Watersleep

by James Axler

  "Hard to believe anyone would want to come to this hellhole for a vacation," Mildred said, wiping at her forehead with an already soaked sleeve.

  "As I recall, madam, the young and the old flocked to Florida for the scenic beaches and tanning rays of the sun, not the steady drizzle or the state's varied swamplands," Doc said, his long white hair drooping around his head like the strands of a dirty mop.

  "Give me the mountains any day of the week," Mildred responded.

  "Hold up," Ryan said from the front of the line. He'd been following the slowly moving river, looking for some kind of a landmark they might remember from before. Nothing as obvious as a sign or a chained-off area presented itself, but ahead of them was a huge fallen tree made of fiberglass and plastic, part of the park's once carefully cultivated veneer. The path Ryan had been following vanished beneath the fake redwood, and an even denser growth of bushes lay beyond.

  "Used to be a bridge here," J.B. said confidently, his remarkably sharp memory coming into play. "Stretched out clean across the water."

  "And boats," Dean added. "All kinds of plastic boats with ripped-up roofs and funny names."

  "Queen of the South," Doc said. "I recall that was one of the poor stranded hulks. But where the sad Queen and all of her familiars have vanished, I cannot say."

  "Bridge probably fell in the quake," Krysty sug­gested. "And those boats weren't exactly secure."

  "Doesn't matter," Ryan said. "I recognize the tree."

  "Alas, even the mighty redwoods cannot withstand the power of the land," Doc said.

  "Sure, Doc. Whatever," Ryan said absently, trying to get some relief from the rain by standing beneath a second, unfelled mock redwood.

  "All right, this spot here is close to where the sec man Kelly got the drop on us first time we came through. This visit, I think we'll try and be a little more subtle until we see what the situation is."

  "Think folk still here?" Jak asked.

  "Could be. One thing we do know is that many of the people living in the ville were chilled in the fight with Traven, and my guess is with Larry dead, there wouldn't be reason to hang around this place for long once the rides went down and the electricity messed up."

  "Debate as you will, friends. I'm going to fetch a drink," Doc said, heading for the shallow edge of the riverbank. "I am frightfully parched."

  "Mildred, any chance of this water being drink­able?" Ryan asked.

  "No reason it shouldn't be," the doctor replied. She turned after the departing Doc, unable to resist adding, "My advice is to be more worried about what's in the water."

  Ryan agreed. "Got a point, Mildred. J.B., go with Doc. Keep an eye out for snakes. If the water's okay, we can refill our ration canteens."

  The Armorer nodded and followed Doc to the edge of the slowly moving water.

  Standing near his father, Dean looked a little un­comfortable at the mention of snakes, since he had nearly had the life squeezed out of him by a multi-hued mutated boa constrictor in his previous visit to this section of Greenglades.

  "You thirsty, Dean?" Ryan asked.

  "No. No, I think I'll stay right where I am, Dad."

  "Be nice to go skinny-dipping in there, lover. Take the edge of this wet heat." Krysty said, crooking an arm through one of Ryan's elbows. "After sweating for so long in the redoubt, then stomping around all afternoon in this fetid mess, I'm sure all of us could use a dunking."

  "I hear you, but I think I'd rather go for a swim when the rain stop—"

  Their conversation was interrupted by a high-pitched shriek from Doc.

  Chapter Six

  Less than five minutes before Ryan and Krysty would be interrupted by his panicked cry, Doc knelt care­fully at the muddy edge of the murky waters and cupped his hands to drink.

  "How's it taste?" J.B. asked, stepping up behind the kneeling Doc. The Armorer was scanning the sur­face of the water, looking for signs of movement. He took off his glasses for the hundredth time since ven­turing into Greenglades, and tried to wipe them clear on his shir.t Even with the scene in front of him being blurry, J.B. could tell the river's flow could be tracked in centimeters, like slow, sticky molasses. Where the water began and ended was open for debate.

  Doc took a tentative sip of the liquid, then another. He smiled and lowered his face into the remainder of the water in his hands, washing his face and eyes. He leaned back and gave out a lengthy exhalation of re­lief.

  "Cool and wet, my friend, cool and wet." Doc took out his swallow''s-eye kerchief and dipped it into the water, soaking the fabric and then wringing out the excess moisture.

  "Real or fake?" J.B. asked Doc.

  "What? This water? Real as it gets!" Doc replied.

  "No, the river. Natural or man-made?"

  Doc pondered the query for a second. "I am per­plexed, John Barrymore. In the scheme of all things great and small, does it really matter?"

  "Guess not," J.B. replied. "Just wondering."

  "I question my sanity at moments such as these," Doc said, placing the damp rag on his neck beneath the collar of his frock coat. "In the midst of a steady, warm rain, I am trying to ease my discomfort with the touch of more water. Such is the logic of Deathlands."

  J.B. removed his canteen from his belt and ex­tended the small metal canister to Doc, who ignored it. Doc was busy shifting his body, leaning back on his haunches and getting out of his kneeling position. For a brief time, his body froze in an awkward pose before flopping backward and allowing him to end up sitting on his butt on one of the larger rocks jutting up from the river's edge.

  "While you're down there playing in the water, fill this up, would you?" J.B. said, waving the battered canteen for a second time.

  "In a moment, John Barrymore," Doc replied, reaching down to pull off one of his high black boots. "I have personal duties to attend to first. If you cannot wait, please avail yourself personally of the facilities. I am afraid we have no running hot water, but at least it is safe."

  J.B. snorted, watching as Doc removed one boot and one grayish white sock. A long bony foot whiter than the pallor of Jak's skin appeared as Doc peeled away the unwashed hosiery.

  Once he realized what Doc was preparing to do, J.B.'s inclination to tend to his own canteen was spurred into frantic action. He bolted forward and knelt on one knee, dunking his open canteen into the river and filling the portable container.

  "Help me with my second boot, friend Dix," Doc asked, struggling to remove his other boot. "I fear it has become a permanent part of my left leg."

  His canteen refilled, J.B. stood and clamped it back securely to his belt. Next to him, Doc impatiently waggled his still-booted foot. "You pull one way and I shall pull the other, and together we shall free my appendage of its leathery imprisonment," Doc said. "Allowing me to wave all ten toes in a gesture of gratitude."

  "Need my hands free to draw in case some mutie bastard crawls out of the water."

  Doc used his bare foot as a brace on the booted heel and pushed. At the same time, he utilized both his hands to shove down on the upper part of his boot. The result from his efforts took both Doc and J.B. by surprise.

  The footwear exploded off his leg and went sailing away, wobbling as the empty boot came down with a splash nearly midpoint in the river.

  J.B. almost fell over in the shallows of the river, his entire body shaking with laughter. Doc got to his feet, one leg bare up to his calf, the other covered with a white sock, and marched out into the water with as much dignity as he could muster to retrieve his boot.

  "Hold up, Doc," J.B. called. "We don't know how deep that river is. You might need some help finding your flying footwear."

  "Thank you for your words of caution, John Barrymore, but I think I can find my way to where my boot landed without your holding my hand."

  "Suit yourself." J.B. grinned. "But if a croc takes a bite out of your scrawny ass, don't come crying to me."

  Still, J.B. kept a careful watch. Doc waded out easi­ly enough,
and the water never went beyond his waist as he reached his half-submerged boot. He grabbed the boot and held it high like a trophy as he began to return to the riverbank, never dreaming his move­ments had indeed triggered the attention of a silent parasite, but a parasite unlike any he'd ever been ex­posed to before.

  Even in Doc's day, a few quack practitioners could still be found in back rooms and barber shops extoll­ing the curative powers of the common leech. As a young lad in the 1870s, he had an aunt who swore by the slimy creatures. Doc's primary memory of her appearance was that the old woman was missing many of her teeth.

  The aunt came to visit on holidays with a jar of her favorite leeches. She'd laugh at the boy's discomfort as she plopped an assortment of the pulpy beasts on her fleshy arms.

  "Suck the poison right outta there," she would say, laughing, and always end by extending one of the remaining leeches out under the young Tanner's nose. "Make you feel twenty years younger! Sure you don't want to try one?"

  Doc would flee the guest room in tears.

  Now, with the horror of the mutated leech directly under his bare feet, Doc would gladly have take a baker's dozen of the small leeches his aunt Mary had carried around in her glass jar.

  The leech was on Doc before the old man ever knew what had happened. Stirred up from slumber by his walking along the river's sediment-covered floor, the creature was nearly eight feet in length. The wormy mutation was vibrantly colored in shades of red and turquoise against black.

  Already one posterior sucker had softly attached itself from below to Doc's unprotected foot, and now, using the anchor his flesh provided, the other end of the leech elongated up out of the river from behind. The pseudopod stretched around and above Doc's shoulder, a tentacle intent on finding another haven of flesh to attach to.

  Unfortunately for Doc, the widest possible area was his unprotected face.

  The first attaching from the disklike sucker below the river's surface was as gentle as a baby's kiss as it clung to the upper part of Doc's bare foot and calf. The many jagged teeth centered inside the other, front sucker came into play as they oozed over and down upon his unsuspecting face.

  Watching from the shore, J.B. didn't comprehend what was occurring since his vision was still less than reliable from the mist covering his glasses. It took Doc's sudden shout of horror—and the abrupt ending of his cry—to alert J.B. that something had gone ter­ribly wrong.

  Hearing the scream, the others on shore raced to­ward the river. Ryan's keen eye spotted the problem immediately as the old man stumbled back and forth. He hadn't fallen down in the water yet, but it was only a matter of time before he lost his footing.

  "Bloodsuckers," Ryan murmured. "Fireblast, but that's the biggest one I've ever seen."

  "Christ, Ryan, what kind of leech is that?" Mil­dred asked in disbelief.

  "Mutie. Drain a man dry in minutes."

  Dean raised his Browning to fire, but Krysty slapped it down.

  "No, Dean. The bullets will tear right through that horror. You might hit Doc!"

  Ryan had already dropped his blasters. He'd drawn his panga and run toward the river as soon as he heard Doc's panicked voice ring out. But J.B. was closer. The Armorer had cast aside his Uzi and the Smith & Wesson M-4000 scattergun and was preparing to dive into the water when Mildred cried out a warning.

  "John, don't go in. There's bound to be more of them!"

  J.B. hesitated, but only for the span of a second, only until Ryan kept moving past him and went un­der, choosing to swim. As the one-eyed man took the lead, J.B. jumped in after him. However, J.B. chose to keep his body above water, wading out toward the struggling Doc as his old friend swam below. The Armorer had also pulled his own blade, a keenly honed Tekna knife.

  In the dirty haze of the river, Ryan was soon able to spot Doc's legs, and pushed his body closer while trying to keep alert to the presence of any more of the huge mutated leeches. Or worse yet, any other kind of mutations that might approach, attracted by the commotion.

  Behind Ryan, J.B. kicked up dirt and silt from the river bottom and was rewarded with a bloodsucker of his own. The orange-and-yellow creature had been lying in wait, disturbed at first by the other leech's efforts to ensnare Doc, and now by the vibrations and the stirring up of the muddy floor of the river.

  The beast slithered toward J.B.—eyeless, blind— drawn to him as the other had been drawn to Doc by the vibrations in the water. The freakish creature came up, undulating around and behind the Armorer, slith­ering its anterior end up under his leather jacket.

  J.B. felt the movement and tried to crane his neck around to see what was on his back. As he turned his head one way and then the other, he spied the lower part of the vibrantly colored leech extending down from under his coat. Each ringlike segment was quiv­ering obscenely as it slid farther and farther into his clothing.

  "Dark night!" he muttered in disgust as he hur­riedly pulled off the jacket as well as he could, first freeing one arm and then the other. He began to twist the sleeves tighter and tighter, finally managing to crush part of the bloodsucker inside the coat. A brack­ish red fluid started to pour from under the leather, and a horrific smell of decay flooded J.B.'s nostrils, making him gag even as he continued to crush the mutated leech with his bare hands.

  When Ryan reached Doc, the old man had fallen over in the water, his legs kicking up as he struggled to breathe. The panga bit deep into the pulpy surface of the leech, releasing a pulsing stream of red blood. More and more of the thick fluid came rushing out as Ryan pulled the blade downward in a vertical slash along the leech's body.

  Ryan pulled Doc upright, trying to get him to stand on his own two feet, while J.B. staggered over and wrapped an arm around Doc's waist. The old man's body continued to thrash and contort as he struggled for survival. "He hasn't gone limp yet, and that's a good sign," Ryan said as he gripped the edges of the dying bloodsucker's anterior end that still clung to Doc's face.

  He hesitated, not knowing just how tightly the leech had attached itself. The creature had dozens upon dozens of tiny, needle-sharp teeth, and all of them were buried in Doc's flesh. Ripping the leech away might save Doc's life but disfigure him per­manently.

  "Do it," J.B. said, sharing Ryan's thoughts. "Bet­ter alive and ugly than dead and pretty."

  Ryan begin to tug, hoping he wasn't going to pull away most of the old man's face. Unfortunately the leech proved to be annoyingly true to its name. Even after the beast's death throes, the now slack creature refused to let go.

  "No good. I'm going to pull his eyes right out of his head like this," Ryan said. "I'll have to cut it off."

  He peered intently at the join where the blood­sucker's skin met Doc's and gave himself a quarter-inch margin for error. The tip of the honed blade of the panga slid into the bloodsucker, and Ryan pulled the blade down. More of the creature's red life's fluid poured out, coating his hands and upper arms. The coppery smell of fresh blood hung in the air like a sodden blanket. Ryan knew the new color was Doc's blood, sucked out by the parasitic beast.

  He had cut away half of the leech's head when it finally let go, the evil teeth releasing their hold. The one-eyed man peeled the rest of the sagging mess of grue back from Doc's pale white face like a gory death mask.

  "Thank you!" Doc gasped, sucking in a chestful of air. The dead-fish pallor of his skin was offset by an almost perfect red ring from chin to forehead where the attaching teeth of the bloodsucker had bit. He coughed in between gulps of air.

  "Can you walk?" Ryan asked, glancing at the river water. "We've got to get out of here before more of these bastard leeches show up."

  Doc didn't say anything, but his body did the talk­ing for him as he stepped forward and headed for shore. J.B. spied the lost boot half floating, half submerged behind Doc. He snatched it up, pouring out the water that had collected inside as he and Ryan followed the old man as quickly as they dared.

  "THERE IS NO SAFE HAVEN," Doc whispered, all of the fight suc
ked out of him along with what Mildred guessed to be over two pints of blood.

  "Not true. Safe haven was at the riverbank. You're the one who left it to go splashing around the water, and look what it got you," Mildred replied as she cleaned the deep wound on the upper part of his left foot. "This will take a little longer to heal than your average abrasion, and this rain isn't going to help. Bloodsucking leeches produce a chemical called hirudin. It prevents the blood from thickening and makes it easier for the leech to—"

  "I get the picture, Dr. Wyeth," Doc said weakly. "Your words and terminology paint a most disturbing portrait."

  "How soon before he can walk?" Ryan asked.

  "Now—if he wants to. He may look like hell, but there's no real damage to keep him off his feet. I wouldn't recommend a long march until he's had some sleep and a chance to build back his blood sup­ply, but he's good for a while. I had some antiseptic to clean out where the leech attached to his foot and face. Luckily the teeth on his face didn't go deep. Those marks should fade soon without any scarring."

  Looking at Doc's bandaged foot, Dean held a men­tal picture of the wound beneath the gauze and sup­pressed the urge to vomit. If he had any say-so in his lifetime again, the boy knew he would never venture into another swamp. They were triple-bad luck.

  Mildred pulled a dry sock onto Doc's injured foot and over the bandages—the extra pair had been squir­reled away by Dean in a pocket. Although too small for Doc's long feet, the donated hosiery had the ad­vantage of not being sodden.