by James Axler
“It would help if we weren’t tethered like a bunch of pack animals,” Mildred said as they started to lower themselves.
“Of course, of course,” Crabbe said, although in a tone that suggested it wouldn’t otherwise have occurred to him. He gestured to his sec chief. “Nelson, cut them loose.”
The squat man moved carefully in front of the group. He had holstered his blaster and held J.B.’s knife in his hand—a deliberate move, no doubt—and used it to cut free their wrists and ankles. He brandished the knife close to Ryan’s artery as he sliced at his wrist, a grin flashing across his face as he caught Ryan’s eye. A provocation, and then he was gone again, vanished to their rear.
Crabbe, satisfied that they were now comfortable enough to listen, began while they each massaged life and full feeling back into their hands and feet.
“This must be a familiar room to you all. At least, if you’re who I think you are. You have knowledge I need. Mebbe I have knowledge that will help you make sense of what you know. It’s like that,” he added, appearing to go off at a tangent, “what’s left of the predark world. Bits and pieces, some of which make sense, and some of which makes none at all. And then you get some small glimmering that suddenly makes the previously insane seem somehow sane. Things that make no fucking sense at all suddenly seem to be transformed into things that are just so blindingly obvious that you think you must have been a stupe not to see it before.
“Like the stories of this guy, Trader,” he continued, emphasizing the name and watching them carefully. After Valiant’s explanation, they were expecting this, and so Crabbe didn’t get the reaction he wanted. His words were met with a blandness that did nothing to inform him, and little more than irritate him.
“Have it that way, then,” he said softly. “See, the thing I could never understand about the legendary Trader was his seemingly limitless supply of stuff. A hidden predark stockpile my ass. He had an underground base. I just know it My men found this one when we had a quake. The shit covering it dropped off like so much crap. Took us a long time to figure out a way in. Now that I know how it works, it’s a marvel to me that we did it all. Punching those fucking keys in any order… Now that I know how these doors work, I take it as a sign that we got in here. It’s meant.”
“What is meant?” Doc asked.
“Why, my using my knowledge and the knowledge that I get from you to run the whole of this pesthole and make it great again. I know, from what I’ve seen in here, that this land used to be the one that everyone else looked up to. Now there must be a whole chunk of world out there that’s still got people, even if it’s like us. We should be great in their eyes.”
“Ah, glory…” Doc said absently.
From the slightly glazed expression, which puzzled Crabbe, Mildred could tell that the old man was still slightly concussed.
“But not gold?” Doc added.
Crabbe’s brow furrowed. “Gold? Well, yeah, of course I mean that, too. Hell, I’d be stupe if I didn’t. Ain’t that what everyone wants? Ain’t that the same thing as glory? Glory gets you respect, and so does jack, gold. Goes hand in hand, I’d say.”
“If it’s the way to glory and jack, then why didn’t Trader take that? Why haven’t we? Suppose we are the people you say. Ask yourself why we were doing shitty jobs in Hawknose waiting for the next convoy out,” Ryan said.
Crabbe eyed him shrewdly. “Fair point, Brian. But this is the only place like this around these parts. I know that ’cause I read that there map.” He indicated the area behind them. On the wall over a row of comps lining one side of the room was a clear glass screen, outlined with a map of the predark United States. On it were marked the locations of redoubts across the continent. “The way I see it is this—somehow you wandered away from one of these places. I bet you’ve been to lots of them. Mebbe that’s what you do. Go to one of these, see what you can pick up, then move to the next. Mebbe you got a stockpile in one of them, mebbe you’re looking for the next big stockpile. Whatever, I reckon you left one of them, got into a fight and ended up stranded in the middle of nowhere. Fact is, you ending up at Hawknose may have been no accident, now that I think about it. Mebbe the reason you landed there is because you were headed for the nearest one you knew…here.”
He finished with a triumphant flourish. In the silence that followed, Ryan was unsure as to whether the baron expected them to cave in and admit that he was right. The demonstration of reasoning that had got Crabbe to this point was disturbing. What other assumptions had he made about Trader? About them? And what, as a result, would he expect from them?
Ryan decided that the only way to find out would be to play him at his own game.
“Okay, so you got us. And you’re right. Question is, where does that get you?”
Crabbe looked at Ryan closely, studying him as though to somehow discern whether he was being deceived. Ryan held the baron’s gaze, steady, impassive.
The baron’s weathered features creased. “Knew it. I fucking knew it. Didn’t I tell you, Sal?” he asked, turning to the tall, thin man.
Sal simply nodded, his face unreadable.
“So where does that leave us then, Baron? All cards on the table.”
“Huh?” The baron looked confused for a moment. “Ah, you mean everything out in the open, right? ‘Cards on the table’—what kind of a stupe expression is that? Something you’ve picked up from the old ways in your travels?”
“Yeah, must be,” Ryan answered blandly. In truth, he’d heard it all over Deathlands, and had no idea where he’d first started using it. But if that was what Crabbe wanted to believe, then that was just fine.
Crabbe shook his head, laughing. “There is just so much that I need to find out, but first, we need to get down to basics. Am I right? There’s a whole network of these underground bases, like on that map. Was that Trader’s secret?”
“Not exactly,” Ryan began carefully. “There are a number of these places, like you’ve worked out. Getting from one to the other is difficult, and some of them have been looted or are damaged in some way.”
“What ways?” Crabbe snapped, as though suspicious of anything that may deviate from his own ideas.
Ryan knew that was worth bearing in mind. “Well,” he said, “you saw how this place was exposed. Sometimes quakes bear down deep, cause cracks in the tunnels. Some places just collapse in on themselves.”
Crabbe nodded slowly. “Right…and looted, you say. So there are places where others have got into these bases.” He looked at Ryan, who merely nodded. “Then if that’s right, how come there ain’t people appearing from everywhere?”
“I told you. Getting from one to another is difficult.”
“But you do it,” Crabbe said quickly. “So you must have the secret.”
“What secret?” Ryan asked slowly.
Crabbe smiled slyly. “One of the legends of Trader. There was a disk that was part of the old tech. It showed where the big stockpile was. Where all the jack and weapons predark were hidden when they knew the nukecaust was going off. It showed where it was, and how to get there. How to get there, Brian. Which means the secret of moving between the bases. And that’s got everything to do with this.”
Crabbe turned and strode the few paces to the mat-trans unit.
The baron once again getting his name wrong was another reminder that the man’s half-assed assumptions spelled trouble. He had worked out that the mat-trans was a means of transportation, but not how it worked. That, presumably, was part of the information that he wanted to extract from the group.
More worrying was his assumption that so much knowledge was contained on one old comp disk. Again, it was rooted in a piece of truth. There once was a disk, but it had contained nothing more than a few codes for redoubts. It had been damaged, and was, in all likelihood, nothing more than a piece of tech that housed some mundane and routine information. The disk was long gone, lost during one of their mad scrambles for survival.
How could they ex
plain that to a man who had already decided to believe what he wanted? He was certain that Trader had had a disk, but he was dead wrong.
Crabbe was on a roll, and so Ryan remained silent. The baron turned back to them, snatching at the sheet in Sal’s hand. The tall, balding man let it go quickly, so as not to anger his baron. Crabbe brandished it at them.
“You know the secret of moving, but you don’t have the disk. Think about it. If you use your knowledge to help me find the disk, how far could they take us?”
Ryan was bemused and relieved, but managed to keep this from his voice as he said, “We? An alliance?”
Crabbe grimaced. “Not exactly. A deal, sure. I like to deal. Who doesn’t? But not really what you’d call an alliance. See, I didn’t get to be baron by cutting people in on the deal. You know how it works, right? You did learn from the great Trader, after all. And I’m betting he wasn’t the kind of guy to make an alliance where he could make a bargain. You know what I’m saying?”
Ryan stole a look at his companions. Doc still looked dazed, but the others had their attention on the baron. And there was no doubt that they, like Ryan, were totally clear on what Crabbe’s meaning might be.
“Okay,” Ryan said slowly, “let’s just say that we do know how to get from one base to another. Are you saying that the disk you’re looking for—the one that contains all the information you want on how to find the kind of stash you’re looking for, and how to go from base to base easily—is in one of the places on that list?”
Crabbe smiled slyly. “I think you know it is, Brian. But if you want to play it that way, then fine. I believe the marks on this paper show the bases where the disk might be. And they also have something that shows you how to work the thing—” he gestured at the mat-trans unit “—but I don’t understand the way that they used to write stuff down predark. There ain’t no one in the ville who does. That kind of stuff has never been any use to us before.”
“Couldn’t you just ask someone else to read it for you?” Mildred asked, breaking her silence. She could barely keep the sardonic edge from her voice. “Seems a whole lot of bother just to look for us to read a list for you.”
Crabbe stared at her. He seemed to be torn between towering rage and astonishment. The latter won out.
“For fuck’s sake, how do people as stupe as you get to be the keepers of the secrets? Fuck’s sake, Brian, haven’t you ever thought that it might be an idea to keep Millicent from opening her stupe mouth?” Before Ryan had a chance to answer, Crabbe sighed then continued. “Of course they know how to do it in places around here, but you think I’m going to let any of them in on the secret? I’d be forever looking over my bastard shoulder. Sure, I could say little about it, but there would always be questions. I don’t want to be distracted by those fucking insects while I’m about my work.”
“So you want us to read that list for you, then go to all of these places and try to find the disk you want,” Mildred stated, bristling at the way in which Crabbe had spoken of—rather than to—her. The fact that he kept getting their names wrong was also irritating her out of all proportion. “So what, Mr. Smart-ass, is to stop us finding your disk and then not coming back?”
Crabbe stared at her as though he couldn’t believe she could speak to him in this manner. “Brian,” he said softly, “you should really keep a better hold on your people.”
Ryan, on the other hand, was content to let Mildred lead, to see where it took them. “She has a very good question,” he said. “I would have asked it myself. So would any of us.”
Crabbe snorted, shook his head and turned away. It took him some time to compose himself. When he had, he turned back to them, shaking his head again.
“Shit, just how stupe do you think I am? Look around you. I got men with blasters aimed at you, could take you out anytime, and yet you still talk to me like I was shit. You’ve either got balls the size of a fucking boulder, or you’re triple stupe. And that I don’t believe. Is this your way of pushing me, see how far I’ll go?”
Okay, Ryan figured, maybe he wasn’t quite the stupe he had him figured for. But still, how was he going to work this out? And why the nuking hell did Crabbe assume the nonexistent disk was in one of those six redoubts out of the dozens in the Deathlands? It just didn’t make sense.
Crabbe stood over them. He gestured to the rear of the room. “You’ve seen the sec. McCready doesn’t like you, I can see that from his face. Nelson’s a mean bastard. That’s why I put him in charge. He’d gladly blow you all away now. He’s sick of chasing you and getting nowhere, so he might be relieved that you’re here now, but he still fucking hates your guts for all the trouble you’ve caused him. All I’ve got to do is say. But if I do, just ’cause you’re all a pain in the ass, I have a problem.”
“What we know,” J.B. stated. “You want it. And not just that.”
“No,” Crabbe said softly. “Not just that. What then, J.T.?”
“You want us to go on the hunt because you don’t want to leave here. You want to stay at the center of things.”
“Smart man. I don’t know what lies at the end of each journey. Might be nothing, might be someone like me. I’d rather you faced that. You’re used to it. And you’ll come back. I can make sure of that.”
Again, the sly smile crossed his face.
“See, you don’t think I’d go to all the trouble that I have and then just let you go off as you are, do you? Do I really look like that kind of a fuckwit? No, I have a real simple plan. I might not be able to read, but I can count. Six lines on this sheet,” he said, holding it up in front of them once more, “and six of you. So I pair you up, and while one of you goes and searches, then the other four are my prisoners here. If you don’t come back, then say hello to the farm.”
“What’s to stop any of us taking our chances?” Ryan questioned.
Crabbe laughed. “From what I hear, with you people it’s all for one and one for all. That’s your strength. Thing is, it’s also your weakness.”
Chapter Five
Crabbe was, as he was so fond of telling everyone, a fair man. Certainly, he had continued to say that to Ryan and his companions many times, until they had reached the point where it was like the drip of water torture, the syllables like spikes to the brain. It was an interesting definition of fair under which he worked. In essence, although he would give them no real choice over the undertaking of the mission—do it or buy the farm—he wouldn’t expect them to embark without some kind of rest or recuperation. Because he was fair. Not because it had been his sec men who had dragged them across wasteland while bound hand and foot.
So, it was fairness that came at a price, and with a large amount of provision. But tiredness and the erosion of spirit that came with aching weariness could do a lot to alter perspectives. What would have seemed very little, if not an insult under any other circumstances, was now welcomed.
Crabbe decreed that it wouldn’t be fair to his new “partners” in the business of finding the disk if he didn’t allow them to rest and prepare for the task ahead. It occurred to all of them that this may have had something to do with the fact that a rested and prepared team was more likely to succeed. But to say as much would have been pointless at best, and provocative at worst. Leave it until the time was right to strike.
After all, Crabbe did have a point. None of them was in a fit state to take on anyone. Sore, aching limbs were matched by a fuzziness of the mind, an after-effect of the drug that had enabled Valiant to sell them like so much feed.
So it was with an overwhelming sense of relief, rather than anything else, that they allowed themselves to be led to the redoubt’s dorms. McCready escorted them himself. He was hostile and suspicious, and so would trust none of his men not to screw up. After Crabbe dismissed them, McCready and three of his men accompanied the companions to the level on which the dorms were housed. Before they left the baron and Sal to pore over the sheet that held, allegedly, the answers sought by Crabbe, Mildred stopped t
o ask if she could visit the medical facilities. When Crabbe, suspicion showing in his tone, asked her why, she indicated Doc.
“If you know anything about us, then you know that he’s a little crazy at the best of times. I think he took a hell of a blow on the head, and the last thing you want—shit, that we want—is him going a little more crazy on our ass.”
Crabbe had looked at the still dazed Doc, who grinned blankly when he saw the baron focus on him, and had decided that she was right. So two sec men accompanied Mildred while she went to the medical facility. To her surprise, it hadn’t been looted.
“So you boys don’t believe in the power of medicine?” she asked idly while she rifled the room for supplies.
The sec men didn’t answer. Undeterred, she continued, even though she figured that she may as well be talking to herself.
“I’m really surprised. This stuff is at a premium out there. Good jack for some of it, and a hell of a lot of use for it among your people. I would have thought that Crabbe would want to use it, rather than let it go to waste.”
“Can’t do that when this place is still under wraps,” one of the sec men mumbled.
“Shut the fuck up,” his partner snapped.
“Don’t matter if she knows,” the first man replied in peevish tones. “Ain’t like she’s gonna get the chance to mouth off about it, right? They ain’t going nowhere near the ville.”
“Shithead, don’t say no more,” the second sec man said in an exasperated voice. The first man took the point and clammed up. But the exchange had told Mildred something—Crabbe was keeping the existence of the redoubt secret from the majority of his own people. He had some obviously high hopes for what he would find, and how it would increase his power. So much so that he felt the need to keep it a close secret. So much that hardly anyone knew that they were here. So much so, perhaps, that hardly anyone knew that the baron himself was here.