Homeward Bound

by James Axler

  Ryan stooped, cocking his head to read the worn letters. He read it out loud.

  "'Drummer Horatio Makem of the 20th Main Regiment. Born in Connaught and died here, aged eleven years and three months.'"

  "Children, Ryan. Younger even than that bloodthirsty albino in the truck. So many died here. Oak Hill. The Peach Orchard and Little Round Top. Cemetery Ridge and the Devil's Den. The wounded begging for death. A bullet in arm or leg, Mr. Cawdor, meant cold, blunt steel. The piles of severed limbs quite o'ertopped the tents where the surgeons labored."

  Ryan straightened and looked around at the quiet fields and hedgerows, their lines still visible among the tide of fresh vegetation. A wood pigeon was cooing softly in a grove of immensely tall sycamores near a narrow, meandering stream. It was a scene of perfect, idyllic peace.

  "You say this was a big fight?"

  "A big fight, Ryan?" Doc queried. "Oh, I think that I might say that. Some fifty thousand men and boys were killed or wounded in those three days in bright July. Five years before I was born. Fifty thousand lost, Ryan."

  "Who won? North or South?"

  Doc Tanner scuffed at the ground where one of the tablets had toppled over. "General Lee hoped for the one great battle that would turn the tide for the South. This was to be it. Gettysburg. The high-water mark for the Confederate States of America. The war was not yet over, but now the die was cast and the count was against the South."

  Ryan glanced around, automatically checking for any possible danger, but the dawning was still quiet and peaceful.

  "They didn't know that their cause was lost," Doc continued. "They rallied and came again and again into the storm of lead. One cried out to Lee that they would fight on until Hell itself froze over. And then they would go and fight the damned Yankees on the ice. But it was lost."

  "Gettysburg," Ryan said, tasting the word on his cold lips. "Heard of it. Old books. So the Union came the way we did, from the north. And the Rebs… that the right name? Yeah, the Rebs came up from the south, yonder."

  Doc Tanner smiled gently. "You'd have guessed so, Ryan. Oddly it was just the opposite. Lee came to Gettysburg from the north, and General Meade from the south.

  Old Snapping Turtle Meade. That's what he was called. When I was a young tad of a boy and we played Rebs and Yankees, we'd all be our favorite generals. I was Jeb Stuart."

  There was no sign that morning of the madness that swam just beneath the surface of Doc Tanner's shaken mind. He was logical and coherent, pointing out as best he could how the battle had swung backward and forward during the three days, using his silver-topped cane to indicate the hills and folds in the rolling ground around them.

  "Thursday, November 19, four months after the battle, a lot of big men came here to dedicate this cemetery as a sort of national monument for the fallen."

  Unseen by either of them, Jak had left the wag and walked through the grass to stand behind them, hearing what Doc had been saying.

  The boy began to speak, nervously at first, then with growing confidence.

  " 'Four score and seven years ago our fathers brought forth on this continent a new nation, conceived in liberty and dedicated to the proposition that…all men are created equal.'"

  "Abe Lincoln's Gettysburg Address!" Doc exclaimed. "How in tarnation d'you know that, my snow-headed young companion?"

  "Pa taught me. Said his pa taught him and his pa before that. There's lots more. Can't recall it now. Bit 'bout the world will little note nor long remember what we say here, but it can never forget what they did here. Meaning the men got chilled. And it ended with something about resolving that these dead shall not have died in vain. That…" The boy shook his head, the long white veil of hair swirling around his face in the dawn breeze. "Can't…"

  Doc Tanner took it over, his rich, deep voice filling all the morning, reaching to the far-off rivers and hills like an Old Testament prophet.

  " 'That this nation, under God, shall have a new birth of freedom; and that government of the people, by the people and for the people, shall not perish from the earth.'"

  It was a solemn and moving moment. Ryan glanced back and saw that Lori, J.B. and Krysty had all gotten out of the wag and were standing close together, listening to Doc's recitation.

  "If I was much given to crying," Doc said, "I would shed tears now for the mindless and overweeningly stupid men who forgot those words of Lincoln. The men, now long dead, who took a dream and flung it into the abyss. The men who took the United States of America and turned it into the Deathlands. I could weep for it, my friends. Truly, I could weep."

  Chapter Eighteen

  THERE IS A POINT where the old states of Virginia, Maryland and West Virginia all come together at notorious Harper's Ferry. The wag coughed and spluttered its way into Ryan Cawdor's home state, now a scant sixty miles from the ville of Front Royal. The closer they drove to his birthplace, the quieter the one-eyed man became. He sat alone on his bunk when he wasn't spelling Jak in the driver's seat.

  It was becoming increasingly obvious that the sec wag wasn't going to make it the whole distance to their destination. The farther they traveled, the rougher the engine sounded, devouring more and more gas.

  They stopped for the night, about thirty miles from Front Royal, and Jak dipped a long stick into the tank, holding it angled to the orange beams of the setting sun to try to see the gas level.

  "How much?" Ryan asked.

  "Not 'nough," the boy replied.

  "In the cans?" J.B. asked.

  "Drier than an old woman's tits. Guess 'bout ten miles. Mebbe fifteen."

  They all looked at Ryan. "You recognize where we are?" Krysty asked. "Ring any chimes from boyhood?"

  He shook his head. "Never hunted much north. This trail don't seem much used. Main tracks were south and west of here. Old 1-81 was the wide one. Pa had trouble with guerrillas coming from the mountains to the west. Shen raiders. They used that interstate with fast wags. Light armor. Stole horses and cattle and women. Surely missed the stallions and the seed bulls."

  "But you believe we may be somewhat in the immediate vicinity of your ancestral home?" Doc asked, scratching his chin, his mind immediately wandering off the subject. "Why, 'pon my soul, I declare that I have a dire need of a shave, my friends. Forgive me while I go to attend to my ablutions." The old man vanished toward a slow-moving stream behind the wag.

  Ryan shrugged. "I guess we got to be close. Can't say… Fireblast! I don't think I'm doing right bringing you along on this."

  Krysty clucked her tongue and moved closer to him, but he shook his head.

  "No, lover. I mean all of you. If'n Harvey once finds out I'm within a hundred miles, he'll put the dogs out after me. After us. And he must be able to call on…mebbe a hundred sec men or more. As well as having every bastard village and hamlet for twenty miles around under his heel."

  "Wouldn't be here if'n I didn't want to be," J.B. replied.

  "And me," Lori insisted defiantly. "We'll killed your brother together. Shan't I?"

  The others laughed at the girl's serious face, Ryan finally joining in.

  "Okay, friends," he said. "But when my brother has us roasting over a slow fire, don't any of you put the blame on me!"

  JAK CAUGHT SOME TROUT and roasted them over a slow fire of hickory wood, the scent making everyone's mouth water. The fish were delicious, the tender flesh all but falling off the slender bones.

  "What's time, J.B.?" Jak asked, laying back on a shelf of thick moss, legs crossed, his stark white hair spread out behind him like a bride's veil.

  "Twenty-five of eight," the Armorer replied, checking his wrist chron.

  "We should be moving on," Ryan said, belching appreciatively. "Those fish were double-ace. Hardly ever get fresh eating. Did you have self-heats and spun soya in your day, Doc?"

  "What, may I ask, do you consider to be 'my day,' Ryan?"

  "Before the long winter, course."

  "During my time in the 1990s, I found the quality of cu
isine execrable."

  "That mean it was good, Doc?" Ryan asked.

  "It means it was shit, Ryan." The old man grinned. "Tinned and frozen and packaged and freeze-dried and irradiated and processed. Little better than these appalling self-heats. But remember that my time was also back in the late 1800s, before I was so cruelly trawled forward as part of Cerberus."

  "What was food like then? In real old times," Jak asked.

  "Ah," Doc sighed. "Like those trout. All food was fresh. Well… most food was fresh. Chicken and mutton and beef and turkey. Salmon and trout and bass. Vegetables from your own garden, with no having to take a rad count first. Cream so thick I swear you could cut it with a knife. But what is the merit in such talk? Let us enjoy the occasional marvelous food like these tender fish."

  "Had good food as a kid, back at the ville," Ryan said. "Cooks made me a special sort of a pie with apples and oranges in it. Called it 'Master Ryan's Surprise,' they did."

  "By the three Kennedys!" Doc exclaimed, leaping to his feet in dismay.

  "What the…?" Ryan said.

  "Your name!"

  "What?"

  "Your name," Doc repeated. "Your name is Ryan Cawdor. We all call you by that name, do we not? Indeed we do."

  Ryan didn't understand. But he was used to the occasional way Doc's synapses disconnected and produced only babbling. Krysty also stood up, eyes lighting up as she realized what Doc was trying to say.

  "Ryan!" she exclaimed.

  "You all lost your jack, lover? What's all this about…?"

  "About your name, you double-stupe," she said, voice raised. "Tomorrow we'll be within range of the ville."

  "And?"

  "And if anyone hears the name of Ryan Cawdor, then they'll…"

  "Go running to Harvey," Ryan finished, slapping his own forehead with exasperation. "Sorry, friends. Better go and throw myself in that pool to try and get my damned brain working. Yeah, of course. Got to change my name."

  "Upon my soul, but I admire a man who likes to speak his mind. Indeed I do," Doc said, grinning. "That's my impersonation of… of someone or other from some old vid."

  "I don't know what to call myself," Ryan said.

  "John Doe," Krysty suggested. "Used to be the name for chills they couldn't put a name to."

  "Thanks, lover," Ryan said dryly.

  "Floyd Thursby," Doc offered.

  The suggestion was greeted with total silence by everyone. Ryan tried the name on his tongue, finding it felt familiar. "Not bad."

  "Like it." Lori smiled. "Floyd Thursby. I can remember that."

  Krysty leaned over and kissed Ryan on the lips. "Hey, Floyd, you kiss just like a guy I used to know."

  "You enjoy it?" Ryan grinned and pulled her to him, kissing her long and hard.

  "Even better when you help," she replied, face flushed, sentient hair coiling and uncoiling on her shoulders.

  "Floyd Thursby." J.B. tried the name. "Why not? Where did you pick that one from, Doc?"

  The old-timer looked puzzled. "I think… No, it's vanished. Perhaps we shall never know who the real Mr. Floyd Thursby was. It will remain a mystery shrouded in an enigma."

  THEY FINALLY RAN OUT OF GAS a little before noon. Fortunately the rebuilt wag had been giving them plenty of warning, the engine stalling and backfiring repeatedly. Jak, who was at the wheel, had ample time to pick a secluded spot off the deserted blacktop. He eventually parked the truck in a grove of trees, completely out of sight of any casual passersby. They hadn't seen a soul since crossing the Susquehanna, so it looked like a good place to safely store some of their clothes and blasters.

  "We go and we look. Find a way—if there is a way—to take out Harvey and his woman. And his bastard son. We need more power, we come back here and collect the rest of the blasters."

  The Armorer sighed at Ryan's words. "Surely like to have the Uzi in my hand, going into a hostile ville like this."

  "Sec men'd chill us 'fore we got ten paces over the moat."

  "Sure, Ryan, sure."

  Their secluded grove was a place of quietness and muted grays and greens. A small, furry animal scuttled amid the rustling leaves, darting out of sight behind the wheels of the wag.

  "Nice forest," Krysty said. "Any mutie critters around here?"

  "Some humans," Ryan replied. "There's still some black bear in the hills, and mebbe some cougar. Pa used to breed wild boars. Big mothers, six feet at the shoulder, with curved tusks that'd rip your belly open 'fore you even saw 'em coming."

  "Nice, lover. I'll stay close to you. This all the woods from the Front Royal ville?"

  "Used to be. When I was a kid it seemed like we owned half the Shens. Now… I don't know. Just know that we gotta step careful."

  "When do we move?" Doc asked. "There's ample daylight left for us to continue with our odyssey, is there not?"

  Ryan put his hands to his chin, as if he were praying, trying to decide what'd be best. It was nearly twenty years since he'd been in Virginia. There could have been lots of changes—probably had been. In fact, in the year since there'd been any reliable, fresh news, much might have altered at the ville. Harvey could be dead. So could his wife and son. There could have been a rebellion. It was widely known that precious few barons ever died peacefully in their own beds.

  "Wait for dusk," he finally decided.

  Most of them slept through that long afternoon.

  They all dreamed, locked in their own private memories and thoughts.

  Jak was riding a great alligator, fully sixty feet long, with mutie jaws and teeth. Somehow it skimmed above the surface of a vast swamp, covered with rich, waxy flowers in unearthly shades of purple and green.

  Lori was wandering naked along swept corridors of gray stone, turning corners, walking and turning more corners. Always the corridors stretched ahead of her, limitless and featureless. Yet she knew that she must keep walking. She was cold, but if she could only find it, there was warmth somewhere for her. Her feet were sore and bleeding and she cried. In her dream, the girl cried.

  J.B., his glasses neatly folded and tucked into the protective top pocket of his coat, was immersed in a common and repetitive dream. His lips parted in a faint smile of enjoyment.

  He had fieldstripped a Stechin machine pistol and laid the parts out, all clean and oiled, on a cloth of white velvet. He ran his eye over them, naming each part.

  "Barrel, recoil spring, slide, barrel bracket, extractor, tip of firing pin…" and all the way through the field manual.

  The Armorer sighed with pleasure.

  Krysty was dreaming of her childhood, back in the ville of Harmony. She was running through a field of poppies, red as spilled blood, feet bare, a ribbon holding back her vermilion hair. The sun was as bright as a newly minted copper coin. Around her she could hear the laughter of children, pealing sweet and hard like small bells of platinum.

  The laughter was getting closer and closer to Krysty.

  The sun disappeared behind clouds.

  The poppies withered and died.

  But the laughter came closer and closer.

  When Krysty jerked awake, she was sweating and trembling.

  Doc Tanner slept shallow and often, like many old people. His dreams were of the long-gone past, lost and beyond recall.

  He was in a book-lined room, which was lit with the soft glow of a brass oil lamp, the background resonant with the regular, measured heartbeat of a walnut grandfather clock.

  Doctor Theophilus Algernon Tanner was reading, occasionally pausing to make a note with his quill pen, dipping it into the ornate ormolu inkwell.

  Through the open doorway, he could see his wife, Emily, suckling little Jolyon, while baby Rachel, swathed in layers of lace petticoats, played with a plump puppy by the fire. It was a scene of intense domestic happiness, and the old man mumbled to himself, smiling on his bed of dry leaves and soft moss, two centuries away from his dream.

  Ryan dreamed of a dagger.

  When they awoke, they readied
themselves for the journey to Front Royal, leaving their long winter coats in the wag. J.B. reluctantly laid his mini-Uzi on a shelf, and Ryan pushed his precious G-12 and its ammunition under one of the bunks.

  It was dusk, a fresh spring kind of an evening with a flock of pigeons wheeling above the tops of the trees. The air tasted green, and already the beginnings of dew lay slick on the folded tops of the boulders.

  "That way," Ryan said confidently, pointing to the south.

  "Wait," Krysty ordered.

  "I hear dogs," Jak said, brushing his hair back from the side of his head.

  "Yes," Krysty agreed. "Pack of dogs, coming this way. Fast. Listen. You'll all hear them soon. They're hunting."

  Lori heard them next, then Ryan and the other two—a high keening that rose and fell as the animals ran into hollows or over hills in their hunt. Ryan felt the hair on his nape rise at the sound. It was a familiar noise from his childhood. He had heard it when he'd ridden to the hounds after boar, galloping behind his father, stirrup to stirrup with his oldest brother, Morgan.

  "What do we do?" the Armorer asked. "I'll get the Uzi out the wag."

  "Wait," Ryan urged. "If it's a full pack, then blasters won't be much use. There'll be forty or fifty curs, trained to go for throat or groin. The only chance is to get in the wag and shut the door."

  "Then whoever's running the dogs'll take us like rats in a trap," Krysty argued.

  "Better than being ripped apart."

  "Guess so, lover," she said.

  But the pack veered away, heading east. While the six friends stood huddled together, they heard the hunting animals finally catch up with their prey and make their kill.

  The screaming went on and on for what seemed like long minutes but probably only lasted for thirty seconds or so. It was a shriek of purest agony. And it was undeniably human.

  Chapter Nineteen

  "THE MEMORIES ARE flooding back and filling my brain with the past," Ryan said vehemently.

  They'd been walking through the evening and into the night, traveling on a twisting network of narrow footpaths. They heard the sound of the pack of hounds, called back by a blaring horn, gradually fading away to the south, toward the ville.