored. If he was in the middle of stalking prey, he could stay silent and still for hours. But this was intolerable: inaction born of inertia.
“We don’t always hunt. It’s not that kind of ville. So why don’t you just kick back and go with it, Whitey? Fretting about it ain’t gonna make things any different.” Jonno crossed his fat legs and propped them on the table. He smiled, his scarred face seemingly smug. Complacent and lazy. Jak’s dislike of him was even more pronounced than before.
Jak had been given a bed in the fat man’s house and had been assigned to learn more about the hunters in Pleasantville. There was no way he was going to learn anything at the moment, as it seemed that they weren’t in a hunting mood. There was one thing that made him curious, however. He had believed that the fat man was actually sec rather than hunter, as he had been with the party that had captured them—Jak looked upon it as that, seeing they had been given little choice in their actions—and had answered to Horse, the sec chief. Hunting and working sec were different tasks, and to see a ville working the two in tandem was unusual. It set some alarm bells ringing in the albino’s head.
Jak paced up and down the small room, looking out the window at the activity in the street. The air of torpor that permeated the fat man’s living quarters was driving him mad. The street outside looked rich: there was a lot of jack, a lot of trade. Also a fairly large population, big enough to require a good quantity of game to support their appetites. Okay, so they made a lot out of their trading. The scrublands around that housed the farms couldn’t keep this ville fed, and they had to get through a lot of game, even if they traded foodstuffs. So why weren’t they hunting?
“You wondering why we’re not out there chasing some mutie skunk to skin it and cook it?” Jonno asked. Jak turned and shot him a sharp glance. Was he some kind of mutie with a sense that could see what he was thinking? The fat man caught the glance and held up his hands. “Hey, ain’t that what you and your weirdo friends do to get by out there?”
Jak relaxed. The man was just setting him up for another insult. That he could deal with.
“So when you hunt? Plenty mouths feed, not much work done,” Jak replied, ignoring the gibe in the fat man’s comments.
Jonno smiled. It was the face only, the eyes remaining dead, scanning Jak to try to get some response from him. “Oh, there’s plenty of work gets done, but only when the time is right. You know what I mean?”
“Seasons for game around here? And you hunt then, keep meat preserved?” Jak asked, knowing that wasn’t the answer, but trying, in his turn, to lead the fat man on.
Jonno grinned, flicked his tongue over his teeth, relishing some memory that he didn’t want to share. “Yeah,” he said slowly, “I guess you could say that. A season…a time when it’s right and when the stakes are high. Then the hunting begins. And it keeps us fed for a whole lot longer than you’d think.”
He laughed. It was low, lascivious and filled with a lust for blood. But not in the sense of being a hunter: Jak had heard that sound before, from the sick and twisted evil they had encountered on their journeys.
Whatever was hunted around Pleasantville, Jak was pretty sure it wasn’t game for food.
RYAN CROUCHED, his body leaning slightly forward, weight balanced on the balls of his feet, rocking gently. In one hand he held his panga, the other was free, palm flat, to act as balance. He circled the sec chief, who was just out of arm’s reach, also crouching and circling. The ghost of a smile played at the corners of the dark man’s mouth, his dreadlocks swaying in rhythm to his body movement.
Suddenly, with the speed of a snake, the sec chief thrust himself forward, his arm twisting so that his knife traveled in a corkscrew movement toward the one-eyed man’s gut. Ryan shifted his weight and pulled back, narrowly avoiding the corkscrew motion as he just went beyond reach. At the same time, he brought his empty hand down, the edge of his palm striking just below the elbow, deadening a nerve. The barest grimace crossed Horse’s impassive visage as the knife dropped from fingers now nerveless and numb, all feeling killed by the blow. Before he had a chance to recover and use his other arm, Ryan had stepped beneath his guard and had the panga on an upward swing, the lethal blade arcing toward the sec chief’s jugular.
Horse brought his free arm up to grab at Ryan’s hair and neck, but he knew that it was too little, too late. The blade stopped within a hairbreadth of his neck, the rapid ascent suddenly halted by Ryan’s rock-steady arm. The sec chief could feel the rush of air on his throat, could almost taste the cold metal in the fear in his mouth.
Ryan’s gritted teeth grinned mirthlessly. “You’re not bad, but you’ve been out of practice. I figure you woul
d have been faster if you hadn’t spent so long out of combat.”
The one-eyed man dropped the blade and stepped back out of the sec chief’s grasp.
Horse exhaled a long breath that said plenty. “Fuck, fuck, fuck,” he swore softly, before raising his voice to a normal level. “Shit, Ryan, it doesn’t look good for you to do this to me in front of these guys, but it’s a good thing. A reminder that we’re slack.”
Ryan shrugged. “You can’t keep a hundred percent if there’s no one to fight. It’s the old problem. Training only gets you so far—unless you’re willing to go the whole way and risk losing men by keeping it real. And that’s just stupe. We’ve had a lot of travels and met a lot of fuckers who’d see us buy the farm. You’ve got your land so well sewn up that you don’t get challenged.”
“Yeah, but how do you keep a sec force up to the task if they don’t get the chance to fight? Answer me that?”
Ryan shook his head. “Wish I could.”
The two men had been talking as though they were alone. In fact, they were being watched by a number of Horse’s select sec guard in charge of outlying patrols around the baron’s territory. Ethan knew the problem the sec chief faced with no real combat for his men, and also that Horse would welcome input from Ryan, who the sec chief had singled out for attention in his discussions with his baron. So it had been obvious that Ethan would send Ryan to Horse’s hospitality.
The first thing the sec chief did was to arrange close-combat practice. The men carried this out, watched by Ryan and Horse. The two men had then staged this little display for the watching guard.
“Okay, men, break now. Take a drink, loosen up. We hike after the sun reaches its height,” the sec chief called before leading Ryan toward his shack.