by James Axler
“Yes?” Krysty urged.
“Unless the kids are eating something different from everyone else,” Mildred said.
“No,” Krysty assured her. “Everyone gets the same, pretty much. We get a fresh delivery of bread, honey, cured meats, dried and fresh fruit each day, some other stuff. The tiny ones eat less but we all pretty much—”
“Honey could...” Mildred began and stopped.
“Could what?” Krysty asked.
“Kids don’t have the resistance to the bacteria that can exist in honey,” Mildred said. “In fact, they used to say that children under twelve months old shouldn’t eat anything with honey in it.”
“Who said?”
“Medics, doctors,” Mildred explained. “Damn it, why didn’t I see that? If these babies are eating honey and there’s any kind of contagion... Well, they’re the ones who’ll react. And react just the way you’ve seen. Lethargic, unable to focus...”
“And the round tummy on the girl?”
“Constipation,” Mildred said.
Krysty looked behind her at the shaded windows of the nursery where the babies were held. “So what do we do?”
“Stop feeding them honey,” Mildred said. “Change the diet for the little ones.”
“And if they already have this botulism infection?”
“Hold all the babies here until I can get them checked properly,” Mildred instructed. “Their parents, too. I’ll bring Petra and the others in, set up a room at the medical faculty and flush the toxins out of these kids’ systems.”
Krysty nodded. “I’ll do that. And you’re sure it’s not contagious?”
“Positive. You’ll be all right,” Mildred assured her as she got up to leave.
That evening Mildred returned with a group of medical assistants and they began to test the children. Mildred was working from memory, but she had found something she recognized and she did all she could to pass that knowledge to her colleagues.
Chapter Twenty-Two
Dawn arrived with birdsong and fingers of sunlight, but there was a tint of yellow to the sky where the pollutants hung.
J.B. was awake before the birds, working through his plan in his mind as he lay next to a sleeping Mildred in the bed they shared. There had been no passion between them in the ten days since they had arrived in Heaven Falls; in fact, they had hardly touched. Mildred had been consumed by her role at the medical tower, and it seemed to J.B. that she was spending all her tenderness there, because when she came home she was exhausted and it was all she could do to stop talking about salves and potions for two minutes straight. J.B. didn’t mind. His relationship with Mildred had always been patchy, passions flaring when the opportunities arose. Right now, he had other things on his mind, too, concerns about the walled ville they seemed to have settled in.
Ten days. That was about the longest he and Ryan had ever stuck in one place. Certainly the longest they had been in a place without having a plan to get out again. J.B. had an idea about that, but Ryan wasn’t buying it; Ryan just wasn’t interested. That nagged at J.B., too, as he got out of bed and dressed.
Once clothed, J.B. shoved his sheathed Tekna combat knife into his waistband and pushed it out of sight. He dearly wanted to carry a blaster but, just now, that was an invitation to get himself into an uncomfortable line of questioning he couldn’t get out of, or worse, get himself chilled without any questioning, uncomfortable or otherwise. He crept out of the house, careful not to wake Mildred or Ricky.
* * *
DOC WAS EATING breakfast when J.B. arrived at his cabin.
“What is it like out there, J.B.?” Doc asked by way of greeting as the Armorer slipped through the door.
“Cold,” J.B. replied.
Doc showed J.B. the plate from which he was eating. “Have you had breakfast? Might I interest you in some delicious bread, warmed through over the fire?”
J.B. nodded and took an unadorned slice, cut as thick as his thumb joint. He needed to eat. The rule of the Deathlands was always to eat when there was food available, because you never knew when it would be available again. This ville had changed that, but J.B. was planning to go out beyond the gates this day, and he didn’t know for sure how long he would be gone. He hoped it would just be for the day, but hope didn’t keep a man alive.
Doc added honey to a corner of crust and invited J.B. to help himself. “You had no trouble, then, joining my crew for the day?” he asked.
J.B. shook his head. He had told his superior at the worksite that he wanted to explore his horizons—which was truer than she realized—and she had been understanding. “A body’s got to find the hole where it fits,” she’d told him. “You come back tomorrow and tell me how it went. Maybe I’ll lose a diligent worker or maybe I won’t.”
Breakfast over, Doc and J.B. left the cabin and trudged into the center of the ville. All around, people were starting work. There were burly farmers turning fertilizer on the fields, construction crews laying the foundations of new buildings and artisans working wood in the workshops.
Doc’s fellow beekeepers met them in the shadow of the white towers. J.B. was introduced to the team leader, Jon, and his deputy, Thomas, whose wild brown hair looked like an out-of-control mop.
“J.B.?” Jon queried. “That stand for something?”
“John Barrymore,” J.B. told him. “I’m a John, too.”
Jon laughed at that and slapped J.B. on the back. “Good man. I have a feelin’ we’re going to get along all right.”
* * *
THE BEEKEEPERS STARTED their work by checking on hives inside the walls of Heaven Falls. J.B. had grilled Doc about the procedure on the way over, so he knew what to expect. He was issued a pair of thick gloves that were streaked with varnish but still durable, and he stepped in to help harvest honey from the hives under Jon’s watchful eye. Doc was used to the work by now, and he and Thomas worked through two hives each in the time it took Jon to show J.B. the parts of one.
“Think you can handle one on your own?” Jon asked.
J.B. nodded. “Nothing to it,” he said. “Like field stripping a blaster. Just gotta remember where all the pieces go.”
Jon looked at him askance but said nothing.
* * *
IT WAS ALMOST midday by the time the beekeeping crew was ready to check on the outside hives. The morning’s work had been continuous, but it was nothing on the physically demanding work that J.B. had been engaged in at the construction sites. The group had stopped for a midmorning snack of sweetened tea made from the leaves of one of the local shrubs, and some dried fruit, though J.B. had found the tea too sweet for his tastes.
As the sun strived toward its zenith, Jon led the group to the main gates and confirmed their duties with the Melissas who stood guard there. J.B. knew both of the women who were on duty, Adele and Linda, recognizing them from his first day in the mountains.
J.B. watched as the gates were drawn back, feeling a strong sense of anticipation as the greenery beyond came into view for the first time in a little more than a week. He eyed the mechanism of the gate, noting how the cantilevers functioned, storing the knowledge away.
Outside, man-made beehives lined the walk up to the settlement wall. Painted white, they were poised like wooden sheep grazing in the long grass.
J.B. followed Jon and the others as they went to the nearest of the hives and began their work.
J.B. worked for a while, taking things slowly and keeping an eye on the sentry post atop the ville gates. The sec women seemed relaxed, which was understandable—there was no enemy out here; tranquillity reigned.
Once he was certain that the Melissas weren’t watching him, J.B. left the hive he was tending and spoke with Doc. “I’m going to duck out,” he said in a low voice. “Don’t know how long I’ll be. You figure
you can cover for me if Jon starts getting antsy?”
Doc looked sternly at J.B. “I hope you know what you are doing,” he said.
“Yeah, me, too,” J.B. quipped. Then he went to talk to Jon, explaining that he was prone to headaches sometimes and that maybe the sun had got to him.
“You need to go back inside?” Jon asked, genuinely concerned. “Get some medication?”
J.B. held up his hand to stall the man. “I’ll be fine,” he said. “I usually find I can walk it off. I’ll take an early lunch and clear my head.”
Jon agreed that sounded like the thing to do, and J.B. turned and began to stride back toward the gates. It wouldn’t do to play his hand too early, he knew. Walking a straight line to the redoubt would attract attention; he had to make this look convincing.
While Jon, Thomas and Doc continued to work, J.B. took a slow, meandering stroll and along the ville wall, kicking at the long grass and occasionally pushing his hat back to rub at his head. Jon asked how he was feeling just once, and before long he had been all but forgotten about. It was then that J.B. changed direction and headed toward the trees that littered the east edge of the valley. It was green there and had plenty of shade—it looked just the kind of place a man with a migraine might choose to sit quietly and rest.
J.B. checked back over his shoulder just once, trusting his instincts that he wasn’t being followed and not wanting to give Jon or Tom any opening to catch his eye and call him back. Then he was gone, disappearing among the trees, picking up his pace the moment he was out of sight.
Back at the hives, lunch arrived and Jon and his team took their break.
“What happened to your bud?” Thomas asked as he bit into a sandwich of freshly baked bread and honey-roasted boar.
“He gets these headaches from time to time,” Doc said, backing up J.B.’s lie on cue. “I imagine he has found himself a shady spot to lie down somewhere. Probably fallen asleep.”
“He’s missing out,” Jon said through a mouthful of sandwich. “Let’s save him some boar.”
“He’ll appreciate that,” Doc said, biting into his own sandwich. There was no question that it tasted delicious.
* * *
TAKING A CIRCUITOUS route, J.B. made his way down the slope toward the redoubt. As he got closer, he began to recognize the contours of the land and the positions of the trees from the first time he was there.
Up close, the redoubt looked like a squared-off concrete arch set in a mound of grass, the metal doors wedged half-open and stained with moss and mold, elaborate scaffolding around them. Plants grew at the top of the mound, creepers hanging down over the doors in ineffectual camouflage.
J.B. slowed his pace, slipped behind a tree and eyed the open doorway from forty feet away. There was a figure there, dressed in white and curved like a woman. A Melissa.
That didn’t come as much surprise. He had observed the engineering crews leave at dawn on several mornings, usually three or four people accompanied by two Melissas. It tended to be women who went out, but he’d seen one man go with the crew on the ninth day, carrying a huge crate of supplies—packhorse and general hack presumably.
J.B. hunkered down, preparing to wait.
* * *
IT TOOK ALMOST four hours before J.B. saw any movement from the redoubt. By then, he had been sitting behind the tree so long that his backside had gone numb; but he didn’t shift, aware that every unnecessary movement risked attracting the attention of that guard on the door.
The Melissa emerged without preamble, stepping from the redoubt entrance in a swish of white robes. She was the black-haired one he first met—what was her name? Nancy?
Nancy was followed by two other women who were dressed in plain clothes and carried toolkits that were speckled with paint and oil.
J.B. waited, watching as the group gathered just outside the redoubt entrance. They stood around awhile, chatting just loud enough that their voices carried to J.B. but their words did not. He listened, hiding in the shadows, resisting the urge to keep watching.
Shortly, the tone of the conversation became louder, and J.B. figured someone else had joined the women. Warily, the Armorer peered out from behind his tree. Two more women had joined the group, one of them the blond-haired Melissa called Phyllida. J.B. watched, hand over his brow, masking the glint of the sunlight from his glasses.
The group talked for a minute more while two of the women worked on the redoubt doors, sealing them manually from the outside with a crisscross of tied webbing across the scaffold. Then all five women began to march into the woods, heading back in the direction of Heaven Falls. J.B. shifted position and watched them go. He felt certain they had to have finished their shift, that they were headed home for the day. It was about three-thirty in the afternoon, which meant this work crew would be back home by four, leaving no time for another crew to take over the job, unless they ran a night shift. They’d likely pulled a long shift in the bleak, bomb-scarred interior—little wonder they packed up early. It was a good bet that the redoubt was shut up for the day. J.B. hoped so.
Once he was certain they were gone, J.B. moved from cover and hurried down the slope to the redoubt doors. The doors had been hitched together using some baling wire and strong thread made of canvas. J.B. examined the way the wire had been tied, slipped one end out of a hook that had been forced into the concrete arch and unwound it. In a minute, he had the cord loose and could get to the doors.
J.B. pushed the heel of his hand into the ridge between the doors and shoved, gritting his teeth as he put his shoulder muscles to work. Had he thought about it, he might have brought some tools, but despite his preparations he hadn’t, so it was all down to brute force.
The door groaned on ancient tracks before finally parting a few inches, enough that J.B. could get both hands inside and get a better grip. Then the Armorer steadied himself with spread legs and shoved again, harder this time, until the door inched backward. A moment later the redoubt was open enough that J.B. could step inside.
Within, the redoubt was just the same as he remembered it. Dirty concrete walls with metal plates removed and leaned upright against the leftmost wall, a thin layer of black mold reaching along the floor and up the walls to about the height of his hips.
J.B. hurried through the open room, heading for the corridor that led deeper into the redoubt proper. Overhead lights fired up automatically, sensing the movement.
* * *
IT TOOK J.B. close to four minutes to navigate the redoubt and find his way to the mat-trans chamber. The redoubt was unmanned; no surprise Melissas waiting to challenge an intruder. J.B. had been confident there wouldn’t be—he’d been watching these people the past few days, knew their routines. “Routine will be the death of them,” he told himself as he entered the empty control room.
The aisle of desks had been cleared of bomb debris, and shone under the artificial lights. Cracks still scored across the walls, but the dust and dirt had been swept away and a broken section of the flooring had been fenced in using some boxes to prevent anyone tripping on it. The comps were either dead or switched off, but J.B. could see evidence where someone had jury-rigged a new power source. That meant the control room should be operational at the flick of that switch.
J.B. walked to the mat-trans chamber and peered inside. The armaglass had been patched and resealed; ugly smears of a substance resembling putty ran across the space where the glass had been damaged in the bomb blast. Inside, the floor had been patched, too, damaged tiles replaced with new ones that had been located somewhere in the redoubt, maybe plucked off the walls of another room. Smoke damage blackened the back wall, and J.B. could see where the bomb had gone off. But someone had made a good effort at repairing everything, and checking it over he was pretty sure the door could be sealed shut, which meant that if the mat-trans was operational, it would be able to
transfer people and gear to another redoubt.
J.B. stood, studying the repair work. Someone had gone to a lot of trouble to make things right again, someone who wanted an operational mat-trans that could be used when it was needed.
The Trai had rebuilt this thing, which meant they planned to use it. But what did they need it for? Where were they planning to go? In J.B.’s experience, the mat-trans technology was too unpredictable to target a site. He and his companions had used them to travel across the nuke-scarred remains of the United States and to a few places outside, but they had never known where they would end up. Either the Trai had figured out a way to set the destination, or they didn’t care where they went—like explorers.
That didn’t make sense, either. The Trai had everything they needed here. Fertile land that yielded abundant food and a safe location that had strong natural protection. The Regina had said something at the rally about taking light out into the darkness or some such hogwash, J.B. recalled, but using the mat-trans still seemed awfully random. Who knew where they’d end up?
Unless maybe that was the point of it all, he thought. To end up anywhere. To end up everywhere.
“Shit,” J.B. cursed as the realization dawned on him. He had told Ryan that they could be training an army up here in the mountains. If that was the case, then here was the transport for that army, a way to shunt troops out across the Deathlands and to chill all opposition before they even knew what hit them.
Just then J.B. heard a noise behind him and realized that he wasn’t alone.
Chapter Twenty-Three
There were two Melissas standing in the doorway to the anteroom. One was Phyllida, their leader, and the other was Nancy, her black hair piled high atop her head. Behind them, the three other women were just filing in.
J.B. watched from where he stood inside the mat-trans chamber, the light through the glass painting the Melissas’ white robes red-violet.
“What are you doing here?” Phyllida asked, locking J.B. with a fierce glare.