Deathlands 118: Blood Red Tide

by James Axler

  “Doc?”

  “May we fetch Mr. Strawmaker?”

  “Why?”

  “Oh, well, when I was at Oxford I had a number of fellow students of Argentine extraction. The wealthy Argentines in that day often sent their children abroad for study. I was fortunate enough to make the acquaintance of several, and we spent many a morning or evening drinking maté in our dormitory or in study group.”

  “What is maté?” Oracle asked.

  “A form of tea. One puts on a kettle of water and fills a gourd with the dried herb. You insert a silver straw, often with a gold tip, and pass it around among your companions. I found it stimulating and refreshing and pleasingly social. They swore it was healthful and prevented many illnesses.”

  Mildred’s brow furrowed. “I’ve heard of it, Doc. They had it in health food stores, don’t worry about what those were, but they pushed it as an alternative to coffee, supposed to be much healthier and full of nutrients.”

  Oracle’s eyes went into unblinking shark mode. “Full of your vitamins.”

  “Loaded with them, according to the literature.”

  Oracle called up through the skylight. “Miss Loral, Mr. Strawmaker to my cabin, if you please!”

  “Aye, Captain! Strawmaker, to the captain’s cabin!”

  Strawmaker teetered breathlessly into the cabin. “You sent for me, Capitán?”

  Oracle nodded at Doc, who continued. “Good Strawmaker, might I ask if your people still drink maté?”

  “Yerba maté? Of course! Every day! I have a supply in my saddlebag. Why do you ask?”

  Oracle leaned across his table. “This maté, it stops the scurvy?”

  “Forgive me, Capitán, but what is this, the scurvy?”

  “It is a disease,” Doc tried Latin. “A scorbutic.”

  Strawmaker brightened. “Ah, the escorbuto! In my land some of the estancias are vast beyond imagining. A gaucho can spend weeks, even months at a time out upon the pampas and consume almost nothing during that time besides dried meat and maté!”

  “Mr. Forgiven, what did we take off Spada’s sec men?”

  The purser flipped back through the book. “Most went under the water directly. We recovered a few blasters, though their powder was wet. Some very fine knives, some lances. From the birds’ saddlebags some spare clothing, odd trinkets and tools and a goodly supply of light rope.”

  “What of their food and supplies?”

  “Each bird carried a supply of dried meat and a water gourd, which we kept.”

  “And the maté?”

  “If you mean the little linen bags full of twigs and leaves.” Forgiven cleared his throat uncomfortably. “The men kept the bags and gave the rest to the sea.”

  Oracle closed his eyes. “I see.” The captain suddenly straightened. “Very well, we must obtain meat and maté, either by trade or raid, and we must do it quickly. Mr. Ryan, I have heard rumor to the effect that you have traveled from one side of the Deathlands to the other, engaging in just such activities.”

  “I have,” Ryan responded.

  “Very well, Mr. Strawmaker, I assume you can read and write?”

  “In both Spanish and English.”

  “You can read a map?”

  “I can.”

  “You claim to have traveled the length and breadth of the eastern coast. I wish you to pick a good landing place, close to where we might be able to acquire what we need.”

  “I am at your service, Capitán.”

  “Mr. Ryan?”

  “Aye, Captain.”

  “Choose your shore party, and then present Mr. Forgiven with a list of weapons and equipment you will require.”

  Ryan looked at Strawmaker. “You’re saying there’s no horses left in Argentina?”

  “They were one of the things the disease weapons, during the Great War, attempted to wipe out. They have had something of a recovery in the south. Indeed, in the north we talk about crossing the Horse Line, and in the south they call it the Bird Line.”

  “Why a line at all?”

  “Because ñandú love to prey upon horse, Ryan, just as the richer people of the north love to prey upon the south.”

  “Captain?”

  “Aye, Ryan?”

  “Let’s cross the Horse Line.”

  Chapter Seventeen

  Ryan marched across the wet, rolling, winter pampas. His party had rowed ashore just before dawn and had been walking inland for hours. It felt jarring to have the earth beneath his feet after so many days at sea. Strawmaker was the clear candidate for translator-negotiator, and he was pathetically grateful to have solid ground under his feet again too.

  Ryan had brought Jak and Doc from his own people. Of the sailors, Hardstone was a Deathlander and had been a hardened fighter before he’d heeded the call of the sea. Miss Loral had come along to represent the ship and Skillet its larder. Manrape rounded out the party as the most dangerous man on two legs. The shore party was festooned with weapons. Manrape and Hardstone were loaded down with packs full of trade goods. Miss Loral wore her full ship’s uniform but had added a peacoat and combat boots. She and Hardstone carried AKs. Skillet looked positively barbaric. The handle of a two-handed meat clever jutted from behind the cook’s back, and the front of his bandolier held three more cleavers of various sizes that, according to rumor, he was adept at throwing. He carried a massive, double-barreled monstrosity of a longblaster with a horrifying, barbed, black iron harpoon head sticking out of each muzzle.

  Ryan walked beside Manrape. The bosun held a nickel-plated pump scattergun that looked to have been lovingly maintained; he held it crooked casually in his arm as if he was going duck hunting. The effect was ruined, or heightened, by the ugly, painted red against rust, home-forged bayonet clipped to the ventilated shroud. A hatchet and his lead-weighted rope end hung at his side.

  Jak topped another hill about a hundred meters ahead and stopped. He waved the party forward. They gazed upon a vale. A road ran through it. Like most ancient small towns, the buildings clustered on either side of the main road and spread back.

  Every building had been burned to the ground.

  Ryan snapped out his longeyes and scanned. It wasn’t that the ville had been bombed or a fire had raged through it. Every single building, including the outliers, had been deliberately reduced to ancient, blackened foundations. Only crumbling chimneys, cracked concrete, rusting rebar and collapsing stone or cinder block remained upright.

  “Spread out,” Ryan ordered. The shore party formed a loose skirmish line and descended. The only thing still standing above head height was a perilously leaning lamppost holding a sagging sign. Nothing moved other than the miserable, misting rain. Ryan stopped and stared up at the sign. It had just two words on it in faded orange.

  MONSTROS

  PESTE

  Jak frowned. “Pesty monsters?”

  “Strawmaker?” Ryan asked.

  The musician stared unhappily at the warning. “We use peste where you would use the word plague.”

  “Plague monsters?” Ryan didn’t care for the sound of it.

  Strawmaker’s shoulders twitched with more than cold. “This place was burned.” The troubadour pointed to a pit in what might have been the town square. “There, in the plaza, you will find your answer.”

  Ryan walked over knowing what he would find. The pit had been dug through the cobblestones and was big enough to drop half a dozen wags into. Its sides had eroded long ago. Nevertheless, blackened bones stuck up through the nearly frozen mud. The pit was an open grave. Like the town, the bodies had been burned. The shore party stared soberly into the pit.

  Strawmaker sighed. “You will find many towns like this in my land. In fact, almost no one lives in a city or town. We are all rurales now.

  The shore party spread out and kicked around in the rubble, but there was little to find. Ryan followed a one-lane road up a bit of hillside. He found a scorched foundation that implied a house of considerable floor plan. He walked
across it and stared at steps leading down.

  “Over here!” Ryan’s party formed around him and stared down the steps. A pair of corroded, nearly eaten down to gossamers of rust I-beams still wedged the equally rusted steel security door shut. The one-eyed man gazed at the crude, faded graffiti painted on the steel. It was the same color orange as the sign in town but brighter for having been sheltered. It depicted a face. The eyes were two angry diagonal slashes. The mouth consisted of two very jagged, horizontal and opposing lightning bolts, clearly representing teeth. “Your plague monsters?”

  Strawmaker looked close to bolting. “I have not seen that symbol in a very long time, Ryan. Always, it was very old. But I am a troubadour, and—”

  Skillet scoffed. “And I still haven’t heard ya sing anything save the breakfasts I serves ya up from ya belly!”

  Miss Loral spoke quietly. “Skillet.”

  “Sorry, ma’am.”

  “Strawmaker?”

  “I play many songs, tangos, ballads, wild festival dances and, to my shame, paeans of praise to jefes that I wrote to earn my supper. Some few songs of my very own I am proud of. But I also sing the folklorico and tell stories. The old stories say that sometimes the epidemics didn’t just kill. Some of them, they changed people.”

  Ryan had seen far more of that than he cared for in the Deathlands. “Monsters.”

  “Si, Ryan.”

  “Is it over?”

  “Is what over?”

  “The peste, Strawmaker. The monstros.”

  “One would like to think so. I have traveled this land more than most, but one always hears stories of those who have gone into the cities for the treasure trove of tools, materials and technology left behind during the great die-offs and the urban exodus. These stories never end happily. Most often the people never return, or they bring something worse back with them. I myself saw a rancho in the north where every last cow, pig and ñandú looked like they had been torn apart by giants, but all of the people were gone. No bodies. Just gone.”

  Miss Loral stared at the door and then Ryan. “Booby-trapped?”

  “Looks like they were trying to keep something in,” Ryan made his decision. “Hardstone.”

  Hardstone reached into his pack and took out a sawed-down double-barrel scattergun. Ryan slung his Scout and drew his SIG. Jak went around the steps and squatted atop the overhang with his Colt Python and his favorite fighting knife ready. Hardstone was an old hand at breeching ancient houses. Thunder echoed as he put a slug into the door where each hinge should be. Rust sifted off the door as he stepped back and kicked the two I-beams. They collapsed in clouds of rust beneath his boots. The door hung by its knob.

  Manrape looked at Ryan. “Together?”

  “On three, I’ll take point. Hardstone? Light.”

  Hardstone took a ship’s lantern from his pack and struck a sulfur match off his belt buckle. He took up his AK with the stock folded like a giant blaster and held the lantern high. “Ready.”

  “One, two, three!” Ryan and Manrape slammed their shoulders into the ancient steel. The door snapped off the deadbolt and fell inward. Ryan took a knee on top of the fallen door and covered the cellar. Manrape followed him like a bayonet charge about to happen. The golden light of whale oil flooded the cellar as Hardstone unshuttered the lamp. Ryan took in a tableau trapped in time like an insect trapped in amber. The one-eyed man rose. The cellar was wide and low ceilinged and seemed to take up a great deal of the space below the foundation. It had a kitchenette, a bathroom and a living and sleeping area.

  “Clear! Manrape, keep a watch up top.”

  “Aye.” The titan went back up the stairs.

  Ryan advanced and the rest of the shore party filed in behind him. Jak took in the arrangement of the bodies like the veteran scout he was. “Bad.”

  “Wasn’t good,” Ryan agreed.

  The sleeping area had a bed and two cots. Two corpses occupied the bed. A woman and a small boy in predark clothes lay arm in arm. The woman’s arms still clutched the boy, and one air-cured hand covered his face. Ancient rust-colored blood spray on the sheets showed where each had taken a round through the left temple.

  Ryan took in the little girl lying in the exact middle of the cellar. She was air dried like the rest and appeared to have taken five rounds in the chest and a sixth between her eyes. Ryan’s jaw set. Something was terribly wrong with her. The eyes of the presumable mother and son on the bed were desiccated. The little girl’s were huge, hard, bright black marbles still bulging out of her head. Her lower jaw was too big. The mouth was locked in a death rictus, and teeth that belonged on a horse filled it. The edge of each tooth was set at a separate, horrible, diagonal shearing bias.

  Ryan turned his eye on the man sitting at the kitchen table.

  His left hand was bandaged and the little, ring and middle fingers were gone. Ryan had a terrible feeling if he gutted the girl he would find three fingers in her shriveled belly. The man’s lower jaw was gone, and the top of his head was open to the sky as if it had taken a burst from a machine blaster. A Glock lay on the floor beneath his right hand, the action racked open on an empty chamber. Behind him three words scrawled in brown streaks of ancient blood stained the refrigerator door.

  DIOS ME PERDONE

  Ryan nodded at the last act of graffiti. “Strawmaker?”

  Strawmaker’s voice shook. “It says, God forgive me.”

  Every member of the shore party saw the terrible drama play out in their heads. Ryan got down to business. “This place has a lot we can use but not what we came for. Miss Loral?”

  “This is treasure and bounty found on land. We take our pick as long as it’s not ship-needed. Can’t carry this much. We mark it on the map and come back with more crewmen for the bulk. Manrape’s above watching our six, so he gets a pick over.”

  Ryan immediately strode to the Glock. He’d taken point and none denied him. Skillet raided the kitchenette. Everyone else began ransacking drawers and closets in what Mildred liked to call a shopping frenzy. They were remarkably egalitarian, and communal loot began piling up on the little dining table.

  “Butane lighters! Ten pack!” Hardstone called. “Grab one!”

  Jak tossed a pair of Swiss Army knives on the pile. “Multi knives! Already got one!”

  “Boots!” Miss Loral threw a pair of new out of the box combat boots on the table. “Don’t fit me!”

  Ryan grabbed them. He knew Krysty’s feet intimately and recognized he’d found her some footwear. He put them on his small pile with some socks and went back to the Glock.

  Jak admired the blaster. “Better’n your SIG?”

  “Figure I’ll give it to J.B.” A corner of Ryan’s mouth lifted. “Surprise him.”

  Strawmaker opened a guitar case and nearly buckled. “A Takamine! A F400S! Oh, madre de dios! Let there be strings...” He shouted in triumph. “A capo! Strings! Bronze strings!”

  Pieces of clothing shot around the room to see if they fit anyone in the party.

  Miss Loral squealed and came out of the curtained privy with a thirty-six-roll bulk pack of toilet paper still in the plastic. She ripped it open and began yanking out rolls, tearing out their cardboard tubes, squashing them flat and jamming them into her pack. Ryan grabbed a few for Krysty, and Jak did for Mildred. Ryan searched the dead man’s pockets and found keys. He went to the steel floor-length cabinet and after two tries opened it. “Blasters.”

  It contained two assault rifles of some make Ryan couldn’t identify. Two hunting rifles, a O/U shotgun and a pistol and a revolver. The boxes of ammo were scant, but Ryan found spare mags for the Glock. He loaded them and filled his pockets with 9 mm rounds.

  “Strawmaker,” Ryan called, “you didn’t draw a blaster from stores.”

  The minstrel in black drew himself up. “I am a troubadour, until very recently I was gladly welcomed wherever I went. I am also a gaucho, born and raised. Give me my bolas, my knife and a good bird beneath me and I can live off the
land quite easily without a blaster.”

  “You’re a Glory man now and a member of my shore party.” Ryan took up the 4” revolver and checked it. The action was gritty, and a couple of spots of rust marred the blueing, but otherwise it looked to be in excellent shape. He loaded it and put it on the table along with the rest of the ammo in the box.

  “Smith Model 25, .45 caliber. You’ve got six shots. Just put the front sight on the enemy’s chest and squeeze. When we get back, have J.B. tune it up for you.”

  Strawmaker made a face, but he went to the table and picked up the blaster.

  The tool chest, radios, computer and tech, the highly suspect meds, the two generators, candles, kerosene, gasoline, lanterns, cots and linens were all earmarked for the ship. Ryan looked over at Doc. The old man was in a corner by a small writing desk and a shelf of books. He perused the volumes with interest. Ryan checked the ring of keys. He’d raided many a predark house and recognized keys by size and function. He pulled off a small brass one and tossed it. “Doc. Desk.”

  Doc looked up and caught the key with his fencer’s reflexes. “Ah, of course.”

  The old man opened a drawer. “Oh my.”

  The shore party looked over. “What?” Ryan asked.

  “Pornography.”

  Ryan and Jak knew what porno was. So did Hardstone.

  “What kind?” the sailor asked.

  Doc sighed and began slapping down old ’zines. “Oui, Juggs, Hustler.” Doc squinted at one in shock. “Hardcore Lithuanian, lactating, unwed lesbian—”

  Hardstone lunged. “Dibs!”

  Doc opened another drawer. “Oh my stars and garters!”

  Ryan read the look of shock and pleasure on Doc’s face. “What?”

  Doc pulled out a clear bottle with an orange label and filled with amber-colored liquid. Miss Loral pointed a finger. “All spirituous liquor is to be handed over to the purser once aboard ship, Doc! You know the creed and you know the code.”