Moonfeast

by James Axler

  In a loud crash the double doors were slammed aside and Baron Eileen Halverson strode into the dark room surrounded by a cadre of armed sec men. In spite of the warm breezes, a huge blaze crackled in the fireplace. Sitting in a chair, a wizened youth huddled under a thick blanket, staring into the flames. A demijohn of shine sat on the floor nearby, the cork dangling from a short string tied to the handle.

  “Well?” the woman demanded. “Is this it?”

  “Yes, they are coming for me,” Beltrane whispered, his voice raspy. His face was heavily lined, as if Beltrane was a wrinklie, yet the youth had been alive for less than eighteen years. The terrible gift of his ability to see things that had not yet happened was draining away his life, aging him rapidly, and soon the boy would be on the last train west. Nobody in the ville wanted the young doomie to get chilled. He was far too useful predicting storms and attacks by coldhearts. But Beltrane eagerly looked forward to the end of his pain and the sweet tranquility of nothingness.

  “Who comes for you?” Baron Eileen said, kneeling to keep her face on an even level with the doomie.

  Beltrane smiled at the courtesy, and briefly recalled how they had been lovers almost all of last summer, before his accursed gift stole away even that pleasure, leaving him nothing but pain, and his visions of the future, swirling and mixing, endlessly being reborn as each decision yielded a thousand new possibilities. The future wasn’t carved into stone, it was alive and forever changing with every action taken by the living in the present. Even the past could be changed, something whispered in the deepest recesses of his mind, just ask the time-walker! But he forcibly banished those thoughts as too painful to endure.

  “They have no names in my mind, and I can’t see their faces,” the doomie said, the words almost too low for the others to hear. “They will smile and speak of peace, but there is chilling in their hearts, and death spreads around them like an invisible plague.” Weakly, the youth reached out a withered hand for the demijohn, but it was much too heavy for him to lift.

  Taking the ceramic container away from the doomie, Baron Eileen poured a few inches of the home brew into a plastic tumbler and passed it over. She knew the shine had been dosed with jolt, the powerful mixture of drugs helping him to stay sane and to ease some of his pain, but also shortening his life even more. It was the only thing the woman could do to help the young doomie without endangering the ville. She had a touch of the talent, and would sometimes have a dream of things yet to come, but she was only a flickering candle in comparison to his erupting volcano of abilities.

  Eagerly, Beltrane grasped the tumbler in shaking hands and drank, only stopping when he needed to drag in air.

  “Thank you,” he wheezed, letting the tumbler drop to the floor.

  “Who are they? Spies from the coastal barons or mercies from the mainland?” the baron demanded, recovering the tumbler to pour another dose.

  “Something blocks me from seeing their faces,” Beltrane said, a touch of strength returning to his voice as the drugs took effect. “Events are still in motion, and they have not yet made the final decision to chill. But I know that they will, and I’ll be forced to feed the cloud.”

  That caught the baron by surprise. Feed the cloud? What the nuking hell did that mean?

  “Is that the same thing as buying the farm?” a sec man asked in confusion, shifting the heavy blaster on his shoulder.

  “Yes…no…” The doomie exhaled and his head dropped forward as sleep claimed him from the tremendous effort of staying awake for a few minutes.

  Standing, Baron Eileen tucked the heavy blankets a round the emaciated figure, then filled the tumbler once more and laid a small glass vial alongside it. The vial contained the last of the dust, a silvery powder made from the dried guts of the blowfish. If handled correctly, it was a painkiller better than anything found in the military stores of the old predark bases. If done wrongly, it aced faster than a dagger in the throat. This batch had been tested on some wild cats before being administered to the invaluable doomie.

  “Is that wise, Baron?” a sec woman growled.

  “He has suffered enough,” the baron said, slowly standing to dust off her pants. “If he wishes to leave this world a little early, then he has my permission. Ten times his warnings have saved this ville from disaster. The very least we can do is spare him some pain.”

  “And what about the outlanders?” a fat sec man asked, a longblaster resting on his shoulder, a bandolier of refilled brass draped across his chest like a badge of honor.

  “Arrest everybody who lands on our beach,” the woman stated, hitching her gunbelt. “If they resist, ace them on the spot.”

  Softly mumbling something, the doomie began to snore, and the baron brushed a hand over his uncombed hair. She had also never told him about the child growing in her belly from last summer on the beach. The birth would be in a few months, and Beltrane would never last that long. With luck, the babe would be a norm, but if not, well, the ville could always use another doomie, sad to say.

  Chapter Thirteen

  In the morning, the companions awoke to the sound of rain.

  Rushing to the window, Ryan started to throw open the shutters when there came the telltale reek of sulfur. Fireblast, that was acid rain! Getting a plastic shower curtain from his backpack, the one-eyed man draped it over his head for protection before risking the shutters. However, the ville was completely dry, not the slightest sign of rain damage. But in the distance, Ryan could see a wild storm raging at sea, the gentle breeze carrying to the land the reek of the deadly acid rain. Softly there came the noise of the hard rain pelting the choppy waves, which oddly sounded exactly like a steak sizzling on a grille.

  “Thank God the wind is blowing in the right direction, or else we might have been stuck here for days.” Mildred yawned, rubbing the sleep from her face as she joined them.

  “It could shift anytime,” J.B. stated, pushing back his fedora, as he stood behind her. “We better wait a bit before riding out. Don’t want to get caught in the open.”

  Starting to reply, Ryan paused at the sight of something moving along a thin peninsula that extended from the main island. Racing for its life, a fat walrus was flopping along, desperately trying to reach what appeared to be a small cave. But it was too slow, and the deluge struck while it was scrambling over a low rill.

  As the first drops hit, the walrus screamed, dark fumes rising from the searing contact. Then the animal began to dissolve under the deadly chemical assault, the blubbery hide sluicing off in horrid streams. Redoubling the frantic effort to escape, the walrus bawed in unimaginable agony as the nightmarish process continued, and it left behind a ghastly contrail of blood and internal organs.

  Suddenly, Krysty was standing alongside Ryan and handed him the Steyr.

  Without saying a word, the Deathlands warrior worked the arming bolt to chamber a round, then centered the crosshairs of the telescopic sight on the poor beast, adjusted for the wind sheer and squeezed the trigger. A second later the walrus jerked and flopped over sideways, the pain gone forever. The rain finished the job until there was nothing left of the animal, except for a reddish puddle of fatty sludge among the irregular rocks.

  “Thank you,” Krysty said, resting a hand on the man’s shoulder.

  Working the bolt on the Steyr, Ryan merely shrugged.

  Just then there came a rush of damp air from the direction of the kitchen, and Doc appeared wearing a plastic sheet like a poncho.

  “Well done, sir,” the man rumbled in his deep stentorian bass. “An exemplary shot.”

  “Hard to miss a target that big,” Ryan said, shouldering the longblaster. It had been a waste of brass, and if his son Dean had been present, he never would have done it to demonstrate to the boy that ammo was to be used only for survival, never casually. However, the soulful wails of the animal had sounded far too human, and having seen people die the same way, the ruthless killer felt true sympathy for anything caught in the awful grip of the
all-destroying rain.

  After a quick breakfast of fried bread and cold chicken, the companions gathered their meager belongings and went down to the throne room. Walking around nervously, the horses were nickering in fright at the smell of the distant storm, but the companions easily calmed the animals with gentle words and a generous supply of nectarines.

  Using a pocketknife, Doc cut a nectarine in two, then stabbed the pit with the point of the blade and flipped it away. Putting the fruit on a flat palm, to make sure the animal didn’t accidentally bite his fingers, Doc fed the treat to his roan mare and scratched her behind the ears.

  The mare whinnied in unabashed pleasure at the sweet fruit, then nuzzled the old man and licked his cheek to the sound of sandpaper on rock.

  “Good girl,” Doc said, feeding her another.

  “Be sure to use an extra blanket,” Krysty advised, throwing a second one across the back of her dappled mare. “They’re still pretty skinny, and may develop saddle sores if we don’t.”

  “Easy fix,” Jak added, draping the reins over his horse. “Cover with raw steak to protect.”

  “Most excellent, sir!” Doc boomed, lashing down a saddlebag. “Exactly as Attila the Hun did to keep his mighty army constantly in motion.”

  “Of course, afterward, the Mongol horde ate the steak,” Mildred reminded, tightening the belly strap.

  “They eat?” Jak asked in shock, then grinned. “Shit, no need weapons after that, just breathe on enemy.”

  “Speaking of riding, we should walk the animals for the first day or two,” Krysty suggested, hanging a canteen over the pommel of her saddle. “Let them grow a bit stronger and get used to us more.”

  “Fair enough,” Ryan said, sliding the Steyr into a leather boot attached to the saddle. “Or, at least, until we encounter another rhino. Then we ride ’em until the horses drop or we get away.”

  “Ah yes, the cold logic of pragmatism,” Doc sighed, cleaning his damp cheek with a handkerchief. “Then let the storm hide our scent, distance blur our shapes, and good fortune cloak us in anonymity.”

  “Luck be a lady tonight,” Mildred said, almost singing.

  Puzzled, Doc shot her a look, then dismissed the matter. The lady physician knew as many obscure literary references from the twentieth century as he did from his own. In a contest of jocular effluvia, they were equally matched.

  Leading the horses out of the throne room, the companions proceeded warily down the hill and through the ville, checking for any sign that somebody had sneaked inside during the night. The ville seemed unchanged, but just in case, J.B. climbed a guard tower to check outside the ville to make sure nobody was waiting for them to open the gate, especially another rhino.

  “All clear,” J.B. announced, waving his hat in the air.

  Standing guard, Ryan kept the Steyr ready as Krysty and Jak got the two gates unlocked and pushed aside. The deep dents in the metal now carried new meaning to the companions, and everybody tightened the grip on their blaster.

  As the companions moved away from the ville, Jak briefly glanced backward over a shoulder. “Not feel natural leave gate open,” the albino teen said uneasily.

  “Agreed, but there’s no way to lock the bastard things from this side, so what’s the point of merely closing them?” Ryan stated, chucking the reins slightly to make his horse walk a little faster. Snorting, the animal promptly did as requested. That pleased the man greatly. This had to have been the mount of a sec man, as it was very well trained and clearly bridle-wise.

  “And so shall the next visitors reap the harvest we leave behind,” Doc said, gesturing with a free hand. “The treasures of Xanadu are there for the taking.”

  “What leave?” Jak scoffed. “Burned rhino in corral, chicken bones in kitchen, horse drek in throne room.”

  “There are also pots and pans in the pantry, boots in the barracks and bedsheets in the gaudy house,” J.B. countered, tucking the nubbin of a cigar into his mouth. “Not to mention the whole damn ville itself.”

  “The difference between garbage and treasure depends entirely upon how fragging poor you are,” Krysty stated, the words carrying the ring of bitter experience.

  Leaving the dirt road, the companions started across a field to try to hide their passage. However, they kept a close watch on the rain storm over the ocean. If it made the slightest shift in their direction, they would gallop hell-bent-for-leather for the forest of pine trees. The dense greenery would offer some small degree of protection from the acid rain. Not much, but it was better than nothing.

  After a few miles, twisted chunks of metal began to dot the landscape, the chunks becoming larger and closer together until the companions came across a huge crater in the ground. It was filled with water, and even had a few fish darting in the weeds, but the bottom was a congealed slab of steel.

  “This must have been a major space station. It’s way too big to merely be a satellite,” Mildred guessed, using a hand to shield her face from the morning sun with the other. “Eventually, it ran out of fuel for the retro rockets, couldn’t correct the flight path and plummeted back to Earth like a meteor.”

  “Or got shot Seven Sisters,” Jak noted with enthusiasm.

  “Nonsense. Those are just a damn myth,” J.B. scoffed. “Seven huge battle stations still orbiting the Earth and fighting the Last War? Utter crap.”

  “Oh, but they exist, John Barrymore!” Doc exclaimed excitedly. “I actually saw them once when I…” His voice trailed away, and the time traveler began to whistle a happy tune.

  Surreptitiously, the rest of the companions exchanged glances with one another, but said nothing. Doc had been places and seen things they would never truly know about, as his journeys through time had scrambled a lot of his memory.

  Privately, Ryan hoped that the man never made it back to his family. They might not recognize Doc anymore, and that would probably do what barons, cannies and muties had never been able to achieve—break his spirit and kill the man. There were still elements of the peaceful schoolteacher buried deep inside Doc, and Ryan knew that was how the man saw himself, as a teacher and a scholar, a man of books. But the truth was a lot more ugly. Doc Tanner was a true product of the Deathlands: born in pain, abandoned to fate, forged in betrayal and honed in combat. He would be as out of place in the predark civilized world as a rampaging kraken.

  Coming to an abrupt halt, Jak raised an arm high and closed his hand into a fist. Instantly everybody stopped walking and drew their blasters, glancing around to try to see what the albino teen had spotted.

  Going to a ragged clump of laurel bushes, Jak took a stick from the ground and used it to gently push the leaves apart. Hidden on the other side of the bushes was the basement of a predark house, the upper stories completely gone. The splintery remains of wooden stairs led down to the concrete floor, the rusting remains of a furnace sitting in the corner. A crazy array of water pipes went nowhere. The floor was littered with piles of windblown trash, dried feces and a large pile of gleaming white bones. Some of them were animals—dogs, bears and such—ßbut there was no mistaking the smashed human skulls, and off to the side was a heap of torn clothing. Jak scowled at the sight.

  “Stickies.” The teenager spit hatefully, strangely holstering the Colt Python. “Safe. Gone long time.”

  “Indeed, lad, but are they deceased or simply departed?” Doc inquired, not relinquishing his grip on the LeMat and Webley.

  “No fresh bones,” Jak stated, as if that settled the matter. “Drek on floor month old, mebbe more.”

  “Fair enough, but no talking for the next few miles,” Ryan whispered, patting the neck of his horse. The animals didn’t seem frightened by the smell of the old nest. More proof that they had belonged to sec men. Stickies were the terror of the Deathlands, and most animals blindly ran at the first whiff of a mutie. Or worse, that terrible hooting they made just before attacking.

  Easing away from the old nest, the companions watched every group of trees or clump of
bushes with renewed intensity, fully expecting a mob of stickies to come charging out of the shadows, waving their bizarre hands and hooting their inhuman battle cry. Each of the companions had the oddest feeling that they were being watched, but nothing dangerous was in sight for miles in every direction, all the way from the fiery volcano in the far east and the snowcapped mountains to the west.

  Keeping a safe distance from any predark ruins, the group marched deeper inland, leaving the sounds and the smells of the sea far behind. Skirting around the cracked black ribbon of a paved airfield, the companions moved farther into the foothills, until the ground became too steep for there to be any more settlements.

  Slowly the sun rose higher behind the dark clouds that perpetually blanketed the scorched sky. Noon came and went, the companions eating the last of the self-heats while walking, and then stuffing the litter into their saddlebags to try to hide their trail. Jak even cut some branches from a pine tree and tied them to the saddles for the horses to drag along behind to erase their footprints. He claimed it was an old swamp trick, while Doc and Mildred both remained tactfully silent on the fact that ploy had been invented by the Native Americans long before the Europeans arrived.

  Eventually the hills eased into a rolling glen. A small waterfall gushed from the side of a ragged escarpment splashing into a pool that flowed away to become a babbling creek. Sweet grass and juniper bushes grew along the banks in abundance, and the companions had to be stern with the horses to keep the hungry animals from stuffing their bellies. It was cruel, but necessary. Although several times larger than a person, a horse only had a brain the size of an orange. If given the chance, the animals would eat themselves sick, and then spend the rest of the day moaning with a bellyache. Ripping choice handfuls of grass from the sloping bank, the companions fed the horses while walking, only stopping for them to drink some water before continuing the long trek.