by James Axler
All thought of the three intruders who had come to disrupt the ceremony, and their three companions who had been co-opted to combat their threat, was now banished from the minds of the elders. It was too late for them to stop what was happening. If they hadn’t been dealt with, then it didn’t matter. They would be absorbed into the belly of the beast and become one with the elders and their young acolytes as they began their journey to the next level. Intent didn’t matter now: that was an earthly failing, and it was too late for such things.
All would be absorbed.
All… .
* * *
JAK HAD CAUGHT sight of them first. It was hard to see anything in the melee—not just because the young were milling around and chanting, getting in the bastard way of his search, but because the light was so strong that it hurt his eyes. There was something about the air, too. It shimmered in front of him, making it hard to focus on anything. Shapes dissolved into nonsubstance in a way that he couldn’t understand, even though he could see it in front of him.
But there was no mistaking Doc. Using sacking to disguise their clothes had been a good move, but Jak knew how they walked. He could spot the gait a mile away, and Doc was more distinctive than most.
With a satisfied grin he looked around for J.B. and Krysty. They had opted to stick together, and he was sure that the other three would adopt the same tactics in this kind of situation. But in the changed world that he now found himself walking through, it was hard to literally see where his companions had gone.
Jak turned and found himself staring down the barrel of a ZKR.
“Hey, Jak, looking for me?” Mildred asked before flipping the blaster in her hand so that the butt was now the offensive part of the weapon. She thanked God that Jak had expected them to act a certain way and was slower than usual because of the shit that had been pumped into him, one way or another. In the split second it took the albino teen to register that he had been fooled and to react, Mildred brought the butt of her ZKR blaster down and across, swiping him across the temple so that a raised red bump signaled the dulling of a light in his eyes before he crumpled.
She reversed the ZKR quickly and looked around. They had split up, knowing that their companions would expect them to stick together. Things were getting weird up here now that the light was so close, but she would happily have bet that it was even weirder for the three who had been hypnotized into joining the throng. That was what was giving them the edge.
She wondered how Ryan and Doc were doing.
Doc’s tactic of reverting to his usual self—bar the sacking camou—was a risky tactic, but one that was bearing fruit. He knew that if for no other reason than Krysty had just stepped out in front of him, her blaster leveled at him.
“Should learn to hide better, Doc,” she said through gritted teeth.
“Perhaps I wanted you to find me,” he said calmly, even though he was aware that in her current mind-set she could just blow him away. But perhaps if there was something of the old Krysty still inside there somewhere.
“Why would you want that? You know I have to chill you. I have to, Doc. I don’t want to, I really don’t.” She grimaced as though a pain was ripping up her head. Doc stepped forward, and she straightened, setting her jaw as she leveled her blaster on him as steadily as her shaking hand would allow. “Don’t come any closer.”
“Why not?” he asked. “If that is what you have to do, then why not do it now?”
As he spoke, he was aware of the risk he was taking. It was as though all that was around them melted away so that they were the only two people standing on the ridge. Nothing else mattered but the hope that he could get through to the real Krysty, could stop her chilling him.
But she could just do it, and he would have no chance of evading the bullet. However, he could see that there was an intense struggle within her. Her intellect and mutie power battled the influences that had been thrust upon her. He hoped his trust in her strength would be justified.
“I…have…to…do…it,” she intoned slowly and through a mist of pain. “It’s been imprinted, and it’s so…strong…that…I…” She trailed off as the effort to speak became too much. It seemed to Doc that the pain in her head—the result of the struggle between her will and the will of others—was overcoming everything else. She crumpled, bent and clutched at her head with her free hand. The blaster wavered.
Doc took two steps forward, brushing a group of young people—oblivious of his presence—away from him as though they didn’t exist. He was almost within reach when she looked up and leveled the blaster once more. He stopped. But the expression on her face—imploring and desperate—told him more than the raised hand.
“Doc, help me…” she said in small voice.
The old man took the last step forward and pulled the Smith & Wesson from her now-limp grip. She fell against him.
“I could have—”
“But you didn’t,” he said simply, cradling her. “You are stronger than that, and the bonds we share are stronger. But this is not the time. We must get the hell out of Dodge, as they used to say, before we get fried. Come…”
She was only too willing to be led, weak and yet pushing herself to the limit as Doc led her to where he could see Mildred with the prone form of Jak across her shoulder.
“Good work, my dear Mildred,” Doc said with a raised eyebrow.
“Not so bad yourself,” she returned.
She turned to Krysty. “How are you doing, sweetie?”
“I’ve been better, Mildred,” Krysty replied with a weak grin. “Where’s Ryan—” a worried expression crossed her face “—and J.B.?”
The one-eyed man and the Armorer were, at that moment, in the middle of their own face-off. J.B. had been keeping a keen eye out for Ryan. Their former leader was the real danger in his view, and being the man who had ridden longest with the one-eyed warrior, J.B. had determined that he would be the one to take him down. Even though a voice at the back of his head kept asking him why.
Like Jak and Krysty, he was finding it hard to focus on what was real and what wasn’t, the people around him fading in and out from real bodies to streams of light. He felt as though the air around him was light in all sense of the word, as though he could—if he didn’t concentrate hard enough—find himself drifting away into the ether.
But there Ryan was, suddenly directly in front of him, and staring him down…
* * *
RYAN HAD SOUGHT OUT the Armorer. He knew that J.B. would want to chill him, and that the impulse would probably be beyond his control. That was okay. It was up to him, then, to reach the Armorer first and take him out of the equation until they all had gotten clear. There was no way they could stop what was happening, but at least they could try to escape before whatever it was decimated the area.
When he saw J.B. looking around, Ryan strode straight toward him, cutting through the crowds as though they weren’t even there. He held the Steyr across his chest with one hand, and shrugged off the sacking as he walked so that he would stand revealed.
He was about a hundred yards from the Armorer when J.B. saw him. He leveled the mini-Uzi, and Ryan halted, standing his ground. He kept the Steyr across his chest. He was taking a great risk, but he figured that it was worth taking. J.B. was sweat-spangled, his hands shaking, and he seemed to be having trouble aiming at his onetime friend.
“Do it, J.B.,” Ryan said calmly, but inwardly he winced as he saw the Armorer’s finger tighten on the trigger. He flexed his muscles, ready to bring the Steyr down and across if he had to.
“Ryan, for fuck’s sake, stop me,” J.B. said, his voice sounding somehow distant and faraway. “I can’t fight it much more.”
Ryan needed no further prompting. He moved across and swung the butt of the Steyr, moving it in a perfect arc so that it sn
apped the Armorer under the chin, knocking him cold. After shouldering the longblaster, Ryan scooped up his old friend, keeping his eye on the sky as he carried him across to where, through the gradually thinning crowds of young, he could see the others.
The light was now so bright as to be incandescent, surrounding them all with an aura that made it hard to see where the shimmering outline of their bodies began and ended.
“It will be here soon. We must go,” Doc urged.
Mildred looked at the young crowded into the circle. Somewhere in the middle of them stood the elders of the city, lost in their own worlds of imagining, and no longer a threat, but still the root cause of what was happening, and still in control of the youngsters.
“We can’t just leave them,” she said.
“We’ll never find any of K’s kids,” Ryan snapped.
“Maybe, but that doesn’t matter. Any of them…”
“There’s no time, Doc just said as much—” Ryan began.
Doc stopped him with a hand on his arm. “But Ryan, who are we that we can just turn away? Some of us just lost ourselves, but still managed to find a way back. Does that not signify something? Something that we cannot ignore.”
Ryan looked up, squinting at the brilliant light that was now so close that it seemed almost possible to reach up and touch it.
“I’ve got to be stupe to agree to this,” he muttered. “Come on.”
Putting the prone Jak and J.B. carefully to one side, with Krysty assuring Mildred that she would be able to move freely and assist, they moved to the outer edges of the circle.
The young people were unresponsive for the most part. Lost in the hallucinogenic effects of the herbs, along with the stimulus of the hypnotics, they were wrapped up in a world that the companions couldn’t see. Ryan, Doc and Mildred pulled at them, trying to get them out of the circle, only to be shrugged off. They hit out at them, hoping that pain would break the spell in some way.
Some of the young caught the blows too hard, and were rendered unconscious. There was nothing that could be done for them; they would have to be left. They already had Jak and J.B. to contend with. They would have to be carried. Only the ambulatory could be led away.
It seemed a thankless task, but gradually a few of the young were detached from the circle, and wandered dazedly around as though seeing things for the first time. One or two even asked—of no one in particular—what they were doing in this place.
There was no time for explanations. A small group was gathered, the baron’s daughter whose abduction had set these events in chain nowhere to be seen, and they were led away from the circle. Some wanted to go back, to collect siblings and friends. To find them would take too long, and they were dissuaded by any means necessary, even if it meant a further blow.
With one eye on the encroaching light, Mildred shouldered Jak while Ryan took up J.B., and with Doc and Krysty leading the young, they started the descent into the canyon. They took the steep path, even though it was the most treacherous, as it was the quickest route down.
The atmosphere was now beginning to feel fractured around them. The air hung heavy, and the lightness of a few moments before was now reversed into an oppressive pressure, as though the gravity had suddenly increased, making every step more and more difficult.
But they had to get down to the floor of the canyon and take shelter. The covered dip in the earth was an hour away, and there was no way of knowing if they had that time. They just had to keep going, one agonizing step in front of another.
It was the longest hour that any of them could remember. Every second was impressed on their minds as though stamped by an invisible combat boot. The air hummed, the rocks sang and the air shimmered in waves around them. The refuge of cover seemed almost eternally out of reach as the light grew closer and more intense.
And then, without knowing how, they were there, under cover.
The rest was lost in a roar of displaced air that was less sound than sheer force, and a light that seemed to sear their eyeballs to the insides of their closed eyelids.
* * *
IT WAS NIGHT when they came out of hiding. The air was thick with a choking dust that settled across the canyon floor. The night was quiet, the sky dark, the moon a single sliver in a cloudless sky. The city on the ledge was dark and empty.
“Best wait till morning,” Ryan said simply.
And when the morning came, he and Doc journeyed up the slope. Mildred and Krysty—now feeling stronger, if still a little washed out—stayed behind to look after the young and to tend to Jak and J.B. They were both conscious, but still disoriented if aware of what had happened to them. Which was more than could be said for the young. Many had memories that halted at the moment the puppet show began. They had no idea how they had ended up here, nor even of what had happened the day before, when they were rescued.
Perhaps, Mildred thought, that was just as well.
Up on the ledge, there was nothing to mark the passing of the elders and the young they had abducted. Nothing beyond the dust that was everywhere, slowly stirring in the morning breeze. All traces of humanity had been expunged. The stone circle and the paintings that had marked the path into it had been vaporized. The ledge looked just as it had to have been when the settlers had arrived in predark times.
“It’s so peaceful,” Doc said softly. “You would not think that such an awful event could pass without some kind of mark. It is as though no one had ever been here.”
“Mebbe that’s the way it is,” Ryan mused. “If you and Mildred are anywhere near right, then mebbe this has happened fuck knows how many times before. And will again.”
Doc snorted. “Perhaps that’s why it feels so peaceful. The beast, of whatever hue it may be, has been satisfied for now.”
They traveled back down to the people who were waiting for them. Ryan outlined what they had seen, and when he had finished, he saw that Jak was looking up at the ledge.
“Fireblast!” Ryan said. “Mebbe that’s what makes the stone shine so bright.”
The rising sun had reached a point in the sky where it was directly shining on the ledge. The stone palaces, built by an unknown hand, in an unknown time, and possibly to unknown gods, were shining like ivory, looking more refreshed than a few scant days before.
“The sooner we get out of this canyon and back to what passes for civilization, the better,” Mildred said. “Meantime, we need to decide what we’re going to do with these kids. They come from lord knows where. Some of them don’t even know where their villes were. How we’re going to get them back to where they belong, I can’t even begin—”
“We won’t bother,” Ryan said, interrupting her. “Listen, they’re changed. No way would they fit in. But I’ll tell you what. K sent us to get his kids back. Okay, we didn’t get them. But we got some kids. And he has a ville that doesn’t have any. It’s not the only ville like that, but the only one we know about. I figure any kids to keep his ville going will be welcome.”
“You think he’ll pay us for that? It’s not what he asked for.”
Ryan shook his head. “I don’t give a shit what he asked for. Mebbe he will, mebbe he won’t. Only thing that matters is that we managed to save some kids. Better than jackshit. For that alone we earned our keep.”
After scavenging for supplies in the palaces of light, Ryan turned away and led his companions and the children into the wastelands.
* * * * *
ISBN: 9781459227651
Copyright © 2012 by Worldwide Library
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