by James Axler
J.B. assisted Mildred with pulling on Doc's long boots. Using their shoulders as a brace, the older man pulled himself to his feet. Krysty handed Doc the silver lion's-head swordstick, and he began to hobble around.
"Funny seeing Doc use stick for walking 'stead of sticking," Jak commented.
"Good as new?" Krysty asked hopefully.
"Not hardly, but I am not ready for the scrap heap of the broken-down bodies and minds of the elder folks' home as of yet, madam," Doc replied, balancing himself carefully and holding up his injured ankle. "The good Dr. Wyeth has managed to patch my hide yet again, and for that, I am grateful."
J.B. was peering around the grassy jungle. He turned and waved Ryan over to where he was standing.
"See something?" Ryan asked, holding his blaster in a defensive position.
"Through this murk?" J.B. replied sourly, taking off his glasses and glaring down at the rain-streaked lenses. "Not much. Glad we're not under attack by some marauders right now. Chopping up mutie leeches under my nose is one thing, but I'd hate to have to try and aim my blaster at something smaller than a barnyard door."
"So, what did you want?" Ryan said. "You're facing in the wrong direction. I don't feel like backtracking."
"Glance over there to the right, back a little from where we came," the Armorer replied. "I can't be sure without my glasses, but I believe there's a break in a wire sec fence over there. That's a fake backdrop on top. Must've been to fool folks out here. If we can squeeze through, should bring us right out in the park."
Ryan peered at the spot. "You're right, J.B. I'll tell the others."
ONE QUICK EXPLANATION later, and the party collected at the torn fencing.
"Once was trail here. Short cut," Jak said, kneeling. He stood and halfheartedly brushed the mud off of his knees. "Not used in long time."
"I'll go through," Ryan said, pulling aside the rusted mesh and stepping through.
On the other side, he extracted himself from the fencing as carefully as possible, enjoying the feel of hard asphalt under his feet. He saw some machinery and a lone open control panel; deep, dark grease and oil stains that time and the rain still hadn't managed to clear away; faded white and yellow lines on the ground. Ryan decided he was behind one of the mechanical attractions of Boss Larry Zapp's amusement park.
Ryan made his way around to the front, seeing a fallen mass of painted metal. Some cables were still attached, spiderlike, to a scaffolding above. The ride looked small, like a thrill-cart adventure that spun in a tight circle for the thrill junkie.
He gave a tuneless whistle, and the rest of the group joined him.
"I'd say the baron's place is closed for the season," Mildred said.
Ryan was about to agree with her assessment when a new complication presented itself. He inwardly cursed himself for not being more thorough in his initial check of the area.
"I remember you," an unfamiliar leathery voice said from behind Ryan's left ear. "I remember you all."
Chapter Seven
Ryan spun in the direction of where the words had come from, dropping to one knee and pulling out his blaster with practiced ease. Other members of the group followed suit, taking out their own assortment of weapons and aiming in the same direction as Ryan.
The sudden appearance of firepower was more than overkill for the sad sight they discovered they were confronting.
A lean man dressed in a yellow shortsleeved sport shirt and threadbare plaid shorts was standing next to the entranceway of the ride formerly known as The Whirling Upchuck. He wore a pair of well-used tan leather sandals, and the top of his bald head was beaded with raindrops as he looked at the plethora of weapons aimed at his face, neck and groin. He raised a liver-spotted hand in a universal sign of greeting.
"You can put away the cannons, young fella. I'm not packing any heat today. Left it inside where I was watching you. Too wet out."
"That's a good way to get chilled fast, old man," Ryan said.
"So what? I'm one foot in the flippin' graveyard anyway. You'd be doing me a favor," the man snorted. "What happened out in the swamps? I thought I heard gunfire, but it was too muffled for me to be sure. Course, you hear all kinds of things from out in the swamps these days."
"We made some new friends," Ryan said cryptically. "But they weren't too friendly."
"What, the man-eatin' frogs? Killer snakes? Mutie cranes? I've seen 'em all."
Ryan chuckled mirthlessly. "You make all that sound almost funny."
"Well, it is, unless you're the one with your balls caught in their teeth."
Dean piped up, "Naw, all we had to contend with was a couple of giant leeches. Almost sucked Doc but good and dry.''
The old man blinked. "Goddamn, that's a new one on me," he said. "Giant leeches. Hell's bells."
"So, you think you know us?" Ryan stated.
The old man nodded.
"Well, I don't remember you," Ryan replied. "You must be losing it—happens with age."
"Nope. Uh-uh. I may look like a decrepit old rip to you people, and I'll be the first to admit I'm nowhere near as fast as I used to be, but my eyes are still sharp and the mind's clear. I used to work in the now nearly extinct art of creating illegal identification cards and access passes, and I was always good with faces.
"Let's see now," he muttered, nodding to each member of the group as he spoke. "A black woman beside a white man with spectacles, a tall drink of water with long white hair, a beautiful woman with flame red hair, and a boy on the shirttail of a grim man wearing an eye patch. Don't recognize the pinkeye—he's new, and the boy's grown a bit, but still…yeah, you were the outlanders who passed through here when that son of a bitch fairy was trying to take the place out from under Boss Larry."
Ryan's keen warrior senses, developed over the long years of survival in Deathlands, had gone into triple red from the time the man appeared. There were plenty of spots for a sniper's nest in this part of the park, along with ample cover if one wanted to plan an ambush. The wrinkled man in the ugly summer clothes could be a diversion.
Still, none of the danger signs had come creeping across his skin.
"Krysty…?" Ryan didn't need to verbalize the rest of his request. He knew the woman would already be using her "seeing" abilities to check for any kind of hidden presence or threat.
"Not feeling a thing, lover," she replied. "I'd say the old coot is exactly what he appears to be."
"No need to be insulting, young lady," the man said. "The name's William B. Chapman. You can call me Wild Bill, if you can say it with a straight face."
Actually to say the man was an "old coot" was about as accurate as referring to the nuke war that had brought about skydark as a "friendly pillow fight" William B. Chapman looked like a walking framework of bones and sinew, topped off with a sunburned raisin for a head. He made even the skeletal Doc Tanner look as young and rosy as Dean.
"I'm Ryan Cawdor. This is my boy, Dean," Ryan said as a greeting, then introduced the rest of the travelers in turn.
"Glad to meet you, Mr. Cawdor. All of you. We don't get many visitors these days," Bill said.
"You're one of the wrinklies from outside the park," Dean said, referring to the condo development located between Greenglades ville and the swamps. In his more coherent days before the dreem rotted his intellect, Larry Zapp had set up the place as a walled safe haven for the old and infirm, as long as they had enough jack to afford his protection.
Never one to pass up the means to make a profit, Larry had taken a former minimum-security prison equipped with separate bungalows and modified it for his own use. After first learning of the setup, Mildred hadn't been able to resist commenting that Larry had managed to make retiring to Florida take on a whole new meaning.
Getting old in Deathlands had to really be a bitch, Ryan reflected. He'd never really thought about getting older—watching Doc deal with the weariness of body and soul on a daily basis was enough to push the image of a s
eventy-year-old Ryan Cawdor hobbling around the rad-strewed byways far from his mind. In his younger days of riding at the Trader's side on War Wag One, Ryan had always assumed that he'd never live long enough to worry about advancing
Now he had a son to care for, and a group of friends who depended on him.
He also had, for all intents and purposes, a wife.
Ryan knew that located in a guarded corner of Krysty's well-protected mind was the hope they would all be able to return someday to a safe haven and spend the last years of their lives together content and safe. A noble dream, and Ryan shared the sentiment.
He only hoped he lived long enough to see the day.
"I am indeed a former resident of Zapp's Rainbow's End Retirement Complex," Bill confirmed.
"Former?" Doc asked.
"Boss Larry's passing meant an end to our security, young fella," Bill said. His choice of term for Doc caused everyone to grin. Doc hadn't been addressed as young in a long, long time. "Although, truth be known, even with all of Larry's alarms and motion detectors and armed security men, we were still trapped on the inside like chickens in the henhouse when the fox came calling."
Ryan knew firsthand how the security of the retirement complex was a blessing and a curse. The elderly compound inhabitants had been one of the lures for Adam Traven, who in addition to his pimping and drug selling, also had a sick blood fetish. Soon after his arrival in Greenglades, Traven had started leading his youthful followers over the wall in the retirement area on a regular basis for long bloody nights of "dark snaking," a term Traven had invented for the murder sprees he'd conducted.
Those who owned the tidy homes inside the complex had paid a bundle in order to sleep at night with the impression that nothing could get in to harm them. They were wrong.
Once past the guards into the backyards, it took little effort to break a window, slip a latch, then enter and creep around the interior of the chosen home as the elderly inhabitants slept, blissfully unaware of the horrors that had invaded their lives.
Unaware until Traven woke them up and the gutting began.
An unarmed Ryan had been forced to accompany Traven and seven of his followers on one of the killing sprees. By the time Ryan had gained the advantage, only two of the killers had escaped his own murderous wrath, and it was the last time Traven would ever harm an innocent.
"I remember seeing your group when the late Mrs. Owen accosted the park's head sec man about wanting Boss Larry to add more protection," Bill said. "Guess Larry had his own problems at the time, huh?"
"Yeah, you might say that," Ryan agreed.
"I came out here to offer you folks some supper and a dry roof," Bill said, gesturing at the gray, stormy sky. "This joint ain't what it once was, but I've managed to keep my own patch of heaven functioning. Come on, you can check out Central Avenue. It's the main spoke toward the Centerpoint tower and restaurant and the best and quickest way to cut through the park."
A STATUE OF GUSSY GOOSE held up a broken wing in a sad greeting as they went through the twisted iron gates that led to the incredible Greenglades replica of a turn-of-the-century small-town American street. Central Avenue was a collection of shops and eating establishments, with a city hall, a fire station, an old-time cinema and even a post office all located shoulder to shoulder. An appropriately seedy penny arcade promised thrills and excitement for a mere cent. A ladies' boutique advertised the latest in spring hats from Paris.
Near the end of the street, a large granite railroad station was tucked away in a far corner. A twin extension of elevated spaghettilike tracks for silver monorail cars to glide to and fro, carrying passengers to other parts of Greenglades, stretched out from the second floor. The monorail tracks had fallen in several places near the exits of the station, eliminating the possibility of any future journeys.
More evidence of transportation could be seen on the avenue proper, as well—horse-drawn trolleys minus the steeds to pull them along, double-decker touring buses with stripped engines and flattened tires, pitted yet somehow still red fire engines and ancient replicas of horseless carriages once gave visitors the option of riding instead of walking, but now all the vehicles were frozen and silent.
Some of the little buildings along Central Avenue were in better repair than others. Boss Larry hadn't allowed Ryan and the others to tour this section of the park during their earlier stay, probably because of its ill repair. The fat baron's ego wouldn't and couldn't have allowed guests to view any part of his domain that was less than perfect.
The memories and thoughts the quaint street triggered in each member of Ryan's party were different—for Doc and Mildred, a vision of what America once was during their individual lifetimes came rushing back, more so for Doc, who had literally lived in such a turn-of-the-century setting with his family, but even the younger Mildred had seen this type of homey ambiance on a daily basis during her smalltown Southern childhood.
For J.B. and Dean, such period architecture had only been glimpsed in books and vids, yet at the same time, there was a sense of place and community here, even in the exaggerated form the theme park provided. And for Ryan and Krysty, the cracked sidewalks and overgrown flower beds, the broken shop windows and elegantly sculpted rooftops, the non-functioning fountain at the center of the hub at the end of the street—all of it was a whispered kiss of what a man's and a woman's life could be, and once was, before the darkness fell across the world.
Only Jak seemed unmoved.
"What happened after we left?" Mildred asked as they walked down colorful Central Avenue and approached the central hub of the theme park.
"All hell broke loose, missy, that's what happened," Bill replied. "Most of us still in the retirement complex didn't know much about blasters or fighting. That's what we were paying Boss Larry's boys for. A few of us had blasters and at least had the presence of mind to take up the guard stations, but after a week or two, we decided we were guarding ourselves against nothing but a case of boredom. The murders in the complex had stopped. We found out later Traven was sneaking in with his band of crazies and killing off families for kicks."
The group strolled past the mock streets of Central Avenue and entered a new section, easily identified by the new color of the curbs, trash cans and other markers.
"Here we go—Magicland. The most popular part of Greenglades Theme Park." Although the old man tried to sound jovial in his mock introduction, there was no mistaking the hint of bitterness that lurked in the back of his throat.
This section of the amusement park was a shock to everybody. Even though some of the rides had started to exhibit signs of age or lack of adequate repair during Larry's reign, now the once carefully cultivated grounds were overgrown and tangled with vines. The paved walkways were chipped and cracked from the earthquakes, and many of the larger colorful rides had fallen over in a massive heap of metal, creating a rusted shambles.
"What happened to this place?" Ryan asked as he stepped over a flattened weather-beaten sign of a cartoon seal in a striped vest and straw hat that instructed Younger Magicland Visitors Shorter Than Me Need To Wait Until They've Grown Another Few Inches!
"Cajuns is what happened," Bill replied, his lined face wrinkling even further at the mention of the name. His brown eyes had almost disappeared into cavernous pits under his long forehead. "Crazy sons of bitches. Once word got around about Boss Larry going down for the count, Greenglades became open season."
"Cajuns long way from home," Jak stated.
"Yeah, I guess they were at that," Bill replied, rubbing his white-stubbled chin. "Even back in the days of Boss Larry, bands of 'em had crossed over from Louisiana into the upper panhandle. Time passed, it just got worse. The Cajuns were always causing Boss Larry to have fits, but none of his sec men were willing to wade out and try and take 'em on in their own environment, no matter how much jack Boss Larry put up. I heard it was nuke trouble— some kind of rad leak cooked the bastard
s right out of their swampy hellhole."
"You heard right," came J.B.'s voice from the back of the group. "We've been there. Nothing left of that part of Louisiana but a sunbaked desert."
Ryan nodded in agreement with his old friend's words, remembering everyone's shock when they had first stepped out of the Louisiana redoubt. They knew from a previous journey the dark blue colors of the gateway armaglass walls were located in a redoubt in the Louisiana swamplands, close to where they had first encountered Jak Lauren.
They'd gone up to the sec door of the redoubt and opened it, expecting a picture similar to the one when they arrived in Greenglades: majestic pecan trees and groves of ancient cypresses covered in a shroud of Spanish moss, all growing up from the dank waters of the bayous. Instead, their eyes had almost been fried in their sockets by the glare of white light. Outside was nothing but glassy sand and scrub brush, topped off with a coating of shimmering heat so thick you could almost touch it.
Ryan remembered stepping out into the yellowish haze and immediately wanting a drink of water, due to the heat and how parched the area looked. Just to make extra certain they hadn't gotten their redoubts confused, J.B. had risked a quick glance at the sweltering sun to take a reading from his sextant. His reading concurred with the color of the armaglass, and Doc's memory of the single, heartbreaking word of graffiti "Goodbye" scrawled in pen at the redoubt's exit.
This was indeed the swamplands of Louisiana, and in the time between their jumps, the entire area had become a wasteland. Sudden change never came as a true shock in Deathlands, but there seemed to be no logical explanation for what had caused such a radical transformation.
Still, there was no time to investigate, even if Ryan had possessed the inclination. Their button rad counters had also immediately gone into overdrive, the warning arrows shifting from a safe green to orange, and finally into a full state of crimson before Ryan and J.B. hurriedly stepped back inside and sealed the door.
For once, no one had minded a second jump.