by James Axler
"I have never seen the like."
"You put out the eyes?"
"Yes."
"And released it clean? It was not harmed? The wings were unbroken?"
"Yes, lord."
His breathing was slow and steady. The only other sound the woman heard was the surf of her own blood seething through her ears.
"It fell to the fire and was consumed?"
"I have never…"
"You have said that."
"Forgive me, lord."
"For what? There was a ripple in our world, and you asked for the strangers' ritual to be performed. It has been done before. And it will be done again. This time, it went… I am disappointed, madame, I am very disappointed."
"It proves what I had said. There had been signs before. When there has been a great tide or the earth has shaken. The insects, the snakes and the birds. All behave in…"
His hand touched her face, and she stopped speaking. The middle finger of his right hand touched her jaw, beneath the left ear. His spatulate thumb probed under the right ear.
"Tell me once, woman. Why?"
The palm of his hand was across her lips, pushing them against her broken teeth. There was the warmth of sweet blood in her mouth.
"There are strangers come. But they are not as we are. Not Cajuns. Not your men or women. Not the wolf's-head renegades from the other side of the town. They have come from nowhere."
"And the signs are bad?"
"As bad as can be. Never…"
The finger and thumb began to tighten, making the cartilage pop under the skin. The woman moaned, but the grip was inexorable.
"That is all? There is nothing more you can say to aid me with these strangers?"
She desperately racked her mind for something that might satisfy Baron Tourment, might spare her from his cold anger.
"No?" he said, voice as soft as the touch of a butterfly's wing. "Then you have failed me."
The hand closed on her jaw, squeezing, the nails digging into her flesh. The skin burst under the pressure, and the woman tried to scream for mercy. But already her windpipe was clamped shut. First the left side of her jaw was dislocated, then the right joint cracked apart. She tried to bite the black hand, but it was too tight against her lip.
Blood was filling her mouth, and she struggled to swallow it. The hand pincered in, harder and tighter, until she couldn't breathe.
Her veiled eyes protruded from their sockets, blood trickling from the corners. More blood came seeping from her broken mouth, from her nose and from both ears. It was as though her entire skull was a great sponge, filled with crimson blood, and Baron Tourment was squeezing it slowly dry.
The giant black braced himself on his splinted legs, lifting Mother Midnight until her bare feet hung clear of the carpet, kicking and jerking. He wrinkled his broad nose at the stench as she lost control of both bladder and bowels and fouled herself. But his grip didn't relax for a moment.
The last sound she heard, deep within her own head, was a soft cracking, like a man setting his heel to a fresh apple.
"Adieu, Mama," whispered the man, opening finger and thumb with a gesture of revulsion, allowing the corpse to drop to the floor at his feet. He wiped the blood from his hand on his dark cotton shirt.
There was a polite knock on the door of the luxury suite.
"Come."
"It's over, Lord?"
"Yes, Mephisto. It's over. Remove that and dispose of it to the pets." The grating Creole French was gone and the man spoke perfect English.
"And then? She saw something?"
"I think so. Something could be real bad. Pass the word for extra care."
"Who can they be?"
The massive black creaked across the room and collapsed inelegantly on a long sofa, stretching the exoskeleton and sighing.
"Not that white butcher kid and his friends?"
"Lauren and his gang?"
"No, Mephisto. The bocor woman here smelled something new. From outside the swamps."
Mephisto grinned wolfishly. "It is a vengeful spirit come to punish you for your evil, Baron Tourment."
It was dangerous to make that kind of joke, but the sec boss had judged the moment well.
"You think maybe that? Do I do wrong? No. A man like me shouldn't worry about something like that. It may even be blasphemous."
He threw back his leonine head and laughed uproariously at his own joke. Mephisto joined in, stopping when the baron pointed a long, bloodied finger at him.
"But take care. Who knows what manner of creature moves amongst us?"
Chapter Three
"THIS PLACE is fucking something else," complained Hennings, swatting irritably at a huge mosquito that had battened on his shoulder.
"These bastard fly-bugs are the biggest I ever saw," added Finnegan.
"Muties," commented J.B., laconic as ever.
The Armorer used his pocket sextant to take a sighting of the glowering orb of the sun through the dense foliage of the forest surrounding them. It confirmed his original suspicion that they were in the Deep South, around two hundred miles west of the old port of New Orleans.
"Cajun country," said Doc Tanner, pausing to wipe sweat from his brow with a massive kerchief with a swallow's-eye design.
"What's a Cajun?" asked Ryan, easing the shoulder strap of his weapon.
"Around five hundred years ago, back in the 1600s, the French settled on a part of the east coast that would later be known as Nova Scotia. The soil being fertile and the climate temperate, the settlers called their paradise Acadia. More than a hundred years later, the British drove them out of the region and the Acadians fled south to these parts. Acadians got corrupted to Cajuns. Simple, isn't it?"
Nobody said anything, and Ryan wondered, as he had a hundred times in the past few weeks, just how the old man came to have such a bottomless supply of knowledge.
AFTER LEAVING the small redoubt they had tugged the door shut behind them. At J.B.'s suggestion, they had put a tracer on it so they could find their way back through the labyrinth. But the tiny trans didn't work.
"Damp," said J.B. disgustedly. "Don't have another, Have to watch our path real careful."
Ryan led the way, following the faint remains of a narrow two-lane blacktop through the trees and shrubs. Never in his life had he seen anything like this place. Not even in his dreams.
Though it was nearly noon, the sky was filled with a dull, hazy greenish light. On both sides of the road there was the sullen glint of water, rainbow-tinted where oil lay on its surface. Cypress and pecan saplings twined about each other, with groves of beautiful oaks and graceful elms. And over all of the forest were the smothering veils of Spanish moss, dangling from every branch like spider webs. As the sun broke against it, the moss seemed to shift and alter, diffusing the light in shards of white and gold Where the shadows gathered, the moss changed color like a chameleon, from green to gray.
Two hundred paces from the building, they came across what had been the security gate. There had been triple-layer barbed wire with porcelain conductors, evidently meant to carry a lethal dose of electricity. But over the decades the planet had struck back at the man-made intrusions. Fallen trees had smashed the fences; long creepers had brought down the guard towers where machine guns rusted in the gloom.
It took several minutes for Ryan to lead his party over and under and around the tumbled trees, using his panga to hack away at the clinging ivy. Several times he heard something scuttling away from them but did not see what it was.
They came to a fork in the road, and Hennings stepped across to examine the remains of a notice board rested crookedly against the stump of a dead azalea. But as he attempted to pick it up, the wood crumbled in his fingers, rotted by beetles and the humidity.
Passing more fallen barriers and fences, Ryan realized how tight the security must have been when the redoubt was built, way back at the end of the twentieth century. Now it was all wiped away by the bombing and by the weather
that followed.
"Much nuking down here, J.B.?" he asked.
"Never been hereabouts. Recall some trader in a gaudy house near Windy City saying they used some kind o' new missiles. Kills life and leaves things standing."
Both men started, looked upward through a break in the covering branches, seeing a great white bird with beautiful plumage soaring far above them. Neither of them recognized the creature as a snowy egret.
"What we going to do 'bout food, Ryan?" asked Finn, stopping to shoo away a cloud of tiny orange flies that gathered around his flushed face.
"This road's got to lead somewhere. We all got food tabs. Place like this might have dirties living close by. Take their food."
The idea of getting food from the backward muties who were supposed to live deep within some of the more isolated swamp areas wasn't that attractive to anyone.
"There," said Lori, pointing ahead, where the trail narrowed by the remains of a high fence. It was now a tangled heap of rusting steel.
"Looks like there could be a real highway yonder," Hennings said.
He was wrong.
It was a back way into a kind of park. There was a wooden causeway, floating on the watery mud that flooded the area. Some of the logs had rotted and broken, and others shook dangerously as Ryan stepped carefully on them. Leading the way, he warned the others to be cautious and keep ten paces apart.
The trees became sparser, comprised mainly of intertwined mangroves set in the water, some leaning and toppling. The water opened into a kind of bay, offering a visibility of up to a couple of hundred paces. The sun was a watery gold, sailing in a sky dotted with purple and black clouds. Intermittently Ryan noticed that the surface of the swamps was broken every now and then by a rippling splash, as if something had moved or jumped. But it was always the actual enlarging rings of water that caught his eye; he was never quick enough to see what was doing it. Once, as he was standing on the edge of the piling, staring down into the thick brown water, he was sure something large passed underneath, setting up a sullen rippling on the surface.
"What's that?" asked Krysty, pointing at a thick square post with the number 25 deeply etched into its sloping top. At its base was a black plastic box.
"Looks like a small trans. J.B. what d'you reckon?"
"Could be. Antipersonnel, mebbe. Pick up intruders by the gateway. Fire gas? Looks like it's well iced by now."
Doc stopped to peer at it, running his gnarled fingers over the carved numbers.
"Upon my soul, but this rings a far-off and tiny bell in some back room. I believe… no, it eludes me, I fear."
The next two posts along the causeway had rotted away to mere stumps. At a curve in the trail, many of the logs had collapsed into the murky swamp below, and they had to leap the gap. Doc surprised everyone by leaping across like a startled gazelle, but Lori found it harder, eventually removing her high boots and throwing them across first, and finally jumped with little difficulty.
Finn slipped on landing and opened a small cut on his hand. He bent over to wash it in the swamp. "Water's warm," he said, raising his hand to his lips and licking it. "Warm and salty."
"Not that far from the sea. Only a few miles from Gulf o' Mexico. Few years back they had vicious acid rainstorms here. Strip a man to his bones in a few minutes if'n you got caught in one. Seems calmer."
"Them clouds is gathering," said Hennings, pointing with the muzzle of his gray HK54A submachine gun.
The sky was blackening, the violet becoming a deep royal purple. The sun ducked and dived behind the clouds, sending shadows racing across the water.
"Best move faster," urged Ryan.
Passing more wooden posts, he automatically noticed the numbers. They stopped at a post numbered 18.
"You are approaching the end of the Audubon self-guiding nature trail. Remember, the planks may be slippery, so use the handrails and ropes where provided. Children should hold the hand of an adult."
The disembodied voice was so sudden and shocking that Ryan slipped and came within an ace of tumbling head over heels into the turgid slime.
"Fucking fireblast!" said Ryan, recovering his balance and his composure.
The voice went on, creaking a little like an old farm gate in need of oiling, occasionally fading and then rising again.
"In the basin directly in front of you are thousands of tiny green turtles. If you see or hear something slithering in the water, then it just might be old brother alligator. But they have been carefully selected to prevent them growing too big, so don't be frightened."
There was a click as the tape loop reached its end.
"Activated by a low-intense beam," said J. B. Dix. "Works like a basic gren trap."
"A hundred years old and still working," said Krysty Wroth, moving close to Ryan.
As the seven continued to walk along the wooden causeway, they passed several of the stumps, but only a couple were working.
Number 7: "Wandering along the Audubon self-guiding nature trail, most visitors will have, even in this vast solitude of mud and water, a sense of kinship and friendliness with the environment."
"Like a hole in the fucking head," spat Finnegan, slapping angrily at one of the insects that had settled on his neck for its afternoon fix of fresh blood.
"Remember, no picking or taking, please! The delicate ecostructure can easily be damaged by the careless hand of man. Some creatures here are real messy housekeepers, so watch where you step."
This time the tape didn't stop. It just began to repeat itself, gradually slowing down, drawling and blurring its speech until it died with a crackling, hissing mess of static.
They walked on in silence.
"LOOKS LIKE DRY LAND," said Hennings, pointing ahead with the muzzle of his blaster.
The cathedral of towering trees that surrounded them was thinning out a little, occasionally letting the sun dart through, creating pools of brightness all over the tangled roots of the mangroves. They spotted several large birds swooping among the upper branches. Ryan had never seen creatures like some of these. Brown-feathered birds, with great leathery bills that hung like sagging shopping bags.
"How deep d'you figure this swamp, Doc?" asked J.B., leaning out over the side and shading his eyes with his hand, peering into the clouded depths.
"I wouldn't be surprised to find them, technically, bottomless. The water will grow thicker as you go deeper. Muddier. Until muddy water becomes watery mud. Then thicker mud, slimy and clinging. Perhaps a hundred feet or more before you reach anything that could be regarded as solid."
"Another speaking tree," said Lori, indicating the last of the posts, with the numeral 1 carved deep into it. As they drew level, the ancient mechanism creaked to life.
"To wonder is to begin to understand…understand. Welcome to the Audubon self-guiding nature trail. The leaflet you are holding will help you to… to… to… to appreciate the wonders of this part of the Atchafalaya Swamp, the largest natural swamp in the entire country. To wonder is… entire country…"
"Kind of strange listening to a voice from the past like this, even if it is going all wrong." Krysty shook her head.
As if involving actual effort, the tape began to grind around once more, with many jumps and starts and repeats.
"If you…finish with it, replace it for use of those… after. Help to preserve this vital part of our living heritage so that they…by the great-great-greatgrandchildren of us all, a hundred years in the unguessa-ble future."
"Unguessable," echoed Ryan. "Son of a bitch sure got that right."
As the tape jerked along, Finnegan sighed and sat down on the edge of the causeway, less than twenty paces from the murky edge of dry land. He leaned over the side, trailing his hand in the warm salty water, straining to hear the faint voice on the tape.
Above them, the sun had disappeared once more behind the gathering clouds. Twice in the past few minutes they had heard the whiplash of lightning as it slashed to the earth.
Half-lis
tening to the voice from the past, Ryan Cawdor walked a dozen paces beyond it, then stopped where the last logs of the walkway were rotting and settling into the crusted mud of the shore. Tiny orange crabs scuttled and darted among the jumbled debris. Near the pier a metal can bobbed on a sullen swell, still bearing the recognizable words Miller Lite. Ryan had seen dozens like it before. They had been containers for beer, or sugary drinks that had foamed and fizzed when opened. He'd seen pictures in old magazines in redoubts.
"The Audubon trail is controlled by the National Parks movement. Remember…man…harmony…environment. Man in harmony with his environment."
Abruptly, Finn screamed and threw himself back on the moss-stained planks, rolling to try to get away from the enormous alligator that had come bursting from the stinking ooze. Jaws gaping open wide enough to swallow a buffalo, with rows of sharp, triangular teeth, the predator raked the air as it sought its prey.
Chapter Four
THE HECKLER & KOCH G-12 automatic rifle has a laser sight that makes it extremely accurate over any distance by day; and equally so by night with its infrared laser nightscope.
J. B. Dix had once explained to Ryan why the three-round burst, such as the G-12 features, had been introduced, back before the long winter hit the world.
"On full automatic, most rifles, like the M-16, tend to start rising after four or five rounds have been fired. Difficult to control. So you fire a succession of three-round bursts. Interrupts the cycle before the muzzle comes up at you."
Everyone was startled by the eruption of the monster reptile from the swamp. Some reacted more quickly than others.
Doc struggled to drag out his nineteenth-century pistol, but Lori jerked out her popgun. Krysty and the Armorer were equally fast in readying their blasters, with Hennings a split moment faster to try to save his friend's life.
Ryan, with his H&K G-12, was first and quickest of all. As he spun around, finger already dropping to the pistol-grip trigger, the alligator was less than ten yards away from him, and Finnegan was desperately scrabbling away from the yawning chasm of its jaws. Muddy water streamed off the horny ridges along its spine and its tiny hooded eyes stared unblinkingly at its potential victim.