by James Axler
"You have to be so shit angry?" Kate whispered.
"I've seen these 'elders' before. Know them. Think the sun shines out of their asses and they piss pure silver."
"Could betray us."
"More likely to leave us alone if they're frightened of us. A little terror buys a lot of friendship."
The discussion was ended.
Elder Bluffield swept across the room, his flock of acolytes behind him. Ryan thought that all he needed was a shepherd's crook and the old man would have looked like one of the paintings of the prophets in old Bible pix.
"You are not of our group." The voice was booming, rich and deep.
"You spotted it, huh?"
The elder's hair and beard were washed, glistening damply. His eyes were narrow, close together, and Ryan guessed he was shortsighted. He was peering at the two on the upper bunk with a strained expression that made him resemble a constipated goat.
"Why have you joined our closed group? Where have you come from?"
"Come from out there."
"I believe that you have escaped."
Ryan grinned. "Sure. We've escaped and we're eccentric, wealthy barons from the sunshine west. We just love twelve hours digging in yellow crap while we starve and freeze."
"Unless you obey our rules, then we shall report you."
This was obviously the biggest ace on the line. Elder Bluffield clearly expected Ryan and Kate to fall to the floor in shock and dismay.
"Who to?" Ryan said quietly.
"To the Russkie."
Ryan nodded and slipped from the bunk to the floor, where he stared at the old man. "You got something right, Elder. We don't belong here. We've been put here. So, think about reporting us. Who to? To the…what did you call him? The 'Russkie,' wasn't it?"
"Yes, it was," he replied, trying to gather his fading dignity around him like a torn bathrobe.
"The Russkie. That wouldn't be Major-Commissar Gregori Zimyanin, would it? Don't think he'd take to the name of 'Russkie,' do you, Kate?"
"Think he could get angered. We know what angered means, don't we, Elder? We've seen it. Haven't we, Elder Bluffield?"
"Yes, yes we have. You mean that… Zimyanin has placed you here?"
Kate wasn't finished. Joining Ryan on the floor, she poked out a finger at the old man, the ragged, gnawed nail snagging on the cloth of his jacket. "Seen them chained up to die, Elder? Just for talking out of line a little. Cuffed up under the rubbish chutes so everyone in the mine pisses and shits all over them. For stealing a blanket, wasn't it?"
"It was, it was."
Ryan took over again. "So, you and your followers think triple hard about going to report us being here, won't you?"
Bluffield nodded, the corner of his mouth working in a nervous tic. "Silent as a grave, my friend. Sorry to have troubled you."
Ryan knew men, saw that he'd slightly misjudged this one. The elder was cowed for now, but there was a streak of resentment in his face and hatred in the narrow eyes. It would be wise to watch their backs while around Elder Bluffield.
"What do you call your group?" Ryan asked him.
"We are a small religious order."
"Yeah?"
The old man stretched a couple of inches in height, feeling on safer ground. "I was once a deacon in the Brothers of Perpetual Waiting. But there was a rift, and I became a warden with the Warriors of the Bright Lamp. After a quarrel over dogma I left and took my own apostles with me and formed the Greeters of the Third Coming."
There was a muttered chorus of "Amens" and "Hallelujahs" from his followers.
"How come you all finished up in here?" Ryan asked, genuinely interested in the scope and scale of the Russian's operation.
"We were at prayer," the oldest of the women told him, holding her mutilated hand above her head in what looked like a practiced gesture.
"I still recount it, Sister Ruth," Bluffield said sternly.
"Keep it short," Ryan warned.
"We were at one of our meetings, locked together in our mission house near to what was once Kansas City, Kansas. Naked in the eyes of our Savior, cleaving together, one to another."
Kate nudged Ryan, face puzzled. He leaned down and put his mouth to her ear, whispering softly, "Means they were fucking like rabbits."
Bluffield half heard him, but carried on. "Next thing there's dead-eyed sons of bastards with carbines taking off to some infernal kind of sleep wag, and when we woke up we were in this frozen Hades."
"How long ago?"
"Twenty-two days. One of our sisters and one of our brothers have been enfolded into the bosom of our blessed Savior."
"You mean they got chilled?"
Bluffield nodded.
"How about those missing fingers?" He pointed at the nearest of the young women, who tried to hide her left hand behind her back.
"Our way."
Ryan's eyes flashed with a sudden, flaring anger, something that he generally managed to keep buried and safe, but which occasionally would slide out and reveal itself.
"Your way, Elder?"
"They sacrifice their fingers to me…to us, as a way of showing their love, loyalty and readiness."
"Why?"
"It was ever so."
Almost like a separate living organism, Ryan's right hand was creeping around toward the small of his back where the long cleaver was sheathed. Kate saw the movement and touched him on the arm, warning him. He looked at her and for a moment the girl shuddered at the cold blankness she saw in his face. Then he took in a deep breath and nodded to her.
"Right," he said very quietly.
Bluffield was moving away, his flock opening like the Red Sea to let him through.
"Just as long as we understand each other, brother," he said, gluing on a smile that showed his broken front teeth and never got within a mile of his cold eyes.
"Not your brother. And you understand me. You better."
RYAN WAS BUSHED from the heavy labor, his shoulders and back feeling like they were filled with hot sand.
He had taken the top bunk, leaving Kate to quickly fall asleep on the bed beneath him, the two thin blankets tucked around her.
Before dropping into a dreamless darkness, Ryan squinted across the hut at the elder and his followers. There was a low-wattage bulb burning in the middle of the stained ceiling, and it gave enough light for him to see that they were having what looked like a prayer meeting.
Ryan was worried about Elder Bluffield. He wasn't the usual blowhard religious crazy, like so many others running their own splinter groups throughout Deathlands. This one had a backbone, and Ryan had pulled him down in front of his loyal followers.
Perhaps it might be possible to take the old man out during the shift tomorrow. There weren't many better places than the deep sulfur mines to arrange a terminal accident.
RYAN AWAKENED in the middle of the night. Pressure on his bladder sent him into the cramped alcove that served as toilet facilities. The iron door was half closed, and he pushed it behind him to bring a little privacy.
Outside, a hailstorm was blowing up, the granules of ice rattling noisily on the roof of the hut. Ryan figured that it had probably been the sound of the blizzard that had jerked him from sleep.
He finished urinating and buttoned up his pants, checking that the blaster and the panga were still secure. It wasn't until he turned around to go back to the sleeping quarters that he realized the door had swung shut.
He pulled at it, but it didn't move at all.
Through it, muffled and faint, he heard Kate suddenly begin to scream.
Chapter Twenty-Nine
THERE WERE ONLY THREE screams, the last cut off short, as though someone had gagged the young woman, or knocked her unconscious.
Or chilled her.
The only illumination in the small room came through a tiny slit window high up, allowing the weakest of filtered light from outside.
Ryan drew the SIG-Sauer and looked quickly around him, seeing what option
s there were.
"Not many," he said grimly.
The door was iron, hanging on rusting hinges, with a simple bar lock. Someone on the other side must have slipped it, intending to keep him in there while they did what they wanted to Kate.
"Don't worry," a voice called through the door. "Stay quiet, brother, and it'll be quickly over and then she'll have paid the elder the due price of respect."
Ryan didn't waste breath on replying.
The red killing mist had swept down over his eye, filling his brain, and he fought against it, looking carefully at the door as he recovered something of his combat composure.
The room was so small that he could lean against the wall opposite the closed door. He'd taken the usual precaution of sleeping fully clothed, including the steel-tipped boots.
Ryan braced himself against the wall, powering both feet into a devastating kick at the door. The hinges crumbled into shards of orange rust, and the door crashed open.
It gave way so easily that Ryan slipped and fell, nearly dropping the blaster into the gaping shithole. By the time he recovered, the elder's flock had a few moments to try to recover their composure.
But as he stepped into the sleeping quarters, Ryan realized that they could have had most of eternity and still not managed to recover. They stood in a frozen tableau, with Kate at their center.
She was spread-eagled on one of the top bunks, tied by wrists and ankles. Elder Bluffield stood by her left hand, holding a small open razor, its blade winking in the glow of the overhead lamp.
He was gripping the young woman's left hand, forcing her to open her fingers.
Ryan waved the gaping muzzle of the 9 mm automatic at them, seeing nobody else seemed to be armed at all.
"This has a silencer, so nobody beyond these four walls'll hear a sound. But you'll all be dying. Starting with you, Elder. Cut her free with that blade, and be real careful. If I see any blood, I start blowing holes in stomachs."
"If the guards come they'll chill us all," squeaked a tiny man with a weathered face.
"Make the wrong move and I'll fucking chill you all," Ryan said, calm and quiet.
"Let this happen, brother, and we can all live and work as one." Bluffield nodded like a child's puppet.
Ryan shook his head in disbelief. "You are about the sickest triple stupe I ever did see. Just use that knife slow and cut the girl free."
Bluffield looked around at his followers. "Will nobody rid me of this troublesome man?" he asked. "None of you?"
"Living beats dying, Elder. Do it now."
Only the reality of having to conceal corpses or do a runner from the mines checked Ryan's finger on the trigger of the powerful blaster. To put a couple of rounds through the bearded old man's belly would have been a rich and genuine pleasure.
The razor moved toward Kate's neck, past the balled gag of cotton waste that forced her jaws apart, on to the cords around her wrists. The sharp steel breathed through the thin ropes and cut her free.
"And her ankles."
The young woman sat up, fingers frantically unknotting the gag. Her eyes were wide with shock, and there was a dark bruise on her right cheek.
"You know what these…" she began, but Ryan hushed her with a movement of the SIG-Sauer.
"I know."
Bluffield finished cutting her free and stood there, still holding the gleaming blade, not sure what to do with it.
"Off the bed and over here," Ryan ordered. "You're all right?"
It was a statement with only the barest hint of a question. Kate simply nodded and moved across the narrow room to join him.
"Now what?" the elder asked, struggling to retain a tattered vestige of authority and dignity.
And failing.
Ryan stepped closer to him, the muzzle of the automatic drilling in toward the center of the elegant white beard.
The slitted eyes became even more narrow, and a thread of spittle dangled from the parted lips.
"Put the razor down on the blanket. Then place your hands together in front, like you're praying. That's good."
"What are you going to do?"
Ryan beckoned to the youngest of the women who stood fearfully watching. "Here."
Elder Bluffield turned his head like a cornered rat. "We'll leave you alone. Won't do anything. Help you. Carry your shift for you."
"Shut the mouth. No, on second thought, you can open your mouth a little wider and lay your left hand on the blanket there."
"Why? What are…" The penny dropped and he moaned. "No."
"Pick up the razor, lady," Ryan ordered, "and do like the elder tells you. Come on, Reverend, you tell her what to do."
"No, no. I beg you to—"
He gagged as Ryan rammed the muzzle of the automatic between his lips. Blood coursed from his upper lip where the silencer tore the flesh, and two of his front teeth were snapped off at gum level.
There was a collective cry of distress from the watching group at their leader's suffering, which was only just beginning.
"Pick up the razor. Two of you men come across and hold the elder's hand real still. Don't want any mistakes here."
Nobody moved. Ryan moved his wrist slightly, making Bluffield's head wobble up and down, his eyes wider than silver dollars.
"I pull this trigger, and it'll take an hour just to scrape his brains off of the ceiling."
Kate cleared her throat, and Ryan glanced over his shoulder at her. She simply shrugged and said nothing.
Two of the older men came and reluctantly held the trembling hand, pinning it down to the bunk. Elder Bluffield tried to speak, but only a choking gargle came past the muzzle of the blaster, accompanied by a wider streak of blood that stained the immaculate white of the beard.
The girl picked up the razor and stared at it with a hypnotized fascination.
Ryan smiled at her, making her even more terrified. In the total stillness they all heard the pattering of liquid on the floor of the hut, and she glanced down at the spreading damp patch between her bare feet.
"Don't worry, sister. Soon be done. Show this sick-hearted bastard just what it feels like to make a small sacrifice. Cut deep and firm, just along the line of the knuckle there." He pointed with his left hand. "Make sure you get in close to the joint, or you'll have a real hard job trying to hack through bone with that razor."
"I can't do that."
"Sure you can. Elder Bluffield truly wants you to cut off three of the fingers from his left hand, don't you, Reverend? Just nod, or I'll blow the whole top of your head away."
The white head nodded slowly.
Ryan smiled again. "There you go, sister."
Bluffield passed out before she was even halfway through the second finger.
RYAN LAY BACK on his bunk and watched the clucking women as they gathered around their stricken leader, tearing up blankets and their own clothes to try to staunch the flow of blood and bandage his mutilated hand.
Kate was sleeping on the bunk below him, one arm thrown across her face as though she were trying to blank out the memory of what she'd seen.
Bluffield had recovered consciousness, biting on a wad of cloth to stifle his own moans. He ignored the efforts of his apostles to help him, keeping his narrow, amber eyes fixed on the man who had caused him the suffering.
Ryan stared back, expressionless, the blaster still drawn and ready in his right hand.
The elder suddenly snatched at the arm of one of his women and pulled her head down so that he could whisper something to her.
She listened, then nodded, tiptoeing across to Ryan's bunk.
"I have a message from the elder," she said, spitting out the words, keeping her eyes on the concrete floor.
"Yeah?"
"He says to tell you to look for the morrow, for no man knoweth what it will bring."
"Tell Elder Bluffield that I couldn't agree more."
Chapter Thirty
THE YELLOWISH EYES were open wide, protruding from their sockets as though
someone had pushed at them from inside the skull. The whites were suffused with blood. The mouth was wide open, the lips purplish and swollen, the tongue thrust far out, blackened and engorged. The front of the white trousers still showed the thrusting erection, the area around the groin moist and stained.
The arms hung limply at the sides, though the palms were encrusted with dried blood, scarred with deep, raw gouges from the fingernails. More dark crimson had seeped through the makeshift bandages around the severed fingers, dripping down to form a sticky congealing pool.
The feet just reached the floor, the bare toes scraping on the damp stone.
The rope, made from plaited strips of torn blanket, was knotted so tightly around the neck that it had almost disappeared into the dark, swollen skin. Its other end was tied securely around one of the water pipes near the ceiling.
One of the women found Bluffield's corpse when she went into the toilet room in the dark hours before the dawning.
Surprisingly she didn't scream. But her stifled gasp of horror and shock were sufficient to wake Ryan.
He pushed the blanket from his chest and swung his legs over the side of the bunk. One of his boots clunked against the metal frame, pulling Kate from sleep.
"What is it?" she whispered. "Not more trouble, Ryan?"
"Could be the end of one of the troubles."
The member of Elder Bluffield's group was standing in the narrow doorway, looking around at the rows of sleepers.
"Gone," she said loudly.
"Has he escaped?" Kate whispered.
"In a way," Ryan replied.
"The Lord has taken the elder to dine with him in the fields of Elysium," the woman called, her voice shrilling out.
Ryan walked quickly and glanced into the anteroom, shaking his head, rejoining Kate by her bunk before any of the others were out of their beds.
"Hanged himself," he said.
"What?"
By now there was a babble of shouting and crying, everyone wanting to go and view the body, but nobody eager to go in and move it.
"Oh, why did you leave us, Master?" shrieked one of the men, banging his head against the wall of the hut until the iron frame rang like a gong.