by James Axler
Doc would be the first. The old man had courage, but his body was considerably weaker than Jak’s, his skills less honed and his mind inclined to wander. Not easy as such, but the easiest. Then he would take Krysty. She was strong, and had the doomie instincts that gave her an edge when danger was afoot. She would be difficult to best, but he knew her weaknesses. Ryan, he would have to leave to last. The one-eyed man was strong, a good fighter and a good hunter. His weakness was that he wasn’t a natural jungle fighter and could be taken by surprise. His strength was that he was bigger than Jak, had more power in those muscles and was tenacious. Jak would be wearier than Ryan, having already eliminated two opponents, but he had an edge of speed that wouldn’t be dulled enough to even them up.
It wasn’t something that the albino wished to consider. Since he had left the swamps of the bayou, these people had been his friends and family. Even when he had left them temporarily, and his beloved wife and child had been chilled by coldheart bandits, they had returned to help him seek vengeance. He would die protecting them, and now he was tied to a piece of wood, thinking of how he could chill them to insure his own survival.
Jak Lauren’s heart hardened as he watched Baron Ethan at his work. If the baron was full of shit, and the hypnotism didn’t work, then they would be together and crush him. But if he genuinely knew what he was doing, and Jak had to chill his friends to survive, then he would return to Pleasantville and he would take great pleasure in helping Ethan buy the farm if it was the last thing he was ever to do.
ETHAN HELD THE CRYSTAL in front of Doc’s eyes, the light glittering off it as it twirled lazily on the end of the leather thong. The old man tried to look away, but Ethan reached out and snapped his head back so that their eyes met.
“You believe that it is possible, then,” the baron stated simply. “That’s good. That makes my task a whole lot easier. There will be less resistance…” He fixed his eyes on Doc’s, and to the old man it felt as if the baron were looking into his soul. Despite his best efforts, a whimper escaped his lips and a cruel answering smile crossed Ethan’s visage. “Look into me, old man, look deep into me…” He held the crystal between them and began to rotate it so that it proscribed a small arc in the confined space between their faces, Ethan’s breath hot on Doc’s face. The light caught in the facets of the crystal and Doc could feel the colors bite into his retina, breaking up his vision into a rainbow. He was aware of Ethan’s voice, crooning to him, but the words became a jumbled mush of sound. He felt an overwhelming resentment begin to grow in his heart. A resentment against Jak. It was his fault that they were in this situation. There would be no problem if it wasn’t for him. So Ethan wanted them to hunt the little runt down and buy him the farm. Was that such a bad idea? Think of all the times he’d got them into trouble…him and his so-called hunting skills. More like just another way of putting them in danger. The little fuck…
“I am going to rip your heart out, Jak, do you hear me?” Doc bellowed. He turned away from the baron and strained at his bonds, trying to escape them and head for the albino teen. “You are going to die, and slowly and painfully,” Doc roared, his face distorted into a parody of itself by rage and fury.
Ethan stepped back, looking smug and satisfied. “You next,” he said, moving toward Krysty. She tried to back off, moving her head to one side, but at the same time keeping the fear out of her eyes. Ethan’s hand gripped her jaw and pulled her face around. She found that his grip was surprisingly strong—she had considered that, as a baron who seemed to do little work, he would be soft—and she couldn’t stop her head from turning to face him.
“This is going to be interesting,” he whispered. “Mebbe I’ll plant a few little ideas in there for when you get back—if you do—and mebbe we can have a little fun.”
Krysty squirmed. The idea of being Ethan’s plaything was repulsive, and yet, even as she thought this, she found a tendril of desire for him creeping into her mind, much to her own disgust. She hocked some phlegm and spit in his face. He calmly wiped it away, still gripping her jaw, and smiled. Somehow, it was much more threatening than if he had hit her. It suggested that he would take his revenge at his leisure, and in his own way.
His eyes bored into her. She called on every reserve, everything she had ever known or been taught.
Meditation and mantras, exercises for the conscious and unconscious, Krysty drew on all of them in her fight against the baron. She could feel his eyes penetrating through her eyes and into her very soul, the tendrils and wisps of hatred that flickered at the corner of her mind. Jak was her friend and had saved her life on more than one occasion. He fought side by side with her, and they stood together. That was the way it had always been. That was the way it had to be. She fought hard to keep that in her mind, but it was forced into an ever smaller space, hemmed in by the hatred that was flooding into her brain.
Ethan was sweating, the crystal twirling in the rays of the sun, the prism of colors bathing their faces. She was difficult; she could resist, and she had an iron-cast will. But he would keep going. He knew he was good at this, and he could sense that she was gradually succumbing to him.
Krysty tried to hold on. Her will was strong; as strong as Ethan’s. But there was something that he had over her—he was a free man, and part of her felt constrained by the bonds that tied her to the stake. It was a small difference, but it was there, in her mind. And it was enough to give him the advantage he needed.
Krysty’s mind collapsed. She wouldn’t have to be going through this if Jak hadn’t been the prey. It was all his fault. The better hunter, was he? Why shouldn’t he be taking this treatment, as well? Bastard…
“I’ll chill you, you little fucker,” she murmured to herself.
Ethan stepped back, a smug grin on his face. He took a kerchief and wiped the sweat from his brow. She had finally broken. He looked over to Jak. The albino was watching, but his scarred white visage was impassive. Who could tell what he was thinking behind those red, glittering eyes?
Ethan moved along until he was face-to-face with Ryan Cawdor.
“So, One-eye, that gonna make you easier?” he quipped.
“Funny man,” Ryan said calmly. “See how funny you are when I come and rip your fucking heart out and feed it to you.”
“Ooh, I’m scared,” Ethan mocked. “If you live, I think I might keep you hypnotized. It could be quite interesting. Now look at me,” he said in a more serious tone.
Ryan tried to look away. It was a futile gesture, but he felt he had to make it. Ethan kissed his teeth, shook his head and then drove his fist into Ryan’s gut. It was a hard, upward punch that drove the air out of the one-eyed man’s lungs. He bent over as far as he could with his bonds, choking and gasping for air. While he was still weakened, Ethan lifted his head up.
“I don’t think you’re going to be a problem,” the baron said softly, lifting the crystal so that it caught the sun, the colors spreading across their faces. Ryan’s eye was clouded with pain and, with his resistance weakened, Ethan was able to break through quickly.
Ryan could feel the poison start to seep into his mind. His willpower was always strong, but his mind was distracted by the need to take in air. He didn’t have the immediate strength to break eye contact, and by the time he was able to breathe evenly, and devote his full attention to Ethan, the tentacles of hate were already beginning to take hold. Jak was his friend and comrade-in-arms, sure, but if they took out Jak, then J.B. would be freed. No, he knew that wasn’t the case, but…why the hell should Jak escape this torture. What made him so special?
“Chill him,” escaped from Ryan’s lips before he even knew it was what he felt.
Ethan stepped back and looked across the line at the three companions who were now fully under his influence. Then he caught Jak’s baleful glare from the end of the line.
Ethan threw back his head and laughed, long and loud. This was going to be one hell of a hunt.
AS THE DOORS SHUT on the hospital, and M
ildred and Michaela were left alone with J.B., a sense of complete anticlimax swept over the women. This should be the moment when both of them felt galvanized into action, but instead they stood looking at the closed door, hearing the sounds of the crowd beyond, and felt helpless.
Their eyes met and each knew that the other was thinking the same. J.B. lay there, hovering in some kind of suspended animation. For Michaela to try to escape into the old city to find whatever Ethan was using to keep the Armorer like this was one thing; but it would mean Mildred staying behind and being exposed to immediate danger. For what could she do to protect herself with J.B. like that? It had seemed like a good idea when Michaela had hatched it, but in the harsh light of day, now that it came down to it, it was full of holes.
Mildred shrugged. “Worked with more stupe plans before now, I guess.”
Michaela put her head to one side, looking at Mildred and then at the Armorer. “Yeah, but not with one of you in such danger.”
Mildred chuckled. “Sweetie, just pray you never know the kind of shit we’ve been in before now.” But then she became serious again. “No, the problem here is that until I know what John’s infected with, I won’t be happy with chancing discovery. And if you go, we risk discovery every second. Ethan or one of his goons could come in to keep John dosed up at any moment.”
Michaela chewed her lip. “Yeah, I’ve been kind of wondering about that. He used the infection as a bargaining tool to get you guys to agree to the hunt. But now it’s actually under way, just how much do you trust him to keep to his side of the bargain?”
Mildred thought about it. “How about not at all?”
“That’s kind of what I was thinking. Which means you’d be left alone, but—”
“Also means that John’s on borrowed time,” Mildred finished. “I think the best thing I can do is have a look at those slides you prepared, see if I can make head or tail of them.”
Checking that the Armorer was comfortable, the two women wasted no time in getting down to their task. Assisted by the young healer, Mildred took the slides and examined them, comparing them to the cultures and viruses that Michaela had in the hospital’s freezer. As she already knew, they didn’t match: but what she did discover were some points of similarity that led to one conclusion: the virus with which J.B. had been infected at a low level was a variant of meningitis, and if he wasn’t treated with the antidote or kept stable, the disease could become full-blown, leading to possible brain damage or buying the farm.
It wasn’t the most deadly of diseases back in the day when Mildred had been a practicing doctor, and was certainly treatable and avoidable: but that was then. Now was a completely different matter. In the post-skydark world, it was virtually unknown and could wreak havoc if it took hold. Come to that, it could spread among the population of the ville, and wipe them out. If it reached the stage beyond incubation, where it became transmittable, then they were all running a grave risk and Ethan was playing a very dangerous game.
Mildred tried to explain all this to Michaela without complicating matters about her status as a freezie, explaining her knowledge away as something they had picked up from old archives they had encountered along their journeys.
Michaela seemed to take it all in, and leaned against the lab bench, chewing her fingernails nervously. “I can’t believe that Ethan would knowingly put the ville—himself, come to that—in such peril. And, before you ask, he’d be well aware of the risks involved. Bones would have made sure of that: if you’d ever seen his house, and the stuff he’d scavenged from the old city, then you’d know how much old knowledge he’s amassed.”
“I’ve heard. Doc was pretty vocal on the subject,” Mildred mused. “So if Ethan doesn’t really want to administer an antidote to John, and doesn’t want the disease to claim him and therefore put everyone at potential risk, then he’s just going to chill him. And if he can’t be bothered to regulate the meningitis now that the hunt is under way, then he’s going to have that done pretty damn quickly.”
“Shit,” Michaela cursed, “it doesn’t sound too good put like that. If I go chasing after the antidote, I could get back to find J.B. already chilled, and you, too, I’d say.”
“Damn right,” Mildred said softly. “There’s only one thing for it, isn’t there?”
Michaela’s eyes widened. This woman was amazing. “How are we going to do it?” she asked in small voice.
Mildred grinned. “How does ‘with great difficulty’ grab you?” she asked.
“It doesn’t, but it’ll have to do, won’t it?” Michaela returned with a confidence in her voice that she didn’t really feel.
Mildred grabbed the young healer and hugged her, unaware of the feelings she was stirring in the girl’s breast. She whispered three words that sealed their course of action.
“Let’s do it.”
WHILE THE SUN beat down with an intense, dry heat and the fervor of the crowd that watched from around the chain-link fencing reached a fever pitch, Jak felt an icy calm inside. He’d watched the hypnotism of his friends, now turned against him to the degree that they were baying for his blood like a pack of starved hounds. He’d watched the faces of the barons and traders on the stand, eyeing him as if he were a slab of meat ready for slaughter, which he was, as far as they were concerned.
Jak had other ideas. There were a few things he knew that his pursuing companions—now his enemies—wouldn’t know. Things that Ethan and his paying guests wouldn’t know that he knew. Things that could be turned to his advantage. But only if he centered himself, turned inside and ignored the lust and excitement of the crowds and listened to the instincts that had kept him alive thus far.
He remained impassive when Ethan left the other three tied to their stakes and signaled that the sec guard release Jak. Flanked by the blond sec man Ryan had hit and the bald man he considered enemy only by default—and whose stone-set visage couldn’t hide the anger and sorrow in his eyes—Horse stepped forward to free Jak.
While the dreadlocked sec chief loosened his bonds, Jak caught the eye of the bald man. For a fraction of a second, they exchanged glances that communicated many things, not the least of which was Jak’s acknowledgment that the sec man wasn’t to blame for what had occurred. A good thing to get across, as Jak knew that there was always the possibility that their bond may be necessary if he managed to stay alive and free in the hunt.
The albino stepped away from the stake, massaging his wrists, the white skin reddened and purpled by the tightness of the bonds. Some feeling began to return and, as he rubbed, Jak took a look at the other companions and then at the scum who had paid for this spectacle.
The companions were looking at him with undisguised hate. He had seen those expressions so many times over the course of their travels, but never directed at him. He realized the enormity of his task.
So be it.
The barons and traders who had paid to make them go through this were eyeing Jak with curiosity. They seemed to find it hard to believe that a man so slight should be a match for the other three. No matter: they would soon find out that he was a match for anyone—even the barons and traders themselves. For he would chill them with pleasure.
At another signal from Ethan, Horse and the blond sec guard stepped forward. Jak noticed that the bald man hung back and he refrained from the urge to grin.
“Come on, Whitey,” the blond guard said in a voice dripping with malice. “Time for us to take you out to where you get yours.” He reached to grab Jak’s arm.
“Don’t,” the albino said impassively.
The blonde gave a short, barking laugh and made a grab for Jak’s upper left arm, his fingers encircling the biceps—or at least that’s what he intended. A strangely comical, eyes-wide expression came over his face as he realized that Jak had evaded him without actually seeming to move, and he was trying to take hold of thin air.
Jak shimmied out of the grab, pivoted and brought up his heavy combat boot so that the toe and outside edge o
f his foot connected with the blonde’s jawbone. It was the second time in less than an hour that he had been hit in the face, and he lost more teeth as Jak’s expert kick crashed his jaws together, grinding tooth against tooth, reducing the inside of his mouth to even more of a bloody pulp than it had been previously. The force of the kick knocked him to one side and lifted him almost off his feet, so that he seemed to be balancing on his toes before the momentum of Jak’s foot transferred to his legs and he twisted before falling to the dirt floor of the training ground, raising a cloud of dust.
Horse reached for the Glock that he had holstered at the hip, but was stayed by the hand of the bald sec guard.
“Baron wouldn’t want you to chill the little guy and fuck up the hunt, boss. It’s Riley’s own fault for being so stupe and pissed,” he said in a slow, gentle voice.
The dreadlocked sec chief looked around at his man, brown eyes blazing with anger. Then he looked at Jak, who was standing impassively, waiting, and at Ethan, who was eyeing him with interest.
Horse grunted. “Yeah, guess so,” he said grudgingly. “But I don’t like my men made to look stupe.”
“Then they—we—shouldn’t act it,” the bald man said simply.
Horse’s eyes met with Jak’s. The albino was bland, unreadable: that was what made him so dangerous.
“Okay, Whitey, I guess you get away with that one, for obvious reasons. But don’t fuck with me on the way out to the hunt, or I might be tempted to forget myself.”
Jak gestured his assent, not wasting words. He waited until the sec chief had signaled for two more of his men to drag away the unconscious blonde, and then started to walk toward a horse that had been saddled for him.
“We’re going to take you out to where the hunt begins, and then give you a half hour head start before we let the other fuckers go,” Horse explained. “The paying guests will be with us, and Ethan will follow with the sec that accompanies your friends,” he finished with an ironic lilt on the last word.