Baptism of Rage

by James Axler

  “That was one way of dealing with it,” J.B. said gruffly. “I wonder what the family here were doing with it.”

  “Torment pet,” Jak said, and his voice carried an edge. “No more.”

  When J.B. turned, he saw that Jak had walked away from the cell and, having placed his blaster beside him on a stack of old Time magazines, was sorting through the tins of food that had been piled in one corner of the basement. He had done the right thing, J.B. knew. The scalie had been held and most likely tortured by Mitch and Annie, the way a child will pull the wings off a fly, the legs off spiders. They couldn’t let the mutie free without endangering themselves or the people they had been tasked to protect. Killing it, swiftly and without malice, was the most humane thing to do. A mercy killing, nothing more.

  J.B. pushed the thoughts from his mind and made his way to where Jak was working. “What are we eating?” he asked, picking up a tin and peering at the water-stained label. It was old U.S. Army, with a use-by date that seemed meaningless. Didn’t matter much, as long as it was food.

  IN THE MAIN ROOM of the house, where Paul tended the fire, the majority of the travelers slept. Mildred was there, too, curled up inside her blanket, exhaustion making her head heavy. Doc rested with his back against a wall, his sword stick still clutched loosely in his hands as he dozed.

  Mildred was thinking about the promise of Babyville, those late-night thoughts that wend their ways into half-awake dreams. She had realized that the attraction wasn’t really youth at all. Well, perhaps in Doc’s case, with his messed-up relationship to the aging process. But for most of them, it wasn’t really youth. Being young was a state of mind. You couldn’t really become younger. But physically, the opportunity to become stronger, to become fitter—that was something that Mildred understood. She had been a doctor, back before the nukecaust. Perhaps she still was, it was hard to tell when she had so little access to medicines, to facilities where she might truly heal people. Her whole life had been turned into an urgent rush, just field medicine, quick, patch-up repairs. Nothing in this environment was ever about building for the future, it was simply holding things together for the present, making them last another hour, another day.

  In her early days as a resident doctor, Mildred had been touched by the cases she treated, especially the children and the elderly. For some reason, there was something about those two groups that made her feel somehow she had to do more. The “adults,” the people like her, they would recover somehow anyway, right? But the elderly always seemed to have so much to give, and the kids hadn’t even started to give yet.

  There had been a patient, a man called Lester, who had been thirty-four and single, and he had been dying of cancer. Somehow, Mildred couldn’t say quite why, he had seemed unreal to her.

  His sallow face came back to her as she lay there in the darkness of the dilapidated living room, the bitter smell of his breath as he spoke, that faraway look he had in his eyes, as if he knew it was going to happen any day now.

  As she lay there, thinking of Les, a man who would never see his thirty-fifth birthday, Mildred wondered if they all had that look that he had. Were they all just staving off the inevitable, trying to keep the game going until Death played his winning hand?

  There was a sudden bark, loud and close, and Mildred snapped fully awake, her hand automatically reaching for the ZKR 551 under the bag she had used as a pillow. She sat up, looking around the vast room.

  Baby Holly started snuffling as Mildred searched the room, and then burst into tears, bawling in loud, unforgiving screams at being woken.

  The barking noise came again, and Mildred saw the figure across the far side of the room, sat doubled over, coughing into his hand. It was Charles Torino, hacking up whatever junk had settled into his besieged lungs.

  Pushing herself up, Mildred walked across the room to where Charles sat, spluttering into his hand. She crouched beside him, bringing herself to his level, as the other occupants in the room rolled over, groping for sleep once more.

  “Do you need anything?” Mildred asked.

  Charles coughed, the noises throaty and strained, until he finally managed to snatch a breath. Mildred saw the way the man shook in the firelight, his shoulders bouncing up and down as he tried to stifle the next cough. Finally he cleared his throat, wiping at his mouth with a sour expression.

  “Sweetheart,” Torino said, his voice a hoarse whisper, “I need to not be in this body. That’s what I really need.”

  “I’m a healer,” Mildred told him. “I might have something in my bag to make you sleep easier.”

  “That’s real kind of you,” Charles said gratefully.

  “Krysty’s good with plants,” Mildred added. “I’ll see if she can brew you up a herbal tea or something like that tomorrow. It might at least ease the pain in your throat.”

  “Ye—” Torino began, then he stopped as his coughing started up again. There were grumbles from all around as he continued to hack gunk from his lungs in abrupt, pained barks. Once the fit has passed, he reached a hand to Mildred, waved and nodded. He didn’t want to speak again for fear of starting up the coughing all over again.

  Mildred nodded back in understanding. “Maybe we could find somewhere else for you to bed down for tonight?” she suggested and Charles agreed.

  Mildred went back to her bedroll and rucksack, pulling them from the floor, as Charles did the same. Lighting a candle from the fire, the pair of them left the main room together.

  Outside, in the hallway, Mildred saw the two figures guarding the main door—Jak and J.B. “Did you find anything interesting downstairs?” she asked.

  J.B. nodded, the candle’s glow playing on the lenses of his spectacles. “Some food, some trouble. Nothing we couldn’t deal with.”

  Beside Mildred, Charles began to cough into his hand, trying his best to stifle the noise he made.

  “The whole place is protected like a fort,” J.B. said. “Suggests this isn’t a great place to be living.”

  Mildred agreed, concern in her voice. “Any idea what those things were we saw out by the road?”

  J.B. declined to mention the two—one living and one dead—that he and Jak had found in the basement cells. “Some strain of scalie,” he said. “Nocturnal or just antisocial. Mebbe something else.”

  “You mean, something other than scalies?”

  “Muties,” J.B. said with a shrug. “All I know is we don’t want to hang around these parts too long.”

  Charles spoke in a hoarse voice, his coughing fit having ended. “Agreed,” he said.

  NOISES FROM OUTSIDE drew Krysty to the window of the master bedroom. She peered through the section that hadn’t been boarded over as Ryan snored on the worn, four-poster. Outside, she could see figures rushing about in the darkness, racing between the trees, illuminated now and then by the moonlight like old-time celebrities in the flashbulb glare of the paparazzi. The figures looked human, erect on two legs, running this way and that in search of prey. Nocturnal scalies, J.B. had called them. Another messed-up branch of the DNA tree that had started with man.

  Feeling the cool air play on her naked skin, Krysty reached across to a stool by the window where she had left her fur coat. She took the shaggy coat, wrapping it over her shoulders, pulling it close, then turned back to the window as she heard the whooping and shouting of the monsters outside.

  As Krysty watched, one of the scalies out in the far field stopped and, placing his hand to his mouth, hollered to his comrades, howling like a wild animal. Two lumbering scalies appeared from the shadows, then more, until a party of eight surrounded the shouting scalie, looking to it for instructions. The leader, the one who had begun the ululating call, pointed to something that Krysty couldn’t see, a clump of bushes obscured by the shadows. They ran forward, spreading wide as they swarmed on the bushes.

  Something ran from the darkness then, a mysterious shape, just a blocky square on short, stubby legs. It rushed at one of the scalies, charging the man-thing
and knocking him off his feet. The scalie was tossed in the air and, as he fell to the ground, another boxy little shape came rushing out of its hiding place, following after the first.

  Krysty watched, intrigued, as the scalies leaped at the second creature, while several of them chased after the first as it made its way across the field and toward the house. She could see it better now, illuminated by the sliver of moonlight that cast its pallid glow over the bleak terrain. It was a boar, with dark, coarse hair on its pudgy body and two tusks glinting with the moonlight.

  “What are you watching?” Ryan asked, his voice coming from just behind her.

  Krysty turned and saw her lover standing by her shoulder, naked. The strip of moonlight through the windowpane played off Ryan’s taut muscles, and Krysty reached her hand forward, running it over his broad chest. “Monsters on the loose,” she told him, “raising hell out there in the fields.”

  “Night things,” Ryan said, his voice low. “Let them chill each other.”

  Krysty leaned her head back until it rested against Ryan’s chest, and she felt his hot breath in her hair, the solidness of his body like a mighty oak tree as she leaned against it. “Will we be okay?” she asked. “Do you think?”

  Ryan reached around and held Krysty close, kissing her high on the cheek. “Come back to bed,” he whispered in her ear. “We can worry about all that tomorrow.” With that, Ryan walked back to the bed, his large body moving with the grace and fluidity of a jungle cat as Krysty watched in the semidarkness.

  Krysty shrugged the fur coat from her shoulders, tossing it aside as she climbed onto the bed beside Ryan, sinking against him, feeling the warmth of his body as he pulled her close.

  DAISY AND CROXTON HAD returned to the main room of the house, and they lay down in a corner with Alec. Daisy and Alec shared a single blanket, conserving their body heat.

  Awake, Daisy spoke in a whisper so quiet, it was if she was hardly speaking at all. “What if they turn on us?” she asked.

  “They won’t,” Alec assured her. “I gave the full speech, word for word, to the old man—Tanner—just like you taught us. He’ll keep them in check, make sure we get back to Babyville.”

  Daisy pulled the blanket about her. “I don’t trust blastersmiths,” she said. “What if they turn on us?”

  Croxton shook, struggling to stifle his laughter lest it wake the other occupants of the room. Finally, his whispered voice came to Daisy’s ears in the darkness. “Well, wouldn’t that be something,” he said.

  WITH DAWN CAME RELIEF; the relief of surviving another night in hell.

  In the master bedroom of the old farmhouse, Ryan stood by the window, scanning the field that backed onto the property. He had been mildly surprised to find that, in the daylight, the walls of the room were decorated with bright and cheery wallpaper that showed tiny flower petals arrayed in sun-faded shades of blue and pink and green. There was movement out there, through the window. A half-dozen birds with black feathers circled in the sky before they swooped down, landing in the branches of two anemic trees that lined the field. There was something down there, Ryan saw, but he was too far to make it out. A dark lump of something that lay unmoving in the center of the field.

  “Morning, lover,” Krysty said, pushing herself up in the bed. Ryan looked across to her and saw her face drop in mock disappointment. “Oh, you’re already dressed.”

  Ryan knew that she didn’t mean anything by it. “Let’s just get moving,” he confirmed. “Get out of this freak show and on the road again.”

  He watched then as Krysty stood, the supple curves of her flesh shining in the rays of the early-morning sun that lit the room. He smiled, marveling at her glorious beauty.

  “I think we should do something before we leave,” Krysty said as she put her legs in the pants of the black jeans she wore. “The thing we spoke about last night,” she reminded him.

  Ryan agreed. “I’ll go,” he said, plucking up the bedside candle and making his way from the room, lighting it as he went ahead in the dim, old house.

  THE OTHERS HAD awakened and were busy filing back through the garden and into their battered wags. J.B. had wrenched off the quick-fix barricade he had nailed to the front door, and he and Doc had checked the immediate area to ensure that it was safe before they let the people under their protection emerge. In the morning light, the man traps in the garden were easy to spot—the traumas of the preceding night seemed a hundred years distant, nothing more than a bad dream half remembered. As Mildred and Jak led the way, blasters ready just in case, they saw a writhing form had been caught by one of the man traps. It was a mutie boar, roughly two feet in length—just a piglet—and it squealed shrilly as the people approached. Jak stopped to look at it, as Mildred kept everyone else moving.

  While the travelers shuffled past, Jak went down on his haunches to get a closer look at the creature in the trap. It was an ugly thing, porcine but with a covering of matted hair the deepest shade of brown, a squashed, lopsided face and two sharp, dirty tusks that curved from lower jaw to high above its head like a devil’s horns. Its eyes glistened wetly, two dark pools of mystery that watched the albino youth with inscrutability. A cloud of tiny insects buzzed around the piglet’s leg where the trap had cut into its flesh. Its breathing was loud and came faster and faster as Jak tentatively reached out with his free hand until, as he appeared close enough to touch the beast, it began squealing once more. The loudness of its cries scared the scavenger birds from the trees, and they took flight in a flock, swirling through the sky before alighting on a group of alders a little farther from the farmhouse.

  Emotionless, J.B.’s voice intruded on Jak’s thoughts as he studied the hog. “Move yourself, Jak. Time to get the hell out of Dodge.”

  Looking over his shoulder, Jak addressed the Armorer. “Hurt,” he said, meaning the animal in the trap.

  “Not our problem,” the Armorer said. “Chill it and you just waste good ammunition.”

  Jak glanced back at the piglike, mutie creature, thoughts whirring through his head.

  J.B. turned back to the house, making his way along the overgrown path toward the mined porch. As he reached the booby-trapped steps, he called back to Jak. “You coming?”

  In a move so swift it was just a blur, something flashed in Jak’s hand and the struggling beast suddenly slumped to the ground. As J.B. watched, a thin stream of red formed on the monster’s neckline where Jak had cut its throat with his knife.

  “Mebbe we can eat,” Jak explained, pushing himself from the ground and following J.B. back to the house.

  ELSEWHERE, MILDRED WAS encouraging everyone to the wags. There would need to be a redistribution of personnel in the wags, of course, now that Croxton’s was nothing more than a burnt-out husk, but the travelers were amiable, enjoying a rare camaraderie in their shared quest. Ryan would take Mitch’s converted harvester, but the beast of a machine accommodated only two people, including the driver, in its high seats, and wasn’t practical for transporting more than that long-term. “It’ll do for me and Croxton,” Ryan had said. “We’ll lead the way and the rest of the convoy can follow.” Croxton had agreed.

  As the travelers busied themselves, loading their possessions—and the useful things that the house had turned up—into the wags, Ryan and Krysty took the time to dig a hole in the backyard. The earth was muddy here, and the topmost layer had been hardened with ice where the morning dew had turned to frost. As Ryan worked at the ground with a small, handheld spade he had found in a kitchen cupboard, Doc emerged from the back door that led into the kitchen of the farmhouse. He had been helping J.B. ransack the property for the last of the food and ammo supplies, and had noticed them working in the yard.

  “Everything is loaded up,” Doc explained from the doorway to the house.

  Krysty’s head turned to look at Doc, and Ryan glanced up from his work, holding his hand up in the universal sign to yield. “Be with you in a few minutes, Doc,” he said. “Just got to finish up he
re.”

  Doc stepped through the kitchen door and strode across the icy, muddy ground. “Might I inquire as to what it is that trammels you?” he asked.

  Krysty turned then, and Doc saw that she held a tiny figure wrapped in a blanket. It appeared to be a child, a baby, and Doc suddenly felt that plummeting feeling in his stomach.

  “We found her upstairs,” Ryan explained as he continued digging the shallow grave in the soil. “Seems wrong, somehow, to just leave her for the birds to peck at.”

  Doc bowed his head respectfully, and stood in silence as they finished their funereal task. Loading a wag by the edge of the yard, Croxton spied the group and stood unnoticed, watching silently as they buried the child’s body.

  Once Ryan was done, Krysty laid the baby out in the soil as black feathered birds circled above, cawing back and forth in their ugly, discordant voices. As Ryan picked up the spade to begin piling soil on the child, Doc stopped him. Ryan and Krysty watched, and then the old man spoke the Lord’s Prayer in his bold, stentorian voice and all three of them bowed their heads over the tiny grave. Once Doc had finished, Ryan set about burying the baby girl, aware that the corpse would likely be dug up again by wild animals in a matter of hours.

  It didn’t matter; they had done what they could.

  WHEN THEY JOINED their companions, out by the wags at the side of the house, Krysty, Ryan and Doc found them eating. In the morning light, J.B. and Jak had raided the tinned supplies in the basement and were sharing cans with everyone in the group.

  J.B. turned at their approach and handed an open tin to Krysty. The circular can was about an inch and a half deep and it sat snugly in the palm of her hand. “Have some breakfast ’fore we hit the road, why don’t you?” J.B. suggested.