Deathlands - The Twilight Children

by James Axler

  Someone said it.

  The shape disintegrated as it left the chamber, becoming transparent and without form.

  The door closed again, and the blackness enclosed the gateway chamber and everyone inside it.

  Chapter Thirty-Nine

  The man astride the small black-and-white pony was lean and hard, with curling side whiskers.

  He was reciting a monologue to himself, about the world being a stage and how everyone had to play a part. But that the fates had dealt him the hand of a lover, and that his girl had betrayed him, cheated him.

  "But I'd rather carry on listenin' to those lies..."

  The trail was narrow between the tall pines, and he'd heard talk at his previous night's lodgings of there being some big mutie critter in the woods. Half the trappers and hunters said it was a humpback grizzly sow. Others talked about a slewfoot cougar that already chilled a dozen settlers in that part of New England.

  "They can bring down the curtain."

  He reined in the pony and blew his nose on a torn cotton kerchief. Singing the old songs, best as he could recall them, of King Elvis always made Lonnie's eyes water. That was why he only ever gave voice when he was out on the trail, which was most of the time, sell-nig his handmade blasters and rebuilds all across Deathlands.

  His last trip had brought him the whole way from old Seattle in the west, into New Hampshire, alongside the great mirrored expanse of Shamplin Lake.

  On previous trips, he'd been able to do some trading with the young folks at Quindley. They mostly used rifles and muskets. Lonnie generally didn't sell long guns. Too clumsy and too obvious. But the saddlebags that Lucifer carried were filled with the actions and locks for all blasters. Quindley-the ville that stuck out into the cold water like a diseased thumb, with that freak baron. Morgyn? Mordred?

  "Moses," Lonnie said.

  But the word of the gaudy where he'd stayed had told of some major disaster in the ville along the shore, a big fire that had filled the air for a hundred miles around with the heavy scent of wood smoke.

  It had happened, so the scar-faced slut had told him, as they lay together on the unmade bed, about a week ago. The survivors had stumbled away as though they were in a daze, abandoning the place to nature.

  "Lot starved," the woman had said. "Wandered around like they'd had their brains picked clean by crows. Didn't know what to do with themselves."

  Lonnie figured that he was probably wasting his time by calling at the ruins, but you never knew. He'd once sold three-quarters of his stock to a white-haired granny near Duquesne, Missouri. She ran a traveling gaudy and needed some extra protection. Thrown in five freebies with her girls as part of the price.

  He was nearing the end of his sweeping run from west to east. It had been an easy ride, with no serious

  problems, apart from an earth slip in the Dakotas that had delayed him for a couple of rainy days.

  There was a sister who lived to the north east, on the Lantic, with gray shores and thousands of hideous spike-shelled crabs for company. New Haven. Lonnie generally called in on her when he was in the area.

  Now HE was CLOSE to where Quindley had been.

  He heeled Lucifer along, wary that the snaggle-toothed brute might swing its head around to try to take a chunk out of his thigh. It wouldn't have been the first time.

  Lonnie broke into his half-remembered version of King Elvis's "Return to Sender," puzzling over the line about her dress unsewn, as he always did.

  Now he could smell the smoke, charred wood, still hanging below the branches of the damp pines. Ahead of him, as the trail opened out with a view north along the lake, he saw that the stories had been right.

  Quindley was gone.

  A few blackened piles stuck up from the water, like the remnants of trees when a forest fire's passed by. The fields around still looked more or less the same, though. As Lonnie drew closer, he could see that rank weeds were already beginning to spring in among the neat rows of crops.

  He reined in Lucifer, right at the edge of the lake, sighing to himself.

  "Waste of time," he said. "Mission aborted."

  He had a slight cold and reached inside his pocket for a kerchief, his fingers encountering a folded piece of paper. Lonnie knew what it was and took it out. He carefully opened the written message from those two cold-eyes up near Seattle. It was to be given to a one-eyed man traveling with a redhead, and a black woman and an old guy and some others that Lonnie couldn't quite remember.

  The older of the pair had been a real triple-jack bastard. Eyes like obsidian chips washed in melt-water. He carried a battered Armalite like he knew how to use it. Other one was smaller. He'd done the writing, Lonnie recalled. They threatened him with what would happen if he didn't do his best to deliver the message.

  "Well, I fucking tried. And enough is fucking enough."

  He dropped the crumpled bit of paper into the lake and kicked Lucifer on again, northeast.

  As it hit the water, the note unfolded like a moth leaving its cocoon, and for a few moments the words were legible before it became sodden and sank from view.

  Success. Will stay round Seattle for three months. Come quick. Abe.

  The sound of the pony's hooves faded into the distance.

  Though the smell of wood smoke still lingered.